Ultranormal

Author: Kevin Lawver

  • The Amazing Mr. Chipman

    Ultranormal

    The Amazing Mr. Chipman strikes again. First, it was his great sculptures (OK, before that, it was all his javascript toys). Now, he’s gone and turned Cindy’s frightening portrait of me into an almost more frightening drawing. You can see the whole thing progress, which is even cooler than the final product.\
    I have amazing friends.

  • Tell Us How You Really Feel

    I hate it when people say “tell us how you really feel.” Hate it. Why wouldn’t I tell you how I really feel? You asked. Would you rather I lie to you?\
    We’ve been having this internal discussion about passion, how to change things inside the company, and how things could be better. It’s been going on for a while, but a presentation I did with a bunch of pals last week (called Guerilla Web 2.0 – I’m going to see if I can release the audio and slides publicly) really sparked something, and I keep coming back to that statement (which people have said to me a lot recently, which is why it’s stuck in my head)… “tell us how you really feel.”\
    If you want to change things, don’t stay silent. If you’re passionate about what you do or what you want to do, don’t hide it. The only way things change is if people speak up. I’ve had this quote from Angels in America on my phone for ages and peek at it every once in a while:\
    bq. We won’t die secret deaths anymore. The world only spins forward. We will be citizens… the time has come.\
    Now, that’s about something a lot more serious than technology, but the line has stuck with me. If you want something to change, don’t suffer in silence. If you want something to change, get off your ass and make it happen. If you can’t convince anyone, or fail the first time, then go back and find a new message that will. People assume that things are the way they are for a reason, and they’re just not. A lot of times, they’re an accident or an unintended consequence of another decision.\
    There’s a flip side to that: that we need to “protect” management from issues. Nope. If something’s broken and it’s important, they need to know about it. They’re not fragile, nor are they immune from mistakes (and if they are fragile, they probably shouldn’t be managers). Most of them are human beings, and if they know something is broken, they’ll try to fix it. If they’re decent (and I think 95% of them are), they’d prefer to have happy employees than disgruntled semi-postal ones.\
    The next time someone asks you to tell them how you really feel, tell them. Don’t be hostile, don’t embellish or hyperbolize, but dammit, tell them the truth. Nothing will ever change if you don’t. If we keep it to ourselves and suffer “secret deaths”, there’s no one to blame but ourselves. If we speak up, at least we’ve made the first step in making things better. If others fail to take that information and do something with it, it’s on them.

  • Robin Hood

    The BBC series Robin Hood is playing now on BBC America. It’s not spectacular groundbreaking television, but it is a rollicking good adventure show where the bad guys are delightfully bad and the good guys are good but conflicted. It’s lots and lots of fun, and you should watch it, if only to encourage BBC America to bring good shows over here quicker (like, concurrent with their UK release).

  • Point Out the Good Stuff

    I don’t normally blog about work stuff (well, I have recently, but it’s an anomoly), but I have to point this one out because it’s such an improvement. There’s a new AOL Webmail beta, and it’s really cool. I’ve been using the current webmail at home on the kitchen computer, and while it was better than the one that came before it, it wasn’t great. The new beta? It’s great. It’s speedy once it loads, and I can view mail without having to open a new browser window. Check it out… really. It’s good.

  • How to Get to Speak at Web Conferences

    Hey you, be diverse!

    There has been a lot of discussion around the geek-o-sphere about diversity and the specific makeup of conference speaking panels (Kottke started it, and Eric has a good sampling of reactions). There’s been a lot of back and forth about who’s “fault” it is that the speakers at web conferences aren’t more diverse (meaning fewer white men, and more of everyone else). Seeing as I’m one of those white men, and I’ve been speaking at conferences for the past two years, I thought that instead of diving in with more critique (reasons why X is wrong and Y is right) I’d give some practical suggestions for folks who want to gain some confidence in their own speaking abilities and how I worked up to presenting at conferences. I am by no means an expert. I’m not Eric Meyer, Tantek, Jeremy Kieth, Kathy Sierra or Tara Hunt, any of whom I would gladly pay (and have) to see present. But, I’ve spoken at a bunch of conferences over the past year, and well, this might help someone. Here are my tips:

