GitHub GitHub Presents • Passion Projects LIVE (Full Length Talks), 10 Jun 2013

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From YouTube: Passion Projects (Live) 3: Timoni West (UX and User Data)

Description

Our 3rd Passion Projects talk, recorded live with Timoni West. Timoni is a Brooklyn-based designer currently working on UX at Foursquare. Before that, she freelanced with amazing startups around the country including Bitly, Lift, Airtime, Flickr, Causes, and Recollect. Like many web designers, she splits her time between product design, user experience, and implementation, and her heart belongs to all three.

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♪[Music playing]♪.

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Hi guys! welcome to passion, projects.

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This is the third talk in our series..

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I'm really excited to have all of you. Here.

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And so underneath your seat, everyone has a notecard.

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Unless you're not sitting on a seat or you're on the coaches,.

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In that case,, you don't get to ask questions. just kidding,. That's not really that funny.

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so,! What we're going to do,.

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Kind of the format of the talk if you've never been to one of these before, is timoni's going to come up here and give the best talk ever and then, no pressure,.

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And then we're going to have a short break and then we're going to do sort of like a panel discussion,, a q, & a.

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and then at that time, in between her talk and the discussion, you'll have about 10 to 15 minutes,.

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If you guys have a question for timoni,, go ahead and write it on that card., you can do that any time during the talk and then we'll ask her all those questions when we're doing the discussion. so without further ado,.

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Please join me in welcoming timoni west to the stage.

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All right, howdy everybody., I am so glad to be here.

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back in balmy, san francisco after spending. The last like five months in brooklyn..., is that okay?.

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And I'm really glad you all can make it out this evening.

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I especially want to thank julie for asking me to come and speak at github..

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I think passion projects is a phenomenal idea and I'm really glad she thought of me, because when I saw the list and saw people I know and people that I really admire on the list, that was honoring to be included in that., and I want to thank github too for sponsoring the event.

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So, before I dig in,, let me introduce myself.

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My name is timoni west.

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and you're probably wondering how to pronounce that before..

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It's timoni, like jiminy., okay, you got it.

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Let's see...okay., and also I should say I don't often have an opportunity to use a lot of keynotes really awesome slide animation, so bear with me for this for this life.

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So right now, I'm a ux designer at foursquare, which is a little location-sharing apps. Some of you may have heard of,, and previously I was a product designer at flickr.

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And before that I was a let's say like an everything designer at scribd.

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Okay,, so you may have noticed some similarities between the companies that I've worked. At. location, sharing, (foursquare), photo sharing, (flickr), content sharing (scribd).. I spend most of my career designing interfaces that encourage people to put data online.

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As most of my peers,probably a lot of you in the audience.

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And frankly,, hopefully, some of the greater minds of our generation.

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I think a lot of you... uh oh...okay.

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A lot of you have probably seen this quote. "the best minds of my generation are thinking about ..." "...how to make people click ads", and that would suck if it were true,. Surprisingly, handsome, jeff hammerbacher.

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But unfortunately, for all of us,, it's not., but it is clear why he said that;. We have been tricking people into doing things,, particularly ux designers.. Here's a great quote from bill gribbons.

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"We've gotten pretty good at being able to subconsciously..." "...influence and alter behavior," "which creates a vexing ethical conundrum for ux designers.".

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"The ux professional must understand that for every product, created...".

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"...With, the "best intention," there will be another...", "...that, deliberately nudges the user to ends..." "...not in the user's best interest.".

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So yes, we've been doing a lot of bad stuff before,, it's all over the place of mine,, but let's focus on the good parts;. What have designers and engineers also have been focusing on.

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Okay,, this is a really great graph..

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This is what we've been actually doing,, getting people to put tons of their information, online.

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So this graph is actually not very good..

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It's a [psyche] graph that literally just shows the basic type of information. Each service was designed to collect..

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It doesn't show a lot of other activity like facebook likes or instragram shares, or more importantly, user effort.. So, for example, youtube users upload something like,.

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"72 hours of video, every second, ", which is pretty, freakin' phenomenal, considering how much more work it takes to make a video than a tweet. so keep in mind. This graph is not supposed to comparative..

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This is just supposed to make it clear that when it comes to getting people to share, what's in their brains and get it online, we're killing, it. so,, good job, product makers.

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So when I was asked to talk about my passion at this passion products,, I had a little bit of an epiphany,, because if you asked me a few years ago, what my passion was,, I would have drunkenly talked to you guys for hours about how we were collecting all these data.

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But we weren't saving it,. We were not [archiving] it in a useful way, and we were giving it back. and honestly it's just for a while,. It seemed like a lot of web apps for just huge black holes for data.

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But it turns out,. Thankfully I was not alone in thinking about this.. I think it's one of the next big problems since it's very a interesting problem on the internet right now,. How do we display the data back in useful ways,?

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How do we get it back to the users in a good way?.

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And even if they don't like it,, maybe we could do something cool with it on their own.

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Showing data back in useful ways is not a [cell] problem,, but it's a problem of a lot of people. I'm thinking about right, now., a lot of great companies as well, lie for example, github..

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I can't tell you how happy it made me to see github really, sync [pulse].. I don't know if one of you guys have seen this before?.

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It's a clever dashbord for repos.

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With graphs and all sorts of activity like poll, requests, commits, and so on. and lots of other companies are making strides towards this.

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for example, facebook's timeline, before facebook came out with a timeline.

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I really didn't get the impression that they cared a lot of storing user data and displaying it back. so kudos to them for hiring a bunch of like kickass designers and really tackling the problem. Heads on.

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But of course, there's a lot more on the internet that might just be sharing videos about how gay marriages now are legal in new zealand..

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It's awesome as that is. for example,, the digital public library of america,.

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A collection of items that time has made clear.

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It will be important to humanity over the centuries, right., the internet, archive,, google's art, project,.

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This is an announcement from the popular blog paleofuture saying they're, joining up with the smithsoninan blog network back in 2011., and this isn't your typical "blog turns into a book deal,".

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But if you care a lot about information and data and education,, this is actually a lot more interesting.

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Here’S one I recently learned about that’s totally awesome, the endangered languages, project. apparently, there’s, about 7000 languages in the world.

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And about 40% of them are endangered right now., so the site is designed to collect samples.

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From anyone that can preserve whatever language for posterity.

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okay,, so there’s a lot of great repositories of information out there right now, with solid searches and they’re doing their best to make sure that the information is relevant and accessible, searchable in archives., perhaps, they’re not always succeeding, but I think everyone was generally on the same page..

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So that got me thinking. What am I really passionate about now, now that designers are mobilizing, and now product makers or mobilizing and tackling this problem that I was worried about for so long..

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So I thought about it for a lot and here’s. I come up with and I’m really fascinated by this particular challenge, which is teaching the people, the world,, not necessarily the academically-inclined or the naturally curious, but all of the people of the world, to use this data and access on a regular basis.

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And I think this is a much harder problem than just getting the data and storing the data,, but I think it’s also the great hope of anyone who ever worked on the internet or who dreamed about it in centuries prior that people would actually want to use the resources that are available to them. [Clears throat].

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So right now,. Basically, we have easy ways for people to put information online,, not necessarily their own even;, anyone's data, the way of interesting challenging, getting the data back to them, but actually having a multitude of data available to you doesn't necessarily mean that it would even occur to you to go and look for it..

