Pecha Kucha Night: Edmonton #3

Tonight was Edmonton’s third Pecha Kucha night. Around 300 people attended the event at The Matrix Hotel downtown, and like PKN #2, it was completely sold out. There wasn’t even a waiting-list or at-the-door ticket sales this time! There’s clearly a lot of demand for this event, and I don’t think that’s going to change in the future. Make sure you pay attention if you want to have a chance at getting tickets for PKN #4!

For those of you new to the concept – Pecha Kucha was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public. Presenters are given 20 slides with 20 seconds per slide, so each presentation is 6 minutes and 40 seconds long. There are no formal Q&A periods, but everyone is encouraged to chat at the breaks. How to pronounce “Pecha Kucha” is a common question here in Edmonton. Is it “pet-cha-koo-cha” or is it “petch-ach-kah”? Edmonton Next Gen decided it was the former and started with an exercise to get everyone to say it aloud:

Mayor Mandel also said a few words (his attendance meant there were dozens of cameras and a couple video crews present), and then it was on with the presentations.

Tonight’s event didn’t have a theme, but I think perhaps it should have. In comparison with the previous two Pecha Kucha Nights, I found the presentations this evening rather weak. There was far too much self-promotion going on. There’s nothing wrong with talking about your work/projects, but I think focusing on the ideas/concepts is much more interesting. It would have been nice to see more diversity too – tonight was fairly academic. As Sharon remarked to me, the presentations at PKN #2 were more accessible – you didn’t have to be an architect or industrial designer to “get” it. Also: two of the presenters were from Calgary, apparently. Could they really not get two other Edmonton presenters?

The first two, Ben King and Tobias Olivia, felt almost like pitches for their respective organizations. Al-Arqam Amer was third, and gave an interesting talk about how architects should do away with floorplans and 2D representations and should instead make use of photorealistic 3D models. Cezary Gajewski then talked about communicating industrial design. The final presentation before the break was by Ron Wickman, who talked about designing with accessibility in mind.

After the break Amber Rooke from The Works Art & Design Festival gave the oddest presentation I’ve seen to-date. She spoke about the festival, but I don’t think anyone was listening to her. Instead, they were focused on the mostly naked man posing on stage. Everyone in the audience was given a pad of paper and a pencil, and were asked to draw his various poses. Amber concluded by saying “6000 drawings were made in six minutes, imagine what we can do in 13 days.” I think the shock-value worked against her though.

Romy Young was up next to share his thoughts on photography – again, way too much “I” in his presentation. Milena Radzikowska followed with a presentation about a GIS-related project she’s leading with Mount Royal and Alberta Parks. Robert Lederer showed a bunch of random designs during his six minutes. The second last presenter was Thomas Gaudin, an industrial design student from the U of A. I thought this presentation was one of the best. He talked about Modernism and Postmodernism, and suggested combining them to result in something called Interface Architecture. He also said that South Edmonton Common is a worst case example of design, much to the delight of many in the crowd. The final presenter was Ryan Stark from the City of Edmonton, who talked about EXPO.

Once again there was a DJ, food, and a cash bar. I thought the seating took a step backward this time – we were spoiled by stadium-style seating at the TransAlta Arts Barns at PKN #2. Everyone seemed to be having a good time though, and the quality of the presentations notwithstanding, I think the event went really well. It’s great to see such a large group of passionate Edmontonians come together. I look forward to PKN #4!

You can see more of my photos here, and you can subscribe to the Edmonton Next Gen mailing list here.

I appreciate my iPod touch more now that I have a BlackBerry

I recently became a member of the CrackBerry crowd. My last three year contract ended in November, and I figured it was time to get something better than my old Motorola phone. I was thinking about the iPhone, but since I already had an iPod touch, I ended up going with the BlackBerry Curve. So far, I love it. Text messaging is much better, email access is fantastic (obviously), and I can hop online from anywhere if need be.

