Wow, it’s over. What an amazing event it was!

I wanted to share with you a bit of the TEDxBoulder back-story. For me, it was one hell of a learning experience about organizing, planning and avoiding stress. This was my first time putting on an event of this magnitude. Luckily for me, I was part of an amazing team that included:

• Andrew Hyde
• Jennifer Roberts
• Arthur Nisnevich
• Ef Rodriguez
• Ken Ficklas
• Jamie Harkins
• Dan Storch
• Josh Mishell

In the Summer of 2008, I registered TEDxBoulder with TED, under the full intention of getting an event running by the Fall of 2008. I delayed. Several months later my wife was pregnant, so I delayed again. Then my son was born, again I delayed. All these delays were excuses I was giving myself to push off the event to a date in the future when I would be “ready.” It wasn’t until April of 2010 that I began to realize I was afraid to move forward. At the time I was reading “Making Ideas Happen” by Scott Bellsky of Behance, and “Linchpin” by Seth Godin. It occurred to me that my “delays” were unnecessary, and that I just needed to start taking action. I needed to move the ball forward to gain momentum. It was then that Andrew reached out to me about doing the event jointly.

There it was – my kick-in-the-ass. Now I had to be accountable to someone other then myself. Andrew’s history of action, community involvement and experience starting up events like Ignite Boulder and Start-up Weekend was undeniable. The ball started rolling. Andrew locked in Chautauqua Park and started assembling a team. Interestingly, with the exception of Josh and Ef, this team had very little prior history with Andrew and me, and I had little history with Andrew and his hands-off style of leadership.

At first the project manager in me thrashed with discomfort. I was used to milestones, to-dos, project plans etc.. TxB had none of that. Instead, we used Google Docs to collaborate and share planning schedules and budgets. I naively thought we could grab sponsorship first, develop a budget and spend from there. Andrew decided to charge everything, keeping the faith that we’d sell out. I soon realized that all of those old project management techniques would have just gotten in the way of us reaching our goal. Fundamentally, it was the Team that made this happen. The joint passion, interest and dedication of the members removed the need to “check on people” or delegate out assignments. We all knew what we needed to do, we just needed to ship!

We started with the speakers. The entire team reached out to their networks of friends and family to find some of the great thinkers and leaders in the Boulder area, and by mid-June our speaker list was 90% complete. Ken tackled the music talent and landed Vienna Teng and John Spottiswoode. Jamie coordinated the staging, signage and venue resources. Jennifer coordinated and rallied together 25+ volunteers plus our food vendors. Dan’s team at Good Apples designed our materials & gifts for the speakers. Arthur managed the TEDxBoulder.com site and was in charge of the overall presentation of the slides. Josh had the monumental task of beautifying the slides a week before the event, and Ef… he just did his thing, and did an amazing job of it. I worked on sponsorship and general coordination, and Andrew showed us the way and lead the charge.

The inaugural TEDxBoulder was a great success. We sold out a few days before the event. Our audience stayed engaged from 4pm till 9pm. Our speakers drove home their messages of hope, knowledge and action. Vienna and Spottiswoode delivered some beautiful entertainment. I made some great friendships and was introduced to some amazing people.

Will we do it again? I’m not sure.

I, for one, won’t decide for another month or so, and I’ll only do it if I can have the same team that I had for this event. They were ALL amazing! That doesn’t mean that someone else won’t pick up the reigns and run with it, however.

My take home: taking action, no matter how small is the necessary prerequisite to success. The stress isn’t in the “doing.” The stress is in the “delay.”

The Good

Like so many brides-to-be before me, I have been using The Knot to stay on track with my wedding to-dos. The Knot does a fantastic job of divvying out to-do’s based on your time-line. Unfortunately because there have been so many brides-to-be who enjoy the usage of this site, it has become bloated with ads, banners, links, animated gifs, you call it, they have it. Furthermore, sometimes the to-do’s don’t apply to me (i.e. no videographer).

So instead of digging around in the links and ads of The Knot, my “wedding planner” populates Stacks with the to-dos. This is helpful when there are tasks specific to the bride or groom or maid of honor etc. Furthermore, if the to-do has any other information, I can add notes in the details and I can adjust the urgency of each task.