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So once I realize this is the problem that I’ve been probing towards,. I realized I had a lot to learn because at my current job and my previous jobs I’ve never really framed the problem like this before..

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How do you get ordinary people to want to learn and be aware of data,?

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And when I say ordinary people by the way,, I do mean, like ordinary people, like a billion people in china, ordinary.

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Right, now,, we’ve designed interphases for text, savvy users and we’re starting to move out like you, know,, regular consumers., but the interfaces that we design now are the genesis of all the interfaces that will follow,.

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The ones that will come in the future., the patters we invent, the tropes that we have now,.

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This is all going to be affecting technologies that most people in the world will eventually have access to, and keep in mind the more poor or backward. The country,.

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The more likely they are to have old and outdated, technologies., so 200 years from now,.

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Hopefully, everyone would have something better than a cellphone, but some of them might have really,, really old devices, and if we’re not careful that have really sucky interphases.

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Okay, so having framed the problem,.

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I started researching what large data collection companies and projects are around.

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And how people who collect data? Think of the problem- and this is one of my favorite snippet from brewster kahle, who founded the internet archive..

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He gave a long [notable] talk about first masons a couple of years ago, and this is a snippet. I’ll, be showing a snippet from the end of the talk when during the q&a and someone asks, "how, can we help the internet archive?" so roll them [video playing].

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I could mime it.

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That you not got yet and why,.

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And how can we help you get it?.

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I think the big step for us is to figure out how to be used. More,.

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How to…uhm…the real aspect that I think we need to do next is to try and to figure out how to be more useful to people.

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right, exactly.

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I've already started thinking about this talk before I saw this video,, but since you know, like, "yes!, that is it!" "this is what we need to do. Next." okay,, there's...sorry, guys.,.

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I just have to settle with...

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Anyway, there's so much good data out there and so few people out there.

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That would even wonder if the internet archive even existed, much less try to go, seek it out and see whether or not it really did., but you might be asking why that's such a big deal. Right?, like most of humanity, wasn't even literate for most of our history, much less,, you know, into doing analytic thinking..

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So why do we care now, whether or not average users are informed? people who care already care and they're doing a pretty good job. and that's a good question.? That is something that I actually had a hard time.

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Finding concise example to give as an answer until a few weeks, ago,.

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Actually, during the boston bombings,, I found an awesome post by an economics student named jacob dellar,, in which he discussed how odd it was that more people died, weekly in iraq, every week from bombings since 2012 than died in the boston bombing.

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and that's insane,, like I didn't, know that..

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Why didn't I not know that right?

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frankly,, I might have read it and I forgot,, but why would I forget, that? it's kind of a big deal., so this is what he says,. He says, "psychologically, we -- all of us...".

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"...Have a dramatically different response to a senseless death...".

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When it is an 8-year old in boston versus "...when, it's an 8-year old in fallujah." "this flies in the face of almost..." "...all, our ethical worldviews..." "...yet. It is an inescapable psychological phenomenon.".

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He goes on to say: that, "we all know that this is wrong," "...this vacillation between caring and uncaring..." "...on, the basis of arbitrary things...", "...like distance and nationality..." "...and. Yet we all do it anyway.", so there's the answer.

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as unsatisfying as it is,. This is how our brains have evolved..

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It's not even a socialization issue, at least not, at first, when you're young., we're designed to live in tiny [chives] of 300 people or so,, not care about billions of people.

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And millions of different groups., but these carefully hung instincts are failing us now, they're, not even what we'd consider ethical now.

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on some level, you could argue that our brains are not capable of supporting our own moral beliefs, which is a very odd position to be in..

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So here's another way of framing the problem by robert wright,, who is a writer and scholar who does a lot of work around evolutionary psychology., he says, "the world's single biggest problem..." "...is, the failure of people or groups..." "...to. Look at things from the point of view...." "...of other people or groups." "...I.e. to put themselves in the shoes of "the other.".

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He goes on to say that he's not talking about empathy in the literal sense of the word, he's just talking about the ability to compehend and appreciate the perspective of the other..

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So how can we become more empathetic??

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The same way you become more empathetic towards your family,, your peers and your friends,. You learn more about them.

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and when it comes back to our jobs,, creating things for the internet or for devices,.

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As most of us do I think, in our best case-scenario we would ambiently teach people, teach our users as they go about their business..

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The data should be displayed as naturally and seemlessly as a status bar,, because, for example, to go back to the iraqi bombings, information is most useful in context.

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Knowing that there were 18 bombings a week in iraq doesn't really help you very much now, and frankly, in the context of the bombing,, it almost sounds a little insensitive to bring it up now. Right?, like by comparing this number to a much larger number, is taking away from the whole of the bombings..

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So our job,, if we want to teach people, have real motivation to learn, or in fact might consciously or subconsciously shy away from learning,. It's all about giving information at the right, time.

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Yeah, most people aren't interested in seeking out new information or researching what they hear about on the internet..

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They don’t necessarily think it’s, entertainment, right,, not all the time, but you know, like a lot of the time. and there’s a few reasons for this..

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The first is that we don’t necessarily teach them that there’s any useful information at all on the internet.

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lots of their faces are effectively black holes in search boxes like email or text, messaging-wise.

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here’s an example:.

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So this is the incredibly sleek and awesome facebook, social graph search, which I’m sure, a lot of you guys have seen before, right?

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it’s, not only very powerful but it’s, also very easy to make hilarious connections.

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Between people, group, which entire tumblrs have been devoted to., you can see a lot of your own data online, filter through your own actions or your friend’s actions too. for example,. This screenshot is a query of photos of my friends,.

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Commented on my friends and likes by me.

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This is a really easy query to set up, fairly complicated, but I don’t really use this social graph stuff routinely.

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And I’m guessing a lot of you don’t either and unless really you’re an advertiser or in a really stalkery mood,.

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And why not?? I think the answer here is context. Actually.

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there’s, no context here beyond your query. in other words, there’s, not much here to learn from this..

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This tool could be about finding interesting correlations and drawing out these correlations, but it really doesn't do that..

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It just shows you a big pile of results. so,, that’s one reason why people might not naturally be drawn.

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To learning more in the internet, because it’s not really clear that you can. here’s, another reason: with this one, and the ui is a little bit harder;. Actually much harder.

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Biased assimilation., biased assimilation is associated with cognitive bias, as you might have guessed.

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Here’S the definition from cass r., sunstein, who’s, a pretty fantastic legal scholar over at harvard.

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he says, “biased assimilation is people assimilate information...".

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"...In, a selective, fashion.", "when people get information..." "...that supports what they initially thought..." "...they, give it considerable weight." "when they get. Information..." "...that undermines their fundamental belief, systems..." "...or initial beliefs,. They tend to dismiss it.”, and this is not a huge surprise. Right?

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looking for information in advance before they make a decision.

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Or form an opinion is not how human brains, work.

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brains, don’t like to spend a lot of time debating options,.

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They take big mental shortcuts whenever possible.

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And this totally makes sense 10,000 years ago., you see something that can be a wild cat,. You run away from the wild cat..

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You see someone who looks like a stranger,, you run away from the stranger., but the result now is that we have bad mental shortcuts.

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Persisting like stereotypes and when people learn something new,, something that really should breakdown that stereotype,.

