Alex Wright

Conferencing

November 23, 2012

I've been enjoying the chance to get back on the conference circuit again over the past couple of months, after a fairly long hiatus (two kids in diapers have a way of conspiring to keep you at home). There hasn't been much time to reflect on any of it, though, but now that I have a few moments of post-Thanksgiving lull I thought I would try to capture a few highlights:

Brooklyn Beta
I walked a few blocks down the street to the Invisible Dog for the third installment in Cameron Koczon and Chris Shiflett's impossible-to-pin-down three-day happening. It takes no small amount of hubris to hold a conference with no pre-announced agenda or speaker list, but somehow they manage to keep selling it out and delivering on increasingly high expectations. Highlights for me included the sheer badassery of Aaron Draplin's opening talk, in which he somehow managed to combine cutting sarcasm about the crappiness of so much modern design with heart-on-his-sleeves passion for the human potential of creative work; Newark mayor Cory Booker's unexpectedly inspired talk on the possibilities of networks to enhance civic participation; the Onion's Baratunde Thurston on the importance of afternoon whiskey and Location-Based Racism; and the chance to meet Ted Nelson, the iconoclastic and famously curmedgeonly genius without whom the Web might never have happened.

ASIS&T
I took the bus down to Baltimore in the pre-Sandy rainstorms to attend a day-long conference on the history of information science. In contrast to the hipster-hacker vibe of Brooklyn Beta, this was a more serious and staid academic crowd (then again, I tend to be on the serious and staid end of the spectrum myself). In any case, the presentations were mostly excellent, if a bit on the white-papery side. Boyd Rayward gave an excellent keynote, laying out a sweeping history of how information science has evolved over the years in what he characterized as three successive eras (the print age following Gutenberg; the pre-digital era before WWII; and the current age of ubiquitous technology); Michael Buckland introduced the forgotten photography pioneer Lodewyk Bendikson; and Charles Van Den Heuvel gave a solid overview of Donker Duyvis, the often-overlooked successor to Paul Otlet. The major highlight for me was dinner with Charles and Boyd, where they regaled me with their encyclopedic knowledge of Otletiana over Baltimore seafood and one or two too many glasses of wine.


UX Brighton
In early November I visited my old home town and spent a day taking part in Danny Hope's fast-growing UX conference. He put together a provocative lineup of speakers to talk about the past and future of UX design, including: Ben Bashford on the role of empathy in designing for connected devices; Jim Kalbach on innovation; Mike Kuniavsky on the coming confluence of the Maker movement and Web analytics; and Karl Fast on embodied cognition (the best talk of the day, hands-down); and, well, me.

World Usability Day
From Brighton I trekked out to Graz to teach a half-day workshop on user research, thanks to event coordinator Hannes Robier, then participated in an evening conference with an interesting mix of European UXers. Also enjoyed the chance to meet some of the faculty in the interaction design program at the Graz University of Technology, including Keith Andrews and Konrad Baumann, followed by the chance to sample some of the best white port I have ever had the pleasure of tasting at the Buschenschank Labanz in the foothills of southern Austria.

That was more than enough conferencing for one season. It was a fun ride, but I'm long since ready to settle back down for a bit. There's a deadline looming, and it's long since time for me to get back to work.

Brighton-bound

October 21, 2012

I'm looking forward to attending UX Brighton in early November. For me, this is a bit more than just another Web conference; it's also a kind of homecoming.

From 1978 to 1980, I lived in Brighton while attending school at the long-defunct St. Wilfrid's down the road in Seaford. For two years I led the full-on Tom Brown lifestyle - school tie, sweater, goofy shorts and all. When I wasn't boarding at school I spent a fair bit of time wandering around my adopted hometown - roaming the old amusement piers where the old folks fed their pensions into the penny slot machines, knocking around the crumbling waterfront promenade, and rummaging for washed-up salvage on the abandoned beach past the marina. My major Brighton claim to fame came in 1979, when I watched from the sidewalk while they filmed Quadrophenia.

