Movies vs Real Life

I was unsuccessfully looking around for the sign for the Women's bathroom. Fox said it was upstairs; one staff member asked me if he could help; the other staff member was talking to the first staff member about a bucket - all at the same time. This was confusing, "I just want to WASH MY HANDS!" The first staff member said I was welcome to use the downstairs toilet for disabled patrons. I thanked him and went through to wash my hands.

Fox, Willo and I had spent the afternoon with The Scots and friends celebrating Charlie's first birthday and had decided to drop into the Belgian Beer Cafe to buy Charlie her first beer. Being the efficient worker-bees we are, we also decided to take the recycling out as we were to pass the bins along the way. I like washing my hands in general, and more so in the time between touching trash bins and putting my hands anywhere near my mouth. I needed to lather-up with increasing urgency and rid my skin of recycling germs before I ordered my drink.

I wasn't entirely sure which door I needed to go through, but I took my best guess and felt comfortable with my choice as entered the spacious white-tiled bathroom - noticing there was tons of room for a wheelchair I must have picked the correct door.

Half way between the door and the basins though I realised that 'extra wide door' to the right was not necessarily for wheelchairs, but for able-bodied people wanting access to the next thing I saw: the urinals. I was, in fact, in the Men's toilet and then I realised the second urinal from the left being utilised.

The man standing at the urinal glanced over his shoulder and clocked me - that slight action made me feel the option to leave was no longer available. It was as if I had been seen, so I could no longer be unseen. I had to carry on. Yes, that's exactly how it works. Those are the rules!

I apologised and started seriously concentrating on washing my hands as quickly as possible. He said it was okay. He said he didn't mind. Failing to rinse my now-soapy hands fumbling with stupid flip-taps that wouldn't just run the water without being held in the 'on' position - I had to hold the handle up with one hand and try to wash the germs off with my the other hand - stupid taps!

Shaking off the water and keeping my eyes to the floor _TO_THE_FLOOR_ I turned and cursed to see there was only a hand dryer and no paper towels. Drying machines take too long, _too_long_. I pushed my hands underneath the nozzle and it began slowly drying my wringing hands in the jet of warmish air.

The man had finished in the urinal section now. He had washed his hands and was now wanting to use the hand dryer too. I thought he's wait his turn - there must be some sort of air-dryer etiquette - and if there is I'm sure that sharing a hand-dryer is considered poor form. He pushed his hands into the air stream between mine and the source and looked at me and said "So, how're you doing?"

"Obviously not well," I said "I'm a woman in the Men's toilet."

"That's okay, I don't mind in fact, I quite like it."

And this, people: this is my life. My life is not a movie.

If this was a movie I'd be some quirky square peg in a round hole who is stupid-smart, good at math and creative up to the eyeballs. I'd buys clothes from second-hand shops, pairing items together in an unique way but I can manage to pull off and look wonderful. He would have been some intelligent, good looking guy who is bored with the string of main-stream vapid blondes he'd been touting around town and is instantly fascinated by the quirky girl who had stumbled into this bathroom, and spends the rest of the evening (not hanging around in the toilet - out in the bar, walking along the waterfront, riding the ferris-wheel) kinda fighting a bit, laughing a lot and falling in love.

No. No, my life is not a movie.

Mine is a real life. It's full of recycled germs and wrong turns. It stars a middle aged, over-weight, under made-up woman with her badly cut hair dragged into a pony tail. She is a woman who, while knowing that 'Homme' means 'male' in French, will still barrel into the a toilet marked as such and not even have the where-with-all to slam it into reverse and get the hell out of there when the truth is revealed. She is the type of person who will commit to a course of action which ends up standing next to a creepy, unattractive stranger who is touching her semi-dry hands with his wet post-peeing-penis hands under the same warm-ish air from a bathroom hand dryer.

Event: Webstock

I'm completely surprised I made it to Webstock for Day Two. After a night at Mighty Mighty with new and old friends and rodeo clowns, I didn’t hold out much hope as I drunkenly found sleep in the early hours - but I made it! and so glad I did too.

First up was to finally meet Mike Riversdale. I’ve been dipping into his blog for years now, and I recognised him as soon as I saw him outside the Town Hall. I introduced myself and he shook my hand saying I am the reason he and Llew blog – which is quite a hefty thing to hear on a hungover Friday morning - but it became easier to bear once he explained when, years ago, they were trolling around the internets and they came across thejamjar.com and they said to each other "Hell, we could do that!" and they were right and so it's my fault they saw how easy it was to blog!

