One simple tweet made me feel terrible. One simple tweet made me doubt myself. One simple tweet – hopefully not meant to be mean – had a devastating effect on me. Here’s how and why, and a reminder that you should not be the person that with one simple tweet causes anguish like that.

Beep beep, I’m a roadrunner

As readers of this blog, you know that the last weeks have been hectic for me:

I bounced from conference to conference, delivering a new talk at each of them, making my slides available for the public. I do it because I care about people who can not get to the conference and for those I coach about speaking so they can re-use the decks if they wanted to. I also do a recording of my talks and publish them on YouTube so people can listen. Mostly I do these for myself, so I can get better at what I do. This is a trick I explained in the developer evangelism handbook – another service I provide for free.

Publishing on the go is damn hard:

• Most Wi-Fi at events is flaky or very slow.
• I travel world-wide which means I have no data on my phone without roaming and such.
• Many times uploading my slides needs four to five attempts
• Creating the screencast can totally drain the battery of my laptop with no power plug in sight.
• Uploading the screencast can mean I do it over night.

The format of your slides are irellevant to these issues. HTML, Powerpoint, Keynote – lots of images means lots of bytes.

Traveling and presenting is tough – physical space still matters

Presenting and traveling is both stressful and taxing. Many people ask me how I do it and my answer is simply that: the positive feedback I get and seeing people improve when they get my advice is a great reward and keeps me going. The last few weeks have been especially taxing as I also need to move out of my flat. I keep getting calls by my estate agent that I need to wire money or be somewhere I can not. I also haven’t seen my partner more than a few hours because we are both busy.

I love my job. I still get excited to go to conferences, hear other presenters, listen to people’s feedback and help them out. A large part of my career is based on professional relationships that formed at events.

The lonely part of the rockstar life

Being a public speaker means you don’t spend much time for yourself. At the event you sleep on average 4-5 hours as you don’t want to be the rockstar presenter that arrives, delivers a canned talk and leaves. You are there for the attendees, so you sacrifice your personal time. That’s something to prepare for. If you make promises, you also need to deliver them immediately. Any promise of you to look into something or contact someone you don’t follow up as soon as you can piles up to a large backlog you have a hard time remembering what it is you wanted to find out.

It also can make you feel very lonely. I’ve had many conversations with other presenters who feel very down as you are not with the people you care about, in the place you call home or in an environment you understand and feel comfortable in. Sure, hotels, airports and conference venues are all lush and have a “jet set” feel to them. They are also very nondescript and make you feel like a stranger.

Progressive Enhancement discussions happen and I can’t be part of it!

I care deeply about progressive enhancement. To me, it means you care more for the users of your products than you care about development convenience. It is a fundamental principal of the web, and – to me – the start of caring about accessibility.

In the last few weeks progressive enhancement was a hot topic in our little world and I wanted to chime in many a time. After all, I wrote training materials on this 11 years ago, published a few books on it and keep banging that drum. But, I was busy with the other events on my backlog and the agreed topics I would cover.

That’s why I was very happy when “at the frontend” came up as a speaking opportunity and I submitted a talk about progressive enhancement. In this talk, I explain in detail that it is not about the JavaScript on or off case. I give out a lot of information and insight into why progressive enhancement is much more than that.

That Tweet

Just before my talk, I uploaded and tweeted my deck, in case people are interested. And then I get this tweet as an answer:

It made me angry – a few minutes before my talk. It made me angry because of a few things:

• it is insincere – this is not someone who has trouble accessing my content. It is someone who wants to point out one flaw to have a “ha-ha you’re doing it wrong” moment.
• the poster didn’t bother to read what I wrote at all – not even the blog post I wrote a few days before covering exactly the same topic or others explaining that the availability of JS is not what PE is about at all.
• it judges the content of a publication by the channel it was published on. Zeldman wrote an excellent piece on this years ago how this is a knee-jerk reaction and an utter fallacy.
• it makes me responsible for Slideshare’s interface – a service used my many people as a great place to share decks
• it boils the topic I talked about and care deeply for down to a simple binary state. This state isn’t even binary if you analyse it and is not the issue. Saying something is PE because of JavaScript being available or not is the same technical nonsense that is saying a text-only version means you are accessible.

