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OSDC Day 2

pjf on 2006-12-07T10:49:46

OSDC Day 2
I missed the first half the day, as I had stayed up very late the night before and slept in. It seems I wasn't the only one who wanted an extra snooze.

I spent most of the day in the Hallway Track, speaking with people and catching up on events. A notable exception was the lightning talks, which are always worth seeing at OSDC. José encouraged everyone to start use.perl journals as a way to attract more international speakers, and singled me out as an example. Whether I'm a good example or a bad one, I don't quite know.

I'm presently working on my talks for tomorrow, including both a lightning talk and my main presentation. I've also discovered I need to think more about my talk titles for multi-track conferences. A title like Human Interfaces for Geeks works great for a single-stream, but I feel isn't catchy enough to attract the crowd I'd like when competing with multiple streams. Next year I'll have to use a title like Robotic Ninja Pirates.

Human Interfaces for Geeks

DAxelrod on 2006-12-07T15:19:35

That looks fascinating. I hope you're able to post slides or a recording (but I'll understand if you're unable).

As someone studying both computer science and human-computer interaction, I've come to the conclusioin that creating APIs *is* interface design. Sure, you have code considerations, but it's ultimately humans who are going to be writing for your API.

Re:Human Interfaces for Geeks

jjore on 2006-12-07T17:22:21

I thought everyone knew APIs were HCI. Huh.

Re:Human Interfaces for Geeks

chromatic on 2006-12-07T21:11:44

APIs are sooooooo 2005. We call them DSLs now!

Re:Human Interfaces for Geeks

DAxelrod on 2006-12-10T18:38:35

Maybe everyone does. It's a conclusion I've arrived at indpendently, but that does't mean it isn't well known.

The downside of an extremely theoretical computer science education is that it's easy to miss a lot of real-world stuff, like how humans relate to the code that you're writing.

Re:Human Interfaces for Geeks

pjf on 2006-12-07T22:37:34

My talk actually has nothing to do with computers. It's Human Interfaces for Geeks. ;)

The slides aren't available, but there's a copy of the paper floating about. I'll see if I can dig it up and attach a link to this entry, but that won't happen until after the conference.