Webstock’s gold sponsor SilverStripe have again put an impressive amount of thought and hard work into their presence at Webstock. It includes a fantastic booth, eyecatching material in the Webstock bag, and a website created specially to complement both of these. We caught up with SilverStripe CEO Brian Calhoun and talked about their imaginative contribution to Webstock this year.
1. Your booth and satchel content asks the question, “How do humans win?” Tell us more about that.
On the back of our business cards is our mantra: “Be more human” which we’ve had for a couple years now. It’s a reminder to us that we’re solving human communication problems first and foremost. For Webstock we wanted to do something interesting to us that tied in with our mantra. We think it’s a fun question: “How do humans win?” It can be interpreted lots of different ways and when we ran a trial run at our company, we had a huge variety of responses. So we thought it would be fun to have Webstock attendees think about what humans winning means to them. This is a longer-term effort by our company — Webstock is just the beginning. The ideas & responses will live on at bemorehuman.org
2. Every Webstock bag contains two postage-paid postcards from SilverStripe which feature stunning photographs. Why did you choose the images and where did you get them from?
We asked SilverStripe employees to submit pictures of humans winning. The only criteria was that it had to be a picture that the employee took. We then sifted through the responses and picked the ones we thought were great answers to the question “How do humans win?” We thought it would be fun to turn them into postcards and put postage on them so Webstock attendees could just write a note to someone, address it, then drop it in the post.
3. Why the grass?
The goats have to eat something! If they don’t eat grass, they’ll eat anything else they can find. In the end, the people at the venue didn’t much like the idea of goats, so now all we have is the grass.
4. This morning you launched a website, bemorehuman.org. What’s that about and how does it relate to the physical wall in your booth?
We wanted people who aren’t at Webstock to be able to participate in the “How do humans win?” experiment. People who visit the site can upload a photo, they can add the “bemorehuman” tag to a Flickr image, they can Tweet with the #bemorehuman tag, or they can type in how they think humans win. SilverStripe staff in the booth will monitor the site throughout Webstock and print out compelling answers / tweets / pictures and place them on the wall in the booth. The website also has a snapshot of the wall taken every ten minutes so people on the site can see how the wall evolves over the course of Webstock. The site will live on beyond Webstock because humans winning is an important idea to us and we want others to keep on sharing their ideas too.
5. You’ve sponsored John Resig and Mark Pesce. How does this fit into your “Be more human” theme?
We have huge amounts of respect for both of these technology visionaries. At SilverStripe, we use John Resig’s JQuery extensively and our developers love it. JQuery is the first Javascript library our developers have responded to in this way. That’s saying a lot. With Mark Pesce, I’ve been following his work since his VRML days and even at that time I knew he was a visionary who helps others see what’s coming. Both Mark and John are inspiring to us and they both show how humans win by doing work that resonates deeply with other humans.
Thanks for you time Brian. We really appreciate the support that you’ve provided Webstock. Without organisations like SilverStripe, Webstock simply wouldn’t be the same!
We recently caught up with Bron Thomson, founder of Springload.
1) Tell us about Springload. How long have you been around, how did you start, what sort of work do you do?
It’s hard to say when Springload truly started to be honest. I started working on websites waaaay back when the Internet was just a wee young thing in New Zealand, around 1994. Over the years I’ve gathered more and more cool people around me, including my business partner Carl. Springload is the result, with a current team of 20 people dedicated to designing and building websites that have a strong focus on user centred design.
2) If you had to boil down the essence of Spingload’s philosophy or methodology to a few sentences, what would you say?
Love the web! It’s our Springload vision and the philosophy that we work by. We love the web and everything about it – the technology, the design, the interaction. And we want others to love it too. We also love the people that we work with – our team, and our clients, and the extended Springload family.
It is our team that make coming to work each day a joy, and it is our clients that inspire us on each project we work on. So to us, Love the web really sums up pretty much everything about what we do.
3) We noticed there were a number of Springload entries for the ONYAs. What’s been your impression of the ONYAs to date? Are they good for the industry?
Well, it’s a brand new gig, but we’re really very excited about the ONYAs. There aren’t that many awards that recognise and honour websites from a fully rounded perspective; not just the visual design, but also interaction, content, architecture and functionality as well. Web awards should be about the whole package! And we think the ONYA’s are going to be just that.
4) What speakers at Webstock are you personally most looking forward to seeing and why?
Woah, that’s a hard one, am I allowed to say them all? 😉 We’re thrilled to be sponsoring Daniel Burka, and I’m particularly interested in hearing about his Creative Director role at Digg. Others that I’m looking forward to are Scott Thomas and his focus on design and content to capture an audience; Esther Derby to get some management tips; Amy Hoy for some inspiration on avoiding same-same design; and Sebastian Chan for keeping content fresh by analysing users on the fly. Lots to learn!
