Human Factors

Two days ago Kai and I arrived in Chicago for Adobe Max 2007. We are still working on getting used to the time difference, but at the moment we are doing pretty we’ll and we are awake although it’s just 3 am back in Wellington. Currently I’m sitting in my first session, a one-day pre-conference workshop called “Unlocking Cross-Media Workflows”. Some guys are showing very cool stuff around image publishing, video editing and other stuff around media. It’s pretty interesting and unbelievable how easy things have become in the last couple of years.

After not having been to MAX last year, I notice one thing that’s quite different to previous years: all the presenters use a Mac to show their stuff and in the audience there are more and more Mac-users as well. So finally people realise, that things can be much easier using the right hardware… ;-)

I haven’t been to a BarCamp yet, but the concept of getting together with people in a user generated conference sounds both fun and educational. Next Saturday (15 Sept) there will be a BarCamp about E-Government in Wellington. Some of the sessions sound really interesting and I would love to go there, but I’ll be in Tauranga for the weekend. Hopefully this is not the last time something like this will happen.

Throughout September publisher O’Reilly is running a series called “Women in Technology: Hear us roar” with articles by successful women working in technology related fields. The first articles are online and it’s definitely worth reading every single one!

Today I finally found the time to have a closer look at the DVD of Mac Format’s August issue. There I learned about Color Oracle, a wee application that allows you to see your screen like people with color vision impairments would see it – all it needs is one click on a little icon in the menu bar. You can chose between Deuteranopia, Protanopia and Tritanopia, and while the colors change in front of your eyes, you’ll even learn what exactly this terms mean and how many people are affected by the chosen type of vision impairment. I think, this free application is a must-have for everyone developing for the web.