Keynote--Jeffrey Veen

Man, this guy's resume is impressive!

Said the #heweb08 on twitter was hottest thing going on twitter this morning. WOOT!!!

Correlating web to the intricate choreography of the opening ceremony of Beijing Olympics this year.
Giving a humorous bit of history starting in 1974 with watergate, gas price spike, and now discussing musical shifts, etc. Broke up the monopoly of telecommunications. Used the word internet for the first time in 1974 in a white paper. PONG! Tells of first time he saw a "tv with a glass top that he could control". With games came the ability to participate and create. Showing nice pics of old games/computer parts. :-)

IBM released first hard drive. It's about the size of a kitchen counter and cabinets. In today's dollars it cost about $100,000 per GB. now with Google can get storage for $0.15 per GB.

Every minute of the day at YouTube 13 HOURS of video are uploaded. {gasps}

UPDATE 1:05 PM

Showing how using some design and usability guidelines, can make a table of data more useable. "Fine line between information and decoration." You can lose the meaning if over-decorate the data. Spent 15 months at Google to work on google analytics on the dashboard.

Wow...looked at stuff from 1854 for design ideas:

• Cholera outbreak. 1 of 3 people had it and died. Dr. John Snow, one of first anastheisiologists. Mapped the cholera deaths in neighborhood of SoHo. convinced city council for London that the outbreak was being spread by water, not air. He took a drawing from a sewer engineer and edited it for his use. He used visualization to help prove imperical fact.
• Charles Joseph Minard had a chart of Napoleon's march. The graph shows 6 different variables. He wanted to create a graph so people wouldn't have to think in order to understand the data and see the patterns.
• Harry Beck worked for London underground. He drew a map of it in 1930's. he was an engineer so used that knowledge to create a very useful map. Users of the underground only care about where does it stop and what side of the river am I on?
• Jeff was watching Indiana Jones and got some inspiration for a chart on GA. Had a dream that Indiana flew his plane over the data. LOL
• Thought of ways to gain perspective. ex: 2 billion pennies. how to visualize that many pennies? Using images to gain perspective can help. Megapenny.com
• Chris Jordon, artist. uses small images on a large scale to create impact. chrisjordon.com. Point here is to find the story in the numbers and portray that on the web in a visual way.

UPDATE 1:20 PM

Talking about how designers for paper had a change in perspective when had to design for web b/c had to give up control. Control of size page, typography, had to be flexible. One of these designers started csszengarden.com

Realizing we can give up control of design. We can find the story in the data and help it with visualization, but giving the control to users so they can extrapolate what they want, to find their own stories in the data is powerful.

UPDATE 1:30 PM

Wow, he's such a dynamic speaker. Very engaging, knowledgeable and very timely.

Seems like he's saying that on the web we have control in that we create ways to allow the users to control their own data and create their own story or glean what they need/want from a system.

They provided filters to enable clarity. Ex: gapminder. This seems amazing. Note to self, I need to check this out.

New York Times has a casualties of War timeline that has just continued to run.

We need to not only tell stories, but allow discovery. Provide interactivity and allow filtering, not just our providing editing. Web 2.0 is collaborative, collective knowledge.

Teens have a different idea of private vs public.

Veen's fave example of meeting users' needs: us dept of ag: need hay or have hay? LOL

key pts: know yourself and understand the user.

http://veen.com/heweb08.pdf