I posted the Zeldman article as an answer to the tweet and got reprimanded for not using any of the dozens available HTML slide deck versions that are progressively enhancing a document. Never mind that using keynote makes me more effective and helps me with re-use. I have betrayed the cause and should do better and feel bad for being such a terrible slide-creator. OK then. I shrugged this off before, and will again. But, this time, I was vulnerable and it hurt more.

Siding with my critics

I addition to me having lot of respect of what Yehuda achieved other people started favouriting the tweet. People I look up to, people I care about:

• Alex Russel, probably one of the most gifted engineers I know with a vocabulary that makes a Thesaurus blush.
• Michael Mahemoff, always around with incredibly good advice when HTML5 and apps where the question.
• My colleague Jacob Rossi, who blows me away every single day with his insight and tech knowledge

And that’s when my anger turned inward and the ugly voice of impostor syndrome reared its head. Here is what it told me:

• You’re a fool. You’re making a clown of yourself trying to explain something everyone knows and nobody gives a shit about. This battle is lost.
• You’re trying to cover up your loss of reality of what’s needed nowadays to be a kick-ass developer by releasing a lot of talks nobody needs. Why do you care about writing a new talk every time? Just do one, keep delivering it and do some real work instead
• Everybody else moved on, you just don’t want to admit to yourself that you lost track.
• They are correct in mocking you. You are a hypocrite for preaching things and then violating them by not using HTML for a format of publication it wasn’t intended for.

I felt devastated, I doubted everything I did. When I delivered the talk I had so looked forward to and many people thanked me for my insights I felt even worse:

• Am I just playing a role?
• Am I making the lives of those who want to follow what I advocate unnecessarily hard?
• Shouldn’t they just build things that work in Chrome now and burn them in a month and replace them with the next new thing?

Eventually, I did what I always do and what all of you should: tell the impostor syndrome voice in your head to fuck off and let my voice of experience ratify what I am doing. I know my stuff, I did this for a long time and I have a great job working on excellent products.

Recovery and no need for retribution

I didn’t have any time to dwell more on this, as I went to the next conference. A wonderful place where every presentation was full of personal stories, warmth and advice how to be better in communicating with another. A place with people from 37 countries coming together to celebrate their love for a product that brings them closer. A place where people brought their families and children although it was a geek event.

I’m not looking for pity here. I am not harbouring a grudge against Yehuda and I don’t want anyone to reprimand him. My insecurities and how they manifest themselves when I am vulnerable and tired are my problem. There are many other people out there with worse issues and they are being attacked and taken advantage of and scared. These are the ones we need to help.

Think before trying to win with a tweet

What I want though is to make you aware that everything you do online has an effect. And I want you to think next time before you post the “ha-ha you are wrong” tweet or favourite and amplify it. I want you to consider to:

• read the whole publication before judging it
• question if your criticism really is warranted
• wonder how much work it was to publish the thing
• consider how the author feels when the work is reduced to one thing that might be wrong.

Social media was meant to make media more social. Not to make it easier to attack and shut people up or tell them what you think they should do without asking about the how and why.

I’m happy. Help others to be the same.

I fly – a lot. I spend more time in airports, in the air, hotel rooms and conferences than at home. As I am a natural recording and analysing device, I take in a lot of things on my travels. People at airports are stressed, confused, don’t pay attention to things, eat badly and are not always feeling good. They are tired, they feel rushed and they want just to get things over with and get where they want to go. Others – those new to travel – are overly excited about everything and want to things right, making mistakes because they are too eager. Exactly what users on the web are like. I found that companies who use technology for the benefit of their users are those people love and support. That’s what progressive enhancement means to me. But let’s start at the beginning.

Getting somewhere by plane is pretty simple. You buy a ticket and you get a booking confirmation number, an airport you leave from, a time and a destination airport. To claim all this and get on the flight, you also need to prove that you are you. You can do this in domestic flights with the credit card you booked the flight with, a driving license or your passport. For international travels, the latter is always the safest option.

