Why do we keep trying to make the web back into print?
This talk mines the philosophical shift from Modernism to Post-Modernism, with stops along the way at the Chicago World's Fair of 1893, for clues to understanding the digital sands shifting under our own feet
This presentation was part of the Future Worlding for Service Design workshop at the ServDes 2014 (www.servdes.org) in Lancaster UK. This presentation introduces some key concepts of futures (aka strategic foresight) and how they can be applied in the discipline of service design.
This presentation was part of the Future Worlding for Service Design workshop at the ServDes 2014 (www.servdes.org) in Lancaster UK. This presentation introduces some key concepts of futures (aka strategic foresight) and how they can be applied in the discipline of service design.
Taking Back What and From Whom?: Imagined Communities and Role of WordPress i...John Eckman
“Taking Back The Open Web” is a bold theme, but every word in that sentence requires some significant unpacking if we’re to agree on a path forward. From whom is the open web being taken back? Who took it from us in the first place? What do we mean by open, and do we really mean “web” here?
Dries’s version of the open web (to which the CFP linked) is a vaguely defined point in the recent past where “the web felt like a free space that belong to everyone.” Anil Dash’s version, which he calls “The Web We Lost” posits a time when the web was about “letting lots of people build innovative new opportunities for themselves” which has been replaced by a system which “continues to make a small number of wealthy people even more wealthy” via “narrow-minded, web-hostile products.” The call for papers for this conference, with a focus on publishers, points to “stress” caused by “proprietary formats which enforce limits and restraints.” There’s even an Open Web Foundation (founded in 2004) dedicated to “open, non-proprietary specifications for web technologies,” to which primary subscribers are Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.
Is the conflict between the open web and the (presumably) closed web which opposes it, really about formats? Is it about access and distribution? Is it about a small number of powerful corporate overlords versus inspired, creative small business entrepreneurs?
In this talk I’ll lay out a couple of different ways of thinking about the “open web” we’re after, what each of those visions postulates as the problem, and what solutions emerge from that set of problems. I’ll conclude with some of my own take on how WordPress as itself an “imagined community” (cf. Benedict Anderson’s 1983 book) can and should contribute to shaping the future of the web. (Hint: It’s about democratizing publishing through open source AND community).
#NoStalking: Advertising & User PrivacyJohn Eckman
As publishers, have we made a Faustian bargain, exchanging revenue for our readers' security & privacy?
How can we shift online advertising (in particular programmatic) to be more compatible with user privacy in the era of the GDPR and the additional privacy laws undoubtedly coming?
We’ve all heard that content is king, yet when it comes to designing web experiences we’re still stuck with lorem ipsum and placeholder images, as though the real content didn’t matter.
We’re still designing web experiences from the top down, starting with the desktop view of the homepage, even though they’re more likely to be experienced from the bottom up – starting with a content detail page on a mobile device.
Designing from the content out means starting with atomic elements of content, and building a system of components and layouts based on the real structure of content.
Great architecture can be found almost everywhere. On the streets, in oneʼs community, in are far-off places, there are always structures that feature mindblowing designs. However, there is one place where architecture is oftentimes taken for granted – movie sets. John Eilermann.
Don't fear the block: Gutenberg is gettin' goodJohn Eckman
As presented at WordCamp NYC on Sept 14th, 2019.
Now that we’re more than six months past the Gutenlaunch, how is the new WordPress editor faring in the real world?
In short, the answer is brilliantly.
In this talk I go through some of the most exciting and interesting developments on and around Gutenberg, including real production examples from our clients as well as others.
We’ll cover core blocks, block libraries, block-aware-themes, and custom blocks.
If you’ve held back from embracing the block, come see why it’s time to start planning your own gutenswitch.
There's a Reason We Call Them Institutions: Working in Higher Education Witho...John Eckman
I’ve consulted with lots of institutions of higher education. Each was convinced that they were a unique snowflake, and that their challenges could not possibly be understood by any outsider. In fact, I’ve found there’s remarkable similarity across many (though of course not all) campus teams as they strategize, design, develop, and maintain their web presence.
