1. Substitute your window title and URL in the appropriate text layers
2. Run the action for either IE 7 or Firefox 2
3. Get designing!

A quick poll of the office shows that we're feeling ready. Are you?

The kind of thinking which leads to the creation of photoblogs may not seem all that innovative to our readers who regularly dabble in the Web 2.0 Black Arts and belong to the AJAX Guild, but the concept of blogs is still foreign for a lot of our clients. Our good friend Eli Singer, Web Maverick over at Cundari SFP (watch out for the Flashtastrophe), has been working with the ROM to bring them into the modern age. Sites like the Photo Diary are simple to setup and don't have a big maintenance overhead, especially if the photos are being shot anyway. We highly recommend the addition of freshly updated content to your website, particularly in blog form, as a primary driver of increased organic search engine traffic.

That's right folks: it's that time again! We've just about finished our massive office renovation and now we have all this empty space to fill, so we sat down and filled up an entire white board of things we could fill it with. A sample:

• Elephants (too heavy, too many peanuts)
• Clowns (too scary, too many clown cars)
• Origami Cranes (too many paper cuts, too many dead trees)
• A Bigger Team (too much... fun?)

And there you have it! We settled on a bigger team, though I still haven't ruled out elephants provided we can build some kind of code input device that doesn't get crushed under their massive feet (Ed: trunk based?).

Effective immediately, we're looking for two key positions:

• Integrator/Web Developer
• Business Development Manager

All the instructions you need are in the posts, so go read 'em and send in your info! If you know someone who matches the description, please forward along, and if you write a blog which gets read by the kind of people we're looking for, please make a quick post on our behalf.

How to Change the World

Sunday, April 15th, Moscone Center, Room 2002
David and I will be doing a 5-minute, 20 slide, Ignite extravaganza on the use of *Camps for positive change. Look for a profile of TransitCamp as a case study on the power of Open outside of the tech community. We're scheduled to talk in the first block, which kicks off at 7pm. Be there or be []!

The *Camp phenomena has been successfully applied to a variety of technology events. This is the story about moving beyond technology, into public policy. And the impact open, creative communities can have on changing the experience of being a citizen, the face of a city and it's transit system.

Update: our talk went really well, although something got a bit messed up with the slides and images placed in the deck got replaced with images from that machine. We got a lot of laughs from the crowd and many congratulations after, and placed 4th out of 8 speakers, with 9% of the vote. Thanks to everyone who voted for us!

Web2Open

Tuesday April 17th and Wednesday April 28th, Moscone Center
It's an absolute pleasure to join our good friends Chris and Tara to attend Web2Open!

The Web 2.Open was conceived with FooCamp/BarCamp in mind. This open event blends some pre-scheduled content with an open grid where the attendees fill in the sessions they either want to discuss or present themselves. It is the perfect space to provide the community at large with a place to connect with other attendees, learn more about elements of Web 2.0, and share one’s knowledge and experiences.

We're not sure yet if we'll lead a session, but we definitely plan to be there and to help out wherever we're needed.

How to Make 27 Million People Hate You: Lessons from Firefox 2

Wednesday, April 18th, 4:30pm, Moscone Center Room 2018
We'll be up on stage again, this time talking about our experiences designing the official theme for Firefox 2 and about the changing role of designers.

Radiant Core enjoyed the terrifyingly good fortune of working closely with the Mozilla team to design the official theme for Firefox 2. Designing for a group of users larger than the population of Canada is hard! Learn about the challenges of cross-culture/language/platform application development, and why passionate users are both a blessing and a curse. Plus, we'll share the big secret about great design!

Find us on Twitter

If you're coming to the Expo, find us for a drink or dinner! You can follow our adventures on Twitter, where we'll be sure to post the where's and why for's. See you there!

The number one job of any leader is talent development.  Recruiting, retaining, equipping and developing the talent in your team is the not only the most critical part of creating a successful company it is also the hardest.

He also performs his own stunts, driving down the San Mateo freeway while video blogging. The man is an animal!

I think the point he makes in the video is essential to this conversation: hiring should always be a two way conversation. We are always more attracted to candidates who interview us and who inidicate that they are assessing Radiant Core as much as we are assessing them - it shows that they undersand the value that they bring to the organization. Don't be afraid to ask tough questions in interviews!

Brief aside: I actually worked for Austin years ago, as a summer intern in the Toronto offices of Total.net. I never met him then, but it was a formative experience and definitely set me on the path I'm still on today. So, no credit to Austin for mentoring me, but it was a pleasure to finally meet him recently when he popped into the Radiant Core offices to say hi. He's one of the few Canadian Internet Rock Stars (present company excluded, of course), so return the favour and pop by his blog!

