The MossyBlog Times Archives 2007 - 2009 : Conference

WebDesign 2008 - Going from Wireframe Zero to UX Hero

scbarnes — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 00:02:32 GMT

July 21st Seattle - I'll be speaking at the WebDesign 2008 conference here in Seattle on "Going from Wireframe Zero to UX Hero".

The session is basically going to cover the "How" I guess on what's next after you've made the leap of deciding to adopt our technology (Silverlight or WPF). I'll be showcasing a project that I and co-team member David Pugmire, been working on the past 2 weeks called RCIA.

The description I gave (I always hate doing these as how do you fit 45mins of ideas into a paragraph! hehe) is the following:

The blank canvas can be a daunting and scary thing at times, even more so when you’ve just taken the leap to learn Microsoft technology. Don’t stress, as Scott will show you some tips, tricks and insights into how to go from Wireframe Zero, to UX Hero using the latest versions of both Silverlight and Expression Studio.

If folks like the presentation, I'll look into how to re-do it over the web post the conference for those whom aren't able to attend.

That's all.

http://webdesignworld.com/2008/seattle/sessions.aspx

Silverlight Masking Demo

scbarnes — Mon, 17 Sep 2007 14:43:39 GMT

I've been playing around with masking and trying to think up new ways to approach the axis in which Silverlight can play. In this demo, my approach was to see how I could put in a fake 3D (2D) room with two walls playing video on them, along with reflections on the smooth glossy floor (it just got waxed, so watch your feet).

I'm not impressed with my effort to be openly honest, I wanted the VideoBrush to distort into the perspective of the walls, but sadly in XAML there isn't this capability yet. The ideal approach would of been able to apply a Path.Fill with a VideoBrush, but "that dog won't hunt".

What am I talking about? See the main wall, how it skews towards the center point, in that the wall itself gives off a different perspective then a traditional "rectangle/rotated/skewed". In Adobe Photoshop, this can be done under Distort > Perspective - and that's the functionality I was chasing in this pipedream.

Not to worry, I know people inside Microsoft (go figure) and I'll hound them for this! mark my words hehe.

I'll be doing more to this, and I'll be adding a cool "Twitter.com" concept I've been floating around. You can view this demo at Web Directions South (I'll be doing a demo on Silverlight + RIA).

Current Example: http://www.mossyblog.com/SilverlightMaskDemo/ (sorry for the download, it wasn't optimized for commercial release heh). Protoyping is such a great way to get your head around technology.

Web On The Piste (New Zealand).

scbarnes — Mon, 13 Aug 2007 04:48:40 GMT

I'll be attending and speaking at the first "Web On The Piste" in New Zealand next week. This is a conference being organized by both Straker and Gruden, two companies in which I've had a lot of positive dealings with over the years. It's shaping up to being hopefully a permanent fixture on my conference calendar going forward (that and the Queenstown Skiing surely helps the cause).

"..Web on the Piste is scheduled for the 22nd - 23rd of August , 2007 at the ultimate in venues, Queenstown, New Zealand. We are bringing world leaders in Rich Internet and associated technologies as speakers and instructors for 2 days of Flex, AJAX, SPRY, Apollo and Flash as well as covering server-side back end technologies such as ColdFusion, .Net, Java and PHP and some sessions on mobile based content delivery..."

I think I'll be both on a "Panel Discussion" and will talking about how one is able to re-use some of their Adobe Flex skill set with Silverlight (don't worry it won't be a political mess and It's targeted at those folks whom have *already* made the decision to try Microsoft Silverlight but have a Adobe Flex background).

I'm looking forward to meeting some of the New Zealand RIA folks who I met at WebDU early this year whilst also catching up with some of the Aussie Adobe Community folks as well.

Special warm thankyou goes towards Straker & Gruden for making some bold steps towards organising this event for the first time.

June: Conference, Jam, Camp & Usergroup etc.

scbarnes — Sun, 27 May 2007 13:39:00 GMT

I thought I'd post a list of events I'll be attending this month, these are subject to change based on health etc but also I'm sure I'll uncover new ones as they are discovered.

June 07 - (Sydney) WebJam Part 3, I'll be given a demo on Silverlight special ops project which is uber secret and may involve Britney Spears? (It's a joke between me and Lachlan). I hope there aren't any Adobe Staffers like the last Web Jam @ WebDU.
June 13 - (Brisbane) Coldfusion User Group. I attend these user groups as despite my Microsoft affiliation, I still do some Adobe coding (even more so now that Atlanta folks have began work on Silverlight + CFML)
June 13 - (Brisbane ) Brisbane Sharepoint User Group. Since I started to play around with Sharepoint + Silverlight, I've grown a fond attachment to Silverlight and thought it would be worthwhile to attend these for future knowledge share.
June 19 - (Brisbane) MSDN User Group (QLD). I've been bad as of late, but have made a point of going to these whenever I can make it. No excuses next month!
June 20 - (Brisbane) Flash Platform User Group were I'll be showcasing Silverlight to the Flash Platform folks, don't worry they are well guarded against my evil Microsoft powers hehehe.
June 23 - (Melbourne) ReMIX07, We are basically taking all of the goodness we liked about MIX07 and re-doing it downunder in Melbourne. It's a must see conference!
June 30 - (Perth) BarCamp. I've been absolutely keen to get over to Perth and meetup with the web folks there, so now I have the perfect excuse (I usually look for 3 reasons to travel as to not waste Microsoft's money).

If you know of any more that I should attend (future ones as well), please let me know as I'll be keen to come along and even present something if one wishes.

Tomorrow (Monday 28th May) I'll also be presenting the ARC Australian Postgraduate Award Industry Scholarship (Microsoft) at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), which I'm looking forward to.

Web Directions South

scbarnes — Tue, 22 May 2007 05:41:26 GMT

John Allsopp just dropped me an email announcing the fourth Web Directions South in September 07. Here's the abstract:

After tremendous recent success with Web Directions North in Vancouver, Canada, Australian web industry pioneers Maxine Sherrin and John Allsopp announce their fourth Australian Web conference, Web Directions South, to take place in Darling Harbour, Sydney September 25-29 2007
Featuring 30 leading experts, including a dozen international stars of the web industry, across three tracks, Web Directions focusses on the key technology and business issues of Web 2.0, including
Designing and Developing for the Mobile Web Mobile Business Trends and development in web technologies and standards Designing and nurturing online communities Web Design 2.0 Rich internet Applications, with Flash and Ajax Building and managing great teams Developing Mashups and Webapps Enterprise 2.0 - Wikis, RSS and Web 2.0 in the enterprise Intellectual property and the web Web Startups Accessibility and usability in a Web Apps world Real World Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Web Directions speakers include
Web Technology pioneer and co-inventor of CSS, Bert Boss from the W3C Flickr designer and developer George Oates Head of Google Engineering Australia, Alan Noble Web Design Gurus Andy Clarke, and Justin French Ajax and Flash expert Jon Boutelle, and Ajax wunderkind Aaron Gustafson Wikipedia and Wikia's Angela Beesley
and many more from companies such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, Atlassian, Optus and News Interactive.
If you design or develop for the web, manage web teams, or if your business relies on the web, Web Directions is the key event in the Australian Web Calendar.

This is a must attend conference for the year (other then ReMIX07 - which by the way is nearly sold out, so hurry!). I'm thinking that I need to probably also post a calendar of Web conferences coming up for the rest of the year, as we also have WebJam in June 7 as well as another one at ReMIX07. Overall, fun, learning and socializing with others whom enjoy the world wide interweb.