IE 8 is pretty cool. There are a lot of new features that will be available including as mentioned before a more standards compliant browser. Some of the more interesting features however are things like Web Slices and Activities - I could try to explain them but there is a pretty good video demo here.  Enjoy.

- Nicole

http://www.visitmix.com/blogs/Joshua/IE8-Activities-With-Jane-Kim/

As I sat in a restaurant at the Venetian Friday afternoon grabbing something to eat before heading to the airport I realized that I hadn't been outside in the daylight since Tuesday afternoon... 3 days... yet, although I was ready to get out of Vegas and get back home I didn't seem to mind. Usually when you go to conferences the meeting rooms and discussions get kind of old quickly.  I have to say that everything I saw and all the discussions (well, most anyway) were extremely interesting and really, there weren't many times that I wasn't learning something or having an interesting dialogue.  Glad I came, would come again for sure.  So, below are just some quick summary points of the conference.

Mix it up: I really liked the fact that this conference is intended to bring together creative, tech and business.  It's not just a developers conference as one might expect from Microsoft. I think that's why there is so much discussion around workflow, process and collaboration - it really does become a discussion about how these 3 disciplines can better work together. Of course, most of the dialogue was centered around how Microsoft tools can aid in this collaboration but it wasn't as much a religious Microsoft message as I'd expected.

Cool Stuff: We saw quite a bit of new things at this conference. From the announcements around the launch of ie8 and some of the new features it will support to demos on the surface machines.  The Deep Zoom functionality that Chip just posted about is pretty amazing as well.  I wish we would have had this option when we built the Nine West site. One of the standout demos really is the NBC Olympics site. I honestly think it's going to change the way people watch the games this year.  It's really amazing... You'll have to wait to see the site but it's incredible - You could pretty much smell the fear of the Olympics CMO as he talked about what a huge endeavor it's been and how they are counting down the days until launch. 

Workflow and Process: A lot of recurring themes, comments, issues, discussions around how to best collaborate and work together and how to build a better product.  I loved all these discussions... they are discussions I have at Tribal, discussions I've had at other companies I've worked for and I'm sure discussions that we will always (hopefully) continue to have.  It's exciting to be able to talk to people from other agencies and not only realize they are facing the same issues (no surprise there) and talk about how they are approaching them, how they are altering their process, what has worked and what hasn't. We have new tools that enable us to work more collaboratively (Axure, the Microsoft tools, etc..) and more efficiently and we have clients who are becoming more and more savvy, forcing us to have more transparency into how we work.  I'm most impressed with the companies who have actually formalized some of the newer steps like Tear Down meetings or new roles like Integrators into their processes. They may find these additions to greatly help and they may find they have to change again, who knows.  I do know that it has caused me to think about how we at Tribal can work to formalize some of these steps and improve our process as we move forward.  I don't think that the 'process' is going to be a particularly pre-defined formal one either (like Agile, waterfall, etc...) I think it will be a creative mix of many different approaches and one that will have a fair amount of flexibility and allow for frequent change.

Where are all the women?  OK, I have to throw this in as kind of a serious note.  At the end of Paul Dain's panel Chris Bernard threw out a "surprise question" - He asked "What is wrong with this picture"... the answer: No Women.  There are a ton of women in this industry yet there were not so many at Mix.  I had a couple of conversations with Miscrosoft people about it and although we tended to laugh at the long mens room lines and the Halo 3 pit I see it as an interesting statement about Microsoft as well as an opportunity in the future. 1) Microsoft is typically thought of as developers tools - they are now wanting to offer a creative suite and a much broader offering... they will have some room to grow in educating their audience to this fact.  You could even tell from the line of questions in most of the panels - yes, there were some designers in the rooms but mostly it was a technical slant for sure.  2) Project Management and Process tends to have a high percentage of women and these discussions dominated a lot of the dialogue at Mix (not to mention it's one of the key messages they communicate about their products). Where were the PMs?  There weren't many at all actually.  I would like to see Microsoft offer either a track or a greater number of panel discussions about how you actually bring these pie-in-the-sky discussions to life in the real, practical, world we all work in. What do these project plans look like, what do the estimates look like, how do you resource and allocate teams - the panels that focused on workflow were packed every time and leaving them, all the follow up discussions were "wow, great ideas but how are you actually making this happen" (message to Chris Bernard: I will happily sit on this panel next year).  3) Demo something with a female target. All the demos were really cool but centered mostly around a male target - I would love to get a JAG example demonstrated in the keynote (ok, I'd settle for a breakout session). It'd be pretty sweet none the less.  The female target online is enormous and one of the fastest growing... address it! 

