Chart junk, PowerPoint, and Rocketships

It is not impossible to make something good with PowerPoint. You just have to do the opposite of what every standard PowerPoint template ever made would have you do.

Seth is right on all points here:

No more than six words on a slide. EVER. There is no presentation so complex that this rule needs to be broken. 

No cheesy images. Use professional stock photo images. 

No dissolves, spins or other transitions.

The legendary PowerPoint of the Gettysburg Address critiques the medium by example:

Remember:

• Good, clear charts and infographics are awesome.  
• Chart junk is bad. 
• PowerPoint chart junk is particularly bad.
• Really bad PowerPoint can kill astronauts and blow up rocketships.

I have a theory

There have been recent outbreaks of the #DTDT controversy: you know, the one that's been going on forever, with some good points but a lot of Big End Little End absurdity.

Shorter: Growth in #ux, #ixd, #ia, #contentstrategy and all that we hold dear is good, but while theory and practice are the same in theory, they're different in practice.

Related:  My theory, by Anne Elk:

All brontosauruses are thin at one end, much much much thicker in the middle, and thin again at the far end.

How do I work this? Expectations across generations

#becauseawesome

The UX of Everyday Things

All your everyday things have a user experience and some are better than others.

Of the dozens -- sometimes hundreds -- of interactions with things that you have in a day, how many are:

o  Invisible to you: they are things you just do, like opening your front door with a key or washing dishes in the sink.

o  Annoying to you: the door on the washing machine still squeaks every time you open it, and there's no clearly simple way to fix it.

o  Delightful to you: Purely joyful and magical; as much a source of delight now as the first time you did it.


Here are some clearly improvable UX experiences from everyday life:

o  When you get out of your car and ding your door on the barrier next to the pump.

o  When you have to look at three different screens at the supermarket self checkout to scan, swipe, and sign.

o  When you are listening to music on your phone and a notification cuts into it.

Here are some lovely UX experiences that are engaging, delightful, and easily reproducible:

o DMs on Twitter: one of the least spammy channels left

o  Making coffee by hand with all the properly configured paraphernalia.

o  Baking with cinnamon.

o Reading a book.

The constant challenge for #UX is to make more experiences better. How?

o  Talk to people.

o  Listen.

o  Design with empathy for the people who will be using the things that you make.

World IA Day :: Nashville :: Feb 9, 2013

How Do I Work This? World IA Day

Do you puzzle over classifying a black cashmere turtleneck, size Medium, for women, as a "sweater" or a "top," while being quite certain that "apparel" is a term of value only to those in the rag trade?

Is the challenge of organizing 60,000 pieces of content -- indexed and tagged -- one that you welcome?

Well, all right then: On Feb. 9, 2013, Nashville joins 14 other cities worldwide in celebrating World Information Architecture Day.

Update: Nashville's event: free seats are going fast; get yours now.

Speaker slots are full; will announce shortly.
Sponsor slots still available: lauriekalmanson at gmail dot com.

Serialized fiction: Everything old is new again

Waiting for the chime of the notification saying "A new chapter is available to download" is completely different from yet very much the same as crowds gathering at the dock to get the latest installment of a Dickens novel unloaded with the london paper.

The updated version:

"Serialized fiction, where episodes are delivered to readers in scheduled installments much like episodes in a television series, has been the subject of an unusual amount of experimentation in publishing in recent months. In September, Amazon announced Kindle Serials, stories sold for $1.99 and published in short episodes that download onto the Kindle as the episodes are released. Three of the first eight serials were produced by Plympton, a new literary studio. "

"In August, Byliner, a digital publisher, announced that it would begin a new digital imprint devoted to serialized fiction, with work by Margaret Atwoodand Joe McGinniss at its start." 

"One of the most talked-about new experiments is taking serialized fiction a step further. Set to make its debut on Monday, it is a novel called “The Silent History” that is available on the Apple iPhone and its iPad. It includes interactive, user-generated elements."

The Victorian version reached its peak with The Old Curiosity Shop, by Charles Dickens.

"The hype surrounding the conclusion of the series was unprecedented; Dickens fans were reported to storm the piers of New York City, shouting to arriving sailors (who might have already read the last instalment in the United Kingdom), "Is Little Nell alive?"

"In 2007, many newspapers claimed the excitement at the release of the last volume The Old Curiosity Shop was the only historical comparison that could be made to the excitement at the release of the last Harry Potter novel, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.^[5]"

BarCamp Nashville 2012 #becauseawesome

BarCamp Nashville is awesome for so many reasons. Come to this year's, and:

-- See old friends.
-- Meet new ones.

Our homegrown, free, tech, social media and marketing “unconference” lets anyone sign up to speak (hurry!) and invites everyone who is interested to show up for listening, drinking,  eating, talking,  drinking, networking, drinking, and going to the after-party.

You can choose across simultaneous sessions on the hour, and if you taste it and don't find it delicious, you can visit another one.

If you meet and greet and want to follow up, take it to the bar and make something happen.

There are also "impromptu" rooms for sessions that happen on a whim; those can be extra awesome.

Here's the info you need to make it happen:

When: Oct. 20, 2012
Where: Tequila Cowboy (formerly Cadillac Ranch), 305 Broadway, in downtown Nashville, at 3rd Avenue South.
When: All day and all of the night.

Here's a little history:

The official "BarCamp" brand is both tighter and looser than what Nashville does, and that's okay. The conference here started in 2007, with Marcus Whitney and Dave Delaney recruiting Kelly Stewart and Dean Shortland, who wrangled enough people to speak  from noon to midnight.

The conference has evolved since then, to be bigger and both more broadly and more widely focused on technology, marketing and social media. People come from all angles of those businesses. Add cocktails and stir.

See you there.

UPDATE: Thanks for visiting, all you all. These are the browsers you smart people are using: