Archive

After Day 1 of Oz IA, I thought I’d put up a few extra thoughts about Day 2. It was cut short for me due to other responsibilities, but all up it was a hugely humbling, rewarding, energising and inspiring experience.

The coffee, gourmet juices and tweets continued to flow freely, and the sessions got even more animated and engaging:

• Gary Barber took us into the courtroom with a scathing critique of tag clouds and who is to blame for their faults (hint: it could be the IAs). I was talking to him afterwards, and it’s not so much all tag clouds that are wrong, but their implementation as-is, rather than being critically assessed by IAs and reinterpreted for each individual use. Great stuff.
• Matt Moore’s Playing games with culture was the one workshop-oriented session, where everyone had a ’serious’ play with the Organisational Culture & Knowledge Management Methods Cards from Straits Knowledge. A fun way of revealing the sorts of team-culture lessons that may otherwise be lost if only resorting to dry presentation and workshop formats.
• Melissa Cooper from the ABC showed us how ruthless you have to be in designing search experiences for mobile interfaces. I can only aspire!
• Matt Fisher took us way out of our cushy little high-bandwidth graphics-rich always-on bubble and showed us the sort of ingenuity you need for designing systems for Defence, where water and dust wreck laptops and there’s no constant connection. What humbled me was the sorts of challenges that diggers are surrounded with when trying to carry out the same sorts of communication- and tech-related tasks we take for granted, and their contribution to refining such systems that can go on to be used for remote communities in developing countries. Very very worthwhile. Sort of puts my dinky little interfaces into perspective.

Oh, and one more thing I encountered: there’s this huge connection between being an IA and loving good food! You know who you are, and more power to you.

Can’t wait for next year!

This year I’m joining the loads of other lads out there and growing a mo for Movember! Movember is a yearly charity event where anyone (usually male) can grow a mo and raise money and awareness for manly man-issues like prostate cancer and male depression.

At the end of it all is a big bash where all the face-furniture comes together in a grand exhibition of manly moustaches, and (I’m guessing) chest beating and generally celebrating being male.

Like a lot of things like this, it’s better in a group, so I’m seeing if I can meld my mo in with the team at Reactive (what do you reckon Carl?). The shot below shows previous experience, taken at the Cliffs of Moher in Ireland. I plan on a neater, more civilised tache this time…

Screenshot of the World

Update: World’s Greatest Shave has (to date) raised over $12 million - and they were hoping for 9! All up the campaign this year had over 15,000 online registrations, nearly 14,000 uploaded photos, over 5,000 blog posts and over 11,000 online comments.

Background: the 2007 design is by Known, and Catch Media looked after the development. It includes some new features, like a blog (with comments) and photo gallery for every registered participant, and even easier online sponsorship.

Go to: worldsgreatestshave.com