Left, Mike Monteiro. Right, yours sincerely. Captured at SXSW by Scott Beale.

(My SXSW photos. Scott’s SXSW photos.)

Filed under: Design, SXSW, State of the Web, better-know-a-speaker, events

One of the things about SXSW Interactive is that you are constantly meeting new people. One day at breakfast, I was introduced to a friend of a friend, who said:

“Your book is dangerous.”

“That’s kind of you to say,” I replied, “but exactly how is Designing With Web Standards dangerous?”

“Oh,” he said. “You didn’t write Rework?”

Filed under: 37signals, Design, SXSW

SXSW 2010: A photo set on Flickr (in progress). The festival began this afternoon at 2:00 PM Central. Lots more photos will appear over the next few days.

Filed under: Community, Design, SXSW, conferences

It’s that time again. Spring and pheromones are in the air, and 11,000 web geeks are about to descend on beauteous Austin, TX for our industry’s version of the TED Conference plus Spring Break, SXSW Interactive.

Along with nearly all of Happy Cog, I’ll be there. Join us, won’t you?

• Friday, March 12, at 3:30 PM, come to Battledecks 2010 in Room 18ABCD, where I’ll compete against the likes of Avery Edison, Ted Rheingold, Mike Monteiro, and SeoulBrother Number 1 Albert McMurry to see who can create the best impromptu presentation in response to random slides.
• Saturday, March 13, at 5:00 PM, open your mind to New Publishing and Web Content, where I’ll explore the creative, strategic, and marketing challenges of print and web (and hybrid) book and magazine publishing with the brilliant Erin Kissane, Lisa Holton, Mandy Brown, and Paul Ford.
• Also on Saturday, March 13, beginning around 10:00 PM, join the fine folks of Happy Cog and 700 screaming karaoke fans for the best official party of SXSW, Ok! Happy Cog’aoke 2, brought to you by Happy Cog and sponsored by these good folks.
• Don’t miss the book signing on Sunday, March 14! Swing by the South by Bookstore with your copy of Designing With Web Standards; Ethan Marcotte and I will be glad to scribble on it for you.

The rest of the time, depending on what else is going on, I will probably be findable via my personal SXSW schedule. (Create your own with Sched by MailChimp.) You can also find me on SitBy.Us, a scheduling web app for iPhone or any good web-enabled phone, designed by Weightshift—and bless them and HTML, CSS, and JavaScript for it. Sitby.us members, my schedule is posted at http://sitby.us/zeldman/.

If you can’t be with us at SXSW, please watch this space and my Twitter feed for photos, links, etc.

And if you aren’t attending and couldn’t care less about SXSW, you might want to unplug for the next six days, because the internets, they will be filthy with SXSW tweetage, bloggage, Flickrage, retweets, retumbling &c.

Filed under: Appearances, DWWS, SXSW, State of the Web, Travel, conferences, speaking

See all the videos on OK! Happy Cog’aoke, and join us in Austin for the best party of SXSW.

Filed under: Happy Cog™, SXSW

See all the videos on OK! Happy Cog’aoke, and join us in Austin for the best party of SXSW.

Filed under: Happy Cog™, SXSW

P Is for Publishing. And publishing, as you’ve heard, is dying. … But “the printed word will be around long after many of our digital creations are gone,” Zeldman says, “either because books don’t require monthly hosting and blogs and websites do … or because the languages and platforms for which a particular digital creation was published will become obsolete.”

…[Jason,] Mandy and I are about to launch a printed book series, called A Book Apart, which derives much of its thinking and some of its formatting from what we’ve learned about PDFs in the past 10 years,” says Zeldman. The Mandy he mentions is Mandy Brown, creative director of Etsy and former creative director at W.W. Norton & Co.; she’s also one of the people speaking on the New Publishing and Web Content panel that Zeldman’s organizing for this year’s Interactive Fest, along with Happy Cog’s Erin Kissane, Harper’s Magazine editor (and Harper’s website creator) Paul Ford, and Lisa Holton, founder of new-media company Fourth Story Media.

…Everyone on the panel is committed to the digital future,” Zeldman says. “But we are also all committed to the book.” And how will their—how will our—relationships to books change, and how will those relationships remain the same, as the digitization of printed matter proceeds faster than most chain saws can spin? “How,” asks Zeldman, “can we be truthful and wise as editors, publishers, writers, journalists, and marketers straddling this scary yet exhilarating new divide?

Print & Paper Über Alles: A more perfect publishing today, Wayne Alan Brenner, Austin Chronicle (SXSW cover story), March 5, 2010

Related

• Austin Chronicle, SXSW Interactive Guide
• Books Not Dead: “New Publishing and Web Content” Panel Details at zeldman.com
• Panel Details at SXSW.com: New Publishing and Web Content, Saturday, March 13, 2010, 5:00 PM, Ballroom A, SXSW Interactive Festival, Austin, TX
• Happy Cog Studios: A Book Apart mini-announcement

Photo courtesy John Morrison.

Filed under: Appearances, Publications, Publishing, SXSW, books, content, events, industry

Headed to SXSW Interactive? Concerned about the future of books, magazines, and websites? Attend “New Publishing and Web Content,” a panel I’m hosting on the creative, strategic, and marketing challenges of traditional and new (internet hybrid) book publishing and online magazine publishing, and how these fields intersect with content strategy and client services.