It hasn’t been a perfect experience however. I’ve run into a number of issues trying to figure out how to do things – simple things that took no time at all to figure out on the iPod touch. Here’s a small list of them:

One of the first things I did was open up the browser. It took me a ridiculously long time to figure out how to enter an address though! Eventually I figured out the menu button and the “Go to” option, but I found the iPod much easier – just scroll up and there’s the address bar.
Another problem was deleting messages. Very quickly I figured out how to delete a single message, but I couldn’t figure out how to delete multiple messages at once! I ended up searching for it, and found the CAPS button trick. The iPod was much easier – nice big edit button, which reveals checkboxes beside each item. Just really intuitive.
Settings are another issue. Changing the background on my iPod took barely any effort at all, but I once again had to Google for help with the BlackBerry. The menus just seem to make more sense on the iPod.
I like to keep the unread messages count cleared, and one day it was stuck at one. I checked the email inbox, the text messaging inbox, and both were empty. I once again turned to the web and found out that missed calls show up as unread messages! I then opened up the Call Log, but it didn’t clear! Turns out they show up as messages in the combined inbox. Confusing design.

There have been other issues of course, but these few stuck out. In general, I think the interface on the iPod/iPhone is just much more intuitive. I guess that’s not surprising, given Apple’s reputation for good design, but it still caught me off-guard.

Most of my searches end up at the the CrackBerry.com forums. I’m clearly not the only one who has run into these issues! Thanks to everyone who has contributed there – you’ve made it much easier for me to get up-to-speed with the BlackBerry!

Pecha Kucha Night: Edmonton #2

Tonight was Edmonton’s second Pecha Kucha night, the first was held back in May (you can learn more about Pecha Kucha here). Aside from the name, I’d say there was very little in common between the two events. Pecha Kucha 2 received a lot of press, largely as a result of the success of the first one, and that clearly had an impact on the audience. The show was sold out tonight (at 300) and unless you RSVP’d ahead of time, it was difficult to get in (a few did, however). The audience also skewed older tonight – I felt much younger than most of the people in the crowd, which was different than the first Pecha Kucha.

The presentations this time around were much better than at the first Pecha Kucha. Even though the first and last presenters this evening were clearly nervous, every presentation held my interest and more than a few of them incorporated elements of humor. Overall, it was much more entertaining than the first one. I really liked Christian Nelson’s Reclaiming Deadmonton, and the gamer/geek in me loved Matt Bouchard’s exploration of gaming console controllers, past and present. My least favorite was probably Rob Andruchow’s presentation on What is design?, as it felt out of place and was probably a topic too large for a mere 20 slides. He still managed to hold my interest though. I think keeping the number of presentations to just ten this time was a good idea.

My biggest complaint about the event was the lack of wifi. You’d think that Next Gen would have wifi at their own events, considering it is one of their top priorities. I think they may have tried tonight, as I briefly found an open network, but it didn’t work and quickly disappeared. Very disappointing.

There was free food this time, and the venue was much improved. The first event was in the lobby of the Winspear Centre which sounds cool, but was actually quite impractical. Tonight’s event was in the Westbury Theatre at the TransAlta Arts Barns, which meant stadium-style seating! Everyone fit comfortably, and everyone could see the presentations. Good call on making that change!

Next Gen is planning two more Pecha Kucha nights before May, with the next one likely taking place in January. Overall I’d say that Pecha Kucha 2 was an improvement over Pecha Kucha 1, largely on the strength of the presentations and venue, so I look forward to continued improvements for the next ones. Subscribe to the Edmonton Next Gen mailing list to be notified right away about the next one!

You can see my photos from the event here, and also check out the Next Gen pool here.

Upcoming Edmonton Events: Pecha Kucha 2 & DemoCamp 3

Attention all “creatives” in Edmonton – two popular events are happening again in our city in September that you don’t want to miss!

The first is Pecha Kucha Night 2, taking place on September 11th. The first Pecha Kucha in Edmonton took place back on May 1st, and it went very well. Essentially a dozen or so presenters will each have the opportunity to show 20 slides at 20 seconds per slide. Typically the content is arts & design.

Date: Thursday, September 11, 2008
Time: 6:30pm to 9:30pm
Location: TransAlta Arts Barns, Westbury Theatre, 10330 84th Avenue (map)
Cost: $5 at the door

You’ll need to RSVP to nextgen@edmonton.ca. You can find more information here.