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They often will just straight up, ignore it.

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I don’t just mean that they listen and discard,, sometimes they’ll shutdown mentally, but often, they’ll, also shutdown, physically., they’ll turn off the television, they’ll move away from the speaker, like they’ll, actually physically move away from things they don’t want to hear..

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So that’s another big reason why people don’t seek out data..

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He wants to deal with finding out things and then you have to process them, and if you disagree with them,, you have to deal with that.

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And so on., like I said,, this is a harder problem, because it’s very unconscious., no one wants to think of themselves as closed minded.

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But there is a glimmer of hope.. The human brain doesn’t have a lot of practice, dealing with a lot of historical or written data.

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Until the 20th century,, only a tiny negligible portion of the population.

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Was literate and now we’re at 84%.?

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This is a huge opportunity.. People’S brains are definitely going to be changing..

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People have already thought about this law of course..

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In 1945,, dr. vanneavar bush wrote a really lovely article.

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For the atlantic called as “we may, think”, which you might have heard of., if you haven’t heard of bush before,, he was an engineer who was basically the head of rnd for the us military during world war. Ii..

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He worked on computers;. He worked on mmx;.

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He worked on “the manhattan, project”, super smart guy.. So after the war, he wrote this article encouraging post war scientists to figure out how best to use things that they had made during the war.

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To increase knowledge of all humanity after the war.

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So here’s what he has to say about archived information versus the brain:.

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Okay, he says, “a record. If it is to useful to science,, must be continuously extended,. It must be stored,.

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And above all, it must be consulted..

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The human brain does not work that way..

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It operates by association.

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with one item in its grasp,. It snaps instantly to the next.

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That is suggested by the association of thoughts,, in accordance with some intricate web, ” ...of trails carried by cells of the brain.", so the first step into teaching people in such a way that they grasp the information instead of shying away, is to work with an associative brain..

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One thing we do know is that people are always interested in themselves and then they’re interested in others once they get the connection, so we can enter through the back door so-to-speak..

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So we can tell people to parse information by telling them things about themselves., better yet,. We can flat out surround them with information in such a way that they can do a comparative analysis really anytime. They hear any data at all., that’s a little pie in the sky, but that would be cool..

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So if we want to start doing this, if we want to start making data available to everyone in a subtle,, useful,, clever way, here are a few guidelines to follow, to create interactions when even the least curious can start to be well informed:.

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1.), the ux should be subtle.

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A subtle ux does not necessarily equate to a subtle ui.

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And I know that sounds a little weird, so I’m gonna show you an example of what I mean.

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when I was a kid,. My grandpa was huge into sports and I remember him watching tv silently while having a radio in the background that was also playing another game at the same time..

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I don’t think he’s alone, because I’ve been to ballgames before where I’ve seen people with like headphones on, and I think they’re listening to another game while they’re at the other game..

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So if you’ve seen this, it might not be any surprise to learn that one interphase maker.

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That’S pretty much killing it when it comes to giving you comparative ambient data. All the time is espn.

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I said the user experience should be subtle and this does not look subtle at all, right?.

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This is a huge thing covering the entire screen and that’s fair point..

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I said the ux should be subtle,, not necessarily the uis itself.

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This is a huge overlay, but you don’t see it for very long, and this is a key point..

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The information on this page and there’s, a freaking amount of information, is displayed.

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During a specific time, in the game, when there’s some downtime and espn knows, the viewer might even be a little antsy and might want to know what’s going on during the rest of the playoffs.

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So while the data here is huge,, it is not invasive and the timing is key. Here.

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Here’S another fascinating example, and I apologize for the low quality here, but I really liked it a lot:. This is espn comparing the brewer’s prince fielder.

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To the astros’ lance berkman back in 2008.

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So there’s a game going on in the background, it’s, the yankees versus the indians, but in the meantime, espn is comparing stats from two high ranking players.

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On completely different teams to give context to the game going on in the background. again,, this is a lot of data, but it’s shown at the right time.

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And it gives you subtle comparisons, so, even if you know nothing about baseball or sports in general,, it’s, basically impossible to walk away from a game not being somewhat well-informed.

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This is live television and we can’t just be popping up.

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Interstitials at people every 5 seconds on the website, like, “hey, did you guys know this other information…?”.

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The next example will have a location.

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Where you can contextualize information could live very happily and incidentally,.

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It goes along well with the second guideline which is: 2.). The interface should provide context.

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There is a rapport,, a very strong conversation that goes on between the content, organizer and the viewer of that content,, no matter where you are., it’s, a conversation that is started and framed by the organizer and designers and engineers on the internet;.

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This is us.. We are the context organizers.

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all the well-meaning library scientists in the world can’t force us to display things in useful ways as much as I’m sure. They would like to so here’s a great example of a site that could provide tons of contextual data with the natural user experience and it’s, not sports,, it’s art.

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This is google’s art project, which is an absolutely wonderful and lovely site, and I do feel a little bad picking on them, but I am going to pick on them a little bit., so this painting is “the return of the prodigal son.”.

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If you can’t see that in the corner, it’s a rembrandt,.

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It’S very orange and if you click on the details,.

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Right up in the corner, there,, you will see this, which has things like the dates, information on rembrandt,. What the painting means,.

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Who commissioned it and so on, like typical, good museum, notes., so there’s a lot more functionality on this page, I’ll go through it pretty quickly..

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You can recommend the painting on google plus.

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Which is a thing that I will not probably ever do.

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You can browse by other artists or collections..

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You can add the painting to your own gallery, which say, organize it for later..

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You can share it on a ton of social networks which is cool.

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You can view it in a slideshow, although I don’t know where the rest of my slideshow is;, that’s weird., you can compare it to other paintings;. I actually couldn’t figure out how to do that. Either..

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You can see the painting in context to the museum.

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Where it resides, which is sort of an interesting context,, I’m, not really sure what the overall use of that is, but it’s really cool.

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You can see it here at the hermitage in russia, which is interesting at least.

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There’S a lot of stuff- you can do with this painting on this page, but what is missing?? Again, context.

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there’s, a lot of basic stuff that we know about this painting.

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That isn’t displayed, or even really available from this page., like for example,.

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There is no real time or real browse by date, interface like what else was being painted at this time around the world?

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like what was being painted at china at this moment?.

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Take the mystery meat navigation and adding clearly labeled pieces that are either related to rembrandt, chronologically,, thematically, by location and so on..

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What else was being painted by rembrandt’s peers?, and that is something that you usually get from a museum.

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Because museums tend to be arranged by region and chronologically.. What was going on in the netherlands when rembrandt painted this? this was painted in netherlands by the way.

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that’s just interesting stuff that puts the painting in context, but remember, users like to know things about themselves and that’s how we’re going to get them to dig into the data. So we could show things like.

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Have they looked at other rembrandt’s before??

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Have they looked at this rembrandt before?? Did they have some emotional connection to this painting that they’re not even really aware of??

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Did they like it a lot?? Did they go back to it?.

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Do they look at a lot of dutch painters?? Did they look at more dutch painters than other people in the world?? Where do people go to look at this painting?

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I’m guessing russia, because it’s in russia, but you know,, interesting information.,.

D

So you get the idea. let’s, get people interested in the painting on a personal level and then expand that out to a global level.

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Step back for a moment., I just said a lot of words. yes.

D

3.) avoid using too many words., so there’s a lot of information that I mentioned about previous pages.

D

That could be shown without using a lot of words like using a map to show visitors looking at the painting now or where the painting lives or actually how it ended up at the hermitage;, using graphs or calendars, to show how many times a viewer has looked at a painting, or other people who have looked at a painting, or looking at the painting now..

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But I want to give you a tiny succinct example of using words versus not using words.

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So this is tim farris’ website.

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I think probably a lot of you guys know who tim farris is, but if you don’t,, he is a lifestyle. Modification expert.

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And this is his blog about four-hour work weeks, which is not a lot of time.

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for most of his blog posts,.

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He puts in this handy little snippet that tells you.

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How long it would take to read the blog post.

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here, it’s three minutes to read the bolder parts and 15 minutes to read the whole thing. it’s very handy,, it’s good, because you only have four hours.

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This is the new republic,, which is very pretty new site and they have something: similar. it’s up, here. it’s a little bit more subtle..

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This doesn’t tell you how long it will take to read the whole thing.. I guess it’s, because they don’t really know what your reading speed is, but they do have a great subtle ambient way of telling you.

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How much you’ve read of the article . and how much you have left- and this is great it’s, very smart.. You think that the scroll bar alone could give you that information, but with headline sizes, are differing with comments on the bottom,.

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You don’t exactly know how long the article is, so they solved the problem here..

D

So that’s two examples of basically displaying the same information, one with words and one without words., the more ancillary information that you want to display; the better it is to use graphics,, they’re, less likely to be glossed over than a blob of words and they’re more likely to be picked up on a subconscious level, so use less words..

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And now the final guideline: 4.) focus on the personal, to get to the global..

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So as I’ve mentioned, before, people really like learning about themselves.

D

They really do., they just don’t know how to do it very well. Most of the time, which is things like horoscopes and pop quizzes, like what type of color are you, or are you so popular.

D

people are avidly curious, they just don’t really know where to start..

D

You can use this basic instinct,, coupled with all the data that we have to inform people about things like reading and learning and seeing in context., so here’s a couple of examples:.

D

This is recollect, which is a tiny product product that a few of my flickr colleagues and I made a few years ago. chris martin and [inaudible].

D

It stores your data from across different social networks like facebook,, twitter,, foursquare; archives, it, makes it searchable and backs it, up,, basically dropbox for your online life..

D

So this is the day view which shows you. What your day looks like, based on what you put online. there’s a map, here; there’s, the weather; there’s, a calendar somewhere..

D

It shows you past check-ins and so on, but this is just the basics.. This is what I was talking about. Earlier..

D

It gives you your data back in a useful way..

D

We could actually do things to remind you to go to recollect, like maybe in your calendar, that pops up a small view on the side to see all your activity in context. in email,,. You can see a sidebar when you’re looking back at old emails, t shows you a little blurb of what your day was like at that. Time; subtle, ux cues go up at the right moment, like espn.

D

So this is a really boring screenshot..

D

This is adium chat, transcripts.

D

I don’t know if any of you guys back up a lot of your chats, but I definitely do.

D

you can run basic analysis on this and have it displayed ambiently all the time.

D

for example,. When you talk to someone,, do you have long conversations?? Do you have short conversations? what’s the mood of your conversations?? Do you use more negative words? positive words?, happy words? business words?? It might be a little scary to show this information back.

D

To people who don’t really get that computers don’t care about your social life and don’t really have an agenda..

D

We have to make it clear that it’s either opt in or just have a lot of good on-board education around it.

D

But ambiently displaying the information.

D

And giving it back to users,, making it available all the time is what gets people thinking about it and that’s what we really want to do.

D

Really,, these are the two main goals of interaction, design for large data for democratic data system and again,.

D

We’Re trying to get everyone who uses a device here, not only intellectuals,, not just the curious to start thinking and remembering that this data is all around them and they can access it anytime, they’re reading or viewing or thinking about anything on a larger context, in global or circle. Context.

D

So what would this look like in other websites that are around now?? I didn’t mock up any interfaces because I’ll be damned if I tell people how to design uis with [pinesky] interfaces.

D

But I’ll give you some examples of existing features and then a couple, brainstorming ideas. I had to get the juices flowing., so this flickr’s creative commons,, which I think probably a lot of you guys- have heard about before.

D

okay. basically, flickr gathered a lot of open source.

D

And government images from around the globe, different ngos,, libraries, and so on, and offered to host them., so we’ve got ton of excellent historical images, usually for the use with a lot of contacts, good tags,, very searchable. awesome., and this is an excellent ui, because it’s so seamless..

D

The data is already in the system and creative commons photos come up in search results alongside everything else..

D

If you search for a ship, you’re going to get all pictures of ships right alongside new pictures of ships., you can’t help but stumble across information.

D

Let’S see the next. okay., so social graph search.. I actually critique this earlier,, but I do think it’s useful and that it gives...

D

It makes it clear that the data is available to people, and that,. They can manipulate it, so it is good first step.

D

I would love to see them start to populate or backfill information from previous populations.

D

They could totally take it from there.. It'd, be amazing to compare populations now to populations past.

D

And again, they could easily make it a seamless part of the interface.

D

Twitter’S a little bit harder because they...

D

I don’t get the impression on the product side.

D

They care much about having the data available later on,.

D

Which is why they sort of moved it off to the library of congress., so thank goodness for the library of congress., so twitter sort of might largely be in the realm of the third-party developer,, which is a little sad because if you don’t bake stuff like this into the product right away,, if you make it a plugin or you make it a one off product,, it will seem a little gimmicky and to prowl, and people will honestly just forget about it.

D

I’ve, seen a lot of cool database stuff around twitter that I just don’t even remember, anymore., but that being said, you’re going to do things like analyze, tweet-sized, bites of information.

D

From newspapers in the past and compare it to the headlines of today.

D

Sentiment analysis is where twitter really shines, because people tend to not edit themselves and they use a lot of emotional words.

D

The wikipedia,, which is my favorite because it had so much potential.

D

It’S so right with possibility.

D

thinking back to google art project,, it would be fascinating to have some sort of personal overland top of wikipedia., so anytime...anywhere you’re looking,.

D

You can see yourself in context in history, or you can compare historical events like the war of 1812.

D

What were wars before 1812?? What wars came? After?? How many lives were lost in this war compared to other wars?.

D

And so on. having that data exposed or at least easily available would be amazing.

D

So I think you guys get the idea and hopefully, you guys can think of sites that could either use this or should be doing this or maybe, hopefully are already doing this,, which would be good.

D

okay.. I think it’s time for me to finish up. and let me summarize a little bit..

D

What do we know?.

D

We know that once people are aware of facts and absorb them that they remember them later.

D

and we know that humans are generally good, either because of their fabulous natural personalities or because of socialization.. It doesn’t, really matter which,, we’re just sort of predisposed social animals..

D

We sometimes kill each other., we generally don’t like killing each other., but we have to be taught in order to extend our basic goodness from our small social groups to the world at large..

D

Finally,- and this is kind of most important,, at least in the short term.. We know from experience that if we create social patterns that people repeat them., there are things that people do now that didn't make sense at the time,, but do make sense in the long term, like swaddling, babies,,.

