Inside the Nerdery

NerdXSW: Day 2… 3… 4… 5!

Gillian Reynolds — Thu, 18 Mar 2010 01:03:50 +0000

I’ve arrived home after 6 days in Austin for the SXSW Interactive Festival. It was, as always, a whirlwind of content, people, and parties. It was really nice to meet up and spend time with other Minnesotans while enjoying the beautiful city of Austin (and the beautiful weather)!

What I love about SXSW (the conference) is the amount of choice in content. Having attended for the past 3 years, I’ve learned that it works best to just “go with the flow” when choosing which sessions to attend. One of my rules for a successful SXSW is to check out a wide variety of content. This year that included a lot of nerdy stuff like web typography, html5 & css3, user experience and wireframing, and a panel on the awesome ExpressionEngine CMS… as well as some totally nerdy-in-a-different-kind-of-way content like DEVO (yes, that DEVO), and my favorite: karaoke!

There were a bunch of Minnesotans doing some awesome panels this year, including Kristina Halvorson (president of Brain Traffic), presenting on content strategy, Greg Swan (who runs perfectporridge.com) on a panel about music blogs in 2010, and Adria Richards (butyoureagirl.com), with her take on how sci-fi shapes the internet.

And this was all but just a small sampling of the content available at the Interactive conference. SXSW really is a great place to hear interesting people talk about interesting things. Equally important to the content, though, are the connections and new friendships that I make every year. This year it was especially great to connect with fellow Minnesotans, and that’s something I hope continues (and that the Minnesota contingent grows) at SXSW in subsequent years!

Well, it’s St. Patrick’s Day, and time to go out and celebrate being home! Then I will begin trying to fit in as much sleep as possible before 9AM Saturday morning, when my team, Pollywog Stew, will come together to dominate at the Overnight Web Challenge.

Signing off,
Gillian

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On feminism in geek culture

Jodi Chromey — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 21:47:26 +0000

Today Jezebel (one of the best blogs on the Internet) asks if geek culture is female friendly, in response to a column in The Guardian about being a feminist and a Lord of the Rings fan.

(I have to warn you there is a bit of defensiveness on being a nerd in the second link. I know, I know, it’s a shame, but not everyone has embraced their nerddom like we have.)

Since I am not a sci-fi or fantasy person, I cannot add anything to the discourse. However, it’s refreshing and heartening to see that not only are these young women thinking about female characters and role models in sci-fi and fantasy but that they’ve recognized the lack of them as a problem.

Way to go girl nerds!

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Can you feel the excitement? It’s starting to build

Jodi Chromey — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 16:51:38 +0000

With the Overnight Website Challenge a mere 3 days away the press is starting to roll out their challenge stories. First up is the Star-Tribune with Geeks offer free all-nighter. The article talks with Jason Striegel from Colle+McVoy and Trisha Reinwald from the Minnesota Jaycees, and Striegel gives the secret to his challenge success. Something his teammates were more than willing to share with the world last year (and something hinted at in our pre-challenge advice column).

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NerdXSW: Day 1 Recap

Gillian Reynolds — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 16:51:59 +0000

Well, it’s the first session of Day 2, and I made it only 10 minutes late! (I had to finish my breakfast of crepes–sustenance is key to a successful SXSW). I’m currently in the front row of “Web Fonts: The Time Has Come”, listening to some history of web fonts and writing up this update about my day yesterday.

For the first session of SXSW, I found myself in “History of the Button.” Bill DeRouchey presented a really fascinating look at the history of the button, from its original mechanical incarnation (the lever) to where we are today (flat surface, digital buttons on touch screen interfaces) to the future of buttons (dynamic surfaces that can raise and lower on demand to provide tactile buttons – cool!). Overall, it was an eye-opening presentation about something that we all take for granted in our everyday lives.

Next up was “Jacks of All Trades or Masters of One?,” a discussion about generalists versus specialists in technology. The panelists presented many of the characteristics of generalists and specialists, and walked the audience through a series of yes/no questions illustrating the difference between each. I found the panel quite interesting and engaging at the time, but even better was the discussion that it prompted over dinner later that night. Speaking of dinner…

I spent the last panel of the day camped out in back of ”Time + Social + Location. What’s next in mobile experience?”, tethered to an outlet, furiously twittering to organize dinner plans. While I was thinking about food, the panelists discussed where we are with location-based social media services (like Foursquare and Gowalla, the darlings of SXSW 2010) and what the future might hold.

