Design Thinking Digest

A curated list of things to do at SxSW, Sunday, March 15th

Sunday is when the EXPO floor of SxSW finds its rhythm. You’ll find a variety of folks exhibiting there (from startups to the US Army and all the outliers in between). Some of the best conversations I have at SxSW occur on the Expo floor. Microsoft will there too, if you wonder what we could be possibly doing that would matter to you, check us out. Or…if you’ve got feedback for Microsoft, stop by and give it to a real person.

Here’s what I’ll be checking out on Sunday.

Sunday, March 15th

Tips and Tricks for Making the Most of Creative Suite 4
Room Hilton A
Sunday, March 15th
10:00 am - 11:00 am

Add this to your SXSW Calendar

Join Greg Rewis, author and industry-renowned Adobe evangelist, to learn how to get the most out of Creative Suite 4. Greg will show you hidden features in Photoshop, Flash, Dreamweaver, and more. During his performance, and it will be a performance I'm sure, he'll also show you his favorite time-saving tips and tricks, and who knows what else you'll walk away with hint. hint. You certainly won't want to miss this fun and informative session.

I’m not certain I’ll learn anything new here but I always like to give Greg the opportunity to give a few potshots in my direction when we’re at the same events. It’s just this thing we do. :)

Greg Rewis Creative Solutions Evangelism,   Adobe
Ryan Stewart Evangelist,   Adobe

Violating the Warranty on Your Touch Computing Device
Room 10
Sunday, March 15th
11:30 am - 12:30 pm
Add this to your SXSW Calendar

Simple touch computing is taking the world by storm in desktop, mobile, and environmental computing. The best and brightest are taking their gloves off, drawing inspiration from Star Wars to James Bond, and going beyond the conventional bounds of touch computing. See what design and technology leaders are doing next with technology like Microsoft Surface and other touch computer platforms.

This is a panel that I’m moderating. Touch is a hot topic and here we’ll focus on why Surface is far more than a ‘big ass’ table and we’ll talk to folks that are actually building and deploying touch apps TODAY versus just talking about what will happen in the future.

Chris Bernard User Experience Evangelist,   Silverlight/Microsoft
Joe Engalan Dir of Dev,   Vectorform
Erik Klimczak Creative Dir,   Clarity Consulting
Joe Olsen CEO,   Phenomblue
Dan Thompson, Developer, Manifest Digital

CSS3: What's Now, What's New and What's Not?
Room 8
Sunday, March 15th
2:00 pm - 3:00 pm
Add this to your SXSW Calendar

This panel explores how major browsers implement CSS3. The focus is on finding effective and efficient methods for developers to unleash their creativity while maintaining cross-browser compatibility. The panel covers current implementations, future plans from the major browser vendors and some discussion of the current progress on the standard itself.

A great, annual panel at SxSW with a great lineup. If you care about the standards based Web this is one you don’t what to miss.

Molly Holzschlag Pres,   Molly.com Inc
David Baron dbaron.org
Chris Wilson Web Platform Architect,   Microsoft
Hakon Wium Lie Opera Software
Sylvain Galineau Program Mgr,   Microsoft

Three great events this night.

Adobe 12th Annual SXSW Web Awards Ceremony - Presented by Adobe 7:00 pm - 9:00 pm
Downtown Hilton Hotel, 6th Floor (500 E 4th St)

The Web Awards Ceremony is the centerpiece of evening activities at the SXSW Interactive Festival. This year's emcee is "conscious comic and vigilante pundit" Baratunde Thurston. The SXSW Web Awards are presented by Adobe, Web Awards Supporting Sponsors are Convio and All Web Leads.

FG SQUARED Party
9:00 pm - 11:00 pm
Lucky Lounge (209 W 5th St)

Hightail it over to the FG SQUARED shindig. It's gonna be aces--grab a highball on the house and knock back some buckshot with Austin's interactive marketing big leaguers. We'll have a cool cat spinning all of Frank's favorites, plus we're playing BINGO (you heard me, Daddy-O.) Swing, baby!

Facebook friends.get Party 2009
9:30 pm - 1:30 am
Pangaea (409 Colorado St)

Do you develop, design or dance like a superstar? Facebook is hosting a party with live entertainment for our developers and partners. Stay up-to-date on all the SXSW activities at http://www.facebook.com/sxsw.

My Panels At MIX

Going to MIX? Want to see my panels? Here they are. They will also be taped and posted at the www.visitmix.com site.

Real World Design: Working with Silverlight and WPF in the Design Studio

Thursday, March 6 8:30 AM - 9:45 AM, Delfino 4001A 

Speaker(s): Beau Ambur (Metalliq), Chip Aubry (Tribal), Chris Bernard (MODERATOR), Nathan Dunlap (Identity Mine), Rich Weston (Neudesic)

Audience(s): Creative, Technical

Session Type: Panel

Silverlight and WPF represent a new way for designers and developers work together. But what happens in a professional practice that's focused more on employing designers than developers and using Macs versus PCs for much of their daily design work? Join us as we find out how practitioners from companies like Tribal, Projekt202, Metaliq and Identity Mine discuss the learning curves and the workflow that they adapted with their visual designers and rich interactive developers to get up to speed with Expression Studio, XAML and Silverlight. You'll hear the unvarnished truth about the challenges and rewards of how Silverlight is enabling the digital design practice.

