Things that made me happy this morning (yes, it is back)

• Today’s Google Doodle is a playable guitar in honour of Les Paul (screencast)
• HTML Boilerplate makes it much easier to write those annoying HTML emails
• A collection of simple .htaccess snippets
• jVectorMap is a jQuery plugin to make simple map visualisations in SVG - for larger data sets there is GISCloud
• If you are a security company you shouldn’t leave your encryption keys in a readable folder (fixed now – screenshot)
• Great comics that never happened is an awesome series
• The Aloha Editor guys have a pretty mental CSS3 Cube Demo but awful browser detection on it
• Very cool behind the scene shots of classic films

About two years ago I had a dream and made it reality: I wanted to mix the crazy world of hackdays and unconferences and the world of accessibility.

In hackdays and unconferences developers show in a very short amount of time that they can solve a lot of problems and create great proof of concept products. These proofs can then be taken forward and changed into real products.

In the accessibility world we constantly complain that developers do not care enough about the needs of people with disabilities. We also complain about new technology not being helpful to disability needs or needs of the elderly.

I wanted to marry the enthusiasm of hackdays and the existing urge of developers to solve problems with the real life problems people who use the web have. I also wanted to dispel some myths around accessibility and show that you can be cool and innovative and also care for the needs of everybody.

Therefore I organised Scripting Enabled, a one day conference in which people with different disabilities showed the barriers that keep them from using the web and inviting a group of developers on the following day to build solutions to remove these barriers.

I was successful – I managed to pull off a free conference with a lot of attendees with only £200 out of my own pocket and caused some media attention and recorded a few good videos (which are on Yahoo Video – so I need to move them soon, drat!) raising awareness about disability needs on the web.

What I failed to do was my second agenda: to break down the barrier between the accessibility world and the development world and start a constant flow of hack and accessibility innovation.

I opened the idea of Scripting Enabled to everyone and invited people to hold their own. One other SE was held at Adobe in Seattle but that was it.

I started a mailing list and a Wiki – both dying of spam now and without any activity.

Probably this is all my fault – you just can’t start a new movement and build a community in a very saturated market like the internet is today with Facebook, Twitter, various mailing lists, Quora, Reddit, Stackoverflow and others all competing for our attention.

If I had constantly pushed for Scripting Enabled it might have hit off. I relied on the accessibility community to do that for me – alas, they didn’t and I actually have a hard time naming a working accessibility community that does not revolve around trying to push “accessible products”.

That is why I will archive Scripting Enabled as soon as I have time. I spend a lot of time deleting spam and I feel that there is no point in kicking this horse to trot on. It was a nice dream and a good first run. I am happy I did it but I don’t feel there is a point to try to repeat when there is no communication in two years.

Derzeit bin ich noch ein paar Stunden in Berlin, wo ich gestern auf der Webinale einen Vortrag ueber neue Web Technologien und deren Einsatz gehalten habe. In dem Vortrag beschreibe ich Probleme von HTML5, wie Firmen es als Marketingidee verkaufen anstatt die Technologie weiter zu fuehren und was man heute machen kann um die Evolution der Webentwicklung weiter zu fuehren. Hier sind die Slides und die Audio Aufnahme des Vortrags:

HTML5, CSS3 und JavaScript fuer alle:

Die Tonaufnahme des HTML5 talks gibt es bei Archive.org.

Die Links, die im Vortrag angesprochen werden:

• Min.us – einfaches File Sharing mit der HTML5 FIle API
• Jason Weaver – ein schoenes Beispiel von dem Einsatz von Mediaqueries
• Media Events in HTML5 Video – ein Beispiel des W3C
• Indiana Jones Karten in HTML5
• This Shell – ein Musik Video als Puzzle Spiel
• GitHub als schoenes Beispiel fuer History Pushstate
• D3.js um Datentabellen zu visualisieren
• HighCharts fuer Graphen
• Google Body Browser und Pepetz als WebGL Beispiele
• 3 Dreams of Black das neue interaktive Google Musik Video
• Kkrieger ein 96K 3D Ballerspiel
• Ben the Bodyguard ein schoenes Beispiel von CSS3 Animation mit schlechtem Markup
• HTML5 fuer XP
• The State of HTML5 Audio erklaert HTML5 Audio Probleme
• Vid.ly fuer einfache Videokonvertierung
• HTML5 Boilerplate um mit HTML5 als Project anzufangen
• Modernizr um Browser auf HTML5 Kompatibilitaet zu testen
• PhoneGap um mobile Applikationen zu erstellen
• YouTube HTML5 um YouTube umzustellen
• Madimation als Beispiel fuer gute CSS3 Animation mit sinnvollem HTML und Animatable als Tool um solche zu erstellen
• CSS3 Animation mit dem Handy
• HTML5 WOW Praesentation von Google IO
• ButterApp um Videos und Webinhalte zu synchronisieren
• Mozilla Demo Studio fuer Demos und einem Demo Wettbewerb

