Not all of us got to go to Austin and join the SXSW party… but we don’t have to miss out completely. Following up on Steve’s post, here’s a bunch of podcasts at the 2006.SXSW web site.
In particular I found the Bruce Sterling speech to be very inspiring. I listened to it and David Jones’ Seneca event podcast the same day and found many similarities.

David speaks about practical applications of what’s happening now, and he’s got a lot of insight on how organizations can leverage sincere use of social media. Bruce Sterling takes it a decade or more out, and gives us the macro view of it all. He’s a Sci-Fi writer, so he’s really well positioned to give us the vocabulary we need to describe the uber-strange-wonderful next wave. Imagine taking a person from 10 years ago and asking them to describe the web of today. They wouldn’t even have the words…

I’m in SXSW withdrawl these days but I’ve discovered a remedy: podcasts of the panels I couldn’t make it to. Just this morning I found James Surowiecki’s discussion on the “wisdom of crowds” concept. James is a columnist for the New Yorker and has actually written a book entitled (duh) The Wisdom of Crowds. (more…)

Back in Ottawa in the office today and thought I’d take a few minutes to write a quick recap of the last 5 days in Austin… (more…)

Peter Morville gives some good insight in the field of information architecture and findability. Morville wrote Ambient Findability and co-wrote Information Architecture – both great books. Morville spoke on two panels at SXSWi this year: the first, Searching and SEO; and second, Ambient Findability.

A portion that really struck me as valuable was his characteristics of usability – a word that has become synonymous with general quality of a website: Useful, Useable, Desirable, Accessible, Credible, Findable, and Valuable. Each characteristic contributes to the appearant value of website design.

Another topic that came up dealt with the conversation of taxonomy vs folksonomy. While quite popular now, folksonomy may become essentially unuseable due to the impending growth in content under single tags. Tendency back towards taxonomy will keep the content findable and ultimately useable. For example, clustering tags into logical groups is a step towards traditional taxonomy.

While taxonomy and folksonomy help us in finding the content we are looking for, the social aspect of describing the aboutness of content is increasing as a qualificaiton of the content. “What others are doing” with this content ultimately gives further context and credibility.

The intuitiveness of the path to the content we look for is the essence of ambient findability. When designing a website we have to realize there are a variety of methods of navigation that may be equally intuitive. Searching, for example, is more than likely going to be the first step in navigation. User-centric and self-identification based navigation is another method. A subject based hierarchy is yet another. The following steps should provide an effective way to drill down into the content the user is looking for.

Further exploration, reading resources for information architecture

1. Boxes and Arrows
2. Don’t make me think by Steve Krug
3. Information Architecture Summit

Burnie Burns, of Austin’s Rooster Teeth, just delivered the day four keynote presentation. Rooster Teeth is best known for their “machinima” video series like Red vs. Blue. Burns talked briefly about machinima but the bulk of his talk was looking at the changing landscape of the internet – examining the space where content providers, customers and the owners of the networks (you know, those mysterious companies that actually built and maintain that part of the internet that normally occupies the “cloud” part of the diagram) intersect. As telecom giants (and rightful owners of the internet infrastructure) like Verizon and AT&T get increasingly frustrated with content providers like Google and iTunes basically mooching off their system while we, the customers, enjoy the free lunch it seems like things will come to a head sooner rather than later. Burns predicted some pretty drastic changes in the flat-rate monthly payment model for net usage most of us have become accustomed to. Certainly doesn’t bode well for a company like Rooster Teeth that creates and publishes original video content.

The DIY theme seems to have stuck with me today as I’m starting to notice a trend in my panel selections this morning: building buzz for your web project. I seem to be catching a bit of the DIY bug, and it’s hard not to when you’re surrounded by so many smart folks doing such smart things. But what inspires me most (and probably a lot of the attendees here) is that after listening to people like 37signals, Shaun Inman, and SkinnyCorp talk about their humble beginnings and how they struggled for months or years before their idea really took off, it makes the possibility of succeeding seem a little more tangible.

After Craig Newmark’s keynote interview, I attended a session on “Zero Advertising” Brands which was essentially a Q&A with the two founders and creative director of SkinnyCorp – the firm responsible for Threadless, Naked & Angry, 15 Megs of Fame and Extra Tasty. In developing this run of successful online communities it seemed their approach was much the same as Craig Newmark, who maintains that the smartest thing he did was just “get out of the way” and let the community run the site, because that’s who the site exists for.

The last session of the day was “Design Eye for the List Guy”, a panel that took over the controversial task of realigning (not redesigning) the venerable craigslist. It was an impressive exercise in the art of the “realign”. And in the end, Craig (who happened to be in attendance), seemed content with their efforts.