The second event is DemoCampEdmonton 3, taking place on September 17th. Local entrepreneurs and developers will show off real stuff they’re building. You can read about our first two democamps here and here.

Date: Wednesday, September 17, 2008
Time: 6:30pm to 8:30pm
Location: E1 017, ETLC, University of Alberta (map)
Cost: Free

If you’re planning to attend, add your name to the wiki page.

Should be a couple of great events. See you at both!

I'm sad to see CNET's yellow and green go

cnet Earlier this week, Dan Farber posted a preview of CNET’s new, improved look. The main changes are to the logo (the pipe between the “c” and “net” is now gone, as you can see to the right) and the color scheme (yellow and green have been replaced with red, black, and grey). I’ll admit that I like the new design, because it is cleaner and simpler. At the same time however, a part of my own personal web history is dying along with the yellow and green.

When I was in junior high (grade seven if I remember correctly), living in Inuvik, NT, I had a summer job at the Inuvik Centennial Library. Part of my job was to scan in old yearbooks and other volumes so that they could be viewed (and presumably searched) using a computer. The other part of my job was to assist library patrons in using the computers and the web (this was around 1996, so the web was still new to most people). Both of these jobs meant that I had a lot of free time, either waiting for the slower scanner to do its thing, or waiting for people to need assistance. To pass the time I would read whatever technology news I could find online. In 1996, that meant CNET’s News.com.

Every morning, I was greeted by the yellow and green coloring of CNET’s properties. My passion (or addiction) for following tech news started at that library, reading News.com. I daresay I became quite fond of the yellow and green!

Over the years I have visited News.com less frequently, of course, due to the appearance of blogs like TechCrunch and aggregators like Techmeme and FriendFeed. Occasionally I’ll still check it out, but usually I find myself clicking through from Techmeme. News.com is no longer the destination for me.

For a trip down memory lane, check out the Wayback Machine. The version of News.com from December 22, 1996 is particularly trippy!

So long, CNET yellow and green, and thanks for all the fish.

Twitter doesn't know what's wrong

Even occasional Twitter users will no doubt be familiar with the service’s frequent downtime. It’s a rare day when I don’t run into at least one or two “something’s technically wrong” messages on the site. That has prompted a lot of discussion about how to improve Twitter, and also some discussion about how things could be so bad.

I’ve been willing to cut them some slack. They’ve grown exponentially, and continue to do so. Then on Wednesday, Twitter founder Jack posted this on the official blog:

We’ve gone through our various databases, caches, web servers, daemons, and despite some increased traffic activity across the board, all systems are running nominally. The truth is we’re not sure what’s happening. It seems to be occurring in-between these parts.

Transparency is great, but surely they must have some idea about what’s wrong? I don’t know much about their architecture or systems, but it seems odd to me that they’d be totally stumped. It suggests to me that their architecture was never designed, and was instead thrown together over time. Now they’re in too deep to start over.

Twitter developer Alex suggests that the main problem is the system was originally put together as a content management system, when in reality it’s a messaging system. If that’s the case, fine, but messaging systems are not new. They must be able to examine and learn from some existing stuff right?

Posts like the one Jack made don’t inspire much confidence that they’ll be able to turn things around, but I sure hope they do. I really love Twitter. Maybe the $15 million in additional funding that they recently secured will help.

Pecha Kucha Night: Edmonton #1

Tonight I attended the first ever Pecha Kucha Night in Western Canada, held downtown at the Winspear Centre. Edmonton’s Next Gen worked hard to bring the popular event to our city, to help showcase local designers, architects, artists, and other creatives. Until recently, I hadn’t heard of Pecha Kucha but it’s actually a worldwide phenomenon of sorts, having spread to over 120 countries virally. Here’s what it’s all about:

Pecha Kucha Night, devised by Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham, was conceived in 2003 as a place for young designers to meet, network, and show their work in public.

Each presenter is allowed 20 images, each shown for 20 seconds each – giving 6 minutes 40 seconds of fame before the next presenter is up. This keeps presentations concise, the interest level up, and gives more people the chance to show.

Pecha Kucha (which is Japanese for the sound of conversation) has tapped into a demand for a forum in which creative work can be easily and informally shown, without having to rent a gallery or chat up a magazine editor.