With coffee in hand, another good front seat Day Two began.

Eric Ries was the first person of the day to give entrepreneurs tips, ideas and information about start-ups. He started his talk with “I do not want, nor do I require your undivided attention. That is what the internet is for.” He talked about his previous experience with start-ups – and how the one that was done ‘right’ ("Like the Cylons, this company had a plan") failed, and the one that where they did everything wrong, worked. He urged people to be flexible and to reduce time between iterations. To be able to change direction but stay grounded in what is learned along the way.

I attended Daniel Burka’s workshop earlier in the week. He preached the "listen and iterate" and "take chances and release often"; message during his time on the Town Hall stage. He wanted us to make small improvements and to not be afraid to prune content and funtionality to create a lean, realigned design. He also said to build with the expectation of change.

Amy Hoy is a funny woman. Her talk was bound for success as she had incorporated the essential elements of Magnum PI and octopi into her presentation. She wanted us to remember that our work/products could be seen as improving someone's day. We are affecting the quality of the day for people using our software. She also said to get on with it "Lions don't wait for an RFP from a gazelle." and we need to be bold, we need to be majestic.

Everyone up to this point wanted to share information. Mike Davidson did too, but he didn’t want any of us to share it outside the Hall. He asked that we not Twitter or Blog about his presentation. It was about entrepreneurs etc too – and I don’t believe there was anything ground-breaking in his talk, but I will respect his wishes and a) not blog about it and b) assure you you didn't miss much.

Bek Hodgson was late to Webstock – Lachlan took her spot the day before, and she arrived in time to take his today. Her presentation was quite short, which left loads of room for questions from the audience. She pulled from her experience in user participation on such sites as etsy and blurb.

Kevin Rose is an internet rock star. He brought a list of 10 Tips For New Web Entrepreneurs, and I managed to grab 9 of them:

1. Go build it! another call to arms to just get the hell on with it. Don’t quite your day job, but start passionately building your product in the after and between hours.
2. Build and release often.
3. Hire your boss. Hire people who compliment your skill set – who have strengths to your weaknesses and who are smarter than you.
4. Raise money.
5. Go cheap.
6. Connect with your community. He suggested when there is no money, not to pay to attend conferences, but show up at all the free after-parties to meet people.
7. Hack the press.
8. Find good advisors.
9. It's okay if not everyone listens. (not sure if this was No.9 but it's pretty good advice)
10. Analyse your traffic.

The second speaker from a workshop I’d done earlier in the week: Adam Greenfield got everyone thinking – so much so that hardly anyone left the Hall for afternoon tea but preferred to continue the discussion around networked urbanism and humanisation of technology. This man is insanely intelligent, and has a Mariana Trench of thought. He’s funny too – in that quiet, understated, smart-kinda way. He talked a little of movies such as Minority Report “You know that movie? the one where Tom Cruise plays a heterosexual police officer..” He also reminded us that “It’s not to make data public, it is that the public make the data..” which makes it ours? Technology is bleeding into RL – the city has become searchable.

Then the long <a href=”http://www.webstock.org.nz/10/speakers/veen.php” target=”_blank”>Jeffrey Veen</a> took us on a journey from ice-making to the internet. Telling stories from the past, who succeeded who failed and how this relates to us in the business of now.

I’m so pleased that good conferences end with people who reach into the future and get our thinking juices topped up. Bruce Sterling has done it before at Webstock, and this year we had the pleasure of Mike Pesce and the future as he sees it. While some futurists talk about grand things, Mike thinks about the small ways technology will revolutionise our lives. Our access to information will come from tiny points, but with great depth of data. He says that unless everything is connected, everything is useless. He gave examples that included buying a pound of ground beef in a supermarket and scanning the bar code with our smart-device-of-choice to learn not only what is in the ground beef, but where the animal was farmed, what it was fed on, what anti-biotics it was injected with, where and how it was butchered – information that we use to make our purchasing decisions. He talked about books – how they want to be digitised because they’ve always been a message in code. He was incredibly interesting, and left me (and I’m sure many others) thinking about the future and seeing things in wider perspectives.

Event: Webstock

Design, development, mobile, usability, content, community, open data, innovation & inspiration. People say Webstock will change your life – these people aren’t exaggerating.

Registering bright and early bought me time for coffee, and some good luck getting a seat up near the front of the stage in the Wellington Town Hall.

Mike Brown opened this much anticipated conference saying “Webstock is made with love.” and that we all fall in love with things made with love. Webstock is made with love, and is loved: and it shows.