I am a lucky, lucky man. I do the job I love and I do it from where I live. Well, technically – with my travel schedule I mostly do it from hotel rooms, airport lounges, trains and coffee shops. In any case though, I am lucky. My company supports and pays people who do not work in an office with everybody else. Even more astounding – my whole team does this: six people in six time zones.

At a meeting we all had we discussed that phenomenon a bit and my boss gave a quick internal lighting talk on the subject of working remotely. We also had quite a few conversations about this when we had our 1:1 meetings and I want to share a few of the observations we both had.

A lot of companies don’t like people working remotely as it is disruptive to a normal office schedule. It can also breed jealousy in the people who have to commute every day to the office. When you offer the option to people though it is amazing what can happen if you play your cards right:

• More output – I find myself constantly feeling guilty of not doing enough (and that is a common feeling). Being visible in an office and available for quick meetings gives you a false comfort of having achieved something. You might not have – you have just been busy. If all people see is what you produced (this could be code, documentation, emails or whatever else) you concentrate much more on the production rather than the talk about it. True, this might mean that things get written that are not 100% what is needed, but at least things get done.
• More documentation – as everybody is distributed and not on the same time zone it becomes much more important to document what you do. This leaves a trail of what has been done before that can be used to hand over work to others if a person gets sick or leaves the company.
• Efficient use of communication tools – instead of meeting in a room at a certain time or impromptu the channels of communication of the web become much more important to have a quick chat. In Mozilla we use Skype, IRC, various messengers, phones and video chat. Again, as we are relying on these for information and communication we use them more sensibly than you normally would. Your status on a messenger is a very important tool to tell your colleagues what is going on and avoid them asking for help and not hearing anything for hours. Messaging evolves from a distraction into a lifeline.
• Collaborative writing – we tend to use Etherpad before and during our meetings to take care of deliveries, goals and actions. By having everyone edit at the same time you collect an amazing amount of information quickly without having a single “meeting note taker” and then hope people will read it. When you were part of the process you are much more likely to read up later on.
• Sequential production – being in different time zones means you can work on the same product in sequence. I can write a text in London in my morning and send it on to my colleagues for review in the afternoon. They can hand it on to another person to add more content and I can finally review it the morning after and put it live. By the time the whole of Europe has tweeted, talked and commented on it the US uptake will be much higher because the content already comes with better reputation.
• Independence and trust – when you are not sitting next to another you are much more empowered to work on your own terms. This can be in a cafe, in your bed or on a train. As people can not look over your shoulder and constantly see what you are doing it breeds a culture of trust. You just expect your colleagues to do right as they are mostly reporting to their own peace of mind.
• Life is less disrupted – companies spend a lot of money on on-site restaurants, gyms and dry cleaning. All things to keep people locked in a golden cage and make their lives easier although they have these things at home. My favourite example is missing deliveries when I am in the office. Not every company delivers to addresses not connected to a credit card. So many a time I missed a “9 to 5” delivery of some product as I was at work and had to wait till the weekend until I had time to pick it up from the depot. Now I just work and get things delivered without me chasing after them.

Jason Fried covered a few of these things in his “Why work doesn’t happen at work” talk and while a lot of it should be taken with a grain of salt, I for one am very happy with what I am doing right now.

I was just lucky enough to pester Sean Martell – Lead Visual Designer (Reticulator of Splines), Mozilla to alter his Avatar to create one for me.

Isn’t it kick-ass? Loving talented people :)