    1. Blog. You must be findable. Blog, at least a little bit, about the topics you want to speak on so people will find that you’re associated with that topic. This helps you get “known” in the field, and will put you on the radar when people are looking for panelists.
    2. Start with a small, friendly crowd. Do a brown bag at work on a topic you’re an expert (or a passionate amateur) in. Keep it short and informal. If you feel more comfortable, pair up with a friend who can help share the burden of keeping things moving. Kimberly Blessing and I started our guerilla standards group at AOL, and I can tell you that that’s the only reason I gained the confidence to even consider speaking at something like SxSW. I’ve presented to internal crowds now (once high on painkillers after ankle surgery) larger than I have at some conferences, and that’s a huge boost to your confidence.
    3. Find someone to trust as a mentor. I’ve had several at AOL over the years, but find someone who will tell it to you like it is and will help you improve your speaking style and delivery.
    4. Go to Mashup Camp or other unconference. The environment lends itself to anyone leading a discussion and you can propose a session on a topic that you know a lot about.
    5. Oops. Jason’s comment reminded me – your local Refresh (here, it’s Refresh DC) or Web Standards Meetup would be a great place to practice your presentational skills in front of a friendly and supportive audience.
    6. Pitch, pitch, pitch. It’s a pain in the butt, but last year, I pitched panel ideas to at least a dozen different conferences. It was only after I’d spoken at a few and people could see that I showed up on the speakers page at SxSW or Supernova that they gave me the time of day.
    7. Throw a Curveball. Don’t pitch what everyone else is pitching. Throw a curve. The wittier the title, and the more specific your description, the better. “Microformats” is a crap title. But, “A Proposal for an Interoperable Widget Spec Based on Microformats” was accepted at WWW last year.
    8. Get a library of your presentations and put them online. All of mine are, and I’ve been able to point to them as past work for conference organizers to look at. Keep all the presentations you give and use them. Don’t throw any of them away.
    9. Get work to help. It helps a great deal if you can point to membership in some professional organization. Most of the big internet companies (and many of the small) are members of the W3C. If you can point to membership in that organization or some other professional group, that can only help.
    10. Get work to help, part two. Get your company to sponsor a conference. Make it a smaller, more regional conference to start with. Most sponsorships come with speaking opportunities. Take advantage of them.
    11. Always have something to share, and don’t make it about the pitch. I’ve been to too many conferences where people squander their opportunity to speak with a sales pitch about their product or company. You have to give people attending the conference something worthwhile – something real – or you’re wasting your chance.
    12. Be a mentor. If you get to lead a panel, actively seek out new voices. For our panel at SxSW last year, two of the folks on our panel had never spoken at a conference before, and none of us were what I would consider “regulars”. Seek out opportunities to help, share knowledge and provide guidance. That’s a quick way to become known as an expert and have other folks seek you out for speaking engagements.\
      That’s all I can think of right now. I actually need to go to bed so I’m awake for my presentation (to about 200 people) tomorrrow. Hopefully, this was helpful.\
      Update – Meri Williams has set up a wiki for folks to post advice and volunteer as mentors to help folks improve their speaking skills with the goal of speaking at conferences. Go check out Make Me a Speaker!

  • Me and the Boys

    This has been a great weekend. I think I’ve broken out of my funk and am ready to get cranking on all the stuff that needs to get done before SxSW.\
    Yesterday, I took the boys to the new Air and Space Museum, and this morning, because it was snowing, we went sledding.\
    Before sledding, I did my slides for our big Guerilla Web 2.0 presentation on Tuesday (the non-corporate, pirate response to any and all corporate co-option of the term – all Cluetrain, all the time – should be fun), and started converting it to Powerpoint (bleagh) for the telecaster thingie.\
    Now, I’m nursing a sore back, and thinking about taking a nap. Then, after the boys go to bed, I’ll be finishing up getting everyone’s slides into Powerpoint.\
    Next week… I’ve got to get our top secret Rails project finished and ready for launch, and then figure out how to deliver it to our ops group.

  • Check Out My Face!

    A pal at work today told me to check out this thing called the AOL Image Organizer. I did, and it’s pretty cool. It’s over on the Greenhouse (which I love… give people a place to put out things that aren’t quite done, get them seen and get feedback), so it’s really not done. But, it does one really cool thing – it recognizes faces! I threw in a bunch of pictures of people from my Flickr stream, and it did a pretty damn good job of picking out people.\
    Check it out, and let ’em know how you like it… keeping in mind that it’s not done (I couldn’t figure out how to add new face boxes to photos it didn’t see a face in originally). And yeah, it’s only for Windows. But, you could go download Cheshire (a very cool collection of AOL-related Mac apps) or my AIM Fight Dashboard widget.

  • AOL and OpenID

    John spilled the beans so I will too. AOL is doing OpenID! AOL is currently an identity provider (meaning you can log in on third-party openid-enabled sites using your spanking new OpenID URL, for example: http://openid.aol.com/kplawver), and we’re working on accepting OpenID logins on AOL products, but that’s going to take some time. See John’s post for all the details.\
    This is really exciting for me. It’s another sign of us opening up, supporting emerging standards and trying new things. It means I won’t be all alone next month when we launch the super-secret Rails project, which will accept OpenID logins.\
    Now, back to work so we can launch this thing on time and I can tell you all about it.

  • Bring Me Your 48×48 Buddy Icons!

    For our soon-to-be-a-launchin’ Ruby on Rails app, we’re looking for services that provide 48×48 buddy icons (you know, like AIM does). So far, it’s surprising how many different social networks and web apps have them, and it’s equally surprising how few of them have APIs to get at them. So far, I’ve got AIM Buddy Icons, Flickr buddy icons, and Twitter icons – because they’re really easy to get at (some easier than others). If you know of more services (or happen to run one) that has APIs for getting buddy icons (that are 48×48), please let me know! We’ll give you a link and make your users happy in the process, because they get to use their cool icon.\
    One of my early goals with the project was to reinvent as little a wheel as possible:

    • I don’t want to store passwords, or make users remember another one, so we’re supporting AIM and OpenID logins
    • I don’t want to host, resize, handle uploading, a bunch of images, because that means users have to upload yet another one (hence the question above).
    • I don’t want to make people fill out a big long nasty profile, so we don’t have them (they’re short and funny).\
      We’ll be launching the new blog in the very near future, and the product hopefully before SxSW. I’m way too excited about it. I even posted a sneak peek of the logo because I couldn’t take it any more (oh, the design on this thing… it’s gorgeous – the best looking web app I’ve ever been associated with, and I’ve been involved in plenty).

  • Ineloquent

    Sometimes I’m really stupid; sometimes I say things I shouldn’t; sometimes my jokes aren’t funny; and sometimes that pisses people off.\
    And sometimes I don’t realize any of those things (mostly because of the first). If you are one of the latter that I’ve offended by one of the former, and I haven’t apologized to you, healed the rift or made it right, please let me know. I’m a boy – insensitive and thick-headed. I try not to be, but sometimes the lizard brain takes over.\
    You know, having a blog is great… so great that I think everyone should have one. I think everyone, especially when you’re in a profession related to the online world, should have one – should have some place online where you talk about your passion. But, they’re a real pain in the ass sometimes.