I’d have five cents.

So, I trimmed my RSS list not long ago and made a category called “Must Reads”. I’ll share those here:

• Brian Oberkirch: The ultimate aggregator
  
• Joshua Porter: Social web design
• Creating Passionate Users: Empowering user to kick ass
• Jeremiah Owyang: Social media guru, though he digs far deeper than I do
• Dan Cederholm: Because he’s my hero
• Chris Messina: He’s just got his finger on everything
• Tara Hunt: Pinko marketer extraordinaire
• Guy Kawasaki: The legend
• Ryan Carson: Just because I love all of his ventures

I know, for a “designer” it’s a little light on design blogs. But I figure if anything too crazy is talked about in the design world, I can get that from Dan or Chris. I also listen to Paul Boag’s Boagworld podcast, which helps out on that front. But what can I say? I love the strategy side of things.

Panelists:

• Liz Danzico, Daylife
• Kristian Bengtsson, FutureLab
• Chris Messina, Citizen Agency
• Luke Wroblewski, Yahoo!
• Jeffrey Zeldman, Happy Cog

How can we:

• Get out of the rut
• Avoid needless reputation
• Work tegether happily
• Get inspired
• Etc.
• Get unstuck?

Unstuck in three ways:

• The act or process of:
  • Doing work
  • Being productive
  • Feeling fulfilled on a team

Collecting examples of being stuck:

• Meetings meetings meetings
• How do we set strategic goals when all management does is micromanage?

Get Unstuck: Process?

• Chris: Work that he does best seems to be out in the open, working with people when the project really matters to them (BarCamp, CoWorking)
  • On Firefox, one of the things he did the best was put ideas on blog, wiki, or Flickr.
  • Rallied others to modify his work and re-post
  • Able to get through things faster than if it was just in his own head.
• Zeldman: Management through conversation
  • First site: Batman Forever (1995)
    • Batman doesn’t talk. Other company bidding said site would open up with “I’m Batman”.
      • Won job despite no experience.
  • Understand what people are actually saying/asking for
• Luke: Continuous feedback loop
  • Absorb any data he can get his hands on
  • Put your idea out there, you get feedback
  • When you write things down, you are thinking it through
  • Common theme is communication
• Kristian: Be fearless and have fun, things are in constant change
  • Better to be a flamboyant failure than a mediocre success
  • Attention + Dialog + Context = Design
• Zeldman: If your boss doesn’t get what you do or why (accessibility, standards, etc.) write an article about it, point him to another
  • Keep putting it out there
  • Your ideas gain traction
  • Boss thinks it is his idea
• Luke: Beyond writing, it’s talking
  • If stuck in corporate environment, there are other groups doing this, getting unstuck
  • Talk to other groups, bring ideas back to your group
• Chris: Get ideas out there early before they are cemented
  • Gives others a chance to destroy your ideas and let them be reborn as something better
  • Others can see into your blind spot
  • Look at negative space of an idea
  • One of the most important things about Firefox is people were able to tell the story to others
  • Simple idea, let people decide what the message means to them.
• Zeldman: John Kerry had long ideas in a world of sound bytes
  • People didn’t know what he was talking about, took him out of context
  • Keep reiterating the goal so people can get on board
• Luke: Naming something goes a long way to getting people to talk about it
• Kristian: 1% of ideas is good enough to present to open public and be matured
  • It is for person process
  • Everything is good in your head, but ideas suck when you write them down

What are the tools?

• Kristian: Design is definitely a tool to get unstuck
  • Gap between designers and developers
    • Should not exist. They are different parts of the design process (working towards a common goal)
• Luke: Don’t talk about yourselves as distinct from the group
  • Design as a problem solving process
  • Add value via design principles. Doesn’t have to be called design.
• Chris: One of the things he learned from open source is that developing software is a political process
  • Understand why certain things are important to people
• Zeldman: Believes in really small teams
  • Constant feedback looks between everybody
• Luke: Small team things apply in big teams
  • Everything is magnified in big teams
• Kristian: Getting unstuck in a smaller team is much easier than getting unstuck in a large organization
• Kristian: When pitching, get to know the customer by taking them out and partying with them.
• Luke: Before and after images for clients gives them much more reassurance
• Zeldman: Here’s what we think we might do for you, but we’ll know once we get to know you better
  • Reason to do that is not to get stuck in sevne rounds of redesign
• Chris: Consultants are being hired more for way of thinking than process
  • Hire your clients
    • Find opportunities and you will get better fits
    • Better than “we have some vague general notion about what you do and would like you to save us from ourselves”
• Luke: Talk about the customer’s problem and not just the fancy-pants process
• Kristian: As we understand context more and more, we will be able to create the deliverable
• Chris: Most important thing when presenting is not what you are saying, it is how you make the audience feel
• Zeldman: Don’t just change the name in previous pitches

Lightning Round Highlights:

• Popular solution: “Quit.”
• Have real users use the product in front of the client to show them that it is way off
• Make a chart: Business goals vs. User Needs.
  • They need to acknowledge that they have customers
• Work late, innovate on your own if there is no budget
  • You need to prove yourself
  • Nobody will give you a budget until you have done it
  • Be as resourceful as possible
• Point non-standards designer to A List Apart
  • What’s in it for them?
  • Zeldman wrote Designing With Web Standards for bosses
  • Yesterday’s accessibility panel showed 30 second clip of blind leukemia patient trying to get information his disease. All sites were inaccessible.
    • Anyone who watches that will get it.
• Money spent on failure = very good learning
• In wireframs, show prioritization of content
• Speak the language of other members of the team

This was a nice free-flowing discussion among some great minds. While there was no set agenda, it was very helpful to hear some ways to get around everyday hurdles. Some are “duh” items, but sometimes you just need to hear those out loud.

Tonight I randomly IM’d Chris Messina of Citizen Agency. Chris’ blog, FactoryCity, is one that has made its way into my must reads. Chris is all about Microformats, BarCamps, coworking, and pretty much all things open source.

So, I just pinged Chris to tell him his blog rocked (hey, I was in a good mood). An hour later, I felt even more energized about this dramatic shift in focus I have taken professionally. It was a great chat about everything from microformats in the government sector to what the heck “coworking” is to SXSW vs. An Event Apart to a bit of valley gossip. A chat with Chris is what I expected—energetic and jam-packed with information. These “new web” folks love to share. And I love to listen.

Chris’ significant other is also, er… significant. Tara Hunt’s blog, HorsePigCow, is yet another that jumps to the top for me. Together Tara & Chris make up Citizen Agency, a consulting company with their own very unique take on marketing.

I first heard of Chris back when he was Open Source Abassador for Flock, a Mozilla-based browser with many social features built in. In fact, Flock made me switch from Safari for a bit, but I found that the features I used I could get with Firefox, so I have since switched full time to Firefox. Even then, most interviews I heard with Chris were about Microformats. He’s really the one that introduced them to me.

I even brought up Chris in a company meeting about our upcoming blog, noting that he used a interesting linking approach sometimes where if he had many different examples to link to for a single idea, he would link every word individually. I liked it. He’s probably not the first to do it—and some usability folks might vomit (though I’m sure he used very appropriate title attributes)—but it was different. (Example: While I’m a total Cederholm fanboy, I still get my inspiration from a wide variety of sources.)

So Chris, thanks for the chat. I’m sure I’ll randomly ping you again at some point.