March 2010 Archive

Mix 10 Talk: Design the Ordinary Video

posted by DL Byron on March 25, 2010

Here is video from our talk at Mix 10. Not sure how the talk would go, but we were very pleased with the result. The crowd was engaged and enthused. Our message of a return to simplicity in web design resonated:

This presentation is a study in the simplest of objects, their usefulness, and how they become part of our culture. It relates to web design and our tendency to overcomplicate, to play drum solos when a tight and crisp backbeat will do. Learn how to find inspiration in the ordinary and pause before adding that flair to your next project.

Fixies are form and function. They are bikes built from ordinary parts into useful machines that do what cyclists need them to do. That’s a good lesson for web designers and developers because we tend to overcomplicate our work. In the talk, we asked, “What if consumers, like bike messengers making fixies, made a website to do one thing? What would that look like?” Probably more like Google and less like Amazon.com. Kevin Tamura and I also presented this talk at Refresh Seattle.

Specialized provided us the Globe Rolls for the talk and to ride in Vegas while we were there.

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No Umbrellas Today

posted by DL Byron on March 22, 2010

A Sunny Spring day in Seattle reminds us of how beautiful it is where we live.

Uploaded by Hugger Industries | more from the dreeping set on Flickr.

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Bike Hugger in the New York Times

posted by DL Byron on March 10, 2010

Worth nothing for the first-time ever, the NY Times quoted me and I didn’t sound stupid.

“We think this is fantastic,” said D.L. Byron, publisher of BikeHugger.com, a blog about bike culture based in Seattle. “It will open up reliable transportation options to cyclists.” Mr. Byron said that while plenty of programs allow cyclists to upload their routes to the Web, no other service provides optimal directions for cyclists in urban settings, at least not on a national scale.

Mr. Byron predicted that the Google service would help to promote cycling as an alternative mode of transportation. “A lot of people would love to get on their bike but are afraid they won’t find a safe route,” he said. “If you make these options more available to people, they will do it.”

The article is about Google Bike Maps, a topic we’re blogging at Bike Hugger. Google is joining us for the Mobile Social SXSW, an urban ride meetup we do annually @sxsw.

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Speaking Season 2010

posted by DL Byron on March 05, 2010

As I tweeted earlier this week,

Speaking at @140tc @MIXEvent @sxsw and @cascadebicycle Bike Expo in the span of a week.

then I noticed

Man in a Suitcase shuffles in on iTunes right as I’m wondering what idiot scheduled 4 speaking gigs in one week!

Oh wait that was me. Yep, here we go with the speaking:

• The Twitter talk covers the tools
• Modertating a bike culture panel at the Bike Expo
• SXSW is about Changing the World with Bikes
• Mix 10 is about Designing the Ordinary

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Secretary Clinton Meets With Argentine President on Twitter

posted by DL Byron on March 01, 2010

Never imagined I’d see Secretary Clinton live tweeted when I was working for the Department of Energy at the Hanford complex in the 90s. Back then we were trying to figure out how to paginate Environmental Impact Statements in HTML and arguing about standardizing on Netscape Enterprise Server or sticking with APACHE.

Remarkable progress when you see it like that.

Uploaded by U.S. Department of State | more from the dreeping set on Flickr.

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