Fun, yes.  Educating, absolutely: Of course we had a great time at this conference.  We also learned a lot about what Microsoft is doing, what other agencies are doing and what our competitors are up to. Usually we are extremely tight lipped in our industry about 'how' we do our jobs.  At these conferences though, one of the main purposes is to kind of pull back that curtain and have an open dialogue. As I said before you may not learn anything totally 'new' but it does make you think more about what we do and how we could do it better.  It spurs a lot of creative thinking and it renews your excitement for what a cool industry (and great company) we work for.  So I would encourage anyone thinking about going to one of these conferences to do it... not just Microsoft of course, there are plenty to take advantage of including some really great discussions that we learned are happening at the Illinois Institute of technology... It's not Vegas but I'm sure it'd be pretty interesting.

-Nicole

When asked about a recent news item about Apple.  4 of 5 panelists immediately grabbed their iPhone to check it out....  Hilarious.

There is a great panel discussion that was just posted (see Paul's link to the sessions) called Designing at the Speed of Light.  I encourage you to check this one out.  The main discussion is around an issue that we are almost always faced with - crazy tight deadlines and how to work within them and still create a good product.  The discussion panel includes the CD from McCann Erickson (Microsoft AOR) discussing issues he faced with having to start using the Microsoft tool set for all their work as well as a graphic designer from Thirteen23 who designed and developed a Mix 08 scheduler tool in about 3 days.  It's also an interesting dialogue around how to work efficiently in your own job as well as how to creatively plan or structure a process to get through these timelines.

I also must add that hearing a designer discuss the benefits of stakeholder matrices and clear project plans makes me all warm inside.

http://sessions.visitmix.com/?selectedSearch=PNL02

-Nicole

As previously referenced, Paul was also on a panel. The discussion centered around the whole concept (that I think we are ALL a bit tired of hearing) of Web 2.0 and what is "next".  It's quite a broad topic and means a lot of things to a lot of different people... some of the more interesting topics of discussion:

Buzzwords: Currently there seems to be a huge hang up on buzz words... clients want a blog, a facebook page, a myspace page, a viral video - "I want to be the next 'elf-yourself'. There are a lot of very useful and fantastically popular sites and applications that have been created as answers to real strategic questions and needs (facebook connects us to all our friends but lets us control our information, Digg allows us to share information easier and more efficiently) but do our clients really need a blog, facebook app or myspace page? For some of them the answer may be 'yes' but for most, the solution ends up being significantly different than the  initial request with the simple questions "why do you think you need that" and "what are you really trying to accomplish"? So in this new "web 2.0" (or whatever you want to call it) era it becomes even more important for us to educate our clients and work with them to navigate through all their new options.

Shifting Priorities: One interesting point made by an audience member was that he felt that most of the highly successful sites right now are what would be considered "low design".  They focus around delivering content and data vs. a highly designed experience (digg, facebook, etc...). He then wondered if this had to do with a shifting audience and is flashy design becoming less and less important as people use the internet in a more every-day-buy-my-groceries kind of way.  I think it's interesting to think about this idea.  We all joke about flaming and/or spinning logos and gratuitously designed sites and I do to think there is something to this idea - although I do not think design is un-important.  I think the answer to this question is that the design has become more strategic and NOT less important.  It's ignorant to think that the designs of these sites that deliver content and data was flippantly done - They are perfectly designed to not get in the way of their intended function and that is not an easy task.  It also made me realize there should be more designers/creative (oh, and women) at this conference.

Adaptive Personalization:  Per device and per context the experience is going have to adapt based on implicit information... culture, location, language, time of day, season, etc ... Sites/content will need to respond accordingly and we will have to develop experiences that will be relevant across all channels - if I'm at home, at work, involved in your clients sales process.  How do we do this? Do we sign onto the internet with our persistent profile? Do we design per device or per site? Do I still have to have 50 different usernames and 50 different passwords? No idea at this point but the discussion is interesting none the less. 

-Nicole

We just attended a panel called Monetization 101 - basically, how do you make money with the applications we're all building.  On that panel was Robert Scoble of Fast Company, Kevin Rose the founder of Digg and Dave McClure of 500 Hats.... Dave McClure is currently teaching a course at Stanford about how to make money with Facebook applications...  Yes, that's right, Stanford offers a course on how to build and monetize FACEBOOK APPS...

-Nicole

So as most of you know, Chip and Paul are both on panel discussions at Mix this year.  Chip's panel was made up of people who are actually using these tools now or who have experiences with them to share.  Again, most of the dialogue was surrounding workflow... source control, collaboration, roles definitions, culture shifts etc.  Again there were agencies on the panel who are utilizing this new role of "integrator" in their process and they spoke to how this works for them... and when it doesn't.

As I said before, I'm torn a bit between the concept of us adapting to the shifting needs of our industry by roles definition or by process. This discussion made me a little less skeptical about this new type of role and to a certain degree I almost feel as though it's semantics more than anything.  I asked them afterwards why they think it's better to add another person to the mix versus just having designers and developers communicate better and more often.  Their explanation pretty much mirrored how I've worked on some of my projects at Tribal.  Sometimes they do think it's a good idea and sometimes they don't.  If a team needs this kind of person to translate and bridge the gap between design and development then it works great but if a team is made up of people who all kind of 'get it' and communicate well then they let them work without the integrator... In a nutshell, there is no totally baked process.  They've added some options to their process and use them when they've identified them as necessary - very much like we do.