D

Not hitting your sister, knowing to chew tree bark to get rid of headaches, social wisdom, that isn’t even necessarily conscious wisdom,.

D

That gets passed down as habits over time., so internet makers,, we’ve, already created tons of habit-forming products.

D

Let’S start making new habits. better habits., so we want to do this because humans have traditionally.

D

Not had access to information. and we know that when humans have better access to information and are open to that information,, they make better choices,.

D

They improve their lives, and they improve the lives of others..

D

The more we learn from history, the more we improve our circumstances,, the better. We are as humans.

D

C

Thank you,, timoni. you’re amazing., best talk, #besttalkever for timoni.

C

So we’re going to take a quick break., if you guys have questions for timoni,, go ahead and pick your notecard and your pen under your chair.. If you don’t have one... ♪[music playing]♪,.

C

If you guys want to give her a big round of applause for the amazing talk, she just gave, that would be awesome.

C

And we here are now,, you get to sit and drink., and this is... very classy..., very class...yeah.. That was the last one I attempted to make it.

C

Not a genuine tonic, vodka and tonic. that was easy.. I found some vodka.. I thought that we had some..

C

So thank you for sticking around..

C

We got a couple of questions. and I have a few questions of my own for timoni,, but what an amazing talk.

C

it was actually our first design talk of the series, and so the last few speakers have been, you know,.

C

Engineers and also, sort of like organizers for things like railsbridge and other women’s organizations for learning how to code.

C

And so this is definitely, completely a different talk than those and which I’m hoping that carries on throughout the talk series.. So thanks for being a part of that, and thank you for being a part of that., how many of you guys are designers?.

C

How many of you guys do nothing in tech or not in tech?.

C

Chris [monschof] does nothing.. I can vouch that actually., I don't even know.. We just keep him around for his hair. that’s pretty much it., that's pretty great hair., it's pretty great. cool.. So I think we have timoni right up. Now.

C

yeah thanks again, timoni, for being our first design, speaker. it’s, an amazing talk.. How did you get into design?.

D

I...How, did I get into design? it’s like website design.

D

Website. I get into design because I design websites. my high school boyfriend and I broke up.

D

And I made a website devoted to the breakup.

D

When geocities went down, I saved it., I still have it., you, can’t see it.

D

I don’t know why I decided to web designs as opposed to like,. I don’t know, a book or something. yeah.. I was already sort of obsessed with the internet pretty early on.

D

and I think I just wanted to start going from there. and actually,. I didn’t make a distinction between web design.

D

And other types of design at first.

D

and I think, that’s actually kind of carried on through until today., although I did work at an agency that didn’t do design at all for a while. but, yeah,. I just started playing around computers as a kid,.

D

Probably like most of you guys, did.

C

Cool., so that was your.... So what was your first experience with technology?

C

like? How did you decide that you had this passion and love for computers? 2es at the school.

D

And I’d learned basic and played a lot of oregon trail.

D

and then, actually,. When I got older...

D

When I first started using a mac with a graphic user interface,, I was actually really fascinated with the folders.

D

you know,, you have like put folders in folders?, and I thought it was being very clever about hiding all my files, inside, like, folders inside folders,, then having like fake folders.

D

And so it was like this little patio to go through to get to my diary.. This is before like spotlight, obviously.

D

Yeah. and then,, I think I started laying out some stuff, newspaper-style,. I guess. so, yeah,. I guess that wasn’t really website.. I was like eighth grade or so....

D

We had to do a project and I was like, “I’m, going to lay out everything using pagemaker probably.”.

D

Yeah. journalism in high school, we've done that.

D

So it was really natural. there wasn’t any a-ha moment.. I just found myself always on computers, designing stuff all along.

C

Cool. and I mean, you’re sort of a journalist., so you went to school but then decided to study english?

C

yes., which is you know...,.

D

Medieval [inaudible]? yeah.

C

Me and timoni actually discovered that we are the only two people on the planet that studied medieval literature in college.

C

D

We’Re going to have some awesome late night conversations., I could tell you. yeah.

C

And so that kind of made you...?

C

How do you think that helped or hindered your kind of design process or learning to design?.

D

I think it helped it in that,. I knew the tools really well.

D

Because I think, when you go and take a class.

D

That teaches you how to learn an application,.

D

You probably get...you get whatever your teacher teaches you as the framework, right? like,, whatever they use, that’s, how you learn to use a product.

D

And if you just learned yourself,, then that’s also a piece of meal., so that was the definitely an advantage. and also,, not really thinking about ux or visual design. As separate components.

D

certainly, it’s, a big discussion in the design community now,.

D

But I think that was an advantage for me. Personally.

D

I think the disadvantage is.... We talked about this yesterday. like, there’s some..., when you teach yourself, there’s some basic stuff that you’ll always miss and that you’ll come up with some clever workaround for.

D

and then, years, later, you’re, like, “what?. You could just do that. what?”, you know., so that’s a disadvantage., like, you’ll always be a little behind in certain areas..

D

I think we’re all kind of behind in every way.

C

Technology moves there quickly, that,, I mean, you could learn, like, a language or, you know, specific framework, and within a year, you are..., like you’re, no longer employable?.

B

I don't know, in that sense, I guess.

C

Yes. actually, it’s true., one of my favorite tweets of all time, is chris defunkt, too,.

C

Is a founder of github, tweeted learning git recently.

C

Think was very funny because that’s absolutely how you learn every technology.

C

You have to be constantly learning... yeah., ..and, relearning and unlearning,. Then learning again...

C

yeah. ...in order to kind of be proficient at something.

D

That’S actually a good point.. I wonder if a lot of non-coding designers.

D

Would agree with that because, like on the coding,, I do like markup in some javascript.

D

don’t hire me to do javascript., but I also know like the adobe creative suite.

D

I know it’s said that creative suite did not change as much as like css, first or html 4 or html 5, right?.

D

Right. so, yeah,. I wonder if web designers would agree.

D

maybe like motion graphics, designers,, but certainly for visual designers. It's like they just see the same interface with sort of minimal improvements.

D

And I’ve been using photoshop since, like 4.0, right?.

C

Yeah. and photoshop was like designed to build websites, either, or to design websites.

D

Yeah,, I know., so it's like ... it wasn't..., so that’s actually hacked as well. Like...

C

Yes., like we're using photo software to design,. You know pictures of websites,, which is like amazing, but also hilarious.

B

Yeah. it’s kind of..., that’s true.

C

Yeah. so what’s your favorite thing about designing?.

C

You work at foursquare, now. you’ve worked at some of like the most amazing startups.

C

And companies that were like very much like.

C

Some of the first kind of product innovations,.

C

I guess, you would say, like flickr with photo sharing, scribd document sharing,, and so many of your, like personal-type projects.

C

And freelance projects. so it’s, just like the first of their kind like.... What would you say is like your favorite thing to work, on?.

D

What’S my favorite thing to work: on? it’s, always what I’m not working, on, like,, whatever design.

D

like,. If I have to do visual comps, the next time I really want to code., and if I do too much coding,, then I just want to do wire. Frames.

D

I don’t know if that’s exactly what you’re asking.

D

When I do site projects or refine things that are really interesting,, it tends to be a very clever use of data,, which kind of makes sense, right?, because that’s primarily what I work in., I know it’s very broad,, but that is generally what interests me.

D

that’s very awesome..

C

So how did you decide you’re going to go work at forusquare?.

D

Well, actually, lea...it’s, lea’s fault.

D

Bunch of beta invites,.

D

So foursquare back in a day., and so I started using it like pretty early on.

D

When the product was really young. and then, alex that had a product, at foursquare, ping me about a year ago. but I’ve just gone freelance, and I didn’t really want to move to new york. and then,. When I decided I want to move to new york,, I got back in touch with him.

D

and that’s kind of a no-brainer.. I use foursquare every single day and a half for quite some time., so it’s really exciting to go work on a product that I’ve known and loved for so long.

D

But I really like the things they are doing, pivoting and to explore stuff, and moving away from the gay mechanics so...

C

Something that was really cool, the other day, I, like, googled, a restaurant or something on...you know,.

C

Just on my phone. and on foursquare, you know, venue page came up before I yelped one. and I was like, “yes. they're winning.” yes. [laughs], no offense, xcl, of course,, who mostly work at github.

C

That’S very awesome., so I’m going to read a few of our cards that we got questions during the talk. [laughs].

C

This one’s pretty vague,, but I think it’s about sort of talking about when you’re using products as representations of displaying data.. Someone asked about what about bit torrent..

C

Do you have any, like, opinions, on, like,, how they use data modelling or displaying data to their users??

C

Do you use bit torrent?.

D

You know,, I don’t.. I actually use bit torrent, using it.

D

I don’t know. like,. What am I missing?.

C

I don’t know, either., I don’t do anything illegal.

D

They do legal good stuff,. I know. I just...[laughs].

D

Does any...is the person who asked the question...yeah?

D

okay.? What are we missing?? What is it?.

E

Yeah., so I guess it’s sort of relates to how we kind of get [inaudible].

D

E

Today, technologically, bit torrent...

C

That’S not that again. no.

E

Technologically, with bit, torrent,.

G

It’S easy to get all the media that were created by humans.

D

I see., I see what you mean. okay., so the question...

C

I’Ll just repeat, that., I think it’s more about making information available to everyone.

C

D

My response would be that I’m guessing what you have right now is.

D

A large data, dumped, right?.

D

Is that...do you actually...

D

Do you have, like, ways of visualizing the data that people can access or they’re like search results?.

H

Currently, it’s, basically there’s like black search box.

D

Okay. it’s a search box and then, you get results, and so on.

D

okay.. So you really...yeah. well,, that’s interesting.

D

For something like that,, I think the library method might be best where you start cross-indexing stuff, rather than data bit stuff.

D

Data bit stuff, like whatever. cool., everyone downloaded this book. that’s nice to know,, but like,. That’S not the most interesting thing. in your case,, the files that you have, the content inside them, cross-indexing that content,.

D

And making that available to users would probably be a lot more useful,. I think.

C

So this is something that I just want point out as a designer.. You just said cross-indexing,, which is fucking awesome.

C

I think that we tend to get really stuck behind these ideas. That,.

C

“Oh,, like a web designer doesn’t code, every day.” they’re, not technical., one of my co-workers,, and I used this on a talk. Recently, said: that, “you know, at the end of the day, we’re all making software.” it really doesn’t... Only our tools differentiate between sort of like what part of that software we’re building.

C

Or contributing to,, but I mean, the idea is that everyone thinks, through the process as much as a developer, does or a designer does., so be nice to your designers basically,. I guess. [laughs].

C

They’Re, just as smart as you, sorry,, but very soft-hearted.,.

C

There is soft part of my heart for designers, who are bad ass. and timoni is definitely one of those people,. Whether or not she’d like to admit it.

C

#timoni is the best,. If you guys are on twitter right, now.

C

So embarrassing for her., I’m sorry. [laughs], so that’s pretty cool. I’m going to move on the next paper question.

C

you could’ve written anything on this. and I was just going to read them verbatim. So you weren't, missed out, by the way.

C

So, do you see new business models to support giving access to people’s data to show it back to them?.

D

Yeah. yeah. I had to manage bringing this question in advance.

D

And I don’t know if I still know the answer.

D

Yeah, I do. I mean,. I don’t know if people who make decisions about.

D

Who gets funder right now really would agree with that.

D

I would’ve paid for twitter years, ago.

D

honestly, I would’ve paid like $10 a month or something., but paying $10 a month for twitter and making sure I had an archive around those conversations. Was...

D

Means that you limit your user base to the people.

D

Who are willing to pay $10 a month for like... to access the twitter, right?? So that means you can’t scale globally, necessarily.

D

So I think, if you’re willing to have utility.

D

That has a certain set of users, then, yeah,, absolutely you can., but if you want to make the next... I guess, facebook,.

D

Which is essentially an ads platform or it’s a content-serving ads platform.

D

It’S basically like tv, right? like,, we watch tv because we like the content, but it’s paid for by ads., and this is like a decision that we’ve all made as the case.

D

then, no. no,, you can’t..

D

I don’t think you could do that. monetize, that correctly. yeah. but subscription models, utility models,.

D

Pay for something once,, you get to use it over time, yes.. I think you could do that.

C

Moving on. still, I think, embarrassing. I’m, really disappointed,. I guess.

C

This is actually just a lesson in learning how to read other people’s handwriting [laughs].

D

Do you have any...I, can try it, too. it’s, all right.? Do you want to get this one? sure.

C

It’S pretty fun., she can have my drink if she...

D

Describe how other cultures can take this information to express their culture.

D

examples of cultural overlays.?

D

I think it’s overlays. describe how other cultures can take this information to express their culture.. So this is very interesting. Actually.

C

Because we talked about this yesterday when we were doing sort of like our preliminary interview, thing.

B

That’S right.

C

Sort of how exposing each other, using the internet to expose ourselves.

C

And other people to different cultures..., right. ...and, how that will kind of like impact, how we, not only do...how, we treat other people but how we learn and how we express ourselves...

C

Yeah. and everything...

D

Yeah. I mean, we’re on a significant.... The third world is at a significant disadvantage right now, because we all have phones, and we’ve been putting a lot of information, online, right?

D

like,. I have been putting information online for years..

D

You probably have been putting information online for years. and there are entire parts of the world that do not do this right, now., but the cool thing is,. Once they start doing, it will be more exposed to their...

D

How they...their patterns, their thought patterns essentially. like,? How do they learn things?? How do they think about things? what’s, the narrative by which they live their lives??

D

Do they think of time circularly?? Do they think of it, linearly? and so on. and, yeah,? That can only expand all of our minds.

D

That’S a little [pie in the sky]., it will be good.. It will be good when we can see what they know. [laughs].

C

So that’s a good segue, for, like,. What are you excited about in the future, in technology,, in your own life, or...

D

What am I excited? About? yeah.. This is a hard question: yesterday, too., I’m, always excited., I’m, always excited..

D

Everything is exciting.. [Laughs].

D

What am I excited? About? you know,, I always...I really want. The young ladies illustrated primer.

D

Do you guys know about this? it’s, like a neil stevenson, book. yeah,, you know about that. okay, cool.

D

The interfaces that we have now,, especially the touch interfaces,, are very low, fidelity. and then,. A notion of having...

D

Actually, I had a dream about this last night.

