Tags: sanfrancisco

022. Web 2.0 Expo 2007

I’ve been enjoying Richard’s trip down memory lane with his memoirs of the Web2.0 years. Imagine my surprise when I showed up in this one!

I remember that fun panel from the Web2.0 Expo …Jesus! Seventeen years ago!

I’ve already written about how much I enjoyed hosting Leading Design San Francisco last week.

All the speakers were terrific. Lola’s talk was particularly …um, interesting:

In this talk, Lola will share her adventures in the world of blockchain, the hostility she experienced in her first go-round in 2018, and why she’s chosen to head back to a technology that is going through its largest reputational and social crisis to date.

Wait …I was supposed to stand on stage and introduce a talk that was (at least partly) about blockchain? I have opinions.

As it turned out, Lola warned me that I’d be making an appearance in her talk. She was going to quote that blog post. Before the talk, I asked her how obnoxious I could be about blockchain in her intro. She told me to bring it.

So in the introduction, I deployed all the sarcasm I had in me and said:

Listen, we designers have a tendency to be over-critical of things sometimes. There are all these ideas that we dismiss: phrenology, homeopathy, flat-earthism …blockchain. Haters gonna hate.

I remember somebody asking online a while back, “Why the hate for web3?” And someone I know responded by saying “We hate it because we understand it.” I think there’s a lot of truth to that.

But look, just because blockchains are powering crypto ponzi schemes and N F fucking Ts, it’s worth remembering that it’s also simply a technology. It’s a technological solution in search of a problem.

To be fair, it’s still early days. After all, it’s only been over a decade now.

It’s like the law of instrument says; when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail. Blockchain is like that. Except the hammer is also made of glass.

Anyway, Lola is going to defend the indefensible and talk about blockchain. One thing to keep in mind is this: remember when everyone was talking about “The Cloud”? And then it turned out that you could substitute the phrase “someone else’s server” for “The Cloud?” Well, every time you hear Lola say the word “blockchain”, I’d like you to mentally substitute the phrase “multiple copies of a spreadsheet.”

Please give an open mind and a warm welcome to Lola Oyelayo Pearson!

I got some laughs. I also got lots of gasps and pearl-clutching, as though I were saying something taboo. Welcome to San Francisco.

Lola gave as good as she got. I got a roasting in her talk.

And just to clarify, Lola and I are friends—this was a consensual smackdown.

There was a very serious point to Lola’s talk. Cryptobollocks and other blockchain-powered schemes have historically been very bro-y, and exploitative of non-bro communities. Lola wants to fight that trend.

I get it. But it reminds me a bit of the justifications you hear from people who go to work at Facebook claiming that they can do more good from the inside. Whatever helps you sleep at night.

The crux of Lola’s belief is this: blockchain technology is inevitable, therefore it is uncumbent on us as ethical designers to ensure that the technology is deployed in a way that empowers people instead of exploiting them.

But I take issue with the premise. Blockchain technology is not inevitable. That’s the worst kind of technological determinism. It’s defeatist. It’s a depressing view of “progress” driven not by people, but by technological forces beyond our control.

I refuse to accept that anti-humanist deterministic view.

In any case, for technological determinism to have any validity, there needs to be something to it. At least virtual reality and machine learning are based on some actual technologies. In the case of cryptobollocks, there is no there there. There is nothing except the hype, which is why you’ll see blockchain enthusiasts trying to ride the coattails of trending technologies in a logical fallacy that goes something like this:

1. There are technologies that will be really big in the future,
2. blockchain is a technology, therefore
3. blockchain will be really big in the future.

Blockchain is bullshit. It isn’t even very clever bullshit. And it certainly isn’t inevitable.

I’ve spent the last few days in San Francisco where I was hosting Leading Design.

It was excellent. Rebecca did an absolutely amazing job with the curation, and the Clearleft delivered a terrific event, as always. I’m continually amazed by the way such a relatively small agency can punch above its weight when it comes to putting on world-class events and delivering client work.