The main thing you have to fear about flying is delays that make you miss your plane. Delays can be natural problems, technical failures with the plane or the airport. They could also be issues with air traffic control. It is busy up in the blue yonder, as this gorgeous visualisation shows. Another big issue is getting to the airport in time as all kind of traffic problems can delay you.

You can’t do much about that – you just have to take it in stride. I plan 3 hours from my house to sitting on the plane.

Avoid the queue

One thing you want to avoid is queues. The longer the queue, the more likely you are to miss your plane. Every single person in that queue and their problems become yours.

Photo by James Emery

Airlines understand that and over the years have put improvements in place that make it easier for you to get up in the air.

In essence, what you need to get in exchange of your information is a boarding pass. It is the proof that all is well and you are good to go.

Photo by mroach

The fool-proof way of doing that is having check-in counters. These have people with computers and you go there, tell them your information and you get your boarding pass. You can also drop off your luggage and you get up-to-date information from them on delays, gates and – if you are lucky – upgrades. Be nice to them – they have a tough job and they can mess up your travels if you give them a tough time.

Improvement: self check-in counters

Manned check-in counters are also the most time consuming and expensive way. They also don’t scale to hundreds of customers – hence the queues.

The first step to improve this was self-check-in terminals. If you allow people to type in their booking confirmation and scan their passport, a machine can issue the boarding pass. You can then have a special check-in counter only for those who need to drop off luggage. Those without luggage, move on to the next level without having to interact with a person behind the counter and take up a space in the queue. Those who don’t know how to use the machine or who forgot some information or encounter a technical failure can still go to a manned check-in counter.

Improvement: mobile apps

Nowadays this is even better. We have online check-in that allows us to check in at home and print out our own boarding passes. As printer ink is expensive and boarding passes tend to be A4 and littered with ads, you can also use apps on smartphones.

Of course, every airline has their own app and all work different and – at times – in mysterious ways. But let’s not dwell on that.

Apps are incredible – they show you when your flight happens, delays, and you don’t need to print out anything. You get this uplifting feeling that you’re part of a technical elite and that you know your stuff.

Of course, as soon as you go high-tech, things also break:

• You can always run out of battery
• Apps crash and need to have a connection to re-start and re-fresh your booking content. That’s why a lot of people take screenshots of their boarding passes in the app.
• You need to turn off your phone on planes, which means on changing to another plane you need to re-boot it, which takes time.
• Some airports don’t have digital readers of QR codes or have access to priority lane only as a rubber stamp on a paper boarding pass (looking at you, SFO). That’s why you need a printout.
• Staff checking your boarding pass at security and gate staff tend to wait for your phone display to go to sleep before trying to scan it. Then they ask you to enter your unlock code. There is probably some reason for that.
• Some security lanes need you to keep your boarding pass with you but you can’t keep your phone on you as it needs to be X-Rayed. You see the problem…

Despite all that, you are still safe. When things go wrong, there are the fallbacks of the machines or the manned counter to go back to.

This is progressive enhancement

This, is progressive enhancement.

• You put things in place that work and you make it more convenient for your users who have technical abilities.
• You analyse the task at hand and offer the most basic solution.
• With this as a security blanket, you think of ways to improve the experience and distribute the load.

You make it easier for users who are frequently using your product. That’s why I get access to fast-track security lanes and lounges. I get a reward for saving the company time and money and allowing them to cater to more users.

You almost never meet people in these lounges who have bad things to say about the airline. Of course they are stressed – everybody at an airport is – but there is a trust in the company they chose and good experiences means having a good relationship. You can check in 24 hours before your flight and all you bring to the airport is your phone and your passport. If you fail to do so, or you feel like it, you can still go to the counter. You feel like James Bond or Tony Stark.

Forcing your users to upgrade

Then there is Ryanair and other budget airlines. You will be hard pushed to find anyone who loves them. The mood ranges from “meh, it is convenient, as I can afford it” to “necessary evil” and ends in “spawn of satan and bane of my existence”. Why is that?