The Bad

I mentioned my procrastination, right? It’s a wonder I completed this blog at all. Anyway, one problem I encountered is that unlike my thorough use of Stacks at work, I have a tendency to ignore tasks in my wedding stack list. Because each task is something I need to complete by the end of the month, I usually ignore it till I get nagged about it. Sort of defeats the purpose of Stacks. However, I chalk that up to user error.

Another problem I encountered is my wedding planner is no project manager. Each month a task dump occurs and each task isn’t carefully scoped out giving it the correct due date, actionable date and details within the task. Stacks isn’t utilized to it’s full potential. It becomes a to-do checklist for whenever I get around to it.

The Conclusion

Being the sexy app that it is, Stacks is an extremely powerful project management tool. I’m glad I have the opportunity to use it for my wedding so I don’t have a random freak out that I am forgetting to do something. However, it is becoming a glorified to-do list. There is nothing wrong with this, I just know what Stacks is really capable of. So thanks, Stacks, for helping remind this procrastinator that she is continuing to procrastinate, but will get around to it eventually.

First, the bumper for the most part is a great little case. It’s hard to emphasize, but having external buttons on the side really make the whole thing feel like it’s a part of the phone. Unlike other cases I’ve used where you have to pinch your fingers into a hole to reach the buttons. Notice in the picture below how the volume buttons are actually on top of the bumper case, not wedged into a small carved out spot.

Okay, so the case for the most part is a nice addition to the phone. The “for the most part” is because of a few small issues. First, the headphone jack is a bit tight with the case, if you’re planning on plugging in a large headphone jack plug it’s not going to fit. Take a look at the default iPhone earbuds, if the plug is more than a few millimeters larger it won’t fit. Second, if you use 3rd party charging cord or car plugs you might not be able to plug into the bottom of the phone with the bumper on. I noticed this on older iPod plugs that have the two side pinchers. See image below:

Last, when I first got my bumper it felt a tiny bit loose. To be fair, I’m pretty picky and it’s possible others aren’t bugged by this. The fact is that the bumper, while fairly snug had a little bit of give on the sides (IE :I could slide it up and down slightly, maybe a few millimeters) and same with the top. After some reading I found information suggesting that heat might shrink the rubber and plastic just a bit. I briefly considered boiling my bumper, but decided against that. The second option was leaving it in my hot car for a few hours. So, the next day I took off the bumper and left it on my dashboard for four hours, it was about 90 degrees out. Low and behold when placed back on my phone the bumper was snug. Problem solved.

Now that bumpers are going to be given out for free I think this trick could come in handy for others. Let me know your results if you give it a shot.

Further, we called the new 4.0.1 phone from the office landline and took a video. You can see the call is fine for a few seconds, then we apply pressure to the death spots and by 30 seconds in the call is dropped. Even though the phone never shows “no service” it still drops the call. Apple stated this update was just a reception formula fix, still, it shows that even with 1 bar of 3g being reported the call will still drop if those spots are covered.

Laying the Ground Rules

As the lead UI designer behind our group task solution Stacks I can be a pretty harsh critic on things that don’t feel or work right. Also along this same line, I understand the difficulty of developing a product and trying to meet feature requests. It’s impossible to keep everyone happy, not to mention build features with time and care. For some of these apps the features I want might be coming, for others they aren’t part of the ballgame and never will be. I get that, but let’s still “talk it out”.

Required vs. Nice to Have

Must have:

• Well designed interface
• Quick task entry
• Repeating tasks
• Time based notifications/reminders
• Access to tasks at all times (ideally: mobile, desktop, ipad, and web)
• Cloud syncing

Nice to have:

• Categorization of tasks (long term, work, personal, etc.)
• Notes or sub-tasks
• File attachments
• An API
• Great keyboard shortcuts

Alright, let’s jump into the four selected contenders and see what they’ve brought to the table.

Simplenote

Done Well:

phenomenal cloud syncing, quick task entry, access to tasks at all times, notes/subtasks, an API

Lacking:

repeating tasks, reminders, categorization, great keybaord shortcuts

At first I felt a little bad including Simplenote as a task management app. The truth is that Simplenote was never meant to soley manage tasks. That said, it’s just too good at what it does to not have it on this list. First off, Simplenote is bar none the best cloud syncing application I’ve ever used. It’s never once lost my changes or updates and I’m using it on my computer, iPad, and iPhone. Also, in a pinch it has a web interface (that doesn’t suck) as well. On top of this it has an API (although it’s not fully public yet) which has allowed developers to tackle the interface in unique ways. For instance, Just Notes and Notational Velocity are independent apps that work great with the Simplenote API.

There are a few big hurdles you have to be willing to accept with Simplenote. First, it won’t be able to send you reminders in any way shape or form. This means you have to remember to check it to see what’s due. This became a deal breaker for me after a few months, but if you’re the type of person who’s disciplined, this may not be an issue. Second, Simplenote has no way to repeat tasks, so all those CC bills and monthly reminders need to be created every month.

If all you’re looking for a is a small To Do app that also has great note taking capabilities Simplenote is probably your best bet. Beautiful Helvtica type, a super clean and fast interface, and very proactive developers. If you need more than just a few lines of text, like me, then it’s onward to the next app.

Things

Done Well:

quick task entry, categorization/tagging, nice interface, access on multiple devices

Lacking:

Repeating tasks are terrible, badge only notifications, no cloud syncing

Things is perhaps the most well known Mac and iPhone task management solution. Culture Code, the creator of Things, has been featured on Apple’s developer site and has done well in a number of reviews. From the surface Things looks like a winner. Beautiful icon and interface, multiple device support, plus tagging and categorization. Yes it is expensive, $50 desktop + $10 iPhone + $20 iPad, but that’s sometimes worth it for a great experience. The problem is that Things felt off the whole time I used it. It’s not that it doesn’t have a few great features (ie: quick task entry via hotkey on the desktop version) but rather that the deep features trail off. The features that should be most thought out don’t seem to be at all. For instance, let’s look at creating a scheduled repeating task:

First off, the entire due field is uneditable so why does it even allow typing? Second, the wording is just ridiculous, ‘copies are due’ could just be ‘this task is due’. Further, why at the bottom do I have to say each copy has a due date, didn’t I just specify that up above when I said the day it’s due? Granted, maybe there is someone out there who needs to randomly assign tasks every month, on a given date, and doesn’t actually have a date that task is due. But really?! Even so, Culture Code should spend some time wording this better, as it is now it’s just insanity. Check out some better solutions that other developers created:

Second, Things doesn’t have cloud syncing. For an application that is meant to exist on three different devices it is extremely weird that there is no cloud connection. Instead, you have to have each device’s wifi on and then let them sync over a home/business wifi network. This, in my opinion, is a recipe for disaster. Router and wifi questions aside, what if I add 7 tasks on my laptop but am connected via ethernet, then take just my phone out of town for the weekend? My data is completely inaccessible. For a $50+ dollar set of apps I expect cloud syncing, even for a yearly cost.

Third, Things isn’t very good at reminding you about tasks. It shows you a badge of how many tasks you have but beyond that you have to go in and look at your tasks on a daily basis. Maybe some people do this but I don’t. Let me specify a time to be reminded and then show me an alert on my phone, simple enough?

End game, Things just doesn’t stack up for the price. If Culture Code works on usability and wording, allows cloud syncing, and gives a discount to users that own all the apps I’ll consider it again.

NotifyMe 2

Done Well:

beautiful mobile interface, push reminders, categorization, task notes, price

Lacking:

web interface might as well not exist, no desktop version, no API

NotifyMe 2 is the most recent application that I’ve been using. While it lacks a desktop client (which is a huge downfall) the mobile client is extremely good. The biggest and strongest pitch for NotifyMe is exactly what it’s name says: notifications. NotifyMe syncs your tasks to the cloud and then sends a push reminder to your phone when the task needs to be done. At that point you can either snooze it and be reminded later (at an interval you set) or check it off. Additionally, repeating tasks on NotifyMe are better than any other interface I’ve seen – especially considering it’s a mobile interface. You set the date and time the task is due, then how often it should repeat, you can do alternate weekdays, weeks, months, or years. Or, something like remind me every 45th day. The best part about this is the ease with which it works. You can tell the crew at PoweryBase sat down and really went through the steps.

Among the other nice things in NotifyMe are task notes and task sharing. Task notes are placed nicely within each task, a small icon appears next to tasks that have notes letting you know additional information exists. This seems small but the ability to add a few notes into a task is huge. For instance, I add a task to set up a doctor appointment easily, but remembering to bring my new insurance card and the new office address could be just as important. The ability to have notes fixes this problem. Additionally the app also has a sharing and friends feature. I haven’t tried it enough to know how well it works, but if it works as advertised (and I assume it does based on the rest of the app) then it should be a hit for married couples or families. The ability to assign notifications to others on the fly could be extremely useful.

The biggest knock against NotifyMe has to be their application web interface, webapp.notifymecloud.com. In fact, let’s be honest, it doesn’t even deserve to be called a web interface. It’s more like a pile of trash sitting online that is meant to somehow duplicate functionality of the mobile app. And, while technically it has the functionality, the feel and care of the mobile app is 100% absent. The icons are gross, the corners of the containers are rough and thrown together. The task fields are unstyled and unorganized. It’s literally like someone went into Dreamweaver and inserted a bunch of default text fields, added some terrible icons, and said “that’s good, I’m done”. The fact this application is so bad makes me terrified that PoweryBase doesn’t take their design seriously. If they are willing to put out something this bad on the web who’s to say the app might some day slip into the same void. Terrifying.

In conclusion, NotifyMe 2, from a mobile perspective, is the best task manager I’ve seen. This is big because if there is any place to have a great app it’s on the device that’s always with you. Sadly, the web app is not worthy of discussion. It’s unusable and beyond in a pinch circumstances, worthless. Let’s hope this gets addressed so I can give NotifyMe 2 the clear victory in the To Do application space.

The Hit List

Done Well:

best desktop experience of any app I have ever used, great keyboard shortcuts, tagging/categorization, extremely fast task creation, repeating tasks

Lacking:

vaporware iPhone version, an API

I’ve never been as excited about a program as I was about The Hit List. It’s beautiful, fast, easy to learn, and incredibly well thought out. Sadly two years into the product life cycle the announced iPhone app has never been released and the desktop version has never come out of beta. The developer has dropped off the face of the earth. While the desktop version is truly a marvel to be seen (even in beta), the lack of syncing, API access, or a mobile version render this app a dinosaur. Some people have gotten it to work with the 2Do via calendar syncing, but I’m just not willing to use some hack method for important tasks in my life.

Because I’m such a fan of The Hit List I believe it belongs in this showdown. For someone that only needs a desktop application there is nothing better on the table. Just check out this quick video I whipped up:

If The Hit List gets an iPhone app I will jump on it no matter what the cost. Though I’m a realist and therefore betting this app, sadly, won’t see the light of day.

The Final Conclusion

Considering it’s mid 2010 I’m astonished that someone hasn’t solved the GTD personal task solution in a way that meets the few goals I provided above. There is a lot of potential in the market but no superstar. I’d love to hear other people’s solutions to the GTD problem, maybe something’s out there that I don’t know about. Until then I’ll keep hoping for a better desktop or web version of NotifyMe2. Or, even better, the mystical unicorn Hit List iPhone application from Andy Kim.

After I moved on and began to work as a freelance designer I was energized by the process of learning about my client’s businesses. I have learned about the inner workings and challenges of countless businesses over the years and I am still excited every time I have the opportunity to learn more. From high-speed data recorders for science and military use, to cryogenic pumps used in semiconductor production, to the design of custom microchips and circuit boards, I have an understanding of so many businesses and innovative products and solutions that I would have never been exposed to were it not for my profession as a designer.

A recent project kick-off was for an extremely innovative company in Boston called Kiva Systems. Kiva has revolutionized the way product retailers manage their warehouses and fulfill orders. While only at the beginning of the project, I have already learned so much more than I would have ever known about how a product gets to my door when I click “Checkout” on a retailer’s website. In a demonstration I was able to witness how an order could be fulfilled in a manner of minutes after the order was submitted on the website. Unlike traditional warehouse systems where workers who receive an order have to go out and search through the warehouse to find all the products that I ordered, the Kiva System brings the products to the person who then put’s the order in a box for shipping. Through a complex system of software and robots, the shelves that contain the products that I ordered are brought to the person to put in the box. Watching the robots move the shelves around the warehouse is like watching a dance performance. You can check out videos on their site to see this amazing system in action.

Once again I am learning about a business that I had no previous knowledge of and certainly never would have known anything about were it not for my profession. You would think this would help me in Trivial Pursuit, but unfortunately you would be wrong. What it does help me with is being a better designer and maintaining my passion for what I do.

For this year’s conference I chose to attend sessions by Tony Mikes, Sam Harrison, and John January & Tug McTighe. Tony Mike’s session was titled, “Is Your Agency Interesting.” As an agency owner I was drawn to this session as we are always trying to better differentiate ourselves. I came to the conclusion that I think Imulus is interesting, but that we could probably communicate that more effectively than we are currently and we could also be doing a lot more interesting things. Tony was a very compelling speaker and I will definitely be checking out his Second Wind company.

Next came Sam Harrison’s session on “How to Sell Your Ideas to Bosses, Clients and Other Decision Makers.” An author of several books, I found Sam to be a very polished and interesting speaker. His ideas were well organized and I learned a lot that I can apply to how we present ideas at Imulus. The idea that he left us with, that it was “All About Energy,” really summed it up for me. If you put all your energy into preparing and presenting your idea your chances of success are much higher. If you aren’t excited about your own idea, how can you expect the person on the other side of the table to be excited.

By far the most unusual session was “Everything I Needed to Know About Advertising I Learned from Star Wars.” John and Tug were very entertaining in their cleverly constructed presentation. Utilizing lessons drawn from all the Star Wars films, they were able to show parallels where those lessons apply to the life of a creative. And while the lessons were good, the heart of the presentation was the humor and clever concept. I will always remember that there is a Death Star out there ready to kill my next great idea.

The resource center had some interesting booths and lots of quality shwag. Adobe was showing off CS5 and bunches of paper companies were hoping that designers will continue to design printed pieces for a bit longer. Threadless was nice enough to give out free drinks at the happy hour at the end of the day. Thanks for the beer!

Here are the additional links that got mentioned during the meetup.

• The League of Movable Type
• Font Squirrel @fontface typefaces
• Hot Shoo imagery
• Border Radius quick grab site
• CSS 3 generator / quick code creation
• HTML5 for Web Designers — A logic and semantic based review of HTML5

This should be everything that was covered, however, if you find something missing feel free to add a comment with a link. We’ll jump on it ASAP.

Updates: A few more HTML5 resources in the list.

The good:

1. The size. I love the way this thing conforms to my hand. So much so, I feel like all other mouses feel too large and clumsy. I have read reviews where people have claimed this mouse is too small and light. I have not had this problem – however as stated previously, I have normal sized hands for a 5′8″ female which means they’re relatively small.

2. The scrolling. The predecessor to my Magic Mouse was of course the Mighty Mouse. One of the main problems I would have with the 360 scroll ball on the Mighty Mouse was it would become gritty and would stop being functional. This could always be cured by holding it upside-down and puffing can o’ air into the recesses of the 360 ball. Obviously this problem is cured by Magic Mouse. Please note – being a control freak while using Photoshop, I turned off the momentum scroll. I have been told this is a nice feature, but I can’t say that from personal experience.

3. The right-click. Although the right click is functional with the Mighty Mouse (as long as that is specified in the system preferences), I feel like the Magic Mouse’s right-click is more responsive and intuitive.