I won’t go into much detail on what was shared at Leading Design. There’s an understanding that it’s a safe space for people to speak freely and share their experiences in an open and honest way. I can tell you that there were some tough topics. Given the recent rounds of layoffs in this neck of the woods, this was bound to happen.

I was chatting with Peter at breakfast on the second day and he was saying that maybe there was too much emphasis on the negative, like we were in danger of wallowing in our own misery. It’s a fair point, but I offered a counterpoint that I also heard other people express: when else do these people get a chance to let their guard down and have a good ol’ moan? These are design leaders who need to project an air of calm reassurance when they’re at work. Leading Design is a welcome opportunity to just let it all out.

When we did Leading Design in New York in March of 2022, it was an intimate gathering and the overwhelming theme was togetherness. After two years of screen-based interactions, it was cathartic to get together in the same location to swap stories and be reminded you are not alone.

Leading Design San Francisco was equally cathartic, but the theme this time was change. Change can be scary. But it can also be energising.

After two days of introducing and listening to fascinating talks on the topic of change, I closed out my duties by quoting the late great Octavia Butler. I spoke the mantra of the secular Earthseed religion founded in Parable Of The Sower:

All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.

My upcoming appearance at An Event Apart next week to talk about declarative design isn’t the only upcoming trip to San Francisco in my calendar.

Two months from today I’ll be back in San Francisco for Leading Design. It’s on February 7th and 8th.

This event is long overdue. We’ve never had Leading Design in San Francisco before, but we were all set to go ahead with the inaugural SF gathering …in March 2020. We all know what happened next.

So this event will be three years in the making.

Rebacca is doing amazing work, as usual, putting together a fantastic line-up of speakers:

They’ll be sharing their insights, their stories and their ideas — as well as some of their pain from past challenges. It’s all designed to help you navigate your own leadership journey.

I’ll be there to MC the event, which is a great honour for me. And I reckon I’ll be up to the challenge, having just done the double whammy of hosting Leading Design London and Clarity back-to-back.

I would love to see you in San Francisco! If you’ve attended a Leading Design event before, then you know how transformational it can be. If you haven’t, then now is your chance.

Early bird tickets are still available until mid December, so if you’re thinking about coming, I suggest making that decision now.

If you know anyone in the bay area who’s in a design leadership position, be sure to tell them about Leading Design San Francisco—they don’t want to miss this!

I’m in San Francisco to speak at An Event Apart, which kicks off tomorrow. But I arrived a few days early so that I could attend Indie Web Camp SF.

Yesterday was the discussion day. Most of the attendees were seasoned indie web campers, so quite a few of the discussions went deep on some of the building blocks. It was a good opportunity to step back and reappraise technology decisions.

Today is the day for making, tinkering, fiddling, and hacking. I had a few different ideas of what to do, mostly around showing additional context on my blog posts. I could, for instance, show related posts—other blog posts (or links) that have similar tags attached to them.

But I decided that a nice straightforward addition would be to show a kind of “on this day” context. After all, I’ve been writing blog posts here for eighteen years now; chances are that if I write a blog post on any given day, there will be something in the archives from that same day in previous years.

So that’s what I’ve done. I’ll be demoing it shortly here at Indie Web Camp, but you can see it in action now. If you look at the page for this blog post, you should see a section at the end with the heading “Previously on this day”. There you’ll see links to other posts I’ve written on December 8th in years gone by.

It’s quite a mixed bag. There’s a post about when I used to have a webcam from sixteen years ago. There’s a report from the Flash On The Beach conference from thirteen years ago (I wrote that post while I was in Berlin). And five years ago, I was writing about markup patterns for web components.

I don’t know if anyone other than me will find this feature interesting (but as it’s my website, I don’t really care). Personally, I find it fascinating to see how my writing has changed, both in terms of subject matter and tone.

Needless to say, the further back in time you go, the more chance there is that the links in my blog posts will no longer work. That’s a real shame. But then it’s a pleasant surprise when I find something that I linked to that is still online after all this time. And I can take comfort from the fact that if anyone has ever linked to anything I’ve written on my website, then those links still work.

