Tag: sxsw

Check out the PW coverage! On the PWxyz blog and on the PW site.

On Saturday, my first panel was Drawing Back the Curtain on CSS Implementation.  This panel had representatives from theW3C Working Group on CSS as well as from the major browsers (Safari excluded). They broke down the features of CSS 3 into two general categories, new features and features that make things easier (or “easing the pain you feel every day”), and commented that the second group get a lot more response from the development community.  The panelists repeatedly encouraged the audience to become part of the process by making comments to the working group. Elika Etemad discussed the box model- she believes that padding and borders should be part of width (Microsoft was right!). If your eyes are glazing over, you are not alone, I cannot interest my students in the box model and they are learning CSS. There was quite a bit of discussion about layout and why there hasn’t been a better layout model.

Next, Flash is Dead! Long Live Flash! A panel I can clearly relate to. After donning tees-shirts “I Love Flash” and “HTML 5”, Elliot Chong and Toby Miller of Resource Interactive discussed the pros and cons of working with Adobe Flash as a development tool. At the top of a list of topics, both sides first agreed that Flash intros suck. Search engine optimization in Flash, HTML 5 browser support, mobile performance in Flash were all debated. In the end, both sides agreed that Flash is just a tool and that developers should be “polyglot engineers rather than platform fanboys” using “the right tool for the right job.” I was hoping for more resolution here, but guess that wasn’t meant to be. Entertaining though.

Jane McGonigal reprised her TED talk (and Colbert appearance), making the case that “games are preparing us to take on the world’s most difficult problems.” She outlined the possible benefits of games  (positive emotions, better relationships, meaning and accomplishment), then engaged the entire (very large) audience in a game of Massively Multiple Thumb Wrestling. “With great gaming comes great responsibility.” MacGonigal pointed out that an average gamer born in the 1980’s or after will have spent 10,000 hours playing video games, which is roughly equivalent to the amount of time spent in middle school and high school. She talked about the relationship of eustress, or positive stress, to gaming- one gets the focus and adrenaline surge without the negative consequences. After outlining statistics that prove that gaming really isn’t bad for you (gamers have fewer nightmares and more lucid dreaming, for example), she showed projects that have used gaming for social good, in education (Quest to Learn) and in politics (the Guardian’s Investigate your MP’s expenses project).

Next we took a break from panels and went to ScreenBurn, which is the video game element of the SSWi. We took a quick stroll through the exhibition floor, where the exhibitors range from Capcom and Sony to the Game Development Institute at Austin Community College. One standout was the IndiePub booth, which exhibited the finalists for the 1st Independent Propeller Awards. These games had great graphics and the gameplay looked clever and absorbing as well.

My final panel was All These Worlds Are Yours: Visualizing Space Data. I was really tired, got there late and didn’t take many notes, but check out these links. Eyes on the Earth 3D and Eyes on the Solar System

Had to take a break, why not visit the PlayStation Lounge? Cocktails, carrots, some strange food in chafing dishes. Also lots of games and 3D TVs.

Spent the evening with my family. Fun!

After having a relatively relaxed morning at our hotel, we went to the convention center and checked out a few of the corporate lounges. AOL- tootsie rolls, mini M & Ms and caramels. Microsoft- ASUS tablet (no they were not giving them away- the things cost over $1000). Many Windows 7 phones. And I have to say, it is a great interface. Fast and responsive, looks great. I wonder if only the prototypes are like this, this has not always been my experience with Windows.

Next we walked over to the popup Apple store in downtown Austin to see the new ipads. The store was not open yet, but there was a mighty long line of eager early adopters waiting for their chance to plunk down their cash.

Gowalla had a cool airstream trailer parked a couple of blocks from the convention center. They were giving away tees, tacos and passports. Thank you Gowalla, I skipped lunch after eating 2 of your delicious tacos (though I am a foursquare loyalist).

My first panel was Programming and Minimalism with Jon Dahl of Zencoder. He drew parallels between coding and other forms, music and engineering as well as writing, quoting Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language”. Good programming is clear direct writing- yes I agree with that. “Programming is defining complex processes in a precise way. Programming isn’t necessarily about computers, its just where our programs live now”. He spoke about the importance of style, and traced cycles that moved between simplicity and complexity in rock music. He ended with a set of principles for writing code that was based on principles defined in the Orwell essay. Great start to my SXSW panel experience.

Next I ran to one of the Hilton’s where many of the education panels are running. First I went to Child’s Play: Game Design as an Educational Gateway. The panelists made presentations about their work building curriculum that incorporate game design for children as part of STEM (science, technology engineering and math) education. After a plea for creating games for the sake of games “We need to be creating all kinds of games and not apologizing for them” Colleen Macklin outlined the work she has done with Activate, a web based project that teaches children game design as well as developing awareness of green practices. The project was deployed at a workshop at the Dandelion Middle School in Beijing. Macklin outlined the learning goals of the project, stressing the importance of teaching the students systems literacy and the iterative design process.

Michael Angst gave an overview of E-Line Media’s Gamestar Mechanic, an on-line game that lets children “level up from player to designer”. He described Gamestar Mechanic as a game-based digital learning platform that teaches the importance of systems learning, as well as critical thinking and problem solving.

This panel was interesting, but I also wanted to go to The Potential of Augmented Reality for Education which was luckily in the next room.Tish Shute of the blog Ugotrade described Augmented Reality as “mobile, local and personal. It puts people at the center of their data.” She also discussed the difficulty of making invisible data visible.

Brendan Scully of metaio outlined some of the open source tools available to work with AR before he gave an overview of the work his company has done. Scully described AR as “glue for digital objects”, an apt description. He described the importance of developing augmented literacy, and suggested that 3D modeling should be taught to children in elementary schools. Karen Hamilton of George Brown College discussed the difficulties of integrating technologies into the classroom, particularly getting faculty to buy in. She also talked about ways to harness the technology students bring to the classroom in a time of budgetary constraints, using QR codes or mobile apps such as Foursquare.

I finished the day with Interactive Comics: Techniques to Enhance Math Education with John Baird. This was an entertaining and informative overview of comics in education as well as many particulars about how he uses comics to teach Math with his project Create a Comic Project.

Baird referenced works such as Maus that have been integrated into history curricula. He described his approach in the Create a Comic Project, where he gives students templates of drawings and panels, and the students write the dialog. His project is an extension of the math writing movement, where students participate in such projects as writing math journals that are reviewed by their teacher. Baird also reviewed what comic material is available currently about math, such as Logicomix and the Essential Math Series of the AIMS Educational Foundation. He outlined approaches for using comics as both passive and interactive learning tools.

 

Parties! Heard Pains of Being Pure at Heart at the Sapient Nitro party. We danced- we ate party food! Then we had Korean bbq tacos from a food truck. Party at Mohawk, also great. And it was my birthday!

Due to a mixup with our tickets (curse you Orbitz!) Calvin and I got to Austin around noon today, a day before any of the official activities started at SXSW. We did get to pick up our badges, scope out the venues and get settled in our hotel. I also got a very large red tag for my camera officially identifying me as a photographer.

 

SXSW is filled with hundreds of incredibly cheerful volunteers. The convention center has some unusual concessions, including one that seemed to specialize in boxes of DeCecco pasta and cans of San Marzano tomatoes. We are now on our way to dinner with Rachel Deahl of PW and a few parties. I am hoping to stay awake, we left the house at 4AM and made our way through the Twin Cities to Austin.