Remix South: Day #2

It's a full 24 hours late and it is a wall of text; the day two wrap up of Remix South 2012.

The day began much less hectic than the prior, considering the fact Bill Buxton's Keynote was the first thing on the schedule. The excitement was rife and a the room was packed with everyone eager to hear Bill Buxton's words of wisdom.
One of the major things that struck me in the earlier part of Buxton's keynote is everything is an application.

He used the Kindle Fire as an example and that hardware and software have become indistinguishable; but despite that out devices see to remain disconnected from each other. He mentioned the seamless flow of transaction between our devices, an example being Bluetooth calling in our cars and that the devices integrate into one and gracefully separate.

Considering Buxton is the Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research I wondered how much of this thinking inspired the Xbox Smart Glass? The keynote ended in huge applause later when I spoke with Buxton concerning planning for the next five years either in business or personally I was in awe.

I was later in charge of keeping the camera on record when speaker's were giving their talks and workshops in the WEB section. Wesley Hales discussed production code in HTML5 and had examples of  Web storage, Geolocation  and Web Workers APIs. One of the interactive things Wesley had created for the conference was HTML5 voting system that allowed the audience to be part of the talk.

One of the things I noticed from yesterday's Responsive Web Design to the next speaker, Adam Trimble's speech on Giving Users Context via CSS3; is that  Responsive Web Design is a heavy part of Web creation. Although it isn't a new to the world as it is to me, RWD is a define buzz phrase among the Web community

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Giving Users Context via CSS3 really opened my horizons in terms of using CSS3, from using the CSS3 extension SASS (and a lesser extent: LESS). I learned that the web is no longer just at a desk, and our CSS3 has to make the web pages accessible and optimized. Images no longer need to be our means of styling.

I next moved to the UX side of things, the next talk was by Sara Summers; a user experience evangelist at Microsoft. Much of her talk focused on the prototyping a user experience with intuitive design and really fleshing it out. She went into detail her prototyping experience (and issues ) with developing Windows 8's modern UI, which really consisted of post it and scissors - focusing on Hands-on designing, proper use of context and a content first experience.

I continued to stay with the UX track as Giovanni Difeterici prepared for his talk on Conceptual Design. Coming from a more traditional artistic background I found the web pages Giovanni really  compelling artistically: Converge SE 2012 for one. Something that stood out for me that was said "Conferences are for those who want to know the future of the industry" - a sort of divination for attendees.

This idea lead to  the idea of creating a Web Tarot card deck (which is seriously badass!)  specific to Converge SE. It just shows that ideas can take fruition if followed through and further reminded me of something that Bill Buxton said concerning interactive bus station ads; instead of having the ad pop up during out apps, reverse the model, walk up to said ad about Football and pop the map app up.

I bounced around the final set of talks but spent the majority of my time in the Bringing Gestural control Using Microsoft Kinect by Chris Twigg. After some networking we all piled in for the closing keynote by Carl Smith. I found the keynote to be humorous but also inspiring with anecdotes about famous (yet inspiring) people from Walt Disney to Bill Buxton to Mohammed Ali.

Two iPad 3s were given away, as well as what seemed like a never ending supply of t-shirts. I will say that I had a amazing time volunteering, I learned so much more that typing something into a search bar and really got a look into what the web/UX/mobile industry is moving into. I learned even more at the after party -  but another blog, another time.

#remixsouth2013