Scott Thomas (@simplescott) was up first. He was Design Director for the Obama Presidential campaign and walked us through some of the strategies and outcomes. He said they established a consistency and balance to exemplify stability and experience through design. He learned that by letting control go, so much more was possible – a message that would be repeated again and again through out this conference – that it’s about the people, for the people, of the people.

Brian Fling rambled his way through his slot. There was quite a bit of disappointment on the Twitter back-channel about the apparent lack of focus of his talk. Personally, I enjoyed it – I thought he was interesting and spoke well.

Lisa Herrod was up next: she spoke passionately about accessibility and how we need to stop making excuses not to do it. She has worked within the deaf community in the past so has a personal touch-paper to her subject. She urged us to develop more insightful personas for testing our online projects – to include people with more challenges, to include characteristics of all peoples and to ensure access to information for everyone regardless of how they access it.

Lisa was followed by her husband, Lachlan Hardy. His passion is the Open Web. He introduced us to OpenID, MicroFormats, OAuth and Webfinger, giving examples of how they are used, and how they are integrated. He said we need to “Solve small pieces of the problem at a time.” I don’t know much about the open web, sources or movement and found this talk really interesting and enlightening.

You probably don’t know this about me, but I’m a bit of a process nut. Not that you can tell by looking at me or observing my work, but I love listening and learning from the way other people work. I’m not in management in anyway, but of all the processes I enjoy knowing about, managing people is the most interesting. Esther Derby come to Webstock with the 13 essential questions managers need to ask to create a design environment for people to do great work:

1. How does the work really get done?
2. What information and tools do people need to do their work?
3. How can we build feedback into the system so people can easily determine and identify errors and solve their own problems?
4. How do you know when the work is done?
5. What is the capacity of the team? “All plans are wishes..”
6. How long does it take to tell if you’re off track?
7. What reward systems are employed? “KPI and bonus systems don’t work..”
8. What message are we sending with our reward system?
9. What message are our policies and procedures sending? “Do we really trust you to make decisions?”
10. What happens to people when they bring unwelcome news? “If you say ‘yes’ to everything, your ‘no’ means nothing.”
11. What is your iterative learning cycle?
12. What do I know that ain’t so? “Most people work for money? performance reviews increase performance? Rewards can reduce cognitive function.”
13. What do I know that I forget at work? “Don’t overstuff the pipe – give people room/time to think.”

Shelley Bernstein held a workshop in the days before Webstock. I came *this* close to going and after experiencing her Fostering Personal Connection to Place suffered a good dose of regret. She was _outstanding_. Authentic, passionate, dedicated, charming she let us know her mission at Brooklyn Museum was more about community and user experience than anything else. Shelley and her team at the museum have worked hard to create a space that is accessible and welcoming. She said “It’s easier for me to fly to New Zealand than it is for people [in New York] to visit Brooklyn.” She also mentioned the idea of giving up control – the museum allows photography and digital interaction within the museum. They ask their community and listen to the responses from visitors, from comments, from feedback in person, at the museum and from the web site. They are dedicated to infusing content with life and she said “A personal voice makes a difference.” So they encourage people to use their real names, real Twitter accounts, and to amplify the community’s voice, to develop that community on their terms, not those of the museum and to contribute to the community, not just “be there”. Ms Bernstein was inspiring. Later, when speaking to someone who had been at her workshop, they mentioned that she had been extremely nervous about her talk, and believed she wasn’t a very good or confident public speaker. Shelley, if you ever read this, know this, you held us all in the palm of your hand – you carried us on the journey of your beautiful museum with your authentic and passionate believe in community. You were my outstanding talk of the entire conference – and I doubt I am alone in that feeling.

Jeff Atwood said he was so fascinated with “being in the future..” I guess we in New Zealand and Australia are just used to it but it was fun to hear. He talked about Stack Overflow, collaboratively edited question and answer site for programmers.

Please, don’t let it be interactive by Regine DeBatty who was annoyed and fatigued with interactive art that wasn’t meaningful.

We didn’t get to have Ze Frank this year at Webstock, but swear to god, Rives is just as good. This New York beat poet brilliantly finished our first day of speakers at Webstock. He mixed multimedia, word-play and stories to spin smiles and touch hearts all around the Town Hall. Some of his quotes I captured included: “I was 15 for 6 years straight.” “My weird mind wanders and my brave heart breaks.” “Your once and future lover has made himself at home.” and “Touching myself was like TIVO in a way.” Take any opportunity to see this man – you’ll find slices of him on ted.com.