Tags: 2010

I’ve published the transcript of a talk I gave at An Event Apart in 2010. It’s mostly about interaction design, with a couple of diversions into progressive enhancement and personality in products. It’s called Paranormal Interactivity.

I had a lot of fun with this talk. It’s interspersed with videos from The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, Alan Partridge, and Super Mario, with special guest appearances from the existentialist chalkboard and Poshy’s upper back torso.

If you don’t feel like reading it, you can always watch the video or listen to the audio.

You could even look at the slides but, as I always say, they won’t make much sense without the context of the presentation.

…another year over, and what have you done?

Well, quite a bit actually, Mr. Lennon.

In 2010 Jessica and I moved into our new home in the Elm Grove area of Brighton. It’s a really nice place in a quiet neighbourhood and it lies at the top of a fairly steep hill, which may be of benefit to my physical condition. This is also the first place that we’re not renting. We’ve got a mortgage now, which technically puts us in the category of being homeowners …although it’s actually the bank that owns it.

In 2010 I became a cyborg. I’ve been wearing glasses since September. They’re especially handy for conference halls and cinemas.

In 2010 Salter Cane released their second album, Sorrow. Modesty forbids me naming it album of the year. That accolade undoubtedly goes to High Violet by The National (and film of the year undoubtedly goes to Inception).

In 2010 my third book was published. I’m very proud of it.

In 2010 I spoke at An Event Apart five times in five different cities in the US. I loved every minute of it.

In 2010 I compèred dConstruct. It was the best yet.

In 2010 I attended the wedding of Simon and Nat and officiated at Cindy and Matt’s wedding. They were joyous occasions.

In 2010 I organised the world’s first Science Hack Day in London and attended the world’s second Science Hack Day in San Francisco. Both events were indescribably excellent.

Bring on 2011.

Well, what a week that was! The start of September is dConstruct time here in Brighton—one of the focal points of Clearleft’s calendar. Things get hectic in the office in the days and weeks beforehand. Then Brighton becomes the centre of web geekdom for a few days.

Things got rolling with a few workshops, one of which this year was my HTML5 For Web Designers workshop. I think it went pretty well.

A funny thing happened after the workshop…

I was walking from the workshop venue (Lighthouse) into town to meet up with Jessica—we were going to see Anthony Bourdain speak in his inimitable, somewhat gauche way. As I was strolling along, a young man approached me. He was carrying a small package. Excuse me, he asked. Are you Jeremy Keith?

I determined that he was an unlikely hitman and anyway, I had committed no crimes grievous enough to warrant a contract on my life, so I answered in the affirmative. It turned out that the package in his hands was a delivery from A Book Apart. He wanted to know if I would sign the contents of the package. I agreed on the condition that we document the unboxing right then and there in the street.

That doesn’t happen very often.

That was a pleasant start to an excellent few days. The geeks began to arrive in Brighton from far-flung destinations: Brian from Iceland, Tantek from California, Andy from Belfast. From Belgium, they came. From Portugal, from France. It was like a little mini South by Southwest …or South by Southwest as it used to be a few years back before it mushroomed in size.

The day itself was wonderful, really wonderful. I know I’m biased and I’m bound to say that, but really, I think this may have been the best dConstruct yet.

I had the honour of introducing the speakers. I thought I might be quite nervous about that but actually, I had a lot of fun. The quality of the speakers and their talks was astoundingly high so I simply spent the day wallowing in the excellence and occasionally exclaiming How cool was that? or words to that effect.

All of the talks have been recorded, thanks to Drew. You can subscribe to the podcast or listen to each talk individually on Huffduffer:

1. The Designful Company by Marty Neumeier
2. Boil, Simmer, Reduce by Brendan Dawes
3. Information Is Beautiful by David McCandless
4. The Power and Beauty of Typography by Samantha Warren
5. The Auteur Theory Of Design by John Gruber
6. Jam Session: What Improvisation Can Teach Us About Design by Hannah Donovan
7. The Value Of Ruins by James Bridle
8. Everything The Network Touches by Tom Coates
9. Kerning, Orgasms And Those Goddamned Japanese Toothpicks by Merlin Mann

Such a great line-up! It felt great to introduce John Gruber for the first time in the UK. Finally meeting Merlin Mann was a real pleasure—his affable, off-the-cuff talk sans-slides was hilarious. And I’m particularly happy that the audio from Hannah’s presentation is available. She started with a little bit of a musical number, playing her cello with myself on mandolin and Matt on piano. I think it sounds pretty good.

But the highlight for me was James Bridle. I don’t just mean it was the highlight of dConstruct; it was one of the finest presentations I’ve ever seen anywhere. Ever.

A few months ago, I wrote of James’s forthcoming dConstruct appearance:

…mark my words: when this year’s dConstruct is done, his talk will be the one that everyone will be talking about at the after-party.

He didn’t just fulfil those expectations, he surpassed them. His thoughts resonated with my own obsessions but he took things to a whole new level with a physical piece of data visualisation that he constructed. You can get the details of the artefact on his site, where he writes On Wikipedia, Cultural Patrimony, and Historiography.

dConstruct 2010 wrapped up with my mind well and truly blown.

Pictures are on Flickr. Audio is on Huffduffer. Elsewhere ‘round the web you can find:

• Robbie Manson’s round-up,
• Laura Kalbag’s notes,
• Eva-Lotta Lamm’s sketchnotes,
• Matthew Culnane’s overview,
• Sam Brown’s experience graph,
• Matt Edgar’s thoughts,
• Did you have a nice day? by Rattle: a gorgeous SVG visualisation of the team’s experience on the day. Source code included.