Diffuse Authority
Audience Ambiguity
Site Proliferation & Content Accumulation
Team Turnover: The Revolving Door & The Lifers
Training Insufficiency
For each we’ll talk about what the dysfunction is and what strategies you might use to mitigate its impact.
Working the Open: Open Source in an AgencyJohn Eckman
Why should agencies contribute to and participate in open source projects? How can they benefit from their participation?
Examples from 10up's own Open Source Practice
GDPR FTW, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Privacy By DesignJohn Eckman
At the start, the web was purely stateless – every request was the beginning (and every response the end) of a new conversation. Then we got cookies, so that servers could remember clients, and SSL so we could share information with servers that wasn't seen by all the servers it passed through en route. These two technologies enabled e-commerce and are so foundational now it is hard to imagine the web without them. The problem is the way we'e evolved the web has been down a path of increasingly aggressive data collection and reduced transparency for users.
We should have always been doing privacy by design, data portability, data transparency, and the right to be forgotten. We should not have become dependent on invasive ad tech and aggregated third-party data; we should not have handed over ownership of our own social graphs and connections so cheaply to private commercial interests.
While many (particularly in the US) may be uncomfortable with the legalistic and regulatory approach, preferring a more laissez-faire, self-governing model for virtually everything, the GDPR can be seen as an opportunity to start doing things right – applying the core principles of privacy by design not just where mandated by regulation but as a standard business practice.
The Blob, the Chunk, & the Block: Structured Content in the Age of GutenbergJohn Eckman
Content strategists distinguish between storing content in unstructured “blobs” and storing content in structured “chunks.” Where do Gutenberg “blocks” fit in? How is Gutenberg-edited content stored, and how do we get the benefits of blocks without going all blobby?
Taking Back What and From Whom?: Imagined Communities and Role of WordPress i...John Eckman
“Taking Back The Open Web” is a bold theme, but every word in that sentence requires some significant unpacking if we’re to agree on a path forward. From whom is the open web being taken back? Who took it from us in the first place? What do we mean by open, and do we really mean “web” here?
Dries’s version of the open web (to which the CFP linked) is a vaguely defined point in the recent past where “the web felt like a free space that belong to everyone.” Anil Dash’s version, which he calls “The Web We Lost” posits a time when the web was about “letting lots of people build innovative new opportunities for themselves” which has been replaced by a system which “continues to make a small number of wealthy people even more wealthy” via “narrow-minded, web-hostile products.” The call for papers for this conference, with a focus on publishers, points to “stress” caused by “proprietary formats which enforce limits and restraints.” There’s even an Open Web Foundation (founded in 2004) dedicated to “open, non-proprietary specifications for web technologies,” to which primary subscribers are Facebook, Google, and Microsoft.
Is the conflict between the open web and the (presumably) closed web which opposes it, really about formats? Is it about access and distribution? Is it about a small number of powerful corporate overlords versus inspired, creative small business entrepreneurs?
In this talk I’ll lay out a couple of different ways of thinking about the “open web” we’re after, what each of those visions postulates as the problem, and what solutions emerge from that set of problems. I’ll conclude with some of my own take on how WordPress as itself an “imagined community” (cf. Benedict Anderson’s 1983 book) can and should contribute to shaping the future of the web. (Hint: It’s about democratizing publishing through open source AND community).
#NoStalking: Advertising & User PrivacyJohn Eckman
As publishers, have we made a Faustian bargain, exchanging revenue for our readers' security & privacy?
How can we shift online advertising (in particular programmatic) to be more compatible with user privacy in the era of the GDPR and the additional privacy laws undoubtedly coming?
We’ve all heard that content is king, yet when it comes to designing web experiences we’re still stuck with lorem ipsum and placeholder images, as though the real content didn’t matter.
We’re still designing web experiences from the top down, starting with the desktop view of the homepage, even though they’re more likely to be experienced from the bottom up – starting with a content detail page on a mobile device.
Designing from the content out means starting with atomic elements of content, and building a system of components and layouts based on the real structure of content.
Great architecture can be found almost everywhere. On the streets, in oneʼs community, in are far-off places, there are always structures that feature mindblowing designs. However, there is one place where architecture is oftentimes taken for granted – movie sets. John Eilermann.
