Chris&an HeilmannParisweb, Paris, France, October 2010

Let’s interface!

Bonjour...

Je suis Chris et j'aime cette conférence

J’aime les organisateurs....

J’adore les autres orateurs...

Mais j'ai un problème...

La langue...

Moi, je suis allemand...

J’habite en angleterre...

Et je parle un petit peu français...

Paris Web est une conférence pleine de bon contenu...

Mais le monde ne saura jamais car il ne parle pas français.

...et pas vraiment anglais

Si tu aimes cette conférence...

Aide à traduire les présentations pour le Web.

Et c’est pourquoi nous continuons en anglais...

Languages are difficult.

Let me tell you a story...

I have this visual mind - you say a word and a picture pops immediately into my head.

I flew over here with Air France from Germany.

Gepäckstücke Gebäckstücke

Now, the problem is that I have a visual mind but I can’t draw for toffee...

I think it is fair to say that I am a developer and a geek.

Which is why I started programming visual interfaces.

Interfaces are what makes things easy for users.

Users could be our end users but also your company.

Dr. Walter Gibbs: User requests are what computers are

for!Inventor of

win!

MCP’s bitch

Ed Dillinger: DOING OUR BUSINESS is what computers are for.

Companies communicate their offerings badly on the web.

Funnily enough the last people they ask for advice is us though.

Right now, it seems there are a few schools of thought how to reach out.

Stick to the facts, deliver everything and let people find what they want to find.

Give the smallest amount of information possible to achieve a goal.

Or go completely visual and let people click together what they need.

Two of them are a lot of work and two really only make people scratch the surface of a subject.

If you want to really reach people - solve a problem with what you offer.

Get your foot in the door.

Companies don’t get this yet - this is your opportunity to shine.

Example: Yahoo Placemaker

http://icant.co.uk/geomaker/

Example: Yahoo GeoPlanet

http://isithackday.com/geoplanet-explorer/geodrilldown.php

http://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/around-you/

http://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/addmap.html

Example: Yahoo BOSS

http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/boss_guide/

http://keywordfinder.org/

All of these I built and released.

I wrote a blog post about them and people started using them.

I also released the source codes on GitHub.

This, other than anything else turned me from code monkey to spokesperson for my company.

And you can do that, too.

Even better: pair up to build something together.

You can do that for your own products or for other peoples products.

Prototype in the browser with Greasemonkey and other browser extensions!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA4Et1DiVbE

Instead of writing an email or a massive document, just do a screencast.

http://screenr.com/

I build interfaces first and foremost for myself.

If I don’t get something, I try to find a way to make it understandable for myself.

The reason is that a lot of documentation is just confusing.

http://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/placefinder/

Simply showing technology is not enough - you need to find the story in the data.

This is where UX people come in.

Branding is beautiful but think about data, too!

Information is beautiful!

http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/david_mccandless_the_beauty_of_data_visualization.html

Tell the stories in the data.

Finding+converting data is easy!

YQL    h=p://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

YQL    h=p://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

select {what} from {where} where {condi&ons}

http://lanyrd.com/people/codepo8/

http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/2010/feb/11/winter-olympics-medals-by-country

select * from csv where url="http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=tpWDkIZMZleQaREf493v1Jw&output=csv" and columns="Year,City,Sport,Discipline,Country,Event, Gender,Type" and Year="1924"

http://isithackday.com/fifa2010/

http://winterolympicsmedals.com

http://github.com/yql/yql-tables

http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/02/11/video-heilmann-yql/

(...)

http://code.google.com/apis/charttools/

108

http://code.google.com/appengine/

110

http://github.com

111

http://heroku.com/

112

Concentrate on building something quickly that tells a story right now with building blocks.

People will listen to you much faster than you asking for time to build it.

You don’t need to be an amazing developer or designer to show your company the way.

What you need is to find the story in the data and the problem your solutions solve.

You can also be the one to bring the web to the company.

Here’s something to impress your boss with.

http://github.com/codepo8/firehose-research/

You are never too small to matter.

If you are confident in where you want to get to you will get there.

Christian Heilmann http://wait-till-i.com http://developer-evangelism.com http://twitter.com/codepo8

Thanks!