The bad:

1. The sensitivity. This is a double-edged sword. Sure, it’s nice when you WANT to scroll, but when you don’t it’s a pain. This rears it’s ugly head often when I am using Photoshop. An example of this is when I have the color picker window open. Notice on the screen shot the field next to the “R” (meaning red) is highlighted; this happens by default when one opens this color picker window. What happens when this field is highlighted is the scroll functionality on your mouse can easily add and subtract the color red. Many times I have barely brushed the top of the mouse and it will change my selected color without my consent. There is no clear area on your mouse where the scroll sensitivity begins, so just laying your hand on the top of the mouse can create a scroll with any slight movement.

2. The two finger swipe. This also goes back to the sensitivity problem. I had to turn this option off after I was working on code in our CMS and my fingers brushed the top of the mouse. The mouse somehow gleaned from this that I wanted to go back to the previous page in my browser, and thus losing all of the work I had just completed.

The conclusion:

After turning off the two finger swipe functionality, life has been easier along with learning how to deal with the problems in Photoshop. I haven’t yet ditched this mouse for the older Mighty Mouse (which is still in my possession), but that’s only after adapting to its downfalls. Basically my conclusion to this review is I would NOT recommend this product to a Graphic Designer, but I would recommend it to people who don’t use Adobe Creative Suite.

Foursquare

I started out using Foursquare in early ‘09; there wasn’t a ton of users and I had trouble convincing others to use the service so I bailed; only to return months later once a user base developed.

Gowalla

I was introduced to Gowalla at lunch with Brian Williams, from Viget Labs. The interface was cleaner, snappier and more pleasant to use, so I picked it up.

Strengths & Weaknesses

I’ve broken down some key aspects that apply to both applications.
Background: For this experiment I’m checking in from Ziggi’s Coffee House in Longmont, CO.

Find a Location

Gowalla is quicker to pinpoint a location; whereas Foursquare usually requires me to search for a nearby location rather then just clicking check-in. *Victory goes to Gowalla.

*Note, if you are on EDGE or a similar network then your location can be off just enough to restrict you from checking in. Foursquare is a bit more forgiving.

To be fair to Foursquare, it did find my location only after typing “Zigg” in the search box. If this happened 10% of the time, I’d be cool with that. My experience is this happens more then 50% of the time, but perhaps experience differs based on coverage and geography.

The Check-In

Both give you the option to drop a comment and then share with your social networks; however only Foursquare gives you the option to “not notify” your Foursquare buddies. I think this is tremendously considerate of Foursquare, but lacking in Gowalla. What if I want to check-in to a mundane location like a grocery store or gas station? Do my friends really want to be notified of that? Maybe, maybe not… but give me the option to control my alert rather then pissing them off with silly alerts that have little value. *Victory Foursquare.

* Foursquare automatically sends a Tweet when the user becomes a Mayor. This is a bullshit move and should really be controlled by the user as an optional send.

Merit Badges

There is a certain novelty aspect to the Gowalla items and the Foursquare badges. To this day I haven’t seen a good explanation of the random things I’ve collected on Gowalla. Foursquare’s badges are somewhat more useful in that they indicate something about the behavior of the user. These features feel like they were created for Russell (UP Character). Slight victory to Foursquare.

Gowalla Miscellaneous

Thumbs Up: The ability to comment on the check-ins of others. This is a nice feature that encourages the followers to interact with each other.
Thumbs Down: Trips. Really, why would I be interested in trips that are hundreds of miles away from my current location. Gowalla, please allow the users to define Trips that are relevant to the locality.

Foursquare Miscellaneous

Thumbs Up: Location specific tips. Hugely interesting if you are visiting a new area or are interested in something new nearby.
Another Thumbs Up: Foursquare seems to be doing more with retailers. While visiting Noodles & Company in Boulder I was alerted to a “Nearby Special” at Modmarket. This sort of integration is what’s going to pay the bills down the road.

Thumbs Down: To-Dos. This seems half-baked. Where is my ability to add a new to-do?

As I said in the beginning, I’m sticking with both for the time being. I rely on Foursquare for the mundane locations and Gowalla for the more exciting places. If Foursquare would nail my location on the first try, then I think I would gravitate over to their app a bit more. If Gowalla allowed me to check-in from a wider geographic location and they added the option for me to control my alerts to friends then I would wholeheartedly stick with Gowalla.