Joining me in a thoughtful exploration of new and old business models and creative challenges will be people who’ve spent a decade or two butting up against and reinventing these boundaries:

• Mandy Brown, creative director, Etsy; former creative director (web and print), W.W. Norton, the oldest and largest publishing traditional house owned wholly by its employees; contributing editor, A List Apart Magazine; publisher, A Working Library; and co-director (with Jason Santa Maria and me), A Book Apart, a new publisher of mid-length books “for people who make websites.” (We’re talking book-books, made of paper, printed, bound, and distributed—not PDFs.)
• Paul Ford, critically respected novelist (Gary Benchley, Rock Star) and short fiction writer; blogger since practically the Civil War, most famously of Ftrain.com, where he has penned such classic posts as “Learning to Fear the Semantic Web;” print and web editor, Harper’s, the very definition of a traditional printed magazine of quality—also web developer, designer, and webmaster of Harper’s website since forever; and frequent contributor to The Morning News and to NPR’s “All Things Considered,” where he once offered a dissenting view on “web standards”—not that I’m bitter.
• Lisa Holton, Founder and CEO, Fourth Story Media (“a fresh perspective in storytelling”). The company “develop[s] compelling intellectual property and distribute[s] it across traditional and nontraditional channels including books, collaborative web fiction, and social media.” Previously, Lisa was President of Scholastic Trade Publishing and Book Fairs, where she managed the publication of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows and initiated and oversaw development of The 39 Clues, a widely heralded book- and web-based venture. Prior to that, she was SVP and Publisher, Disney Global Children’s Books, running all aspects of the domestic and international children’s book business at the Walt Disney Company. Before that, Lisa was Vice President, Associate Publisher and Editor-in Chief of HarperCollins Children’s Books. She serves on the Board of Directors of the New York Women’s Foundation and the Board of Trustees of the Eric Carle Museum of Picture Book Art.
• Erin Kissane, publisher, Incisive.nu, a website about strong language, writing tools, and other aspects of content strategy; content strategist and editorial strategist, Happy Cog Studios; former editor-in-chief (for ten years), A List Apart Magazine; author of numerous articles on web writing, editing, and content strategy, including “Attack of the Zombie Copy,” “Your About Page is a Robot,” and “Content Templates to the Rescue;” founding strategist, A Book Apart; and author of an upcoming book on content strategy for content strategists.

As moderator, my job will be to let these geniuses speak, to occasionally lob the right question to the right genius, and to help field your questions from the audience.

If you work in web or print publishing, or just care about the written word, please join us at 5:00 PM Central Time in Ballroom A.

(What else am I doing at SXSW Interactive? Here’s my schedule so far. I also hope to see some of you at OK Cog’aoke II, SXSW Interactive’s premiere karaoke event and best party, hosted by your friends at Happy Cog.)

Filed under: Micropublishing, Press, Publications, Publishing, SXSW, The Profession, Zeldman, business, client services, conferences, content, content strategy, editorial, events, speaking

It’s the return of Cog’aoke.

Video: Ian Corey.

Filed under: Community, Design, Fun, Happy Cog™, Karaoke, SXSW, engagement, events, experience

With over 2,000 proposed panels from which a mere 300 will be culled, there’s no shortage of content for next year’s SXSW Interactive Festival in Austin, TX. Panels featuring Happy Cog personnel include the juicy candidates listed below. Follow the links to vote for your favorites. (Voting for a panel increases the likelihood that it may actually get presented.)

Web Fonts: The Time Has Come

After fifteen years of contenting ourselves with system fonts, or image type, the planets are now in line for getting real fonts on the web. Some solutions are already working, and a cross-platform standard is emerging. Here web designer and type designers mix it up on how the font hurdles is finally being leapt. Moderator: Roger Black. Panelists: Font Bureau’s David Berlow, Stephen Coles (new.typographica.org), Bert Bos (CSS), Happy Cog’s Jeffrey Zeldman.

We F*cked Up. Now what? Exploring Failure, Together.

Projects fall apart. We often blame the client, the politics and the personalities. But when it happens, there is a tremendous opportunity to grow as a professional and as a person. Candidly recounting past catastrophes, the panelists explore the emotional experience of project implosion and the silver lining that emerges. Moderator: Happy Cog’s Kevin Hoffman. With Greg Hoy, President of Happy Cog East, Greg Storey, President of Happy Cog West, and Tracey Halvorsen, Principal & Creative Director of FastSpot.

New Publishing and Web Content

What is content strategy? How can publishers harness the energy and talent of the online community? Explore the creative, strategic, and marketing challenges of traditional and new publishing. Moderator: Happy Cog’s Jeffrey Zeldman. Panel: book and new media publisher and entrepreneur Lisa Holton; designer, writer, and W.W. Norton creative director Mandy Brown; novelist, web geek, and Harper’s editor Paul Ford; and writer, editor, and Happy Cog content strategist Erin Kissane.

ExpressionEngine 2.0: Total Domination!

ExpressionEngine is growing in popularity and with the release of 2.0, it’s power has expanded to the stratosphere. Powering great websites such as Change.gov, A List Apart, and Campaign Monitor, it represents an amazing way to build websites and publish content. Join us as 5 experts give best practices from a beginner front-end level up to extension developer supreme. Moderator: Kenny Meyers, Happy Magic Fun Time. Panelists: Happy Cog’s Brian Warren, Happy Cog’s Ryan Irelan, Happy Cog’s Mark Huot and Happy Cog’s Jenn Lukas.

Client Whisperers: Understanding Clients and Selling Web Design

Is there a formula for success? Is there such a thing as a good client? How can you avoid problem clients? Gain insight from the people on the front lines of some of the best known web shops. Learn from their stories the best way to find, manage and love great clients. Moderator: Happy Cog’s Robert Jolly. Carl Smith, President of nGen Works (co-presenter)

Turn Off, Tune Out, Drop Weight

As we become increasingly connected and our lifestyles trend toward the sedentary, our waistlines are growing. Fitness is elusive. Hear from your colleagues about their trials and tribulations around maintaining health while balancing creative work, family, and career development. Moderator: Happy Cog’s Robert Jolly.

Filed under: Design, SXSW