Your weekends are valuable. Spend them wisely. I have some suggestion on how you might spend next weekend, October 19th and 20th, depending on where you are in the world.

If you’re in the bay area, or anywhere near San Francisco, I highly recommend that you go to Science Hack Day—two days of science, hacking, and fun. This will be the last one in San Francisco so don’t miss your chance.

If you’re in the south of England, or anywhere near Brighton, come along to Indie Web Camp. Saturday will feature discussions on owning your data. Sunday will be a day of doing. I’ve written about previous Indie Web Camps before, and I really can’t recommend it highly enough!

Do me a favour and register for a spot—it’s free—so I’ve got some idea of numbers. Looking forward to seeing you there!

Yay, science! The 7th annual Science Hack Day SF roundup

Science Hack Day’s mission is simply to get excited and make things with science, and that’s just what everyone did. One of the remarks I made at the start of this year’s event was about how building community is one of the best things to be involved in right now after the election, and especially connecting different communities together as Science Hack Day does. Exploration is not a solo endeavor and thus it’s less about what you explore and more about the act of exploring. In community exploration, we build strength, support, and safe spaces.

Decentralized Web Summit: Locking the Web Open

Oh, how I wish I could make it to this event!

June 8th-9th at Internet Archive, featuring Vint Cerf, Brewster Kahle, and more.

We are bringing together a diverse group of Web architects, activists, engineers, archivists, scholars, journalists, and other stakeholders to explore the technology required to build a Decentralized Web and its impact.

Wrapping up another epic year of Science Hack Day SF!

It looks like this year’s Science Hack Day in San Francisco was particularly excellent.

Tantek told me about building a portable home planetarium—sounded like a blast.

Here Comes the Airplane

Paradigm-busting disruption!

Science Hack Day San Francisco 2014 Teams - an album on Flickr

What a fantastic collection of creators!

I’ve just come back from a multi-hop trip to the States, spanning three cities in just over two weeks.

It started with an all-too-brief trip to San Francisco for Science Hack Day, which—as I’ve already described—was excellent. It was a shame that it was such a flying visit and I didn’t get to see many people. But then again, I’ll be back in December for An Event Apart San Francisco.

It was An Event Apart that took me to my second destination: Austin, Texas. The conference was great, as always. But was really nice was having some time afterwards to explore the town. Being in Austin when it’s not South by Southwest is an enjoyable experience that I can heartily recommend.

Christopher and Ari took me out to Lockhart to experience Smitty’s barbecue—a place with a convoluted family drama and really, really excellent smoked meat. I never really “got” Texas BBQ until now. I always thought I liked the sauced-based variety, but now I understand: if the BBQ is good enough, you don’t need the sauce.

For the rest of my stay, Sam was an excellent host, showing me around her town until it was time for me to take off for New York city.

To start with, I was in Manhattan. I was going to be speaking at Future Of Web Design right downtown on 42nd street, and I showed up a few days early to rendezvous with Jessica and do some touristing.

We perfected the cheapskate’s guide to Manhattan, exploring the New York Public Library, having Tiff show us around the New York Times, and wrangling a tour of the MoMA from Ben Fino-Radin, who’s doing some fascinating work with the digital collection.

I gave my FOWD talk, which went fine once the technical glitches were sorted out (I went through three microphones in five minutes). The conference was in a cinema, which meant my slides were giganormous. That was nice, but the event had an odd kind of vibe. Maybe it was the venue, or maybe it was the two-track format …I really don’t like two-track conferences; I constantly feel like I’m missing out on something.

I skipped out on the second day of the conference to make my way over the bridge to Brooklyn in time for my third trip to Brooklyn Beta.

This year, they tried something quite different. For the first two days, there was a regular Brooklyn Beta: 300 lovely people gathered together at the Invisible Dog, ostensibly to listen to talks but in reality to hang out and chat. It was joyous.

Then on the third and final day, those 300 people decamped to Brooklyn’s Navy Yard to join a further 1000 people. There we heard more talks and had more chats.

