Færslur Þriðjudaginn 30. maí 2000

At 15:30: First Day of Work. 

Today was my first day of work in England. Actually I should have been working yesterday also, but yesterday was a UK banking holiday and Stína had a day off her work, so we spent the day walking the Tooting area (Southern London). We looked at things in Indian shops, bought (Indian) groceries, cooked great food at home, and then watched Jack Nicholson movies on TV and drunk some nice wine offered by Angelo.

Today I started digging into the huge pile I have of unread CHI-WEB mail. I'm doing good. Still I estimate that I have about 20 hours left of reading and following interesting links. I plan to distribute this work evenly between my work hours and my private time.

I brought my computer home the day before yesterday and got it running. Unfortunatly I'm still unline (I'm saving these entries locally and will post them as soon as I get online). What I need is a phone cord from my modem to the wall socket. and a permit from Angelo to use his ISP connection until Friday when I get my own phone line and cheap ISP access.

Now I'm on my way out to run some important errands: Have the locksmith fix the front-door key he made for me last Friday (it never worked!), try to find a phone cord (there were no "dull" stores open yesterday), see if I can find a PC cord for my digital camera (I want to take pictures!!), and go to Easy Everything to send some e-mails and stuff...

When Stína finishes her work today (18:00) we're going to meet Steve (my mom's guy^tm) for a chat and a beer and stuff. Really English, in a pub and everything.... Now I just have to figure out what the place is called where I promised we'd meet him...

Argh! Panic!

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At 14:45: Genii 

"Everyone is a genius at least once a year; a real genius has his original ideas closer together." -- G.C. Lichtenberg

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At 14:20: Marketing vs. Usability? 

Here are a couple of random quotes from the CHI-WEB mailing list, that I relate to a lot!

"marketing isn't the enemy, you just need to work with them to find out their needs, then use your superior knowledge of human behavior to help them meet their goals sucessfully." - christina (cwodtke@sirius.com)

"marketing needs to communicate their goals and needs and let the ui person decide how best to accomplish that based on the audience and the site." - Birgitte Eaton

This relates to independent web-development companies in a way that the "marketing" department easily fits into the slot of the "client-advocate" in Peter Merholz's web development team diagram.

In the company I work for we're currently in the process of defining and forming the role of the user-advocates within the design and development process.

My two greatest concerns are that the user-advocates must...

...connect equally well to all parts of the development-process. (User- centered issues are equally important in grapics-design and software design.)

...be able to interact with the client-advocates in a way that will prove beneficial to both ends. (No marketing vs. usability please!)

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At 12:10: Leadership 

"A great leader in the army makes decisions with 70% information." -- ?

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At 10:25: Ignorance is Luxury 

Some simplistic thoughts...

The old saying goes; ignorance is bliss. In the world of tomorrow the blissful ingnorance will also be a thing of luxury.

Education will no-longer be luxury but a basic need. Information will be plentiful and for anyone to grab. Knowledge (applied processed posessed information), however, will define one's chances of surival and success. Information age begets "knowledge age".

Only the rich and powerful will be able to afford being ingnorant. They will be able to pay others to know things for them. They'll be free of the burden of having to forage for knowledge every day.

One gets the most crazy ideas while using white porcelain things...

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