Another interesting question came from an ad agency in London - "There seems to be a culture shift in using these new tools (designers working in Silverlight v. Flash, PCs instead of Macs, etc...) Is it really worth the effort?"  The point he was making essentially was that his flash designers and developers are really talented and produce fantastic work so why should he have to retrain them on a new tool set that produces a pretty similar product.  The answer was similar to how the other agencies were referencing the use of their integrator role - These tools ADD to your options, they don't replace.  The panelists all agreed that there really is no reason to give up the current tools and become Microsoft-centric.  If a project requirement, process requirement or a designer's concept calls for something that these tools can do or enhance then they use them.... and if not, then they don't.

- Nicole

If there is one thing Microsoft knows how to do well it's brand the hell out of everything you come into contact with.... I think they're kind of excited about IE 8.

-Nicole

Surprise, surprise the project manager is writing another post about process.... however, it's becoming quite a recurring theme in this conference and given that we are currently investigating ways to improve ours I thought I'd share some of what just came out of the workflow panel discussion.  First off, I'll start by saying that I was convinced that this discussion was going to be a long, drawn out hard sell on how awesome the Microsoft tools are and how they will solve all of our workflow issues and improve our lives immensely... What I discovered was that since these tools were developed, yes, to help with workflow they are in response to the fact that everyone in this industry is facing some of the same challenges and it resulted in the realization that we do a lot 'right' and that we, along with everyone, have some room to improve.

Roles v. Process:  IdentiyMine has hired people called "Integrators" - these are the 'dev-igners' Microsoft references frequently. They are the people who do both design and development and bridge the gap between.  There was quite a bit of discussion around wether or not you can actually find these people and if you do, if you can keep them. I'm a firm believer (as were many on the panel) that the answer lies more with 'how' we all work together vs. who is doing the work - our designers are very talented even if they don't want to work on a PC or know the details of the 'how'. The process answer to this question included a lot of discussion around: early prototyping, collaborative teams, simultaneous phases (basically getting to functional builds much more quickly).  We are starting to do a lot of this at Tribal and I think we will see a lot more of it in the future.

Common Workflow Pain Points: 3 points that all agreed were pain points in this more collaborative workflow process were 1) Distributed teams (how to I get teams in multiple offices to 'collaborate' and work this closely), 2) Finding single resources with collective skill sets - the problem of finding the 'dev-igner' and 3) The absence of tools that can be used much earlier in the process to show intended function, actions and interactions (we are currently using Axure as this tool - something no one mentioned as an option - yes we really are doing a lot right at Tribal)

This is all great but how do you pay for this?:  This question had to have come from a PM.  Working collaboratively is expensive. There are more people on the team throughout the process at greater allocations.  This is something we discuss a lot in our group and as much as I would love for all our teams to be large, collaborative and consistently dedicated to a project, that gets very expensive very quickly. No one denied this and agreed they all have had these discussions. For some it is about educating the client on why they should pay more, while for others it was simply starting with the ideal team structure and backing out from there to a budget and plan your clients (and teams) can live with - no real light-bulb moment here or big solution but it was good to see this recognized as I do feel it is one of the greatest obstacles we will need to overcome - creatively staffing our projects so that we can enable collaboration while making sure our clients aren't choking on the estimate.

How we might see changes in the TDDB process:  There were some interesting suggestions of how these companies are integrative and working collaboratively. It's a bit of a culture shift from a beautiful design that gets handed off to developers who see it for the first time during a production kickoff meeting.  One of the more interesting steps was what was termed the "Architecture Meeting" or the "Tear Down Meeting".  This would be a step where upon approval of IA documentation and Design you essentially meet with the entire team inclusive of developers, designers and UX (and this is prior to a production kickoff) and you essentially 'tear down' the design - component by component, with everyone in the room really figure out the 'how'.  How should it be built? What should it do? ... look like... act like... etc.... a meeting that would set the stage for the production process moving forward.

Essentially, as the internet and our usage (and our clients' customers' usage) of it has changed so have the solutions we create and the products we deliver for them changed. That shift I believe necessitates a shift in how we all actually work together to deliver these solutions and products.  So, for those of you still reading, thanks, and for those of who who dropped off at the title that included 'process' I hope you gain a new appreciation for this discussion as it will impact how and what we do everyday.

**  Update:

2ndFactory team outline - Roles and Hierarchy

Nothing totally new here but some interesting role titles - This company seems to operate somewhat similar to us - Project Management oversees the overall process and interactions with the team members but the 2 roles who work most closely throughout the process to ensure that their teams collaborate are the Experience Architect and the Experience Designer...

PM = Project/Product Manager

XA = Experience Architect

XD = Experience Designer

SD = System Developer

ID = Interaction Designer

GD = Graphic Designer

- Nicole