UX Report: The Series!

Since there's a lot to talk about, I'm going to break this up into a series of posts over the rest of the week. While many of my colleagues are down in Austin frolicking at SXSW, I'm going to stay where it's still cold and wet and tell you all about a trip to the one place in the tech industry that's pretty much the complete yang to the SXSW ying. I do it for you, really. Can you feel the love?

Today's post is about the setup and format of the two days, while the rest of the week will tackle specific sessions and presentations. Here's the breakdown:

    
• Today: Format (c:)
    
• Tuesday: The New Microsoft (Again)
    
• Wednesday: Design Matters (Maybe?)
    
• Thursday: Expression
    
• Friday: Wrapping Up

I'll come back and turn those into links as the rest of the pieces get published so you can always just tune back into this post to find them again.

Behind Enemy Lines

Let's get the bit about being the contrarion out of the way first: As a lifetime Mac user and passionate believer in Open Source, Culture, and Community, I viewed this trip as an opportunity to visit the beast's lair and to peek behind the curtain at what it contained. Back when my youthful naievity hadn't been dulled by the wisdom of time, I fought the Holy Religious War of the Operating System with all of the passion that a teenaged fan boy can muster.  I lost the need to convert the Great Unwashed Masses to the One True Jobsian Way sometime around the point where I became really interested in the User Experience of technology. As I got older, I realized that they're all just tools - some nicer than others - but in the end the importance is the outcome. I still think Apple makes better machines and software (although it has plenty of faults of its own), and we run our business almost entirely on Macs, but I'm happy to admit that there are plenty of times when their technology is not the right answer. This was a chance for me to go spend a few days with people who I respect a great deal, in a friendly and welcoming environment, and to learn what the other half will be up to for the next few years. It was interesting to note that there were four MacBookPros out of fifteen attendees and that four or five other people around the table admitted to owning a Mac at home (just for the kids to play on, of course).

Around the Table

Since the event was organized by Microsoft Canada, the Round Table consisted of some of the best and brightest Canadian UX minds. A quick introduction:

    
• Ryan Apps, Traffik Group
    
• Colin Bowern, Official Community
    
• Audrey Carr, Organic
    
• David Crow, Radiant Core
    
• Nicole Flippance, High Road Communications (Microsoft Canada's PR Company)
    
• Tom George, Design Axiom
    
• Dave Goodwin, University of Waterloo
    
• Anthony Hempel, Blast Radius
    
• Bryce Johnson, Navantis
    
• Kerri McKenna, imason
    
• Ben Skelton, Haberñero
    
• Gene Smith, nForm

Our Hosts

We were graciously hosted by a number of Microsoft Canada folk in addition to the great list of speakers. Thanks go out to:

    
• John Oxley, Microsoft Canada Director Community Evangelism
    
• Daniel Shapiro, Microsoft Canada Audience Manager
    
• Jerome Carron, Microsoft Canada Developer Evangelist

Format (c:)

As per my Reporting Live from Bellevue post, the event was held at the beautiful new Westin Bellevue hotel. We camped out in one of their conference rooms for two days and heard presentations from an amazing group of speakers:

Day One: UX at Microsoft

    
• Darren McCormick, Worldwide UX Role Owner for Microsoft: What’s up with UX at Microsoft?
    
• Will Tschumy, West Coast User Experience Evangelist (formerly Director of Experience for Flock): User Experience in Research - the Ribbon in Office 2007
    
• Jeff Pettiross, Senior Program Manager: User Experience in Practice - Health Explorer
    
• Kevin Gjerstad, Group Program Manager (WPF Reader): A User Experience Story – NY Times Reader
    
• Michael Suesserman, Technical Evangelist: Windows Vista Desktop and Live Gadgets

Day Two: Expression

    
• Erich Zocher, General Manager Tools (Expression): Turning UX Ideas into Reality (The Tools Roadmap
    
• Arturo Toledo, Technical Product Manager (Expression): Expression Design and Expression Blend
    
• Wayne Smith, Senior Product Manager (Expression): Expression Web
    
• Angela Baxley, Product Manager (Expression): Expression Media

The presentations largely consisted of someone speaking to a PowerPoint deck, followed by a Q&A with the Round Table panelists. These posts are based off my extensive notes taken during the presentations, but if I missed something and you were there to catch me on it, please add it in the comments!

That's it for Day 1 - tune in tomorrow for The New Microsoft (Again)! I'll leave you with a neat PictoBrowser of all my shots from the event: