–Engage

(Disclaimer/Apology: I’m sorry if you got duplicates of this. If you are a non-USer I hope you will feel engaged enough to see the importance of this message and to pass it on to your own personal network.)

In case all this text isn’t necessary and I had you at “Hello” so to speak, here is the link:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/DaveMalouf4Barack

Dear, friends, family & colleagues (and well a few strangers),

This is the first time in my personal political history (some 20 years) that I have ever felt so compelled to support a presidential candidate. Below, the campaign will tell you why they think we need your support. For me, it is a deeper message. The US is on a precipice regarding its very soul. Since Vietnam we have been spiraling downward into an abyss of shame, conceit, arrogance, selfishness, self-hate, pride, belligerence, and myopia. The core of Obama’s message is a reversal of this path, one towards compassion, creativity, openness, selflessness and humility.

Because I am so inspired, I am crossing social network boundaries that I would have never done previously. But the importance of this election at this time can change the next 50 years, and create wounds as irreparable as those caused by the Civil War between north and south (which even close to 150 years later still reverberates).

But there are real policy needs that require a new politics. We must create a new world order whereby no single individual’s success can be laid on top of the death of anther’s. Too many people throughout this country but more so throughout the world are suffering an dying at the expense of our ability to attain and maintain extraordinary wealth.

When I made my decision to donate $250 towards this campaign I did so with a promise to sacrifice something of my luxury. I chose sushi. So I’m giving up 10 weeks of sushi to support Obama. Maybe you can give up something too? A cell phone service? desert? Heck, it might even help you. Here is my blog post: http://synapticburn.com/more.php?id=294_0_1_0_C

The rest are all the great reasons better articulated by the campaign itself.

Thanx for listening/reading this far. I even just appreciate that!

- dave

We need a President with the courage and integrity to change Washington. Some people don’t believe that’s possible, but I believe it is.

It’s why I support Barack Obama for President. His commitment to change means he won’t take money from PACs or lobbyists, so this campaign is in the hands of ordinary Americans like you and me. Will you help?

Join me in supporting Barack by making a donation to my personal fundraising page:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/DaveMalouf4Barack

We have a choice in this election.

John McCain talks about his independence, but he wants to continue George Bush’s disastrous policies: the war in Iraq, millions of Americans without healthcare, tax giveaways to oil companies that are making record profits, and relying on lobbyists for political support.

Barack Obama wants to change the way Washington works and change those policies: end the war in Iraq, expand access to affordable healthcare, close oil company loopholes, and cut taxes for the middle class.

We urgently need an honest leader who understands that doing things the same old way is going to give us the same old results. Americans are hungry for real change, change Barack Obama will bring when he is elected.

Help me make that happen. Please take a minute to check out my page and make a donation of any size:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/outreach/view/main/DaveMalouf4Barack

Thanks.

– the Obama Campaign!

I’m trying to raise $10,000 to help Barack Obama. Go here and to donate:
Dave’s Barack Obama Fundraising Site

Tonight I made a decision. After a deep debate with my friend @zakiwarfel (twitter reference ID) I decided to put my money where my mouth is in a direct way. First, I’m going to cut to the chase. Yup! I am going to ask you to donate to the Barack Obama/Joe Biden campaign. So if you are already convinced and don’t need to be entatined by my narrative below, just jump on over to http://www.barackobama.com/ and get started with your donation.

Here’s what I’ve done.

I’ve donated $250 to the campaign I think that is a lot considering I’m struggling with my life as it is financially and that Barak has only ever asked me for $5. But where did the number come from. Why that number? Well, in the end it is pretty arbitrary. It is the usual amount I give to my school Alumni association each year and I figure this is a heck of a lot more important than that THIS year. (Sorry Cal. Go Bears!).

But I thought about the number a bit, and I thought more about my conversation with @zakiwarfel a lot in the last 24 hours. A big piece of that debate centered around “wealth” and what the right to obtain “wealth” is worth in society. I was on the side of, we have NO right to obtain wealth while so many globally and locally are in such pain or dying from so much that is preventable through the elimination of wealth. (Notice I didn’t say “redistribution”.) You can ask me more about this later.

