Monthly Archives: March 2012

It’s all coming together now

I was asked to speak for a small group of people on behalf of my Javascript expertise at a meeting of frontend web developers. Of course I said yes, and started thinking about it. I wanted to use my newly learned lessons from The Art of Hosting. I also told my host I wanted to take a personal approach, and would like to include my own stories. I said I wouldn’t be needing a beamer or flipover. He was very interested and let me go my way.

When we went to the presentation room, I saw a round table. Just big enough to host us all. We were with 9 people, so that created an intimate space.
I started with a check-in and asked each person to tell us who they are, what inspires them, and what they’d expect from the evening.
When the first person started all became engaged, and we listened with interest when each took their turn. Some talked about their professional self, others took a more personal route. Wonderful!
I felt my body relaxed, my mind clear, and was able to truly listen to the others, and get familiar with their faces. Questions were asked from genuine interest.

Finally I told my own story. I was able to be fully at ease and look everybody in the eye. That was a first for me, and I attribute that to the initial check-in round. And the small group as well.
I talked about my personality, my lack in degrees, my initial insecurities because of that, and how I overcame that by reading whatever I could about my area of expertise. About how I got to know myself better, enabling me to become more solid and gain integrity. That I sometimes need to manage my overenthusiasm.
The group responded multiple times by asking questions and recognitions.

In essence I was telling authentic stories, exposing my weaknesses, and how I gained strength by accepting and getting to know them. Their faces told me they were intrigued, sometimes amazed, but all of them were engaged. Some faces started showing minor agitation, which I think was some impatience for my build up, or the mismatch with their expectations.

So to move them towards the topic of the evening (Javascript) I then went on to speak about the moment I fell for Javascript, and who was on my path to inspire me.
I talked about my open source project called backbone-everywhere, and that it was meant to be a demo for a startup. This project involves bleeding edge open source javascript, which is common ground to most of us. So we ended with a discussion about our area of interest, which we all hoped to talk about.

Afterwards I asked them for feedback, what they thought about the format, about my way of hosting.
They all preferred our participatory setup over a regular presentation, and felt energized.
Because I hardly got any critical feedback I kept asking for it.
One person then told me he got a little bit frustrated for not knowing how and where it would go. I thanked him, and explained I am learning to detect such signals in the heat of the moment, so I can ask what is needed.
Some people told me that more structure in the informative section would be nice. I agreed there. The lack of a visual presentation gave them a new experience and engagement, but I realize that I should have some visual structure for stories that involve lots of technical aspects.

When most of the people were gone, I remained with the two intitators of the evening. They were very enthusastic about my approach and we talked setting up a new Javascript course together.
What an energizing and fruitful night! It’s wonderful to see everything come together, and life aspects seeping into work, and vice versa.

 

Android hemroids

I am a genuine late adopter of modern technology. I do see a lot of it coming from miles away tho, and try to get in touch with it before it arrives. Read up on it, let it sink into my stubborn brain cells.
And so I fell in love with Android long time before it was found on any commercial device. As a programmer I immediately fell for it’s architecture, it’s intents, it’s openness.
While waiting for the baby to mature, I read up on the first user experiences and decided to wait a year more, before trying it out myself. Being very fond of my iPhone User eXperience, and a Linux user, I was very reluctant to try another open source OS.

So I finally decided in 2010 to buy the Goog’s Nexus One, and treat myself to a whole different mobile experience. No cruft, straight up android from the core.
Nice new features, integrated messaging and notifications, free navigation, supported rooting, a dream come true from a programmer’s perspective!

But then the wet cement started coming up through the cracks, reminding me of the slow, shaky and ever evolving Linux OS’s. Why would it be different with Android? Marketing? A larger user base? Of course not. The foundation is the same. Openness breeds variety, and the lack of control allows buggy software. It just kills the user experience when there is no senior top of the pyramid overlooking a coherent interface to it’s OS, but also it’s ever growing list of apps.
Android’s choice to let performance measures come from the community itself, rather than exert dominant control over such an important aspect, resulted in an unresponsive and sluggish device. Trying and uninstalling many task killer and performance apps trained me to keep it into shape somewhat, but how cumbersome!
But the most irritating to me was the fact that the Android market became the waste bucket of successful iPhone apps, with even the largest web services out there offering alpha software. Not only were most of them very buggy, but it seemed that the android user base was treated like the linux user base, expected to not care about user experience, but openness and features only.

And that is what made me sell the device after 2 months of trying very hard to make the device perform acceptably, and go back to my good ol’ iPhone 3Gs.
So I decided to give Android more time to mature, and hoped the inevitable growth of it’s user base would demand top notch user experience. Boy was I wrong.

2 years after my first encounter I now own a quad core Asus eee prime monster tablet running the latest ice cream sandwich, holding more power than necessary for a smooth user experience. Or so I thought.
ICS 4.0.3 is still not controlling performance and has apps running wild, interfering with my user experience.
The apps I use most, such as Facebook, Spotify and Twitter, are all cream of the crap. Offering the same crappy UI and limited functionality like years before. But I can’t really blame app developers for not wanting to support an OS that does not deliver the same functionality on the multitude of devices churned out every day. I do have to see that as a given from now on I guess.

What was I thinking? I should have realized that the same lack of control over performance and apps, and also the increasing complexity of hardware support are truly hindering front of the line, top notch mobile device experiences.
Apple has been criticized by that same android community for exerting this kind of control, and app manufacturers have been honed for only supporting Apple’s stable unified hardware approach. But being an open source advocate, I am also a power user in need of a user experience allowing my quick and intuitive workflow. My day to day operations are not to be hindered by sluggy OS’s and unusable apps.
There is no choice for me but to go back to Apple’s stable, and ride their willing and able iron horse, taking me into the camps of the fronteers, letting me indulge in their nourishing stream of app cream.