D

I just remembered.. I was communicating with some friends in a notebook that was somewhat connected to the internet,, except it didn't have a good refresh mechanism, so we were all like talking to each other. and then,. We would like write over each other accidentally.

D

But, yeah, effectively having like high fidelity ways if communicating things, but then storing them for later,.

D

I think, is something that I really personally want. and maybe that’s just because I’m a designer., but can you imagine just having a notebook that you...?

D

I mean, people keep trying to do this.

D

and I haven’t done it yet,, but it’s so grit to think you actually write in your diary and then have that uploaded for all time..

D

I don’t know about you guys,, but when I think about stuff,, I have to, like, work really hard to get it out of my brain and on the paper fast before it goes away.

D

and there is no device out there right now.

D

That’S faster than a pen and paper. like, there is...you type on your phone, that sucks. you can, like,, do voice dictation.. I do that sometimes.

D

that sucks. wacom tablets are like nowhere nearer where they need to be in terms of fidelity.. So having that,. That makes me super excited.

D

that’ll be awesome.. Okay, awesome, yeah., we'll get right on it at github.

C

Awesome,, we'll just move into hardware.

C

C

Amazing. does anyone else have questions for timoni?

C

it’s, your last chance. she’s, going back to brooklyn.... jake?.

H

So you talked a lot about places that.

H

You’Re excited you figured data from.

H

Like,, you could hear the data and excited about what come out of it.. Okay, curious. If there’s...a lot of people react, to, like,, I’m like afraid about the data...

H

The data being...like coming back to you.

H

yeah. yeah, privacy issues, right? right. yes., so I’m curious. If there’s any, like, in terms of like [caller's value],.

H

I mean, like,. Are there other places where the amount of data that's being collected? Like, freaks you out?.

D

No, but I’m really open person., you guys repeat the question?, oh yeah.,.

C

So the question was...

C

I don’t know if it was like timoni.

C

Specifically, has concerns about that or if you see other people having concerns about how open data is. like,, what are the parts of it that we... I don’t know.? It was like privacy concerns and that sort of thing.

C

yeah., as we’re collecting data,.

D

Are there any points that I’m particularly concerned about the collection of that data?.

D

Yeah. my reply was that, no. I’m, a very open person.

D

I sort of...ever since that my, like, secret, dating blog, got found out by the guys, reading in, like, 2004...

D

I'm like , "oh, the internet!". I can’t put anything on there that I wouldn’t want people to know. also,, I’m, very boring,, which is helpful.

D

So I guess it could be, right?.

D

Like, there’s a lot of data analysis that could lead to,.

D

Like, people going on watchlists, like government’s watch lists.

D

You know, people...the whole..., like facebook, trending or telling a guy that they know if he’s gay before he told his parents..

D

That stuff seems a little creepy., but I think I have either the advantage or disadvantage of knowing, again, like computers don’t care, really., advertisers, care., marketers care,, but they care about your money.. They don’t really care that you’re a gay..

D

They care about marketing to you, correctly, right?, your parents care whether or not you’re a gay,, I’m sure..

D

I wonder if there’s a way that we could teach people.

D

That computers don’t care. that might help. like,. If you put your data back in the network, yes,, someone could access it., who would care?, but your computer, just doesn’t care, right?.

D

So I don’t know. that’s an interesting challenge., trying to make sure that you know your computer loves you, but doesn’t really care what you do. it’s, very non-judgmental. yeah.. I mean, it’s interesting.

C

Like,, probably all of us in this room care a lot less about.

C

People being seeing the data we created and the data we generate every day. yeah, I think we’re definitely probably unique in that way.

D

Well, also,, we know..., we see the code, right? right.. We know where it’s going.. We don’t know that there’s this little... like,, I get the impression, people like the 'entomorphise' things, right?

D

right?. Am I saying it: rigt? entomorphise? entomorphise. entomorphise, whatever.. So if they get a human reaction out of a nonhuman thing,.

D

They will assign a human motivation to that. Thing., so, intent, right?, yeah,, intent., right., exactly.

D

computers don’t have intent.. They don’t know that computers don’t have intent.. Maybe we can teach them that computers don’t have intent.

C

Right. and I think it’s just sort of one of those things- that...

C

like, the more people that are using the internet,, the more people who will be comfortable with it, and like sharing their data, and like also,, showing them the endpoint. like, yeah,, we’re not going to take this. and you know, write a really detailed letter and send it to,. You know, your priest or your mom.

C

like,, we’re not going to do that with your data. and I think right, now,, we’re pretty much... we’re very much like vague, right?, we’re...people don’t understand who are building applications.

C

They don’t understand who... like,, who works at these companies.. They only see us as sort of like acebook or twitter or...

C

Yeah, that’s true., I was just going to say like...

D

So right, now, people...like,, they’re a little afraid of posting their party pics on facebook, because they’re like, “oh, I don’t know...." "...I don’t want people to see..." "...like. My last friday, night,” right?, like, “it’s, so embarrassing...." "...I don’t want my boss to see that.”. My guess is that as more and more people’s.

D

Friday night party pictures go on, facebook, people will care less and less.

D

like,. We already have a president who admitted to smoking pot. like,, “oh,” right?, but like the last one, is little and so on. and now, whatever. it’s, no big deal..

D

So if you know that everyone partied and there’s, like sort of anecdotal evidence that everyone partied on a friday--.

E

Second: point of reference. yeah. then, like,, who cares.

D

When it comes to your job, interview?, it doesn’t matter as much as it used to...

C

All right. ...quickly., you should -- and also,. You probably don’t want to work for the person. Who cares that much about what...

A

E

...Like, I’m guessing.

C

That’S true. so that’s also another thing. but, yeah, it’s. The idea of [recognization] like...

C

So we talked a little bit yesterday. About, you know,.

C

Being a woman in our industry, kind of like what that means, and the value in seeing another woman in our history.

C

Kicking ass and taking names, and how that makes us feel more comfortable with being who we are. and I think that's... it’s true. it’s really similar in a way that, you know, humans process data is like okay. like,. I see that someone else is doing some benchmarking, your life or something. it’s, like, “oh,. This person was a shit, show last friday.", "I, guess it’s, probably okay..." "...that, I was half a shit, show last friday.”.

C

Instead of just pushing for lack of a better term.

C

Like pushing the envelope or --- yeah.

D

...Being not comfortable. we're social animals,, right? like, what’s acceptable behavior,. What you do... right. ...depending on how I think of you is acceptable. Behavior.

C

Exactly., I guess it should be, like, really interesting..

C

There are all these amazing companies like foursquare and github who are really about,. You know, sharing data with our users, but also,, making it accessible to other people, so they can do really cool shit with it. yeah.. I think there’s like...you know.

C

actually, obama,. I think, tried to give a talk about data today, online.

C

really? yeah,. He did about sort of like the open data initiative and everything. so...we didn’t get our shout-out unfortunately.

C

We’Re all kind of waiting, like, on our toes, but...yeah.

C

But it’s just interesting in that., like, it’s becoming more discussed like the president, talked about data today. yeah., like, that’s...like,, you know... like,. Would that have ever happened?

C

and do we have a circumstance other than everyone is using it more... yeah. ...and. Everyone sees how much... yeah, exactly. ...how powerful it is? and I’m really happy..

C

He said that we have the group of people from code for america here today. I apoligize. I don’t know many people stuck around.. Anyone still here from code for america? yeah.