Don't fear the block: Gutenberg is gettin' goodJohn Eckman
As presented at WordCamp NYC on Sept 14th, 2019.
Now that we’re more than six months past the Gutenlaunch, how is the new WordPress editor faring in the real world?
In short, the answer is brilliantly.
In this talk I go through some of the most exciting and interesting developments on and around Gutenberg, including real production examples from our clients as well as others.
We’ll cover core blocks, block libraries, block-aware-themes, and custom blocks.
If you’ve held back from embracing the block, come see why it’s time to start planning your own gutenswitch.
There's a Reason We Call Them Institutions: Working in Higher Education Witho...John Eckman
I’ve consulted with lots of institutions of higher education. Each was convinced that they were a unique snowflake, and that their challenges could not possibly be understood by any outsider. In fact, I’ve found there’s remarkable similarity across many (though of course not all) campus teams as they strategize, design, develop, and maintain their web presence.
Diffuse Authority
Audience Ambiguity
Site Proliferation & Content Accumulation
Team Turnover: The Revolving Door & The Lifers
Training Insufficiency
For each we’ll talk about what the dysfunction is and what strategies you might use to mitigate its impact.
Working the Open: Open Source in an AgencyJohn Eckman
Why should agencies contribute to and participate in open source projects? How can they benefit from their participation?
Examples from 10up's own Open Source Practice
GDPR FTW, or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Privacy By DesignJohn Eckman
At the start, the web was purely stateless – every request was the beginning (and every response the end) of a new conversation. Then we got cookies, so that servers could remember clients, and SSL so we could share information with servers that wasn't seen by all the servers it passed through en route. These two technologies enabled e-commerce and are so foundational now it is hard to imagine the web without them. The problem is the way we'e evolved the web has been down a path of increasingly aggressive data collection and reduced transparency for users.
We should have always been doing privacy by design, data portability, data transparency, and the right to be forgotten. We should not have become dependent on invasive ad tech and aggregated third-party data; we should not have handed over ownership of our own social graphs and connections so cheaply to private commercial interests.
While many (particularly in the US) may be uncomfortable with the legalistic and regulatory approach, preferring a more laissez-faire, self-governing model for virtually everything, the GDPR can be seen as an opportunity to start doing things right – applying the core principles of privacy by design not just where mandated by regulation but as a standard business practice.
The Blob, the Chunk, & the Block: Structured Content in the Age of GutenbergJohn Eckman
Content strategists distinguish between storing content in unstructured “blobs” and storing content in structured “chunks.” Where do Gutenberg “blocks” fit in? How is Gutenberg-edited content stored, and how do we get the benefits of blocks without going all blobby?
WordPress is the dominant CMS of the web, but still struggles to find acceptance in many Enterprises.
One reason is the lack of clear paths for personalization and content targeting – features which are heavily promoted in platforms like Adobe Experience Manager and (especially) Sitecore’s Experience Platform.
This talk covers what personalization and content targeting are and multiple ways of achieving both using WordPress as the underlying CMS, as well as of the dangers of personalization projects and ways they can go wrong.
The JSON REST API is something developers in the WordPress community have been very excited about for years. But what can your teams and clients actually use it to accomplish? What's it actually for?
Alternate Title: Who is JSON, and Why Do I Care How Much REST He Gets?
What "The Four Agreements" can teach us about avoiding drama in the WordPress community. 1) Be impeccable with your word; 2) Don't take anything personally; 3) Don't make assumptions; 4) Always do your best
Distributed, not Disconnected: Employee Engagement for Remote CompaniesJohn Eckman
Just because your employees don't all come to the same physical location doesn't mean they can be engaged. Distributed teams have needs much like co-located teams, and there are some additional steps you can take to drive employee engagement.
Facebook Instant Articles, Apple News, and Accelerated Mobile Pages all offer new distribution opportunities to address the limitations of today's mobile web experience.
What are these new distribution channels and how can marketers and publishers leverage them?
What’s wrong with the traditional approach to requirements definition and how a more proactive, collaborative, prototype and visualization driven approach generates better results.
Client Diplomacy: From Adversaries to AlliesJohn Eckman
Lightning Talk (10 minus) presented at WordCamp NYC at the UN
Too often in web design and development we treat clients as the enemy - irritating, ill-informed, pointy-haired-boss style business people who don't "get" what we do.
If instead we treated clients as our allies, and aligned our interests to theirs - recognizing that their success is out ultimate goal - we'd achieve better outcomes.
WordPress as a CMS Platform: Gilbane 2015John Eckman
While WordPress powers now 25% of the web, enterprise customers often overlook the platform as a content management system.
WordPress can be used for more than "simple" blogs or news sites: it supports custom content types, meta data, and taxonomies; has a robust API for managing user permissions, content states, and workflow; handles multilingual and multinational use cases easily; supports multisite networks (and networks of networks); offers a JSON REST API in addition to XML-RPC and CLI options; and can be integrated with enterprise class search engines like Elastic Search and SOLR.
Don't allow the deliberate simplicity of the WordPress "out of the box" experience or the focus on usability for content editors to overshadow the incredible power of the core platform and well established APIs.
WordPress and the Enterprise DisconnectJohn Eckman
While the WordPress community rightly celebrates powering > 24% of the web, Enterprise customers have a drastically different perspective.
How can we more effectively sell Enterprise clients on the benefits of WordPress, without losing the ease of use and simplicity that has made WordPress great?
(see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PrPVZ60s-ls for audio and sync'd slides)
"Content precedes design. Design in the absence of content is not design, it's decoration." - Jeffrey Zeldman
We've all heard that content is king, yet when it comes to designing web experiences we're still stuck with lorem ipsum and placeholder images, as though the real content didn't matter.
We're still designing web experiences from the top down, starting with the desktop view of the homepage, even though they're more likely to be experienced from the bottom up - starting with a content detail page on a mobile device.
Designing from the content out means starting with atomic elements of content, and building a system of components and layouts based on the real structure of content.
While the community (rightly) celebrates the tremendous growth of WordPress as a platform, there’s a significant disconnect between what community members know about WordPress and what folks outside the community know.
Getting outside the WordPress bubble – by participating meaningfully in other conferences, conversations, and communities – helps bring new ideas into our community and also helps us bring WordPress into new contexts.
Dev Dives: Train smarter, not harder – active learning and UiPath LLMs for do...UiPathCommunity
💥 Speed, accuracy, and scaling – discover the superpowers of GenAI in action with UiPath Document Understanding and Communications Mining™:
See how to accelerate model training and optimize model performance with active learning
Learn about the latest enhancements to out-of-the-box document processing – with little to no training required
Get an exclusive demo of the new family of UiPath LLMs – GenAI models specialized for processing different types of documents and messages
This is a hands-on session specifically designed for automation developers and AI enthusiasts seeking to enhance their knowledge in leveraging the latest intelligent document processing capabilities offered by UiPath.
Speakers:
👨🏫 Andras Palfi, Senior Product Manager, UiPath
👩🏫 Lenka Dulovicova, Product Program Manager, UiPath
State of ICS and IoT Cyber Threat Landscape Report 2024 previewPrayukth K V
The IoT and OT threat landscape report has been prepared by the Threat Research Team at Sectrio using data from Sectrio, cyber threat intelligence farming facilities spread across over 85 cities around the world. In addition, Sectrio also runs AI-based advanced threat and payload engagement facilities that serve as sinks to attract and engage sophisticated threat actors, and newer malware including new variants and latent threats that are at an earlier stage of development.
The latest edition of the OT/ICS and IoT security Threat Landscape Report 2024 also covers:
State of global ICS asset and network exposure
Sectoral targets and attacks as well as the cost of ransom
Global APT activity, AI usage, actor and tactic profiles, and implications
Rise in volumes of AI-powered cyberattacks
Major cyber events in 2024
Malware and malicious payload trends
Cyberattack types and targets
Vulnerability exploit attempts on CVEs
Attacks on counties – USA
Expansion of bot farms – how, where, and why
In-depth analysis of the cyber threat landscape across North America, South America, Europe, APAC, and the Middle East
Why are attacks on smart factories rising?