Once the final session of the day let out, 20 or so Minnesotans at SXSW got together for dinner at The Boiling Pot, a cajun restaurant where they dump shrimp, crab, and crawfish in front of you right on the table. Dinner brought a lot of Minnesota camaraderie, as well as follow-on conversations about the panels each of had attended and what we had taken away.

I’m looking forward to what today holds–it’s shaping up to be a nerdy day for sure, including the web fonts panel I’m currently sitting in, and then a series of workshops: wireframing, CSS3/HTML5, and more web fonts! Wee!

Until next time,
Gillian

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Friday Links: Short & Sweet since it seems most of the nerdom is at SXSW

Jodi Chromey — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 19:33:23 +0000

Can behavioral economics help agency creative? This is way more interesting and easy to read than it sounds.
Will the iPad help or hurt news industry’s ad business?
Whatever happened to programming.
A Joan Holloway Barbie? Yes, please.
Infographic of the week: Edmonton’s water consumption during the gold medal hockey game. Just check it out, it’s pretty rad.
Milton Glaser & Chip Kidd in conversation.

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NerdXSW: Reporting for duty

Gillian Reynolds — Fri, 12 Mar 2010 02:52:39 +0000

Greetings!

I’ve arrived in Austin, TX for the famed nerd mecca, SXSW Interactive. I’ll be blogging a bit from here–sharing some of my experiences, thoughts on panels I attend, and hopefully convincing at least a few of you fine readers that Austin and SXSW is the place to be in mid-March!

All the nerdly goodness starts tomorrow at 2PM. Until then I’ll be emptying my swag bag, charging my mobile devices, reviewing the schedule, and attempting to choose which panels to attend (already there are no less than 5 sessions I’m interested in for the 2:00 time slot).

My most pressing decision at this moment, however: food and margaritas in downtown Austin or the last full night’s sleep I’m likely to get in the next 6 days?

Your faithful reporter,
Gillian

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Great Moments in Nerdery: Pi Day

Jodi Chromey — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 16:53:59 +0000

What kind of nerds would we be if we didn’t remind you that Sunday, March 14 is Pi Day? The worst kind of nerds, nerds who don’t celebrate their culture. Also, it’s also Albert Einstein’s birthday. Two very justifiable reason to throw a party. You can celebrate with a ThinkGeek Pi-Tini, and after a few of those you can start singing songs about Pi.

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Today there’s nothing but a pretty video

Jodi Chromey — Wed, 10 Mar 2010 21:28:05 +0000

It’s a grey and dreary day in the Twin Cities Metropolitan area. The kind of day that sucks all the energy out of a room and all the thoughts out of your brain. If I had any thoughts left, they’d surely be regarding this post about the history of the photo that’s the default wall paper for iPhones, or about how Facebook was really founded (be careful if you have delicate sensibilities when it comes to the f-word, there’s some swearing), or maybe I could weigh in on this point/counterpoint between Marco Arment and Merlin Mann.

But I have no thoughts, instead I have a very cool video to share.

70 Million by Hold Your Horses ! from L'Ogre on Vimeo.

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A company after our own heart

Jodi Chromey — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 19:02:29 +0000

If you’ve spent more than 34 seconds on The Nerdery’s website, you know we’re fans of stats. If this is your first 16 second here I’ll just let you know that if you surf around our site you can find out how many hours we’ve worked since 2003, how many miles nerds travelled last month, and how many cases of Ramen we consumed last month.

So now you can understand when I spied the piece about Panic’s Status Board over on Lifehacker my first reaction was “Holy crap, that’s awesome.”

And it is:

You can get the details about the board and how effective it’s been over at Panic’s blog.

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A brief history of marketing in Minnesota

Jodi Chromey — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 18:35:04 +0000

Over at MinnPost John Renian has a post in tribute to Pat Fallon (who is about to be inducted in the Advertising Hall of Fame) and other Minnesota marketing greats. If you click over to the story you can read about Fallon, Carmichael Lynch, Campbell-Mithun, and a 1914 booklet printed by the UofM on how to plan an advertising campaign.

(and because it’s International Women’s Day, I have to tell you to make sure to read the comments)

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