Exiting things are happening.

Instead of looking at the whole picture and settle on a distinct style, they are all over the place, adding bits and pieces they hope will improve their expression. The ‘more is better’-crowd. I bet you’ve seen them around. Usually they are more than willing to include you in the process of deciding what to do.

Compare that with unfocused applications with lots of features. Highligts and bling bling — featuritis … is about insecurity. In the hope that someone will like them, they try to have a little something for everybody — and leave no area empty. Fear of whitespace, fear of focus.

So next time you see a web app standing in a bar looking nervous all pimped up, resist the urge to have a quick shag. Go for the hot one standing to the side, with a relaxed look and an eye for combination and color. Your future you will thank you.

You won’t find that here, just some of the things I’ve done recently, including hardcoded URLs, IDs etc. You’ll figure it out, I’m sure.

Thanks to Niels for the introduction (he made the del.icio.us one). This is incredibly easy — otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to do it ;-) But you might as well grab thesee now that I’ve made them.

List your recent del.icio.us items: delicious.xslt
Display square thumbs from 23: 23.xslt
List your 5 recent plazes: plazes.xslt
List your Last.FM tracks: lastfm.xslt

What I intended to do was to let out a little steam and suggest that we take a slightly different path; I get annoyed when I see bullshit, especially when it’s unnessecary. It’s my right, might be healthy — and I don’t think it’s too anal and fear-driven/arrogant to suggest that whoever thinking they get it, make sure they do their best.

Gunnar Langemark has posted some related thoughts, stating that there are multiple ways of doing things and that it’s the way it is. That’s true. But I don’t see that being a reason not to try our best.

Gunnar suggests we pick our fights; battle the big companies instead of fighting the ant war. I couldn’t agree more. The thing is, I fully believe that the best way of fighting everyone else is to make sure we play our own game. A decent game with no selling out and a clear statement of the values we believe in. And that’s that, really. I’m not trying to cause a fight. Instead I suggest that we take it upon ourselves to discuss some of the things out in the open and back our actions with words — and our words with action. We share the objective, I believe. I don’t think there’s any value in being an arrogant 1%‘er — but that whatever value’s in there should be made clear.

I find too much buzz everywhere I look. And already, I’m spending a lot of time joking about a lot of the terms that reflect the things we are doing, just as I find myself explaining to clients that “this is not hot air” when they’re curious about some of the new ways of thinking. I’d like for everyone to think about what they say and write, how they portray their own field of work and how and what they sell.

Some things to keep in mind:

• Manifests should only be made, when there’s a revolution around the corner. This is a list.
• Words are important. Simplification equally so. but you don’t say ‘beta’ when you mean ‘agile’ — or ‘web 2.0′ when you mean ‘ajax’ — or ‘social software’ when you mean ‘community’, do you? Don’t worry about missing out on all the good buzz, your customers will thank you in the end.
• Words are important. Be careful with terms like ‘economy’, ‘revolution’ and ‘paradigm’. New opportunities don’t make a revolution, something involving money doesn’t constitute an economy. It sounds cool but these words have a meaning already. Maybe your customers get confused when they know the original one. Iook it up — and use with care.
• When pointing to technologies marking a new beginning, make sure you’re pointing to the actual one making the difference. Blogging might not mean shit — easy publishing in general might do.
• Show value. Telling customers that “it’s new”, “everyone else is doing it” and that they should “jump on the train” remind me of the early dot-com years. You’re selling hot air based on fear.
• Buzz is better than hype. Both, however, have a tendency to end up as selling points in their own right. They’re not. When you say “web 2.0″, do you know why you do it? Do you think it is a fitting container for a new way of doing things — or a clever marketing tool?
• That something’s ‘new’ isn’t a reason for anyone to do anything. To refer to the speed of which information travel and gets generated and to claim that ‘things are happening really fast now’ is to ignore how most civilizations evolve. I would be very surprised if things didn’t continue to develop this way from here to eternity. So that’s not the problem you should say you’re solving.
• What happens when all your customers have bought your services? Does your company name or profile imply that what they’re buying is just a way to ‘get up to speed’ or implement ‘that new thing’? Can your see yourself and your company in two year’s time? Are you honest about that you can’t?
• Is it clear from the way you’re communicating that you didn’t invent all the terms you’re using? Is it clear who did? And what it is you’re adding on top?
• Framing is important. In many ways, our core service is to enable people to use new technology and provide new ways of thinking about a lot of the things they would normally do by giving them a vocabulary; a way to think and talk about things that are new to them. Think hard about how you use terms. Are you drawing on known concepts to make things clearer where you should make a clear distinction? If you didn’t know what you know, would it make sense? Is there a risk your terms could obscure a good intention? Have you thought about metaphors lately?
• Networks are cool. Being in more than one is not bad. Is the foundation of your network based on values you’ve made an effort to explain — or is your profile ‘new’; hinting that this is the new black without further proof?
• When you explain the possibilities with technology and the ways we use it, do you attempt to transfer industry terms to a business environment uncritically? Are you confident that term x, known and debated within the industry, provides any real value to a corporate client — or would they be better off getting your take on some of the values?
• Would you rather not worry about all this hippie-nonsense and force your customers to swallow the blue pill — as it is
  movie wall street: money never sleeps online

  good for them?

I might add to this list, i might not. That doesn’t mean it’s in beta. It just means that maybe i find some time and some more input — and maybe i don’t.

Update: Gunnar Langemark posts what I believe is a comment to this post. Some different views…and some of the same conclusions ;-)

40+ developers from 11 countries made this a wonderful event. Met some nice and cool people, most of them already with their hands dirty from doing sites with umbraco. Sweet.

The venue, Kulturhuset Islands Brygge, proved to be very well suited for the conference — everything went well and even the weather turned out ok in the end.

Good presentations, lots of talks, ideas, questions, examples.

My photos can be found at Flickr: Umbraco Codegarden 06. Also, take a look at the CodeGarden blog for more updates — maybe a bit of video one of these days.

Hope to see you next year.

I wanted to cut things a little sharper, clean up the sidebar, widen the blog post area to bump up the font size and see if I could get over my fear of color. Features include leather and a color scheme that would make John Deere proud.

I’m nowhere near being done with it, but it’s starting to take shape. I still need to style the different sections, clean up the code and make sure everything is aligned and adjusted.

Apart from the photostream and links to various involvements that are moved to the footer, everything is pretty much the same as before. But if you find something broken, please let me know…

I’m in. Have a few things to sort out anyway, hopefully this will force me to act sooner…

Update: CSS is back — here’s a screenshot of the unstyled site