Cyber risk predictions
Axis of attacks – Europe
Systemic attacks in the Middle East
Download the full report from here:
https://sectrio.com/resources/ot-threat-landscape-reports/sectrio-releases-ot-ics-and-iot-security-threat-landscape-report-2024/
DevOps and Testing slides at DASA ConnectKari Kakkonen
My and Rik Marselis slides at 30.5.2024 DASA Connect conference. We discuss about what is testing, then what is agile testing and finally what is Testing in DevOps. Finally we had lovely workshop with the participants trying to find out different ways to think about quality and testing in different parts of the DevOps infinity loop.
GraphRAG is All You need? LLM & Knowledge GraphGuy Korland
Guy Korland, CEO and Co-founder of FalkorDB, will review two articles on the integration of language models with knowledge graphs.
1. Unifying Large Language Models and Knowledge Graphs: A Roadmap.
https://arxiv.org/abs/2306.08302
2. Microsoft Research's GraphRAG paper and a review paper on various uses of knowledge graphs:
https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/blog/graphrag-unlocking-llm-discovery-on-narrative-private-data/
Accelerate your Kubernetes clusters with Varnish CachingThijs Feryn
A presentation about the usage and availability of Varnish on Kubernetes. This talk explores the capabilities of Varnish caching and shows how to use the Varnish Helm chart to deploy it to Kubernetes.
This presentation was delivered at K8SUG Singapore. See https://feryn.eu/presentations/accelerate-your-kubernetes-clusters-with-varnish-caching-k8sug-singapore-28-2024 for more details.
Builder.ai Founder Sachin Dev Duggal's Strategic Approach to Create an Innova...Ramesh Iyer
In today's fast-changing business world, Companies that adapt and embrace new ideas often need help to keep up with the competition. However, fostering a culture of innovation takes much work. It takes vision, leadership and willingness to take risks in the right proportion. Sachin Dev Duggal, co-founder of Builder.ai, has perfected the art of this balance, creating a company culture where creativity and growth are nurtured at each stage.
Kubernetes & AI - Beauty and the Beast !?! @KCD Istanbul 2024Tobias Schneck
As AI technology is pushing into IT I was wondering myself, as an “infrastructure container kubernetes guy”, how get this fancy AI technology get managed from an infrastructure operational view? Is it possible to apply our lovely cloud native principals as well? What benefit’s both technologies could bring to each other?
Let me take this questions and provide you a short journey through existing deployment models and use cases for AI software. On practical examples, we discuss what cloud/on-premise strategy we may need for applying it to our own infrastructure to get it to work from an enterprise perspective. I want to give an overview about infrastructure requirements and technologies, what could be beneficial or limiting your AI use cases in an enterprise environment. An interactive Demo will give you some insides, what approaches I got already working for real.
Slack (or Teams) Automation for Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Soluti...Jeffrey Haguewood
Sidekick Solutions uses Bonterra Impact Management (fka Social Solutions Apricot) and automation solutions to integrate data for business workflows.
We believe integration and automation are essential to user experience and the promise of efficient work through technology. Automation is the critical ingredient to realizing that full vision. We develop integration products and services for Bonterra Case Management software to support the deployment of automations for a variety of use cases.
This video focuses on the notifications, alerts, and approval requests using Slack for Bonterra Impact Management. The solutions covered in this webinar can also be deployed for Microsoft Teams.
Interested in deploying notification automations for Bonterra Impact Management? Contact us at sales@sidekicksolutionsllc.com to discuss next steps.
Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey 2024 by 91mobiles.pdf91mobiles
91mobiles recently conducted a Smart TV Buyer Insights Survey in which we asked over 3,000 respondents about the TV they own, aspects they look at on a new TV, and their TV buying preferences.
Essentials of Automations: Optimizing FME Workflows with ParametersSafe Software
Are you looking to streamline your workflows and boost your projects’ efficiency? Do you find yourself searching for ways to add flexibility and control over your FME workflows? If so, you’re in the right place.
Join us for an insightful dive into the world of FME parameters, a critical element in optimizing workflow efficiency. This webinar marks the beginning of our three-part “Essentials of Automation” series. This first webinar is designed to equip you with the knowledge and skills to utilize parameters effectively: enhancing the flexibility, maintainability, and user control of your FME projects.