C

Cool. anyways, code for america also does a lot of work in using data to make people’s lives easier in all kinds of projects,.

C

Like things like just making weather alerts better for like tsunami warnings in places and making...using data to make everyone’s lives better,, not just,. You know, people who spend a lot of time on the internet. like, all of us. right. right. ...you know.. So I mean, the more. We can kind of do.

C

To help everyone understand how data can help them....

C

Right. ...the easier it’s going to be for everyone to contribute.

C

yeah. cool., yeah., anyone, question. at the same time., I'm just kidding.

C

All right. I’ll go with it.

G

Considering what the data being a [journey] right, now, and like what annoys, like what are some of the stuff there [inaudible].

G

I think over the past, I think five years or so on the internet, we kind of like notice the emergence of like a curator.

D

G

And so there's a lot of people that,, you know take time to express themselves. Through, like it's a cool thing. yeah,. We bought this... yes., I’m kind of curious how you feel about that.

G

Like,, should we embrace this curator culture or like bite? It and, empower people to find one thing. Besides, that?.

C

The question was,: do we sort of embrace the idea of people curating content on our data online.

C

I think the example he gave was people like finding something they think it’s interesting and retrieving it, for example. like,. That’S one way to look at it,, I'm sure there's many more.. But what do you think, timoni?.

D

Yeah. it’s interesting., it's so funny.. I was literally just thinking about that earlier. Today.

D

One of my friends started a company called circa that does curated news., and I was trying to think about whether I like that notion of having a curated news source.

D

Better than having sort of a summary of all the news.

C

So this is also interesting when we talk about computers, not caring...

C

yeah., because if you thing about the idea of ---.

E

Exactly. ---a computer, creating an algorithm,.

C

Yes. that you were feeding date into, and that is then spinning back up content to you- that it thinks is relevant because it doesn’t have a motive,, right? yes. whereas,. If advertisers are like generating content for you,.

C

Well, then, you're like, “well, I’m only seeing what they want me to see..." "...so that I do x,y, and z.” yeah. well, in this case,.

D

You said it was like very intelligent, editors.

D

right., yeah., it’s interesting.. I guess medium actually uses user-based algorithm.

D

To show their top posts.

D

But circa is curated by people,, just saying.

D

And tumblr, right? obviously, is curated.. Tumblr’S is little weird because they have, like,.

D

I think, radar up to the side,, but you can’t see all top posts on tumblr,. If I am correct,.

D

Unless it’s on some secret corner of the tumblr that I haven’t seen, before.

D

Man, it’s tough, because I’ve found so much good stuff from like khaki?.

D

And that is like one of the original curated blogs, right?

D

and then,. I still get stuff from khaki.

D

It is very..., I think, as long as you’re aware that what.

D

You’Re, seeing is in the whole view, that’s okay.

D

I would say long term, or at least what I was talking about my talk,. That is not a good way to get live. Information,.

D

Honestly. I mean...

C

Especially if you want to see different things... yeah.

D

...You’Ve got to learn., I think, if you want to get like see like cool laser cut, gloves, you know...or something.

D

But it’s not really good way to find information.

D

About what’s happening to the rest of the world.

C

Note the effects right? like, you’re only going to see sort of....

C

If you only follow people who are like you,, those users are only going to retweet things that you are most likely either. I don’t know or....

C

So what? If you could find people who aren’t like you?.

D

Right. right., I actually got something I thought about for a while..

D

I was trying...like, I’m fairly liberal and trying to find a new source that I would trust that was very conservative. and I started listening to al-jazeera’s listening post podcast., but it gets like the bbc podcast talks about it.

D

It’S, like still very western focused,, right? like,. So where can I find information that’s like east asia, talking about east asia and they don’t really care about america. like,, that’s actually kind of hard to find, honestly.

D

But if I could- and I know it's curated source,- I would still be willing to look at that.. So I wonder if there’s somebody to combine the two,.

D

Where you have sort of at least like an agnostic information.

D

Repository, and within that, you find curators that are biased,.

D

I don’t know. did I answer your question?.

G

I guess that was kind of more thinking of like curation as a form of self-expression,. You know...

D

Oh,, a form of self-expression. yeah. okay.

G

Against the [inaudible].

D

In terms of, like, finding more about other people, because they’re expressing themselves through the curation?.

G

Kind of like it in a broader scope, do you think that people should feel more empowered to.

G

Curate things and then, like, tell other people what...

C

I think so., I mean,, I think how else do you find your people? like...so? I recently had conferences put on excel excel festival,.

C

Andy bayo, and one other human I think, human.

C

Andy mcnolan., andy, mcnolan. and so,, I saw andy bayo gave rex pancake give a talk at.

C

A conference called brio, and I thought it was really interesting because he had the.... That conference is all about makers.

C

and it wasn’t necessarily designers or developers. Or...

C

they're, just people, creative people who had made things.

C

and he brought on the writer of community.

C

Who's still loved by the internet.

C

dan harmon. dan harmon is still loved by the internet. and he...during the talk,. He played a video of something that.

C

Dan harmon said that really was awesome. and he said, you know, stand on the top of buildings and shout until you find your people.

C

and that’s sort of the power of the internet is you will find them. it’s just a matter of,. You need to kind of express.

C

Who you are in order to find these people. like, you’re, never going to, like,. Do that without, you know, curating.

C

Curating the things you like., I mean,. I could lead you, of course, to that thing that we’re talking before, where it kind of becomes ubiquitous or homogenous., and we would have just kind of like in the same cycle, but then, it’s up to you to go out and find new things, right?. I mean...

C

yes., that’s very true., that’s very true.. I think it should be a mix of like curating and discovering.

C

yeah. interesting.

D

People like what they like. yeah. and now we got people who, like the same thing.

D

That’S okay. that’s good even.

D

But I think it is important to be aware of other...

D

Yeah. that’s interesting., I don’t know if I have a good answer for you., but it is interesting, the economy between two things..

D

You want to feel safe and comfortable,, but you also don’t want to get trouble. Again,, right?, yeah.,.

G

It also kind of creates some more noise,, like some more...like, curating, their own things.

D

You’Re, creating more noise, by curating your own thing. yeah,, absolutely. like,, we blog, and we blog, and we blog, and we blog., and how many times is amazon, going to start the same image, right?, yeah., yeah.

C

Cool. well, there’s, no definitive,, I think. maybe,; we’ll leave it at that., let’s think about it. let’s. Think about it. yeah.. I thought of that. shameless blog.

C

let’s talk about it., we’re having a drink down the street at mars bar..

C

I encourage you...all of you to come here to come to the drink up.

C

and I mean,. I hope that these discussions continue, not only like here. the reason,. One of the reasons we started passion projects was to start discussions like this with awesome, women.

C

And I think we’re doing a pretty decent job so...

C

Well,, I think we’re maybe running out of time., so thank you...

C

Yeah., like so much... yeah, thank you., ...for being part of this.

C

And if you have anything in mind...

C

another place and time,, I guess., I think we should probably cheers at least once or... cheers. cool. thank you, guys, for being a part of it..

C

I really appreciate it and github does. and so on. Behalf of all of us,. Thanks for coming in. come have a beer on github. it’s free. come drink, our free alcohol. come on.. Thank you.

A

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