At any rate, my takeaways, even before UXCampVancouver starts are:

1. There is clearly a desire here to have a conference where local User Experience people (that includes Information Architects, User Interface Designers, Web Developers, User Testers and Researchers, Software Entrepreneurs, etc.) can meet and share information and opinions.
2. We may need a bigger venue if we do it again
3. Being free doesn’t hurt either. After all, a chance to talk about this stuff, plus some coffee and treats, comfy chairs and Wi-Fi is a good way to spend a late fall Saturday in Vancouver, wet and rainy or not.

At any rate, if you do want to get on the Waiting list, there is still a chance, although remote, that someone who has signed up for a slot will bow out, so give it a shot, and hopefully I’ll get to see you on Saturday.

What’s also interesting is the cost of getting that speed. Here’s another graph:

According to this, all that speed is incredibly cheap, under a dollar per month per megabit in US Dollars, according to the article. By this calculation, I’d expect that for a person in Tokyo to get roughly the same speed I do, they’d pay around $20 per month. Here in Vancouver, my Internet cost is coming in at about $47 for that 19 Megabits, so that works out to roughly $2.5 (Canadian) per megabit, which would convert to almost exactly $2 US per month per megabit. That’s better than the graph says (although it’s hard to tell, I’d read it at closer to $5 per month).

Although I’ve been making some comparisons here, I’m wondering how life would change for me if Internet was half the cost it was, and 3 times faster, but I’m also wondering if this high level of service at relatively low cost will cause a flurry of Internet activity and development in Japan. I note that their limitations have more to do with screen size (many Japanese access the Internet exclusively through via cell phone screen, if  I’m not mistaken).

So, what’s it like? How has cheap, fast Broadband Internet made things different, and do you think it will change things in the coming decade? My friends in Japan, your input here is welcome!

Rather than try to write something profound (at least on the surface), I thought I’d start writing in this blog again with an observation about today’s date, at least in terms of the History of Computer Science:

On today’s date, HAL, the computer from 2001: A Space Odyssey turns 17 year’s old, as the movie says:

I am a HAL 9000 computer, Production Number 3. I became operational at the HAL Plant in Urbana, Illinois, on January 12, 1992. My instructor was Mr. Langley, and he taught me to sing a song. If you’d like to hear it I can sing it for you. It’s called ‘Daisy’

I always thought that the production number being 3 was intriguing. It couldn’t be a nod to Windows 3.1, the first successful version of that software because the book was written decades before that appeared on the scene.  What happened to production numbers 1 and 2? (It was mentioned, I seem to remember, that HAL 1000-8000 series had problems of some sort and were “not entirely successful”).

The idea of a mutinous, murderous central computer is a theme that is still alive and well in movies today: the movie WALL-E has one of these, the Autopilot computer that looks a bit like HAL’s red eye inserted into an old fashioned ship’s wheel (and the voice actor who gets to do it, in the credits is, wait for it… Macintalk, the speech synthesis software on the Macintosh (!))

Needless to say, in this year, 2009, there is no HAL 9000, no similar level of Artificial Intelligence, no ships to Jupiter, and no permanent base on the moon. We do have a space station, but Pan Am airlines never survived to create that beautiful space liner, and although there is talk of private citizens doing flights, it is Virgin Airlines that is going to be doing that.

I fear that drucker.ca has fallen victim to the phrase: ‘The perfect is the enemy of the good.’ Because it was never exactly the way I wanted, I have been reluctant to write a great deal until it was ‘finished’  although I have a good first draft of what I wanted, based on an existing WordPress theme. This new theme is better than my old one (at least in terms of slickness, but it is far less colourful.

At any rate, I want to get cracking on writing some new posts, given that there are a few things going on in North America (as well as the rest of the world)  besides economic meltdown and the Presidential race.

Watch this space for more to come.

I’ve been a little better about my personal blog, Loud Murmurs, but now that my contract at IBM is over, I have a little spare time. That means not only redesigning this web site (yes, look for exciting new changes in the coming days and weeks) but also starting to write in this blog once again. I will make another effort at getting my presentation of roughly a year ago up online (and fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your point of view, it’s still just as valid today as it was then).

What you can’t see is that I have a new admin interface which I really, really like. It’s the Fluency Admin by Dean J, Robinson.Tell you what, I’ll put in a screenshot of the screen I’m writing this on:

So, I find myself in the unfortunate situation of essentially having to recreate the slides from scratch in Dreamweaver, and re-compress all of the movies (along with trying to figure out how to do so without them becoming unreadable thanks to multiple transformations from one codec to another). All of this is not a problem if one has the time. So, I’m going to give it a couple of more hours today and hopefully will get closer to a solution that I can post here. In the meantime, sorry for the delay.

Set for English: (lower case)

Those same keys set for Photoshop:

Wait, what it if was set for the game Quake?

On top of this extraordinary keyboard, there is also a brilliant, if less ergonomically spot-on mouse:

In addition to these bits of Industrial design (and geek fancy-tickling), Mr. Lebedev, who along with his studio, is in Moscow, also writes a sort of blog, although it is not an RSS feed (but I wish he would make it so) called Mandership. According to Mr. Lebedev, it’s been a project since 1997 (which would account for it’s pre-RSS structure). I also notice that the most recent entry is in 2006. I hope he does another few this year. Nearly all of the posts I read were gems of clear thinking about design, the way the world works, and the way people think. No wonder he and his compatriots at his studio keep coming up with such brilliant products, even if some of them are harder to bring out of the concept stage.

That’s one small step for a blog…

The quality of the User Experience is never strained…

Aqua is to Aero as Pee Wee’s Playhouse is to…

On second thought, rather than do that, here are a few words of explanation of what to expect in these pages. I consider drucker.ca to be my ‘professional blog’. It is to serve as my voice in the User Experience community. I also have a personal blog, called Loud Murmurs, which is where my daily life, the journey my wife and I have made, the observations and stories I wish to tell all go. If you’re curious about me as a human being, by all means, check it out.

Still here? Well then, you’ll (eventually) also find my resumé, a portfolio of some of my work and my ongoing thoughts and observations as they pertain to User Interfaces, Usability, Information Architecture and all of those related topics that often fall under the overall subject ‘User Experience’. This does not mean I’ll cease to be a human being. There will be funny bits, angry rants, and probably everything in between. I don’t think I could write a dry, academic blog. Well, maybe I could, but I wouldn’t like it, and neither would you.

So, in short, my effort to separate my personal and professional lives has ended up producing 2 blogs, on 2 different URLs.

And with that, I offer a test of the Audio player plugin:

There, now that sounded good to me. How about you?