Radiant Core: presentation tag

Brockville Ad & Sales Club January Speaker: Doing Business on the Web

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 07:00:00 GMT

Although some people find it hard to believe, I really enjoy getting up in front of a room full of people and giving a talk and last night was no exception! I was honoured to be invited by Brockville's Ad & Sales Club to visit their lovely city and present on the topic of Doing Business on the Web, something we try to know a thing or two about. My thanks go out to Anisa Sherwood (a great Brockville Mortgage Broker from Assured Mortgages) who tirelessly organized the talk, President Robert Tavares from Freedom 55 Financial for a great introduction, and to all of the members of the Club who I had the chance to chat with! A special thanks to the crew who took me out for a drink at The Brock Pub, including Kathy MacDonald (from Brockville real estate agents the Keary Team), Taira Kirkland (a very talented and highly knowledgeable Brockville web designer), and Dave Holmes (from high end server vendor Testworx), who brought along his lovely wife Stephanie.

I think the talk went well despite yesterday's incredible wind actually knocking out power to the venue (they were worried the projector might strain their backup generator and it sure did and the power died as I wrapped up :). The crowd's tech knowledge spanned everything from very casual web use to bloggers and SEO-fanatics, so I started off with a quick review of the basics (e.g.: Web 1.0's one way street vs. Web 2.0's participatory conversation), and then jumped into blogging, social media, search, ecom, and collaboration. We covered a lot in an hour and some people were starting to get a bit of the Information Overload glaze in their eyes, so I wrapped up with an encouragement to take advantage of the wealth of free software and opportunity and get out there and experiment. I'm on the train on the way back to Toronto now, but will post the slides to SlideShare from a more reliable net connection for anyone interested.

FacebookCampToronto Presentation: Anatomy of a Facebook Application

Sun, 19 Aug 2007 19:00:00 GMT

Bryce has posted a video of my presentation at FacebookCampToronto:

Download the Quicktime or Download the MP4

FacebookCampToronto Report

Wed, 08 Aug 2007 13:00:00 GMT

Last night was the super-awesome FacebookCampToronto, which kicked off at the MaRS Discovery District at 6:30pm. Colin and Roy from Refresh Partners and Andrew from Trapeze did an amazing job organizing the camp, which attracted an almost unbelievable 400+ people. Big thanks to Megan Marks, Caitlin O'Farrell, and the other Facebookers who made the trip to Toronto specifically to attend. Megan gave a great presentation right before mine, full of useful tips about how to build Facebook apps and how to get people to install them - I saw Joey DeVilla taking copious notes in the row right behind me so hopefully he'll post them soon (Joey: hint hint!).

My talk went well (The Anatomy of a Facebook Application notes, courtesy of Jordan Christensen). I got a chance to chat with our favourite Citytv reporter, Amber MacArthur, as well as our new friend Eli Glasner, National Arts Reporter for the CBC Radio News. He generously provided us with an MP3 of the interview, which is included below for your listening pleasure:

Update from Allen Gelberg, Director of the Collaboration Centre at MaRS and the man who generously donated last night's space for FacebookCampToronto:

FYI overall attendees were 453. That is 400 in the Auditorium and 53 in CR-3 where we were simulcasting into.

FaceBookCampToronto Tonight!

Tue, 07 Aug 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Tonight is the super-awesome FaceBookCampToronto, kicking off at the MaRS Discovery District at 6:30pm. Colin and Roy from Refresh Partners and Andrew from Trapeze have done an amazing job organizing the camp and we're expecting an absolutely record breaking 500+ attendees. We'll be presenting on the topic of The Anatomy of a Facebook Application, as part of an exciting schedule:

6:00	Social/Mingling
6:30	Introduction by Colin, Roy & Andrew
6:40	Best Practices around Product Design and Viral Marketing (Meagan Marks, Facebook.com)
7:30	Anatomy of a Facebook Application (Jay Goldman, Radiant Core)
7:50	FBML Overview (Sunil Boodram, Trapeze Media)
8:10	FQL Overview (Craig Saila)
8:30	Updating the Facebook Profile (Colin Smillie, Refresh Partners)
8:50	Demo: .Net Sample Application (Ricardo Covo)
9:00	Demo: Carpool by Zimride (Rajat Suri)
9:10	Demo: My Aquarium by Greg Thomson
9:20	Wrap-up & drinks

If you're reading this after the fact, welcome to Radiant Core! Don't forget to check out our Careers section for some great positions, including Facebook app development :)

browserSim 0.2 - browser chrome for design made easy

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 16:00:00 GMT

Many web design types use a masked browser chrome to present their design work to clients - it helps provide a context for the visuals being presented.

I personally find it a tremendously useful technique to use from the very start of a design process - it keeps me aware of how the elements I'm producing will sit within the browser, and ultimately of how they'll appear to the end-user.

I've done several versions over the past half-decade or so, but finally got around to doing one with multiple chrome options, layer group masks, etc., which makes it all ludicrously easy to use. Even better, the chrome is nicely drop-shadowed and pretty much presentation-ready!

All you need to do is grab the .psd and use. Instructions are in the first group. If you find yourself making improvements (such as adding browser versions), do ping me!

Web2.0 Expo Bound

Sat, 14 Apr 2007 10:25:00 GMT

We're off to Web2.0 Expo tomorrow morning (I'll be accompanied by the Bourbon Express known as David Crow), where we'll be making a number of very public appearances:

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!