Here’s what you’ll gain:
- Essentials of FME Parameters: Understand the pivotal role of parameters, including Reader/Writer, Transformer, User, and FME Flow categories. Discover how they are the key to unlocking automation and optimization within your workflows.
- Practical Applications in FME Form: Delve into key user parameter types including choice, connections, and file URLs. Allow users to control how a workflow runs, making your workflows more reusable. Learn to import values and deliver the best user experience for your workflows while enhancing accuracy.
- Optimization Strategies in FME Flow: Explore the creation and strategic deployment of parameters in FME Flow, including the use of deployment and geometry parameters, to maximize workflow efficiency.
- Pro Tips for Success: Gain insights on parameterizing connections and leveraging new features like Conditional Visibility for clarity and simplicity.
We’ll wrap up with a glimpse into future webinars, followed by a Q&A session to address your specific questions surrounding this topic.
Don’t miss this opportunity to elevate your FME expertise and drive your projects to new heights of efficiency.
LF Energy Webinar: Electrical Grid Modelling and Simulation Through PowSyBl -...DanBrown980551
Do you want to learn how to model and simulate an electrical network from scratch in under an hour?
Then welcome to this PowSyBl workshop, hosted by Rte, the French Transmission System Operator (TSO)!
During the webinar, you will discover the PowSyBl ecosystem as well as handle and study an electrical network through an interactive Python notebook.
PowSyBl is an open source project hosted by LF Energy, which offers a comprehensive set of features for electrical grid modelling and simulation. Among other advanced features, PowSyBl provides:
- A fully editable and extendable library for grid component modelling;
- Visualization tools to display your network;
- Grid simulation tools, such as power flows, security analyses (with or without remedial actions) and sensitivity analyses;
The framework is mostly written in Java, with a Python binding so that Python developers can access PowSyBl functionalities as well.
What you will learn during the webinar:
- For beginners: discover PowSyBl's functionalities through a quick general presentation and the notebook, without needing any expert coding skills;
- For advanced developers: master the skills to efficiently apply PowSyBl functionalities to your real-world scenarios.
3. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
About Me
• 1998: PhD in American
Literature
4. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
About Me
• 1998: PhD in American
Literature
• Diss: “Confronting
Modernity: Urbanization
and American Literature
1880-1930”
5. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
About Me
• 1998: PhD in American
Literature
• Diss: “Confronting
Modernity: Urbanization
and American Literature
1880-1930”
• 1999-Present: Web
developer, CMS
consultant, UX director,
Project Manager, Agency
Director
6. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
About Me
• 1998: PhD in American
Literature
• Diss: “Confronting
Modernity: Urbanization
and American Literature
1880-1930”
• 1999-Present: Web
developer, CMS
consultant, UX director,
Project Manager, Agency
Director
• Current: CEO at 10up
7. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
About Me
• 1998: PhD in American
Literature
• Diss: “Confronting
Modernity: Urbanization
and American Literature
1880-1930”
• 1999-Present: Web
developer, CMS
consultant, UX director,
Project Manager, Agency
Director
• Current: CEO at 10up
• (Yes, we are hiring)
8. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
“Now is the time for the medium of the web to outgrow its
origins in the printed page. . . . It is the nature of the web to
be flexible, and it should be our role as designers and
developers to embrace this flexibility . . . The journey begins
by letting go of control, and becoming flexible.”
11. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
What happened in
between these two
publications?
12. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
“Creating Killer Web Sites was
the first true design book for
the Web. It became the best-
selling book on the Internet in
1996 and has been translated
into ten languages. It has
taught an entire generation of
site designers how to get
control over their pages”
15. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Why do we so resist the
digital nature of the web?
16. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Walter Benjamin
!
!
!
!
!
!
“The Work of Art in the Age of
Mechanical Reproduction
(Reproducibility)” 1936
“that which withers in
the age of mechanical
reproduction is the aura
of the work of art . . . the
technique of reproduction
detaches the reproduced
object from the domain of
tradition”
17. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
What is the work of
design, in the age of
digital reproduction?
19. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
The White City
Chicago World’s Fair 1893
20. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
The White City
Chicago World’s Fair 1893
21. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
The White City
Chicago World’s Fair 1893
22. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
The White City
Chicago World’s Fair 1893
23. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
- Daniel Burnham, Master of Works for the Chicago World’s Fair
“Make no Little Plans . . . Make big plans . . .
remembering that a noble, logical diagram once
recorded will never die . . . Let your watchword be order
and your beacon beauty”
25. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Modernism
“All fixed, fast-frozen relations, with
their train of ancient and venerable
prejudices and opinions, are swept
away, all new-formed ones become
antiquated before they can ossify.
All that is solid melts into air, all
that is holy is profaned, and man is
at last compelled to face with sober
senses his real conditions of life, and
his relations with his kind”
Marx & Engels, Communist
Manifesto (1848)
26. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Modernism
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, . . .
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
. . .
And what rough beast, its hour come round at last,
Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?
- Yeats, “The Second Coming” 1919
27. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
- T. S. Eliot, The Waste Land 1922
I sat upon the shore
Fishing, with the arid plain behind me
Shall I at least set my lands in order?
London Bridge is falling down falling down falling down
Poi s'ascose nel foco che gli affina
Quando fiam ceu chelidon - O swallow swallow
Le Prince d'Aquitaine a la tour abolie
These fragments I have shored against my ruins
Why then Ile fit you. Hieronymo's mad againe.
Datta. Dayadhvam. Damyata.
Shantih shantih shantih
28. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Modernism
“To be modern is to find ourselves
in an environment that promises
us adventure, power, joy, growth,
transformation of ourselves and
the world - and at the same time
that threatens to destroy
everything we have, everything
we know, everything we are.”
Marshall Berman, All That Is
Solid Melts Into Air (1982)
33. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Tryin’ to keep it real (compared to what)
1969: Gene McDaniels
composition, recorded by Les
McCann & Eddie Harris, protests
Nixon and the war in Vietnam.
!
!
2003: “Real Compared to What”
stars Mya and Common selling
Coca Cola, “The Real Thing”
34. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Mo vs Po-mo
• Things Fall Apart / All that is
solid melts into air
• Mourning lost authenticity
• If only we could reassert a
master narrative
• Clear distinction between
“high” and “low” culture
• Aesthetic formalism
• It’s the end of the world as we
know it, and I feel fine
• Authenticity is a lie, a trap
• Distrust of master narratives
• Blurring of lines between
“high” and “low” / “art” and
“commerce”
• Pastiche, collage, parody, irony,
self-referentiality, simulacra
36. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Responsive Web Design
is more than a set of
techniques: it is a push,
to force us out of the
collective hallucination
of fixed-web design
37. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Responsive Web Design
• RWD can’t just mean
producing three comps where
we used to do one (mobile,
tablet, desktop)
• We need to balance the clients’
desire for control with a
realistic sense of device
proliferation and the
appropriate ebb and flow
• Stop trying to make the web
back into a new print
41. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Stop controlling, start designing
• Design from content out
42. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Stop controlling, start designing
• Design from content out
• Design for fluidity & device independence - grid
systems, percentages, responsive typography and
imagery
43. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Stop controlling, start designing
• Design from content out
• Design for fluidity & device independence - grid
systems, percentages, responsive typography and
imagery
• Move to real interactions (html,css,js) as early as
possible / practical (but not before that)
44. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Stop controlling, start designing
• Design from content out
• Design for fluidity & device independence - grid
systems, percentages, responsive typography and
imagery
• Move to real interactions (html,css,js) as early as
possible / practical (but not before that)
• Semantic markup and progressive enhancement
FTW!
45. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
Epilogue: Control is an
Expensive and Dangerous
Illusion
48. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
The White City
• Henry Howard Holmes,
“America’s first serial killer,”
designed and built a hotel to
prey upon primarily young
women who came to visit or
work at the fair
• See Erik Larsen, The Devil in
the White City, 2003
49. John Eckman | @jeckman | #wcnyc2014
The White City
• Henry Howard Holmes,
“America’s first serial killer,”
designed and built a hotel to
prey upon primarily young
women who came to visit or
work at the fair
• See Erik Larsen, The Devil in
the White City, 2003