5) What do you most love about working in the web?
I’ve got one of those strange brains that likes both the logical and the creative as much as each other (I did a maths degree and a music degree). This seems to me to be what the web is all about – the merging of form and function. You can’t have one without the other, and I love the challenge of meshing the two and creating an experience that is so good you almost don’t even know it’s there.
The dress code for the ONYAs is: ‘Geek designer formal – you’ll know it when you see it. But don’t be that guy who shows up in jeans, t-shirt and sandals.‘
We’ve had a few queries as to what this means, so though it might be apposite to outline our thinking.
So the first thing is that we made a little mistake – it should read, ‘geek/designer formal‘, rather than ‘geek designer formal‘. [Ed note: I’ve just realised this is the internet. I could actually go and change that!]
It’s an important difference. What we mean is that it’s appropriate formal wear for ‘geeks’ and ‘designers’, rather than ‘formal wear for geeks that is designer-y’.
Broadly (also unfairly and lazily) the Webstock audience has lots of geeks and lots of designers. And working in the web is where the two tribes meet. We appreciate and embrace that. We’re also aware that the word ‘formal’ (in relation to dress) might cause some stress to both parties. The web doesn’t really do formal. But awards, of course, do!
All of which is a roundabout way of saying we’re expecting a wide and unique variation of dress at the ONYAs. We’re looking for you to define ‘formal’ in a way that suits you and in a way that’s appropriate to a night celebrating the best of the New Zealand web industry.
We know, for example, that your host for the evening, MC Russell Brown will be wearing a tux. We know that certain members of the Webstock crew have already been on numerous shopping expeditions in preparation for the ONYAs. And we know that dressing up for an evening like this is fun!
All of that said, we won’t be turning anyone away on the night!
We’re also aware that most people attending the ONYAs will have been at a conference (a most awesome one if we do say so ourselves) all day. We can help with that.
There’ll be a room set aside on the Friday of Webstock to store outfits you might want to change into for the ONYAs. And there’ll be changing rooms available between the time Webstock ends and the ONYAs start.
To help you further, we asked Charles Bird, Director, International Markets and Business Development for Webstock to model appropriate and non-appropriate ONYA attire.
Not appropriate
Definitely appropriate. Understated elegance is never out of style.
An outfit made from Webstock schwag? That’s a winner on the night!
Swandris? Really? No.
If you come dressed in noir, we’re not going to argue or turn you away.
We think you get the picture. It’s going to a fun night. Don’t get too stressed about the ‘formal’, but do dress up a little.
Feel free to ask questions below. We’ll do our best to answer them.
Peter McLennan (@dubdotdash on Twitter) will be providing the sounds at Webstock and we’re really stoked. Webstock’s Ben Lampard caught up with him using the power of the internets and this is what happened.
Well Peter we’re very excited to have you providing the sounds at Webstock this year. Tell us a bit about yourself.
I like chocolate.
Oh, you want more? I discovered Len Lye and punk rock roughly at the same time, as a teenager. I later figured out a lot of Len Lye’s attitudes to art were very punk. I started playing guitar at high school in a band called the Worst. The name was apt. I ended up going to art school and working with film and video, while playing in a band called Hallelujah Picassos, who released two albums, a handful of singles, and played around the country scarring young minds as often as we could. Our approach to playing live was best described as “search and destroy”.
I went on to direct a few music videos for the Picassos too, which led me to work in TV for a while. I’ve also had other gigs as a music journalist, magazine designer, radio DJ, office cleaner, music video shoot runner (I got to drive Shayne Carter round once for a Bike video, we talked about Sly and the Family Stone) and more.
I like chocolate too. You were a member of the Hallelujah Picassos, easily one of the best live bands of the time. For instance, the gig you played in 1994 at the Otago University Student Union still ranks as perhaps the best live performance I’ve ever seen anywhere. Tell us a bit about the band.
We labelled ourselves as the four-headed beast. We all wrote, we all sang, and we all played at 100 miles an hour intensity onstage. We mashed up genres way before it became cool (see Sublime, Rancid) and had a great time playing to folks around the country. Our sound generally got labelled with a barrage of hyphens…. ska-reggae-hiphop-funk-punk. See? I’m proud to say that all my former band mates in the Picassos are still my friends.
What keeps you busy these days?
Currently I DJ on BaseFM and KiwiFM, write a music blog and make music as Dub Asylum.
I’m also writing a book.
Holy cow, and you found time to do this interview. What are some of your current influences and how would you describe your sound for those who haven’t heard you recently?