I was so inspired by the speech and also by MoveOn’s follow up to the convention (registering voter campaign) that I was even telling my wife that I want to quit my job for the next 10 weeks and work on the campaign. Her reply, “you can’t give up sushi.”

So That’s the $250. I spend about $250 personally on sushi every 10 weeks. My usual sushi bill is about $25 so 10 weeks is $250. So I’m going to give up sushi for 10 weeks to be my “wealth” or if you will “luxury” tax that I’m going to sacrifice to help ensure that this amazing, eloguent, inteligent, wise, articulate, visionary individual can lead my country.

And I’m going to ask you all to do the same. Well, maybe not sushi, but for you for 10 weeks to give up that one luxury of sweetness that really is so unnecessary that by you giving it up may end up helping so many more than you.

So that link again is http://www.barackobama.com/ and I urge you to go, click on the Donate link or if you must read around a bit to help you get more convinced. If you must even check out snippets of his speech last night, but I do hope you see that we are at a moment in time, a crossroads, to either continue down the path this nation has been leading filled with conceit, selfishness, self-absorption, myopia, recklessness, belligerence, etc. or a new path where compassion, openness, wide vision, thoughtful intention, humility, and mutual respect are put forward.

This campaign is not really about the economy, or oil, or security, but it is about the soul of our nation.

Please join me … Donate today! … Let’s re-design the US!!!

http://www.barackobama.com/

– dave

interaction’09|vancouver “Lightning Round Submission Form”
http://interaction09.ixda.org/program.php

Call for Submissions: IxDA’s interaction’09|vancouver

The Interaction Design Association (IxDA) is now accepting submissions for its second annual conference to be held in Vancouver, British Columbia on February 5-8, 2009.

Submissions are for Lightning Round slots, each of which is 25 minutes in duration around a single topic. Single or duo speakers are allowed, but no panels.

There are 28 open Lightning Round slots. Lightning Round speakers will receive free admission to the conference.

Topics for Lightning Round should relate to the field of interaction design. We are particularly interested in methods, prototyping techniques, practice, communicating design intent, design inspiration from other disciplines, mobile, physical computing, ubicomp, and information visualization. We are interested in fields related to interaction design (e.g., information architecture, visual and industrial design, coding), but only as they relate to interaction design.

The deadline for submissions is August 31, 2008. Lightning Round speakers will be determined by the IxDA Conference Committee and announced on October 1, 2008.

You will need to provide a 100-150 word abstract for your session and a 75-100 word bio. There is only one submission per person, so submit your strongest idea.

The IxDA Conference Committee
(on behalf of)Greg Petroff, Chair

On the Information Architecture Institute’s member’s only list there has been a discussion about the place of IA (I’ll even extend it to UX practitioners) in an organization. The conversation then turned towards discussing the nature of the dichotomy of “creative” vs. “technical” since so many agency and corporate cultures split teams in this manner. Below is my response to the thread.

I always thought of the dichotomy (actually a continuum) is more about methods & practice than about intelligence type & media.

So the dichotomy I use is “D”esign (capital “D” on purpose) vs. Engineering–or art vs. science.

Basically engineering starts with a problem statement & creates a hypothesis towards discovering solutions through methods associated with “proofs” a la high school geometry.

Design is more about random discovery through methods of personal expression.

Now before everyone jumps on this, please remener I said it is a continuum, or a better metaphor is a ying-yang relationship. For example any great expressionist designer still incorporated moments of at leaat qualitative validation in their processes and O have met few scientists & engineers that don’t also use creative expression as part of their work.

I would also say that I do not believe there is an ideal balanced perspective, & that I do believe that different problem types are more successfully attended to leaning one way vs. The other.

The clear example for me is that solutions that require or ate beat served by including emotional impact should use a more design-centered approach. Also, I believe if the “right” solutions are not derived using the method you are comfortable with you should shake it up.