Alas, the acoustics in the hangar-like space battled against the speakers. That’s why I made sure to grab a seat near the front for the afternoon talks. I found myself with a front-row seat for a series of startup stories and app tales. Then, without warning, the tech talks were replaced with stand-up comics. The comedians were very, very good (Reggie Watts!) …but I found it hard to pay attention because I realised I was in a living nightmare: somehow I was in the front-row seat of a stand-up comedy show. I spent the entire time thinking “Please don’t pick on me, please don’t pick on me, please don’t…” I couldn’t sneak out either, because that would’ve only drawn attention to myself.

But apart from confronting me with my worst fears, Brooklyn Beta was great …I’m just not sure it scales well from 300 to 1300.

And with that, my American sojourn came to an end. I’m glad that the stars aligned in such a way that I was able to hit up four events in my 16 day trip:

• Science Hack Day San Francisco,
• An Event Apart Austin,
• Future Of Web Design New York, and
• Brooklyn Beta 2013.

When I organised the first ever Science Hack Day in London in 2010, I made sure to write about how I organised the event. That’s because I wanted to encourage other people to organise their own Science Hack Days:

If I can do it, anyone can. And anyone should.

Later that year, Ariel organised a Science Hack Day in Palo Alto at the Institute For The Future. It was magnificent. Since then, Ariel has become a tireless champion and global instigator of Science Hack Day, spreading the idea, encouraging new events all over the world, and where possible, travelling to them. I just got the ball rolling—she has really run with it.

She organised another Science Hack Day in San Francisco for last weekend and I was lucky enough to attend—it coincided nicely with my travel plans to the States for An Event Apart in Austin. Once again, it was absolutely brilliant. There were tons of ingenious hacks, and the attendees were a wonderfully diverse bunch: some developers and designers, but also plenty of scientists and students, many (perhaps most) from out of town.

But best of all was the venue: The California Academy of Sciences. It’s a fantastic museum, and after 5pm—when the public left—we had the place to ourselves. Penguins, crocodiles, a rainforest, an aquarium …it’s got it all. I didn’t get a chance to do all of the activities that were provided—I was too busy hacking or helping out—like stargazing on the roof, or getting a tour of the archives. But I did make it to the private planetarium show, which was wonderful.

The Science Hackers spent the night, unrolling their sleeping bags in all the nooks and crannies of the aquarium and the African hall. It was like being a big kid. Mind you, the fun of sleeping over in such a great venue was somewhat tempered by the fact that trying to sleep in a sleeping bag on just a yoga mat on a hard floor is pretty uncomfortable. I was quite exhausted by day two of the event, but I powered through on the wave of infectious enthusiasm exhibited by all the attendees.

Then when it came time to demo all the hacks …well, I was blown away. So much cool stuff.

Ariel and her team really outdid themselves. I’m so happy I was able to make it to the event. If you get the chance to attend a Science Hack Day, take it. And if there isn’t one happening near you, why not organise one? Ariel has put together a handy checklist to get you started so you can get excited and make things with science.

I’m still quite amazed that this was the 24th Science Hack Day! When I organised the first one three years ago, I had no idea that it could spread so far, but thanks to Ariel, it has become a truly special phenomenon.

Chloe Weil — Science Hack Day

Chloe writes up her experience of the excellent Science Hack Day in San Francisco and describes the hack we built together: Radio Free Earth.

Science Hack Day San Francisco 2013 - a set on Flickr

Wonderful photos from Science Hack Day San Francisco, courtesy of Matt B.

I played truant from UX Week this morning to meet up with Mike for a coffee and a chat at Cafe Vega. We were turfed out when the bearded, baseball-capped, Draplinesque barista announced he had to shut the doors because he needed to “run out for some milk.” So we went around the corner to the Code For America office. The place had a layout similar to what we’ve got planned for the new Clearleft building so I immediately starting documenting it with pictures (although it probably looked like I was just trying to sneakily take pictures of Tim O’Reilly).

After catching up with Mike, I rendezvoused with Jessica back at the hotel and we headed out for lunch at Mel’s diner. The espresso milk shakes there are a must-have on any San Francisco trip I make.

