Prof. Temple Grandin - Colorado State - “Autism, Drawing and Design”

From here on out, the speakers were a bit more unconventional, with more emphasis on the human interaction and experience side of things.

I’m here in San Francisco at UXweek 2009, sent by Riverbed, determined to learn all I can and rub shoulders with the best and brightest minds in the industry. It’s been a really cool couple of days so far. I’ve met some really cool designers and got to pick their brains on their team practices. The food, oh the food: it’s excellent (ahi tuna? creme brulee? smoked salmon? green tea cookies? Pinch me.)

I’m currently in Botswana, doing volunteer work at a nonprofit Christian agency called Love Botswana Outreach Mission. Among my responsibilities are helping out with the organization’s IT needs. I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the organization is wired for 24/7 Internet access, despite being located about 10km out from the center of Maun, a medium-sized village.

One trend on the Web these days is to move away from traditional full-stack frameworks (like Rails) toward client-side, full-stack Javascript frameworks (among them Dojo, GWT, SproutCore, and Cappuccino). There’s been a lot of buzz about SproutCore and Cappuccino, because of their design elegance, shiny Mac-ness and promises of really rich client experiences. I’ve been checking them out and here’s some of my observations so far:

I’m looking to develop a Web application with a full-stack Javascript framework like GWT, SproutCore or Cappuccino. I’m making the decision to go with a Javascript framework over a traditional full-stack framework (like Rails) because:

I think I must preface this post with a bit of context:

Do any fellow geeks out there follow any GettingThingsDone (GTD) practices?

Many of you have wondered what it’s like daily indulging in the opulence that are the FAQQLY offices. Allow me to take you on a tour.