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11:30am - Making Your Short Attention-Span Pay Big Dividends
Jim Coudal - Coudal Partners
Brendan Dawes - magneticNorth

[Chatting beforehand with Shaun Inman and Richard Rutter about type. After talking about comic sans, Shaun said,"There should be a comic sans tax." Richard, "There is a place for comic sans..." As he started to tell the situation, the Jim Coudal started the panel.]

"Most important, we got to dream about that event in reality." - Jim Coudal "Embrace your short attention span."

"Analog in, Digital out" Brendan's new book

Another benefit of trying things because you can, you need to be moving to do anything. It is much easier to steer a moving ship than a ship in port.

"It looks from the outside that we at Coudal Partners are screwing around everyday." The dirty little secret is that there is hardly ever any conclusion. To a natural or unnatural ending part.

We tend to be re-starters not revisers. [revising until it fits the brief] ... Poetry meme - Zadie Smith called in a Frank O'Hara poem.

(Jen says: Jim is funny.)

At Coudal:
1) Paint all the walls in your bathroom that takes colored chalk. Everyone goes to the bathroom and has ideas.
2) The Book: a holding place for ideas. It legitimizes ideas. One line ideas.

My grandfather, a Dane, was a notorious note taker. But he was always losing the notes. "I am not writing it down to remember it later, I am writing it down to remember it now."

Now onto Brendan:
I am a great believer of pencil and paper. I also have a drive with me that is full of crap.

This is me over ten years ago. (slide of young Brendan) Site of Saul Bass. Dividends are not just about the money, but about reputation and identity. There is not much about Saul on the internet. So, I did this site, it hooked me up with Jim and through this I started to work with Hillman Curtis. The dividends were that I got to work with some great people. Because of this short attention span thing, the domain expired. 3 times. The main point is if you are going to do something, make it, even if it isn't finished do it.

Make stuff, get it out there. It is about making things happen.

Short attention span is about constraints. Constraints is a fantastic thing. Constraints help you focus ideas.

Tells story of first computer - The Sinclair ZX81. 16k of memory. Within the first hour, Brendan had made his first program. And then left a load of cocks at the computer store...

I dabble in a bunch of stuff. One moment I am working in php, then in photoshop, and then flash. All programming is the same, the concepts. Brendan talks about playing with DVDs and writing a program to capture frames and display the imagery in fun ways.

Film students, academics and obsessives with time on their hands may use Dawes's grids to prostulate new theories about the language of film. - John Waters, The Guardian

Brendan committed that if he was an artist, he would take John Waters seriously. But being a ... he just went on the next project.

Interface playdoh with a computer. Amount of playdoh on screen dictates how fast the movie will play. [Audience loves this.]

Create magical experiences. What is the point? I don't know. To see what will happen.

McGoogle: Brendan really likes the icons on the bottom of McDonalds' bags. Let's take the world's most ubiquitous food company and merge it with the world's most ubiquitous search company. Put your search term in and you get burger and fries icons back as search results. Completely unusable. Doesn't make any sense. But fun. Begat Flamazon.

"They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night." - Edgar Allan Poe

Jim Coudal - "Write down your dreams before you take your shower and forget it by the time you have your coffee. The notebook thing."

You can't build the house if you can't drive the nail. You can't do the work with out the skills. - Jim

I can do a little bit in php. Jack of all trades a master of none. Surround yourself with people who can do the craft. Learning the skills, it is how you apply your spare time. I take the train for an hour everyday, I use that time to learn things. - Brendan

"Wasting time is really important as well." - Brendan Dawes

Question - Do you meander with a purpose?
Jim - We just meander.

It is important for us to enjoy going to work. Most of the world doesn't. - Jim Coudal

****
Came out of the Short Attention panel and found Shonagh Hurley (Yeah! She has arrived!) at check in.

Lunch at Las Manitas with Kent Brewster and some Yahoo folk (Tara from Flickr, Eric from myBlog, Dan, and Jason). Tasty food, good company.

****
Met back up with Shonagh, talked a bit, and then off to:

2pm - Everything You Always Wanted to Know About the Mobile Web...but Were Afraid to Ask

Brian Fling, Blue Flavor

Linking phone numbers
5-7 navigation links - use access keys
make navigation be ordered lists
forms are tricky
Mobile publishing

1) Use stylesheets with well formed XHTML and use the stylesheet to do the adaptation on the fly for the user.
OR
2) Mobile Specific Site

Supporting Devices and Browsers
Focus on Five devices, as many of the phones are on the same platform or essentially the same phone with minor upgrades.
Nokia Series 40
Motorola Razr
LG or Samsung (free phone)
Treo
? (Windows based? Nokia S60?)

Device Detection Dilemma

Brian advises to keep it simple. There are not a huge volume of users running towards mobile internet.

Testing - Brian likes casual usability testing as formal testing slows down development.

.mobi Developers Guide - dev.mobi

.mobi Mobile Ready Report

Mobile Design - mailing list and mobiledesign.org

****

Attempted to go to Steve Champeon's Spam panel, but ended up in a varied discussion with Eric Meyer and Mark Trammel, with Julie Hammond popping in for a bit to say hello.

****

5pm - "I'm Good, Really!": Self-Marketing for the Freelance Web Geek

Gina Trapani
Molly Ditmore - Molly Bloom
Matthew Haughey - MetaFilter
Annalee Newitz - Freelance Writer
Penelope Trunk - Brazen Careerist

Molly - The Elevator Pitch - what do you do? A concise carefully practice statement of what you do that everyone will understand. Be positive and brief.

Matt - prefers the quiet approach and is not comfortable with marketing - make the best thing you can make, join mailing lists, blog and then it will happen.

Middle Ground between spamming and not selling yourself short.

Look at the work that other freelancers are doing and see what promotion they have done and what they are linking to.

If you are a freelancer, have a concrete set of goals and a short-term plan.

Matt - Self confidence goes a long way, longer than a business card and the perfect pitch.

Annalee - Not everyone has confidence all the time. I have been starving and then done well and then you will just be crushed by bigger people.

"The Secrets of Consulting" by Gerald Weinberg

Show, don't tell.

Specialize.

Don't Stop. Keep going, even when it sucks.

***
Meet up with Shonagh. Drop her bags off at my hotel room. Shonagh goes to find Mano. Jen joins Derek, Leslie, Lauren and Dave for dinner at Finn and Porter. Then off to the Web Awards.

10th Annual Web Awards: Ze Frank is the mc. Very funny. He says that this is the last web awards... (Must ask if this is true.) Twitter won in the blog category. While they are not a blog, I am glad they won, as Twitter kicks bootay. The UCLA team won in the Student category, not Around Ireland. A bit disappointing, but I am having a good time and the real honor is to have made it as a finalist. A site I did not spend much time visiting won best in show, I thought it would be Twitter.

Then off to the Awards After Party at Club DeVille in the rain. The rain stepped up with lightning. Club DeVille did not have their usual tent up. I was a very wet due to lack of umbrella. Inside was very very crowded. Hung out Shonagh, Mano, Jeremy, Frances, and Patrick.

At 10pm, trotted over to Mohawk for the Consummating/Chow party. Got VERY VERY VERY soaked while waiting in line. Got in, sung happy birthday to Tantek, looked like a drowned colorful rat, bar out of wine (Gillain Carson got the last glass...), chatted a bit, continued to drip water, got discouraged, then walked back to hotel.

In bed by midnight, only my way to boring... ;o)