Barack Obama
I try not to post many political comments on this site, but I need to make another exception. While some other things about the DNC were quite disturbing, I was particularly impressed with a keynote speech by Barack Obama Tuesday night. Some people are touting this man as the future first African-American President of the United States, and I understand why. While I personally think it is way too early to predict a presidency, there is absolutely no doubt that Obama is an inspiring speaker and I will be watching his career with great hope.
Though it was not broadcast on the major networks, I caught Obama’s keynote on PBS. The speech is available as video or audio, and as plain text.
Of course the speech is a pitch for John Kerry, but more importantly, it is an inspiring view of our nation, and the first step to restoring my faith in an American governmental system that has lost my trust. I would give you some of my favorite quotes, but I don’t want to ruin his impeccable delivery. Whether or not you are an American, take the 15 minutes to view Barack Obama’s speech. This is what the United States of America is truly about.
AIGA National Leadership Retreat 2004 (Part 1)
A few weeks ago, I attended the 2004 AIGA National Leadership retreat in St. Louis. It was a whirlwind four days of informative sessions, interesting people, and intriguing after-parties. What follows is a partial review of my experience.
On the 24th, I showed up early due to a mix up with American Airlines, so I had some time to kill. I bowled a few games and then went spouse-present shopping for Jessie. Later that afternoon, I went back to the hotel lounge to wait for the other Austin board members to arrive. While I was reading a magazine—No wi-fi… Austin has me spoiled—Dave Chapelle walked in looking stoned and making pigeon noises. He was doing a show later that night. No, I didn’t scream, “I’m Rick James, bitch!” I was sure he’d heard that enough.
Shawn, Diana, and Mel, some of the other Austin board members, showed up about half an hour later. Amanda was arriving later and Adam couldn’t make it due to some self-inflicted battle damage. We went out to dinner and then to the opening AIGA mixer. I met the crews from San Diego, Vegas, and a few other places. Before we left, Diana and I paused for this photo op. 
The mixer was held in a former police station near the brewery. Nice combination. Have you ever noticed the brew yeast smells like Cheese-Its?
The next day we registered for the conference and attended the AIGA year-in-review and year-in-planning session. Speakers included Kathy Frederickson, Ric Grefé, David Hall, Chris Martin, Doug Powell, Ria Sharon, and Sam Shelton. Among other things, we learned about new plans for National site content syndication, a new searchable database of design history and artifacts, and the upcoming Design Legends Gala in NYC. Ric Grefé, AIGA’s Executive Director, explained his responsibility for advocating the design profession’s interests with the public, businesses, public agencies, and the media. Among other things, AIGA will soon be granted the designation as an official Non-Governmental Organization (NGO) with the United Nations and they are lobbying for design review within the American government (think Florida ballots and presidential daily briefs). The current administration doesn’t seem to care about good design, but perhaps the next administration will.
By the way, Ric Grefé is an amazing speaker that can articulate the vision of AIGA better than anyone I’ve heard. If you ever have a chance to hear him speak, don’t pass it up… Even if it’s not about the AIGA.
Later, we consumed tapas and tequila shots and amused ourselves by watching Amanda get drunk, get loud, belly dance, and recite poetry.
Most of the next day covered topics that would be of interest to fellow board members, but probably not to readers of this blog, so I won’t bore you with all the details, but I will mention the websites session hosted by Ben Friedman, Orin Fink, Sean McKibben, and David Womack.
Some of you may remember that I publicly complained about the new AIGA site back in February. My complaints were with the client-side interface of the site. Web standards and accessibility are important to me, and that aspect of the site was ignored overlooked. As it happens, the national staff and volunteers that worked on the site didn’t build that part. It was farmed out to Flat and, though their design work and client list is impressive, it is readily apparent that they care little about the value of web standards and accessibility.
That said, I was rather impressed with the collection of web talent that ran the discussion panel. Orin’s team at Third Wave did the site implementation (all the back end work) which is pretty solid. Orin Fink seems to be an interesting case as well: a developer, so impressed with the mission of AIGA, that he joined as a member… even though he’s not a designer. David Womack, the Director of New Media on the AIGA National staff, seems to be a well-rounded, big picture guy. Although he and I have differing opinions on the importance of web standards—I’ll win him over eventually—he has a solid grounding in other areas important to maintaining an large multi-faceted site like AIGA. The skills of Sean McKibben, of the Colorado chapter, complement those of Orin and David, and it is apparent that he’s been a driving force in the organization’s web progress.
Finally, Ben Friedman, partner and CIO at Iconologic in Atlanta, seems to be my kindred spirit in the AIGA. He built a shiny, new, standards-compliant site for the Atlanta chapter and wants to sell David on the idea as much as I do. We may need to recruit some help from another AIGA member or two, but it will happen eventually. Mark my words. An organization that cares this much about design won’t always overlook such an important part of the design process.
I’ll have to continue the rest of this in a later post…
Cnet Flash Course online. Now Free.
I just noticed Cnet launched a new learning site, Cnet Help U, and posted a Flash Course. It turns out that this is the same course Patrick Wood and I wrote for Netscape Learning Center last fall. The only differences are that, this time, enrollment is free and there is no author credit. I’m happy for the former and displeased about the latter. That’ll teach me to double-check my contract next time. (grimace)
Nevertheless, go take a beginning Flash Course for free if you like. The original name was “Beginning Flash MX,” but you know how marketing teams like to sex up a title. Also, the authors—ahem—recommended Moock's book as course material, not the CDs they have listed.
