Michael Leis

In one of the sadder moments of SXSW, as I was feverishly typing away on a live post about Gaming the Crowd: Turning Work Into Play presented by Andy Baio when the WordPress iPhone app crashed. Worse yet, Mr. Baio has not published the slides. Hope he will soon, because he presented a lot of [...]

In the second full day of the music portion of SXSW, the format is completely different, and pushed into a whole other gear. The SXSW Interactive conference is very much at the convention center, with associated social stuff in concentric rings outward in Austin. But if you follow this panel/social metaphor, then think of every [...]

Though our wide-ranging crepe-based discussion panel on Saturday morning was a highlight, I’m seated in the cavernous ballroom A for Brynn “No relation to Will or Bob” Evans is sitting on this panel, so I really wanted to hear it. Brynn is kicking things off. She is concerned with the interaction design of search and [...]

Only got to see the tail end of RWTW part one. Fred opens by saying it’s time to nut up, He also admits that he loves prototyping, and can’t think of a situation where prototyping can’t help your design. As designers, we’re not making solutions, we’re making hypotheses, and building towards a solution. So the [...]

Hyping right in with Kevin Hoffman and the happy cog crüe talking about projects they’ve been in that have failed, and how to identify and eliminate those f-ups in the future. They’re starting with easy-to-recover from failure. Maintain scope Don’t borrow from one budget to pay for another. Just stop, and issue something like change [...]

As noticed by Amy Cueva as we walked around Austin, looking at this bunch of oddly adorned bicyclists, there seems to be a trend this year by brands to be as silly as possible, ultimately humiliating themselves before this audience in the hopes that (I guess) people take some pity on them and buy something? [...]

Psyched since yesterday to watch Margot Bloomstein open SXSWi with her presentation on content strategy, how to include it in a workflow, and budget appropriately for it. She is absolutely brilliant and a great choice to open the conference with. She’s also a JUXer, which means she’s been training a lifetime in how to structure [...]

And hello to badge pickup and our warm up for many, many, many long lines. Looking forward to Margot bloomenstein at 2pm, and maybe some BBQ lunch. Here we go! Update: by 2pm, the lines stretched across the entire building. Woo hoo! Now I’m glad I was in the short line.

Very ready to dive back into SXSW this year, and write this as a warning. Over the next two weeks, I’ll do my best to fill this blog with the same kind of coverage I did two years ago. Mostly I do this for all the people who can’t make it. There’s too much good [...]

If you know me, you know that I volunteer my time to lead sponsorship and marketing for the IDEA conference because I believe it’s an incredibly valuable learning experience for the UX community. Designing for complex information spaces melding the physical and virtual is critical knowledge for anyone with a stake in designing digital today, [...]