Well, budget airlines try to save and make money wherever they can. They have less ground staff and check-in counters. They have online check-in and expect you to bring a printout of your boarding pass. They have draconic measures when it comes to the size and weight of your luggage. They are less concerned when it comes to your available space on the plane or happy to charge extra for it. Instead of using a service it feels like you have to game it. You need to be on your toes, or you pay extra. You feel like you have to work for what you already paid for and you feel not empowered, but stupid when you forgot to have one thing the company requests you to have – things others don’t bother with.

They also have apps. And pretty ones at that. When everything goes right, these are cool. Yet, these come with silly limitations. These companies chose to offer apps so they can cut down on ground staff and less check-in counters. They are not an improvement or convenience, but become a necessity.

The “let’s make you queue anyways” app experience

The other day I was in Italy flying to Germany with Ryanair. I have no Italian data connection and roaming is expensive. I also had no wireless in the hotel or the convention I was at. Ryanair allows me to check-in online with a browser 24 hours before the flight. I couldn’t. When you use the app is even more draconic: you can only check in two hours before the flight. If you remember, I add a my 3 hour trip cushion to the airport to my travels. Which means I am on the road which in London means I am underground without a connection when I need to check in.

I grumpily queued up at the hot, packed airport in a massive queue full of screaming kids and drunk tourists. Others were people standing over half-unpacked luggage as their passports were missing. When I arrived at the counter, the clerk told me that as I needed to print out my boarding pass or check in with the app. As I failed to do so, I now need to pay 45 Euro for my boarding pass if he were to print it for me.

This was almost the price of the ticket. I told him that because of the 2 hour period and me not having connectivity, I couldn’t do that. All I got was “this is our policy”.

I ground my teeth, and connected my roaming data on my phone, trying to check in with the app. Instead of asking for my name and booking confirmation it asked for all kind of extra information. I guess the reason was that I hadn’t booked the ticket but someone had booked it for me. The necessary information included entering a lot of dates with a confusing date picker. In the end, I was one minute late and the app told me there is no way I can check in without going to a counter. I queued up again, and the clerk told me that I can not pay at his counter. Instead I needed to go to the other side of the airport to the ticketing counter, pay there and bring back a printout that I did pay. Of course, there was another queue. Coming back, I ended up in yet another queue, this time for another flight. I barely made it to my plane.

Guess what my attitude towards future business with this airline is. Right – they have a bleak future with me.

Progressive enhancement is for the user and you benefit, too

And this is when you use progressive enhancement the wrong way. Yes, an app is an improvement over queuing up or printing out. But you shouldn’t add arbitrary rules or punish those who can’t use it. Progressive enhancement is for the benefit of the end user. We also benefit a lot from it. Unlike the physical world of airport we can enhance without extra overhead. We don’t need to hire extra ground staff or put up hardware to read passports. All we need to do is to analyse:

• What is the basic information the user needs to provide to fulfill a task
• What is the simplest interface to reach this
• How can we improve the experience for more advanced users and those on more advanced hardware?

The latter is the main thing: you don’t rely on any of those. Instead you test if they can be applied and apply them as needed.

Progressive enhancement is not about adding more work to your product. It is about protecting the main use case of your product and then enhance it with new functionality as it becomes available. Google is a great example of that. Turn off JavaScript and you still get a form to enter information in and you get a search result page with ads on it. This is how you find things and Google makes money. Anything else they added over time makes it more convenient for you but is not needed. It also offers them more opportunities to show you more ads and point at other services.

Use progressive enhancement as a means to reward your users. Don’t expect them to do things for you just to use your product. If the tools you use means your users have to have a “modern” browser and load a lot of script you share your problems with them. You can only get away with that if you offer them a cheaper version of what others offer but that’s a risky race to take part in. You can win their current business, but never their hearts or support. You become a necessary evil, not something they tell others about.