Oh crap. Seriously? I hate this question. It sucks harder than a vacuum cleaner. Current influences… Rhythm and sound, Lee Scratch Perry, Onra, Public Image Limited, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble, Ragga Twins, Julien Dyne, Carl Craig and ZILLION more… My sound is a mix of reggae, funk and hiphop. That’s the type of music I make as Dub Asylum, and also what I play when I’m DJing. Cept when I’m DJing there is usually some steel drums in there.
Yeah, sorry about that question, I thought it was mandatory when interviewing musician types. Too much Rip It Up as a kid. What 5 songs/albums/artists would you recommend to our readers?
Music by Iggy and the Stooges, Mulatu Astatke, Eric B and Rakim, Kraftwerk and the entire back catalogue of the On-U-Sound record label. Or the entire back catalogue of Daptone Records, home to Ms Sharon Jones and the Dapkings, The Budos Band, The Daktaris, Naomi Shelton and more. This could go on for days….
And it will go on for days at Webstock ladies and gentlemen. Thanks Peter, we look forward to meeting you and hearing some of this stuff next week.
We caught with up Esther Derby in the middle of snow storm and hoping the airport is cleared before she has to fly out to Webstock in a couple days time! In addition to her conference presentation, Esther is running a full day workshop on Agile Retrospectives.
1) Tell us something about your past work history and how you’ve arrived at where you are.
I started my professional career as a programmer. I wrote my first program using punch cards. My first portable computer looked like this:
Some things about our field have changed a lot.
Other things…not so much.
I was really good at finding the source of odd behavior or errors in large systems. My managers noticed this, and promoted me to be a manager. I believe this method of selecting managers remains largely unchanged.
It is true that all complex systems share certain characteristics, the parts are interconnected and a change in one element can have ripple effects throughout the system. The connections aren’t always obvious, and the fix many be far away from the effect. Still, the skills needed to steer a human system (which is what managers need to do) are just a little different from those that made me good at trouble shooting software. So I set out to learn a different set of skills.
Along the way, I earned a Master’s in Organizational Leadership, studied family therapy, and took a dive into Humans System Dynamics, a new field that applies concepts from chaos and complexity science to groups and organizations.
In my first years as a manager, I missed the challenge and satisfaction of solving technical problem; I’ve come to learn that working with human systems is just as intellectually challenging and just as satisfying. Does tend to be a bit more messy, though.
2) Have you always worked with an Agile methodology? If not, did you have a “ray of light” experience that brought you to it?
I’ve been around long enough that I’ve seen methodologies come and go. When I look back over the teams and projects that worked best, we were applying at least some of the principles of agile development. We found ways to build feedback into the system: working in small chunks, testing early and often, keeping public project progress posters (the precursor of Big Visible Charts). We worked in the same office and we had frequent communication with the people who would use our products.
What got me interested in Agile (with a capital A) was the explicit emphasis on collaboration, sustainable pace, and pride in work. I’ve seen too many organizations where work is a dehumanizing slog. Life is just too short to spend 40+ hours a week that way. Many teams have had success using agile principles and methods. I’ve heard from scores of developers that the Agile teams they worked on were the best work experiences of their lives.
Sadly, I think many organizations are drawn to agile because they see it as a way to squeeze more work out of people. Sort of like the days when executives didn’t read past the word Rapid in Rapid Application Development. The truth is that if executives want to get more done faster, they have to look at the work system, and the way they manage.
3) Why do most managers suck so much?
Most managers want to do a good job, but don’t know what to do or how to do it. It’s not surprising, since most managers in software organizations are promoted into management from technical position (as I was). So they do what they’ve seen their managers do. Or if they’ve had a bad experience, avoid doing what their manager did.
The broader problem is that the predominant mental model of management is way off. I know, all mental models are wrong….and some are wrong in ways that are more damaging than others. Much traditional management thinking focusing on getting people to work harder and smarter with carrots and sticks. But the most effective way to get everyone to work more effectively is to work on the work system so that everyone can do better.
4) You’re giving a workshop on ‘Agile Retrospectives’. Who should attend and what will they learn?
Agile retrospectives are the engine for continuous improvement on teams. Anyone who wants to learn how to help their team think, learn, and improve together should attend. Same for anyone who has dull, do nothing retrospectives. We’ll do a project, have a retrospective, and then learn how to design effective retrospectives by examining the pieces and parts of a retrospective and how they fit together–all without PowerPoint!
5) What are you most looking forward to about Webstock?
I’ve heard so many wonderful things about New Zealand. I’m looking forward to visiting Wellington, catching up with some old friends, meeting new people. I’m also looking forward to the energy and drive that just rolls off the Webstock program. I’m sure I’ll have fun.
Thanks Esther. And we can promise there will be no snow in Wellington in February!
