As a graduate of the University of Waterloo I had to blog about this article on itWorldCanada’s website.

Waterloo is world-renowned because of two companies that started in the city: Reseach In Motion who created the Black Berry; and Open Text – now the world’s largest Record and Document Management solution provider. So what makes Waterloo so special? Quoting directly from the article:

“The city’s current size supports its role as a centre of collaborative innovation, suggests John Tennant, CEO, Canada’s Technology Triangle Inc., a non-profit, private/public economic development organization for marketing the cities of Cambridge, Kitchener and Waterloo to the world.

“It’s a community that’s big enough to be sophisticated, offer many amenities, and have a critical mass,” he said. But it’s not too big. It’s still of a size that allows people to intuitively and naturally communicate. And that builds collaboration.”

Imagine – a community being defined as intelligent based on the structure!

Content Strategist and co-founder of FatDUX, Eric Reiss, developed this Web Dogma – an absolutely brilliant list of rules for creating a valuable User Experience.

1. Anything that exists only to satisfy the internal politics of the site owner must be eliminated.

2. Anything that exists only to satisfy the ego of the designer must be eliminated.

3. Anything that is irrelevant within the context of the page must be eliminated.

4. Any feature or technique that reduces the visitor’s ability to navigate freely must be reworked or eliminated.

5. Any interactive object that forces the visitor to guess its meaning must be reworked or eliminated.

6. No software, apart from the browser itself, must be required to get the site to work correctly.

7. Content must be readable first, printable second, downloadable third.

8. Usability must never be sacrificed for the sake of a style guide.

9. No visitor must be forced to register or surrender personal data unless the site owner is unable to provide a service or complete a transaction without it.

10. Break any of these rules sooner than do anything outright barbarous.*

* Shamelessly stolen from George Orwell’s famous Rules for Writers

Quoting from this remarkable book on the future of how we do everything from work and play to the most fundamental aspects of the way we communicate, “It’s an ethic that defines what the new Web is becoming: a massive playground of information bits that are shared and remixed openly into a fluid and participatory tapestry.”

Whether you’re a senior executive in the private or public sector; a junior programmer; or simply someone who wants to better understand the concept of community this is an important piece of literature.

I think this song by U2 illustrates the idea of “findability” in an artistic sense. Ironically this is the constant complaint from people I’ve done usability testing with – “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for!” or more specifically, “I still haven’t found what you asked me to find.”

The concert also demonstrates the power of community in how the band interacts and communicates with their audience through their music. (Song lyrics posted below the video).

I have climbed the highest mountains
I have run through the fields
Only to be with you
Only to be with you.

I have run, I have crawled
I have scaled these city walls
These city walls
Only to be with you.

But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.

I have kissed honey lips
Felt the healing in her finger tips
It burned like fire
(I was) burning inside her.

I have spoke with the tongue of angels
I have held the hand of a devil
It was warm in the night
I was cold as a stone.

But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.

I believe in the Kingdom Come
Then all the colours will bleed into one
Bleed into one.
But yes, I’m still running.

You broke the bonds
And you loosed the chains
Carried the cross of my shame
Oh my shame, you know I believe it.

But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.

But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.
But I still haven’t found
What I’m looking for.

After seeing several notes from the Information Architecture Institute mailing list about David Weinberger’s new book Everything Is Miscellaneous, I had to pick up a copy. Mr. Weinberger presents interesting arguments about how the bottom-up approach to managing information is the new world order, so to speak. What I found most interesting about this book is how he seems to focus on the idea of chaos theory – in the midst of what seems like massive disorganization, if one looks long enough they can see order.

I think part of the problem in adopting the arguments that Mr. Weinberger presents is that of a philosophical difference in generations. We are at a scary and exciting time in North America. We have the largest generation in history on the verge of retirement. The very idea of sharing information and knowledge is a major paradigm shift for senior leaders – who have been taught their entire professional lives not to share information or knowledge with others; especially their competition. However, as Mr. Weinberger points out, “Knowledge – its content and organization – is becoming a socical act.”

This is a great parody of the first recorded help desk session in the history of man kind! Thank God books have become easier to use, eh?

Special thanks to Kristina Mausser at DigitalWord for passing this video along.

IT Conversations and Eric Rice on the future of Podcasting

Eric Rice of Hipcast and Slackstreet Entertainment has long been known not only as an early adopter of emerging media technologies, but also as a visionary who can identify those technologies that will become the standard in a couple years.

Rice suggests as a podcaster you focus on content rather than the specific technologies of podcasting, even spreading out your content across multiple media. The future is not podcasting in a vacuum, but rather integration with existing industries, technologies, and media types.

Podcasters will and should continue to break the perceived rules. Telling a podcaster not to do something provides the utlimate inspiration to him that the forbidden thing must be done. And breaking out of the confines and mindsets of traditional media create the broadest opportunities for effective new approaches.

This spoof illustrates the importance of Plain Language when writing for the web; working with clients; or with members of your team.

I don’t know if I’m more disturbed by the fact that I understood every single three letter acronym that was rambled on about in this video; or how many times I’ll hear technical leaders talking in this “speak” with clients or other non-technical members of their team.

Know your audience and speak their language – whether it’s writing; project planning; or simply trying to communicate your ideas – say it simply…say it plainly.

This advertisement from Cisco about “The Human Network” really nails the idea of community and how the global village is shrinking. How will this impact the way we work? The way we live and communicate with one another? The implications are staggering!

It’s the realization that truly, “we’re more powerful together; than we ever could be apart!”