Sitting in the lovely conference hotel Estherea in Amsterdam, I am ready to go to Schipol to fly back home to London. This marks the end of the massive conference tour in beggining May. I can’t believe it all worked out, although I had to re-book one flight and I stayed for two days at each location.

(sketch from my Beyond Tellerand keynote by Manuel Ortiz)

Here’s what happened:

• 05-06/05/2015 Windows 10 Summit, Mountain View – you can see all the recordings of the talks at Channel 9 and my “Advancing JavaScript without breaking the web“. My big “wow” moments here were Aaron Gustafson’s “Falling in love with forms” (lots of great, pragmatic advice) and the amazing “Microsoft Edge: Product And Personality” by Paula Chuchro – her excitement for every detail was intoxicating.
• 09-10/05/2015 Open Source Conference Albania – The slides of my opening keynote discussing the current state of open source and mistakes made are on Slideshare.
• 11-12/05/2015 Beyond Tellerand, Duesseldorf, Germany. Slides of my opening talk at day two: Advancing the web without breaking it
• 13-14/05/201 JSDay Italy – opening keynote: Breaking out of the endless callback loop.
• 15/05/2015 DevIT Thessaloniki – Opening Keynote: Crack, Train, Fix, Release – Keynote at DevIT Thessaloniki 2015
• 18/05/2015 PhoneGap Day, Amsterdam – moderated the conference and ran Q&A.

Now it is time to wash my clothes, send all the emails I stacked up during bad connectivity times and clean out my flat to move to another one. Oh yeah, and two more conferences this month :)

I am currently in the Heathrow airport lounge on the first leg of my May presenting tour. Here is what lies ahead for me (with various interchanges in other countries in between to get from one to the other):

• 02-07/05/2015 – Mountain View, California for Spartan Summit (Microsoft Edge now)
• 09/05/2015 – Tirana, Albania for Oscal (opening keynote)
• 11/05/2015 – Düsseldorf, Germany for Beyond Tellerand
• 13-14/05/2015 – Verona, Italy – JSDay (opening keynote)
• 15/05/2015 – Thessaloniki, Greece – DevIt (opening keynote)
• 18/05/2015 – Amsterdam, The Netherlands – PhoneGap Day (MC)
• 27/05/2015 – Copenhagen, Denmark – At The Frontend
• 29/05/2015 – Prague, Czech Republic – J and Beyond

I will very likely be too busy to answer a lot of requests this month, and if you meet me, I might be disheveled and unkempt – I never have more than a day in a hotel. The good news is that I have written 3 of these talks so far.

To while away the time on planes with my laptop being flat, I just downloaded lots of videos from build to watch (you can do that on each of these pages, just do the save-as), so I am up to speed with that. Here’s my list, in case you want to do the same:

• What’s New in JavaScript for Fast and Scalable Apps
• Getting Great Performance Out of Cordova Apps
• Building Consumer and Enterprise Device Solutions with Windows 10 IoT
• Developing Audio and Video Apps
• Deploying Complex Open Source Workloads on Azure
• Vision APIs: Understanding Images in Your App
• Case Studies of HoloLens App Development
• Building a Single-Page App Using Angular and TypeScript Using Office 365 APIs
• Windows for Makers: Raspberry Pi 2, Arduino and More
• JavaScript Frameworks in Your Apps and Sites from WinJS and Beyond
• Cortana and Speech Platform In Depth
• Building Office Add-ins using Node.JS
• Getting Started with Cross-Platform Mobile Development with Apache Cordova
• Microsoft Edge (discussion round video)
• iOS and Android Apps with Office 365
• “PROJECT ASTORIA“: Build Great Windows Apps with Your Android Code
• Visual Studio Code: A Deep Dive on the Redefined Code Editor for OS X, Linux and Windows
• Using Git in Visual Studio
• Hosted Web Apps and Web Platform Innovations
• Python and Node.js: Microsoft’s Best Kept Secrets
• “Microsoft Edge”: Introducing the New Browser and Web App Platform for Windows 10
• What’s New in F12 for Microsoft Edge
• Building Accessible Universal Windows Apps