Now back to what I understand is the original question. IA belongs where it can do the most good within your organization’s cultural structures. It is a design problem, that has no easy solution.

For example, In my 2 previous jobs I was firmly embedded in the engineering/product dev team, & that worked very well for us. Now I work inside a design bureau that acts as a service agency and here that has worked well.

In my agency past I have had the most success when UX roles were neither in the design, business, nor engineering units, but was the bridge between the three others. To evoke Don Norman’s model of the stool the 3 others are the legs & UX is the seat (that which the end user places its value on top of).

If I was forced to choose, I would choose design, but only if the agency sees the IA role as one to grow towards the creative director position. Most IAs don’t go that route which I think is part of the problem.

A while back Fortune magazine did an analysis of prospects for successors to Steve Jobs. I think there is a very important missing candidate. Of course, as I do this I in no way want to be supporting the efforts to “kill off” Steve or create hype related to health. It is just an idea that when someone I told heard it they felt that creating a meme about it, might actually be influential to the future of Apple a company I love to love. The person in question is also from a company I love to love.

So who is this candidate and why should you care?

John Lasseter

1. He understands selling a story
2. He knows how to direct creatives AND technology
3. He is a visionary AND a business man
4. He is a mentee of Steve Jobs himself
5. He has been incredibly successful (a proven track record)
6. He isn’t tied to technology or design, but rather understands how both are tools for achieving broader eco-system goals.

I understand that he might not want the job being so embedded in the entertainment industry, but if Steve can lead both Apple and Pixar, why can’t John?

– dave

Teaching for SmartExperience.org has been a great experience for me. My previous teaching has been 1-day workshops for the IA Summit and for User Interface Engineering (Jared Spool). I have to say I really enjoyed the camaraderie that seemed to occur among some of the classmates. This seems to only occur when students have a certain type of experience, where they get to remember each other and look forward to seeing each other again and again week after week. In both cases of doing this class for SmartExperience, this occurred. What it meant for each class was something different. For the first class it meant a deeper understanding of studio work, as there was more critique and review and a strong interest in each other’s projects. In the next go around, it led to great theoretical debate and a passion for demonstrating ideas but not so much critiquing them.

This last course also taught me something else. It taught me that I have a passion for sketching, and I saw how that passion came through in the class and through my students (well not all of them of course, but many). Teaching people to use sketching as a design technique for idea generation as opposed to rapid idea communication is a joy for me. That moment when a student gets a light bulb to go off in their head when they discover its purpose and power is just great.

So, when Victor and I were discussing “what next” after the last multi-session course, 2 things came to the fore: 1) Well, I don’t have time for a multi-session course again; 2) I really want to teach a workshop on sketching. This led us to creating 2 separate 1-day workshops (which can be taken together).

The first day is my RIA workshop, ever evolving, but returning to its original 1-day format. It will focus more on the specifics of designing Rich Internet Applications like the original version did, and less on general IxD theory like the latest incarnation did. The biggest addition to this course will be the inclusion of more time to review and compare different RIAs across similar spaces. In the last class this seemed to provide a tremendous amount of value to the students and well was also fun for me.

The second day is a new workshop on Sketching for Interaction Design. This one will be more hands on, more paper and pencil in hand. We will discuss theories and case studies about how sketching is used and why it is so successful as a tool for design, and what value it brings over other idea generating processes. We will practice a bit as well. The main thing I want to tell people is that you don’t need to know how to draw. ANYONE can sketch.

A few logistical things at this point:
Timing: RIA Workshop is on October 16 and the Sketching Workshop is on the 17 (Thu & Fri).
Costs: Each workshop Early $495 / Standard $595; Take both early $890 / Standard $990 (saves either $300 or $200 off the regular price). There is also a discount code of 15%. “Synapse”.

For more information or to sign up go to SmartExperience.org. The RIA workshop the last two times sold out pretty quickly.