There are some significant events happening in South Florida this month namely the Future of Web Apps conference and Barcamp Miami. It’s been fun to see how far along this area has come along in the past couple of years. FOWA is in my opinion the first well respected web conference to hit this area and it says alot about the potential Miami and the surrounding areas have. I’ve stated all along that there is alot going on in this area in terms of design and technology, the main hurdle has always been the many disconnections that existed. If you’re in the area I would highly encourage you to make it out to one of the events.
It’s always fun to look back, on this day last year I gave a presentation at the University of Miami’s Communications Week entitled “The Aesthetics of Web 2.0″ While I was moving some files over to a new host I decided to take a peak at the presentation and was surprised that it held up pretty well. Just today I was discussing Barack Obama’s web site design and I couldn’t help but notice tonight that the look and feel of his campaign site really captures one of the tropes I made a claim to in my presentation called “Optimist” I don’t want to discuss the presentation in this post, if you’re curious you can download the presentation at the link below and post any of your thoughts in the comments.
Download “The Aesthetics of Web 2.0″
May’s Refresh meetup is happening this wednesday at UM’s Communications School. If you are interested in coming out please head on over to the Google group, Upcoming or the site and get more information. Hope to see you there.
The Pandora meetup was interesting tonight. Alot more people than I would’ve expected on a Tuesday night at this sort of venue. It was interesting to see how many older dedicated fans were in the crowd as well tonight. I expected to see alot more hipsters in the audience but this definitely wasn’t the case.
Some interesting things on the horizon for Pandora, mobile is something they are definitely focusing on and there was some brief discussion on their plans to boost the community features of the service as well. There was also discussion on the recent royalty rate ruling in D.C and the impact it could have on Pandora, from everything that was discussed it looks like Pandora could cease to exist if this ruling sticks. I’m sure Pandora will not be the only one campaigning against this ruling so we’ll see how this all plays out.
The UM School of Communications and the Knight Center are bringing down Paul Scrivens from 9Rules and Wisdump to speak March 21st. UM and the people there “get it” and it shows by their recent involvement in Refresh, Barcamp and other initiatives like WeMedia. This will sure to be an interesting talk as Paul has had his hands in alot of projects in the past and is currently building the defacto destination to visit for the best “independant” content on the web with the 9Rules network. If you want more information please join the Refresh Miami group.
I’ve been asked by Kim Grenfeder and UM to speak briefly at the University of Miami’s Communications Week. I’ll be speaking on “The aesthetics of web 2.0″. A discussion of what I define the web 2.0 phenomenon as and the evolution of the design/usability among it’s sites and applications.
I’m hoping this will be an interesting discussion both ways, so if you can make it down it’d be great to chat with you. The date is Thursday, February 15th @ 2:00 P.M Wednesday, February 21st @ 4:00 P.M 3:35 P.M to 4:25 P.M
Miami is fortunate enough to be hosting this year’s We Media conference and although I have never attended, the past topics and speakers have been interesting.
The conference will be running February 8-9 at the Storer Auditorium at the University of Miami. With this conference and with the recent involvement with Refresh Miami it’s nice to see the folks from UM reaching out and doing cool things.
If you’d like to register or get some more information please click over to their site to get the details.
We Media Miami 2006