OSCON 2009: incoming!

Just a quick note. More of a test really. Can I crank out a quick post in the lounge at Bristol airport? Will the wifi not fail? Faced with the prospect of spending the next 17 hours in planes and airports, and a manic schedule that always seems to halt any attempt at the usual essays, can I post something this in a brief hiatus? We shall see!

I’m on my way to OSCON for the second time only. Last year was a blast, and I’m hoping for more of the same. This year I’m lucky enough to have had a talk accepted called, Grokkin’ Design — an introduction for developers to the principles of design. I have to be honest and say this is very much a talk for developers, focussing on the 80% science that makes up much of what designers do, rather than 20% art that we love so much. It’s hopefully going to be a mix of practice and theory, with a bit of my own opining thrown in about ways designers and developers can collaborate to go from good to great. It’s in meeting room J3 on Wednesday 22^nd at 10:45am. Love to see you there if you can make it. Feel free to bring questions in abundance   I’m hoping it can have a good chunk of debate in it, as well as my monologuing.

There are other bits of goodness in the design and usability sessions as well as many friends and colleagues giving tutorials and speaking at sessions. Here’s a few:

• Chris Shiflett and Sean Coates: PHP: The Good Parts
• Chris again on Security-Centered Design: Exploring the Impact of Human Behavior
• Theo Schlossnagle: Scalable Internet Architecture
• Theo (again): Reconnoiter: Monitoring and Trend Analysis
• Luke Welling and Laura Thomson: 2009 PHP Best Practices
• Robert Treat on Conventional Thinking, a guide to database naming standards
• Andrei Zmievski: All the Little Pieces: Distributed systems with PHP
• Ed Finkler: Put Down the Superglobals! Secure PHP Development with Inspekt
• Wez Furlong: Getting it Done

There’s a lot of technical stuff in that list for a lowly designer like me, but I often think that the more diverse the interests of your circle of friends, the more you get exposed to the intellectual food for interesting ideas. All of the people in my list are super smart and definitely worth listening to no matter what your primary discipline may be.

If you’re heading to San Jose next week, stop by and say ‘hi’!

PS. They’re boarding so I have to dash. No proofing time! Please forgive any typos but feel free to email me and let me know!