Christian introduces himself and discusses his experience presenting at the Paris Web conference while dealing with language barriers as a German speaker. He emphasizes the importance of interfaces in making technology easy for users and tells stories from his work building visual interfaces and prototypes to demonstrate solutions. Christian encourages the audience to focus on finding stories within data and using technology to solve problems rather than just presenting information. He provides examples of projects he built and released that advanced his career.

1. Let’s interface!
Chris&an Heilmann
Parisweb, Paris, France, October 2010

2. Bonjour...

3. Je suis Chris et
j'aime cette
conférence

4. J’aime les
organisateurs....

5. J’adore les autres
orateurs...

6. Mais j'ai un
problème...

7. La langue...

8. Moi, je suis
allemand...

9. J’habite en
angleterre...

10. Et je parle un petit
peu français...

11. Paris Web est une
conférence pleine
de bon contenu...

12. Mais le monde ne
saura jamais car il
ne parle pas
français.
...et pas vraiment anglais

13. Si tu aimes cette
conférence...

14. Aide à traduire les
présentations pour
le Web.

15. Et c’est pourquoi
nous continuons en
anglais...

16. Languages are
difficult.

17. Let me tell you a
story...

18. I have this visual
mind - you say a
word and a picture
pops immediately
into my head.

19. I flew over here with
Air France from
Germany.

20. Gepäckstücke Gebäckstücke

21. Now, the problem is
that I have a visual
mind but I can’t
draw for toffee...

22. I think it is fair to
say that I am a
developer and a
geek.

23. Which is why I
started
programming visual
interfaces.

24. Interfaces are what
makes things easy
for users.

25. Users could be our
end users but also
your company.

26. Dr. Walter Gibbs:
User requests are what computers are
for!
Inventor of
win!
MCP’s bitch
Ed Dillinger:
DOING OUR BUSINESS is what
computers are for.

27. Companies
communicate their
offerings badly on
the web.

28. Funnily enough the
last people they ask
for advice is us
though.

29. Right now, it seems
there are a few
schools of thought
how to reach out.

30. Stick to the facts,
deliver everything
and let people find
what they want to
find.

32. Give the smallest
amount of
information
possible to achieve
a goal.

34. Or go completely
visual and let
people click
together what they
need.

36. Two of them are a
lot of work and two
really only make
people scratch the
surface of a subject.

37. If you want to really
reach people - solve
a problem with
what you offer.

38. Get your
foot in the
door.

39. Companies don’t
get this yet - this is
your opportunity to
shine.

40. Example:
Yahoo Placemaker

45. http://icant.co.uk/geomaker/

46. Example:
Yahoo GeoPlanet

50. http://isithackday.com/geoplanet-explorer/geodrilldown.php

51. http://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/around-you/

52. http://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/addmap.html

53. Example:
Yahoo BOSS

54. http://developer.yahoo.com/search/boss/boss_guide/

55. http://keywordfinder.org/

56. All of these I built
and released.

57. I wrote a blog post
about them and
people started
using them.

58. I also released the
source codes on
GitHub.

59. This, other than
anything else
turned me from
code monkey to
spokesperson for
my company.

60. And you can do
that, too.

61. Even better:
pair up to build
something
together.

62. You can do that for
your own products
or for other peoples
products.

63. Prototype in the
browser with
Greasemonkey and
other browser
extensions!

65. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SA4Et1DiVbE

66. Instead of writing
an email or a
massive document,
just do a screencast.

67. http://screenr.com/

68. I build interfaces
first and foremost
for myself.

69. If I don’t get
something, I try to
find a way to make
it understandable
for myself.

70. The reason is that a
lot of
documentation is
just confusing.

72. http://isithackday.com/hacks/geo/placefinder/

73. Simply showing
technology is not
enough - you need
to find the story in
the data.

75. This is where UX
people come in.

76. Branding is
beautiful but think
about data, too!

77. Information is
beautiful!

78. http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/
david_mccandless_the_beauty_of_data_visualization.html

80. Tell the stories in
the data.

94. Finding+converting
data is easy!

95. YQL h=p://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/

96. YQL h=p://developer.yahoo.com/yql/console/
select {what} from {where}
where {condi&ons}

97. http://lanyrd.com/people/codepo8/

99. http://www.guardian.co.uk/news/datablog/
2010/feb/11/winter-olympics-medals-by-country

102. select * from csv where url="http://
spreadsheets.google.com/pub?
key=tpWDkIZMZleQaREf493v1Jw&output=
csv" and
columns="Year,City,Sport,Discipline,Countr
y,Event, Gender,Type" and Year="1924"

103. http://isithackday.com/fifa2010/

104. http://winterolympicsmedals.com

105. http://github.com/yql/yql-tables

106. http://www.yuiblog.com/blog/2010/02/11/video-heilmann-yql/

107. (...)

108. http://code.google.com/apis/charttools/
108

110. http://code.google.com/appengine/
110

111. http://github.com
111

112. http://heroku.com/
112

113. Concentrate on
building something
quickly that tells a
story right now with
building blocks.

114. People will listen to
you much faster
than you asking for
time to build it.

115. You don’t need to
be an amazing
developer or
designer to show
your company the
way.

116. What you need is to
find the story in the
data and the
problem your
solutions solve.

117. You can also be the
one to bring the
web to the
company.

118. Here’s something to
impress your boss
with.

119. http://github.com/codepo8/firehose-research/

120. You are never too
small to matter.

121. If you are
confident in
where you
want to get
to you will
get there.

122. Christian Heilmann
http://wait-till-i.com Thanks!
http://developer-evangelism.com
http://twitter.com/codepo8