Then it was a race against time to try to get to the Mission Bay Conference Center to catch Sophia’s talk at UX Week. She ran the gist of the talk by me yesterday and it sounded great. Alas, I missed the first half of it, but what I caught was reaffirming much of what I was hammering home in my workshops yesterday.

UX Week wrapped up with the inimitable Ze Frank. As I said to Peter afterwards, he’s always reliable but never predictable.

Having said my goodbyes and my thanks to the lovely UX Week people, I met up with Jessica again for a feast of sushi at Hana Zen, right by the hotel. That’s three nights in a row that we’ve had really good asian cuisine downtown: Thai, Chinese, and Japanese.

We finished the evening in good company at the home of young Master Ben, observing the ritual of games night, sipping beers, and resisting the temptation of the cheese.

Tomorrow we depart for Chicago. Farewell, San Francisco; lovely to see you again, as always.

As predicted, today’s schedule of two back-to-back half-day workshops at UX Week was indeed quite exhausting. But it was also very rewarding.

Every time I run a workshop, I always end up learning something from the experience and today was no exception. The attendees were a bright bunch with lots of great questions and discussion points.

Once the workshops were done, I felt pretty exhausted. Jessica and I had a quiet night sampling the culinary delights of M.Y. China conveniently located just across the street from our hotel so I could collapse into bed at the end of the day.

Tomorrow I’m going to be spending all day teaching workshops at UX Week: two back-to-back half-day workshops on Responsive UX. So today I took it easy in preparation for what will probably be a knackering day tomorrow.

Jessica and I moved from Tantek’s place to a downtown hotel near Union Square; like I said, despite the fact that UX Week goes on for four days, they only provide speaker accommodation for three, guaranteeing that speakers won’t be around for the whole event. Very odd.

We checked into the hotel, grabbed some sandwiches and sat out in Yerba Buena park, soaking up some sun. It was a bright blue clear day in San Francisco. After that strenuous activity, we went for a coffee and strolled along Embarcadero, finishing the day with some excellent Thai food …just a harrowing walk through the Tenderloin away.

Now I’m going to fret over my workshop material and have a restless night of stress dreams. Wish me luck!

UX Week kicked off today. It’s a four-day event: one day of talks, followed by two days of workshops, followed by another day of talks. I’ll be spending all of the third day doing workshops back-to-back.

Bizarrely, even though it’s a four-day event, they only offer speakers three nights of accommodation. Seems odd to me: I would’ve thought they’d want us to stick around for the whole thing.

So, as I don’t get my hotel room until tomorrow, today I had to make my way from Tantek’s place in the Haight all the way over to the Mission Bay Conference Center—a fairly long MUNI ride. Alas, that meant I missed Steven Johnson’s opening talk. Curses!

Fortunately I did make it time for Ian Bogost’s talk, which was excellent.

In the afternoon, I walked over to Four Barrel, the excellent coffee shop that was celebrating its fifth birthday. They had a balloons, a photo both, a petting zoo, games, and best of all, free coffee. Tom popped by and we had a lovely time chatting in the sun (and drinking free coffee).

Seeing as I was in the Mission anyway, it would’ve been crazy not to have a mission burrito, so a trip to Papalote quickly followed. Best of all, Erin popped by. Then, as we were heading home via Dolores Park, we met up with Tess. Just like I hoped!

Today was mostly a travel day. The flight from San Diego to San Francisco is a short hop, but when that flight is delayed by two hours, you’re going to spend far longer than intended within the confines of an airport. That’s what happened to me and Jessica today.

Still, it’s not a bad airport as airports go. And as airports go, it went.

With the delayed departure, the flight itself, and then the taxi ride in from the airport, by the time we finally made it to Tantek’s place it was late afternoon. But we were still made it in time for our dinner date with Cindy and Matt, and Daniel and Sharon.

We uber-ed over to Daniel and Sharon’s place (“to uber” is a perfectly cromulent verb in this town). For once, it was a bright, clear day in San Francisco and we were treated to the gorgeous view of the city laid out below us as we went from the Haight to Bernal Heights.