What Is the face of the next Web?

Wednesday, March 5 1:30 PM - 2:45 PM, Delfino 4001A 

Speaker(s): Chris Bernard (MODERATOR), Paul Dain (Tribal), Anthony Franco (EffectiveUI), Tjeerd Hoek (Frog), Mark Kurtz (Gage), Garrick Schmitt (Avenue A | Razorfish)

Audience(s): Business, Creative, Technical

Session Type: Panel

Web 2.0 appeared almost overnight from innovative uses of technology to break through the traditional HTML/JS browser ceilings. But what comes next? What is the face of the next web? What are the expectaitons for user interaction and experience? What about a mobile web?

Touch Me: Where Are Interfaces Going?

Thursday, March 6 2:30 PM - 3:45 PM, Delfino 4101A 

Speaker(s): Chris Bernard (MODERATOR), Doug Cook (Thirteen23), Dale Herigstad (Schematic), Daniel Makoski (Microsoft), Yoshihiro Saito (2nd Factory), Dave Wolf

Audience(s): Business, Creative, Technical

Session Type: Panel

The keyboard and mouse are aging input devices. For the future of computing and UX, where are interfaces going? Are these enough? Is touch-screen Surface/iPhone/iPod Touch just a gimmick? Where should Man Machine Interface (MMI) go?

Technorati Tags: MIX08

What Chris Bernard is doing at MIX

Aside from having a great time at one of my most favorite conferences of the year I'll be doing three panels at MIX this year. MIX sells out EVERY year so if you're thinking of going book your travels soon. You'll get the latest and greatest on the following topics plus you'll be able to see some great panels that I'm moderating.

Learn about:

• IE 8
• IIS 7.0
• ASP.NET (including ASP.NET 3.5, ASP.NET AJAX, ASP.NET MVC, and ASP.NET Dynamic Data) 
• VS 2008 and Expression Studio
• WPF
• Silverlight 2
• And much more....

And join me for the following panels.

Real World Design: Working with Silverlight and WPF in the Design Studio

Silverlight and WPF represent a new way for designers and developers work together. But what happens in a professional practice that's focused more on employing designers than developers and using Macs versus PCs for much of their daily design work? Join us as we find out how practitioners from companies like Tribal, Metaliq and Identity Mine discuss the learning curves and the workflow that they adapted with their visual designers and rich interactive developers to get up to speed with Expression Studio, XAML and Silverlight. You'll hear the unvarnished truth about the challenges and rewards of how Silverlight is enabling the digital design practice.

Will have panelists from Metaliq, Tribal DDB and Idenity Mine and we'll get down and dirty about how Web agencies use our tools in the real world. We might have a few surprises up our sleeve with the addition of some surprise panelists.

My second panel?

What is the face of the next Web?

The Web 2.0 appeared almost overnight from innovative uses of technology to break through the traditional HTML/JS browser ceilings. But what comes next? What is the face of the next web? What are the expectations for user interaction and experience and the intersection of digital marketing, social media and services? What’s next, mobile, the living room, everything?

My panelists include:

• Anthony Franco is the president of EffectiveUI
• Paul Dain is the Director of Technology for Tribal DDB in Chicago
• Tjeerd Hoek is one of the principal creative leads for Frog Design (and former lead designer for Windows at Microsoft)
• Mark Kurtz is a former technology director at IdeaPark and who’s next gig is VP of Interactive Technology at Gage.
• Garrick Schmitt is the author of the Avenue A Razorfish Digital Technology Outlook

My final panel?

Touch Me: Where are interfaces going?

The keyboard and mouse are aging input devices. Where are the future of computing and our experiences with  technology going? Are touch interfaces the wave of the future? Are they enough? Is touch-screen Surface/iPhone/iPod Touch just a gimmick? How will human and machine interfaces evolve?

My panelists include:

• Doug Cook, an interaction designer from Thirteen23.com
• August de lost Reyes and Daniel Makoski from the Microsoft Surface team
• Saito-San from Japanese Web Agency and UX pioneer 2nd Factory
• Dale Herigstad from Schmatic (If you've seen Minority Report you've seen Dale's incredible work).

Changes in Chris Bernard's panels at SxSW

So a few changes at SxSW. Due to my workload I've decided to turn over a panel I was moderating to a peer from our Microsoft Surface team. The panel below...

Hollywood and Design and Literature: Just who is inspiring who?

Gattaca, Minority Report, Children of Men, Battlestar Galatica. Cinema and television inspire technologists and vice versa. Who’s driving who these days? Join interaction designers and some of Hollywood’s best special effects artists and story tellers and discover how convergence in these two worlds is already happening.

• A review of Hollywood inspiration.
• A debate on what’s really coming in the future.
• A discussion on how science fiction and Hollywood inspires us.

...is now going to be moderated by Evan Hirsch (Those of you that hang around Siggraph or ACM have probably heard Evan speak a number of times). In the coming weeks I'll post up bios of who the panelists are (although SxSW might beat me to it on their site) but other panelists include Joe Crump, Rhazes Spell, Lisa Sanders and Marty Kline.