To me it’s sort of like the design world equivalent of DemoCamp, though that may be simplifying things a bit.

pecha kucha night

Tonight’s event featured thirteen presenters with a range of interests, from urban planning and design to humanities visualization research. A twenty minute break split the presentations, and offered me a chance to go from sitting to standing. I think standing was better – easier to see, harder to get bored.

Yes, some of the presentations were a bit dry. If only they all contained the energy and humor and enthusiasm that Myron Belej’s presentation on urban color did. Essentially what Myron did was take photos of our city, and then added color to the buildings. It was really interesting, and his style of presentation was great for an event like this. Everyone was paying attention to Myron. His “21st slide” is a colored Rexall Place, and you can see it at his website.

The current plan is to have four Pecha Kucha Night’s per year here in Edmonton. Apparently some larger cities like San Francisco do one every month! I think it’s great that our city has an event like this, and I expect the presentations and attendance will only get better.

For more information, check out the official Pecha Kucha website or Wikipedia. You might also want to sign up for the Edmonton Next Gen newsletter, to find out when the next one in our city will be held! I snapped a few photos too, which you can see here.

Helvetica

Last night I went to see Helvetica, the feature-length documentary about typography and the most famous typeface of them all, Helvetica. I had been looking forward to the film for quite some time, and was really excited to hear it was coming to Edmonton. The event was put on by the Alberta chapter of The Society of Graphic Designers of Canada.

Every review I had read about the film had been glowing, so my expectations were pretty high. The film wasn’t disappointing, but I have to admit, it wasn’t quite what I was expecting either.

I think I was anticipating something like Freakonomics but for typography, a fun and interesting look at the impact of Helvetica on our daily lives. Instead, the film focused more on the history of the typeface, and really only discussed the impact of Helvetica on the design industry. Designer Paula Scher made the bold claim that Helvetica caused the Vietnam and Iraq wars, but that was a close as we got to the impact outside the design world. There were one or two segments with company logos, but the discussion of corporate adoption of Helvetica was fairly limited.

All of the people interviewed in the film were in some way involved in the design industry. I think it would have been much more interesting (and entertaining) to have balanced the interviews with some “outsiders” who could comment without really having a position. The designers seemed to either love or hate Helvetica.

That said, as a documentary about a typeface, Helvetica was quite good. A little long for those of us who are not enamored with design, but still quite good. I particularly liked graphic designer Michael Bierut, who always had the funniest comments and anecdotes. Without his segments, the movie would have been seriously lacking in the chuckle department.

Bottom line: if you’re interested in design, you’ll probably enjoy Helvetica. Otherwise, you might want to think twice.

I like focused gadgets

It’s very easy to get excited about cool new gadgets and devices, isn’t it? I am guilty of it. Thing is, these gadgets are often far too complex. Their creators often try to cram in too many wonderful features. It happens in software too, but I think the effect is far more noticeable with physical devices. I doubt I will stop getting so excited about new gadgets anytime soon, but I have been thinking about it, and the devices I appreciate most are focused on doing one thing well.

It’s kind of like the 37signals philosophy:

We’re focused on executing on the basics beautifully.

I wish more gadget makers made that their goal. A camera is a camera. A media player is a media player. A phone is a phone. Why do they have to be combined into one? Usually what ends up happening is that the device suffers. Take my phone for example. It’s great at making and receiving calls, and sending text messages back and forth. As a still or video camera, it totally sucks. And as an audio player? It’s not even worth the trouble.

My camera on the other hand, is wonderful. It’s a Canon Digital Rebel, and it does one thing and one thing only: it takes photos very well. Unlike my phone, which had to be designed to support the extra features (so maybe a little thicker for the camera, an extra button to start the video, etc), my camera is a focused device. Every feature is there specifically to help me take photos. And I appreciate it.

I know the idea is that you could carry less stuff if you had one gadget that did everything, but I’d rather have separate gadgets that do their jobs very well than one gadget that does a bunch of jobs poorly. Maybe one day we’ll have a gadget that can morph into a contextually appropriate focused gadget…but that’s a long way off.

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