On March 22nd and 23rd I attended the OSCMS Summit which was held at the Yahoo Campus in Sunnyvale. A friend from Boston flew out and we drove down together. The conference, true to the open source community, was without cost. Yahoo was very generous and lunch was provided on both days, not to mention enough caffeine to keep the developers going.

I was impressed with the breadth and the depth of the topics. The people were very pleasant and supportive of each other in their endeavours and skill levels. I learned a lot and I am excited about continued participation in the community. Considering the conference itself did not cost a penny for its participants, it was quite spectacular.

I believe the next one will be in Barcelona next fall. That would be a fun trip. Who knows, maybe I will see you there! Check out the summit web site for topics covered. There were people video taping each session too, but I have not chased those down yet.

I am always looking for great tools for making stuff. One tool I have wanted for a long time is a tool for quickly and easily creating an online portfolio that is clean and slick. There are lots of tools to do this, but my requirements for this particular tool are strict. I wanted something that I could easily update. That knocks the obvious choice, Flash, out of the running. The last thing I want to have to do is disect a flash .fla file everytime I want to update my portfolio. (more…)

Well it has been a little over a week since I went to MacWorld and I have gone through all my handouts and looked through the various demo disks to see what is really worth pursuing further. The one thing that really stands out for me is an interesting tool called Memory Miner. Be sure to watch this video to get a sense of what it does. (more…)

I went and saw this amazing exhibition yesterday with some other members of the Yolo Designers Group, and it was just amazing. If you are in the Davis, California area before the end of June, it is worth checking out. It is at the University in the Design museum in Walker Hall.

There is tons to look at and what is truly wonderful about the show, is so much of it can be touched. There are books, magazines, cd’s, posters and all kinds of other stuff. The show is intended to focus on what designers have been doing since the dotcom bust. The changes in media and methods and how we think about media that have happened in the past few years, which is a lifetime to a designer.

There is a lot of grungy, skateboard culture influenced sort of work in the show. And the work shown has a decidedly anti-establishment / anti-war / ultra left-wing sentiment attached to it, but it does speak volumes about where we have been for he past few years from a particular point of view.

Currating this show must have been maddening. Not only because of the sheer quanity of stuff, but also the variety coupled with the small space to put it all in. They did an amazing job, and the materials promoting the show, such at the poster, and postcard were striking in their design as well. You can check out the web site for the show here