Somehow it seems fitting that the talk I'll be giving is on the history of hypertext, looking at some of the early precursors to the Web in search of interesting ideas left by the historical wayside. I've always felt like I probably left some of my pre-adolescent self in Brighton - and while of course you can't go home again - I'm hoping that I may yet stumble across a few misplaced memories left somewhere by the sea.

Robot Theater

July 6, 2012

The Times' Weekend Arts section is running my story on the emerging intersection of theater and robotics. This was a challenging piece to write; my theater career ended over three decades ago (when I was Chris Kulp's understudy for Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing); and everything I know about robotics I pretty much learned from watching bad sci-fi movies. So it was humbling to watch a group of kids at New Albany High School performing their own original scripts and programming their Bioloid robots to hit their marks. I also enjoyed the chance to interview smart folks like Bill Smart, Annamaria Pileggi, David Saltz and Heather Knight, whose pal Data may just be the robotic answer to Lenny Bruce.

What I'm Up To These Days

June 8, 2012

Blogging has been painfully slow around here for the past few months (if not, well, years), but life seems to have slowed down enough on this lazy Friday afternoon that I thought I would take a moment to let the Internets know what I've been doing with myself lately.

Mostly, I've been working on my next book. I generally subscribe to Hemingway's advice that it's bad luck to talk too much about books you haven't written yet, but word seems to have trickled out here and there, so I thought I might as well go on the record. Briefly, I'm writing a book about Paul Otlet and the early history of the modern information age. That's about as much as I'm ready to say about it just yet, but if you're interested in hearing more about it as the book gets closer to publication, feel free to drop me a line at alex at alexwright dot org.

In other - far more important news - my wife and I recently welcomed our second son Elliot. He was born at a hearty 10 lb 5 oz (can you say, Daddy's boy?) and has been settling into his new world in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn. But not for long: We're on the verge of closing on a condo in Park Slope later this summer. Because, you know, Park Slope doesn't have quite enough bearded men pushing strollers around the neighborhood while they try to finish their books.

Elsewhere, I'm still plugging away at the Times, where we have a few interesting irons in the fire (some of which should come to light early next year). But for now, I'm getting ready to cash in my paternity leave to focus on the aforementioned book, baby and Brooklyn-ing.

More to come on all of the above, sooner or later. In the meantime, allow me to recommend turning off the WiFi and enjoying the summer.

Linotype: The Film

February 7, 2012

Last week I enjoyed the chance to see the premiere of Linotype, Doug Wilson's new documentary about the automated typecasting machine that revolutionized the twentieth-century printing industry.

I have been fascinated with the Linotype for years, ever since I had the chance to use one briefly at the Firefly Press (whose proprietor John Kristensen makes an appearance in the film). When I first got wind of this film, however, I couldn't help but wonder how they would a) find a market for it, and b) make an interesting story out of an antiquated machine that has long since outlived its usefulness.

As to the first question, I was pleased to see a full house for the screening at SVA, including host Steven Heller who conducted a Q&A with the filmmakers afterwards. A roomful of type geeks may not a blockbuster make, but at least these guys found enough of a following out there to get the film made (apparently with a substantial boost from Kickstarter). Here's hoping that momentum continues to build for them.

As to the question of interestingness, the film more than surpassed my admittedly modest expectations. Wilson wisely avoided the stultifying conventions of traditional historical documentary, focusing instead on interviewing a handful of living, often gloriously eccentric modern Linotype enthusiasts: the 85 year-old deaf typecaster in Iowa, the hipster typecaster in Brooklyn, and the self-taught son of a junkman turned founder of the only Linotype school in the country. The film makes a compelling case for these artisans as artists, toiling in noble anonymity just as their predecessors did for the better part of a century, bringing the printed word to life for generations of readers.

The breakout star of the film may just be Carl Schlesinger, the retired New York Times Linotype operator who had the foresight to shoot some footage of the last day of the Times' Linotype, ultimately released in the late 1970s as a documentary called Farewell Etaoin Shrdlu (and the source of some invaluable footage for this one). Carl attended the screening, and afterwards joined with the other retired Linotype operators in attendance to receive a long-deserved standing ovation.

"Linotype: The Film" Official Trailer.

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