Category Archives: Events

Presentations in November

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It’s been a very busy few months, and November is no exception. In addition to an unholy amount of client work at Cinnamon, this month has brought a couple of speaking engagements.

On November 8th I had the privilege of taking part in a panel discussion at the eNederland conference about web accessibility and the new Quality Model for Websites. The Quality Model is heavily based on the Dutch Web Guidelines for government websites, and is an effort to encourage businesses to conform to accessibility and usability best practices. Other members of the panel were Gerlach Cerfontaine (President and CEO of Schiphol Group) , Rabobank ICT-manager Harrie Vollard and Thuiswinkel.org director Wijnand Jongen. There is a photo and a summary (in Dutch) at the website of the Taskforce for Handicap and Society, one of the initiators of the Quality Model project.

Next Thursday (November 29th), I’ll be doing a presentation for Logeion Association for Communication on real-world application of accessibility and usability guidelines, and the impact on online communication. Ruben Timmerman will present some case studies on the business application of usability principles. More information is available (in Dutch) at the Logeion website.

FOWD London 2007

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FOWD London 2007I’m actually starting this post while still in London at the Future of Web Design (FOWD) conference; there are a few presentations to go. So far I’ve found this event pretty well organized. Being a one-day event, it’s been packed and maintains a high tempo. Ryan Carson has been “nudging” speakers to adhere to the allotted time, so everything has run like clockwork.

As far as I’m concerned, the quality of speakers is not on par with @media (save Andy Clarke), but let’s face it: it’s five times cheaper, there was water and wifi (@media2006-goers will know *exactly* what I mean) and some of the lesser known speakers did have very interesting things to say. I enjoyed almost all of them.

A few of the presentations seem to have been more sales pitches than anything else. One presentation made me want to hang myself from an eyelid. Andy Clarke’s TopGear style presentation definitely stole the show. He’s not only entertaining, but also made some great points, arguing his preference for using XHTML/CSS prototyping over Photoshop wireframes and mock-ups.

Rei Inamoto presented 5 ways to strengthen your brand. One of the speakers presenting material not explicitly dealing with web design, he obviously took the time to make the points relevant to the audience. Web designers need to look outside their medium and technique to become and remain creative. Inamoto is a strong creative, and Ryan Carson and team did well in choosing him to speak.

There were other good speakers, of course. As far as the sales pitches go, well, one can’t really complain. I’m sure that’s one of the many ways Ryan and crew were able to create a conference which costs roughly one-fifth of an @media ticket. For that price, it was well worth it.

Anything new here? Nothing mind-blowing. But I applaud Carson Systems for daring to throw some cross-media experts (like Inamoto) into the mix. I’m interested in seeing where this conference will go in the future.

See a few photos.

Gender diversity idiocy in web design

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Zeldman [speaks out](http://www.zeldman.com/2007/02/25/gender-and-ethnic-imbalance-in-web-design/) regarding his opinion on gender balance in web design, at least as far as conference speakers are concerned, agreeing in essence with Jason Kottke. Jason has made an [informal analysis](http://www.kottke.org/07/02/gender-diversity-at-web-conferences) of gender balance in recent conferences, the results of which he apparently feels is an accurate indicator of how seriously conference organizers take the issue.

This type of thing pisses me off. First of all, what is the actual problem here? Are women being pushed aside? Are conference organizers actually discriminating against women here? And I do mean discriminate: choosing a man instead of a women to speak *because* he is a man and she is a woman. I just don’t believe that’s the issue.

Is the issue that some people *feel* that there is an imbalance, that there *should be* a balance, and wish to force that balance on everyone? Because, conference organizers: if you don’t start balancing your speaker lists right now, you’re going to get labeled by the elite non-discriminatory community (uhhh, the Rainbow-Boy-Girl club?).

Now, don’t get me wrong, Zeldman is my *hero*, and I respect and value his opinion, as I’m sure he would respect mine. He didn’t even say much on the subject yet; I’m interested in his further clarification. And I haven’t a thing against Kottke. However, although Kottke’s list of percentages of gender differences in conference speakers appears sound, he utilizes too little data, which is dangerous and confuses the issue. This is important, because now his informal study is being cited.

Here’s the problem. Both of these gentleman allude to the concept of balance in the number of female/male speakers in conferences. Okay, fine. But what is “balance”, and who decides this? I don’t know about you, but if you make websites for a living, look around your workplace. How many women are there? Exactly. Balance, in my opinion, would reflect the actual landscape of the subject being covered, and that’s not 50/50 here. The problem is when we assume that the percentages in Kottke’s report reflect that something is wrong in the first place, without defining what right and wrong really are. And let’s look at some real data about how many women are actually tripping over each other to become web developers.

I’ve never seen an indication that women are less dedicated or ambitious than men, and a good percentage of my clients are women. That’s right, in case anyone is wondering “where the women are”, they’re often telling me what to do, and paying me for it. If any of the women I know wanted to get into web design, they’d probably achieve it more quickly than I did. And the same resources are available to them.

And what about speaking? Not everyone who works in web design wants to speak. So imposing a “balance” on speaker lists (when that balance is probably there naturally), will only be a disservice to qualified female and male speakers alike. Are there self-respecting female experts out there who’d rather be invited to speak based on the conference organizer’s desire to please the politically correct and achieve a balanced speaker list, or rather based on their knowledge, experience, and plain old hard work? Do you think [BlogHer](http://www.blogher.org/) really want to get men on board (oh, yes, balance means balance, or does it?)?

If the goal is to treat women and men equally, and as long as you’re not deliberately choosing men over women, let’s give women the same respect we give men: hire a woman because she fits the bill, not the numbers.

I ask you this: Where are all the half Puerto Rican, curly-haired American expatriate male speakers without trendy facial hair?

More on this subject, ad nauseum? Here’s a well-balanced list with both sides of the story: the right side, and the wrong side. Since we hold the seemingly politically incorrect view, I, Eric and Tantek (Turkish. Oops! Nothing to do with gender!) and many others are, of course, automatically wrong.

Isn’t life simple?

The two cents of:

– [Anil Dash](http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/02/23/the_old_boys_cl)
– [Jenifer Hanen](http://www.blackphoebe.com/msjen/archives/2007/02/on_conferences.html)
– [Tantek Çelik](http://tantek.com/log/2007/02.html)
– [Eric Meyer](http://meyerweb.com/eric/thoughts/2007/02/23/diverse-it-gets/)
– [Shelley Powers](http://burningbird.net/diversity/diversity-isnt-importantand-neither-is-standards-nor-accessibility/)
– [Tim O'Reilly](http://www.dashes.com/anil/2007/02/23/the_essentials_#comment-144598) (Anil posts about an imaginary conference in which discrimination against *male* speakers is apparently tolerated and encouraged, unless the men have developed the new [Flickr](http://www.flickr.com). Tim posts in the comments.)
– [Dave Shea](http://mezzoblue.com/archives/2007/02/24/homogeneity/) Dave’s post includes a few more links than I have listed here.

Enjoy the madness!