It's overcast here, which is a drag - there's so much sky in Cape Town, and by all accounts it's spectacular when it's sunny. But hopefully the sky will clear tomorrow, when we have some more tourist time.
(I just went to check the weather forecast online, having forgotten that I'd already logged off the Internet, since as noted before the cost is metered. I bought four hours worth and have already gone through an hour and a half. What I've come to realize is that it's not that I use that much Internet time -- I got through most of my email fairly quickly -- but that so much of what I do with my computer now presumes that I'm always online. I downloaded MarsEdit so I could compose blog posts about all this offline; so far so good.)
Presumption is also a good place to start thinking about the Interactions conference, and about this trip, since the former was so much about using and challenging them, and this trip just overturns them, or exists outside of them.
With Interactions and my trip to South Africa coming so close together, the two are bouncing around up against each other in my mind. Jared Spool spoke about how learned conventions can become intuitive interactions through use: Sigi Moeslinger from Antenna told us how the ATM interface she thought would be intuitive for the MTA MetroCard machines she designed turned out to be more of a stumbling block for users than she'd expected, because approximately half of the people riding the New York City subway don't have bank accounts. What are the assumptions that go into making something intuitive, and what layers of class, expectation, and history go into that?
Cape Town defeats a lot of my expectations -- not the least of which is that people will drive on the left. Since Cape Towners also drive like maniacs, I've felt my mortality acutely.
More seriously, Cape Town has all the trappings of a First World city - the highways, the industry, the skyscrapers full of businessmen -- but the Third World peeks through the cracks, in the signs advertising backup generators for the power supply problems, in the cell phone repair/reuse stores, in the amazing range of languages I can't even identify being spoken all around me.
The history of the place comes through in odd ways as well: my breakfast options were "English" (hot) and "Continental" (which turned out to be a fairly lavish cold breakfast spread). I went for English and faced what I think was actual scorn when I turned down tomato and sausages (really, other people's breakfast habits, being experienced first thing in the morning when my defenses are down, are the hardest thing to be culturally sensitive about). I keep getting tripped up in these little ways, and it's useful to be reminded that all of my assumptions about creature comforts (like the wireless access I don't have in my room)are embedded in specficity as well.
Possibly the most interesting and jarring place I've been so far is the Victoria & Albert Waterfront, which is still a working port even as it's become a major shopping district and tourist destination -- there's a warning/disclaimer as you enter. There are major label brand shops, including a Nike Experience, there's a beautiful 19th century clocktower that wouldn't look out of place in Boston which the harbormaster used to use to survey the port, and there's a ferry out to Robben Island, and an associated exhibit space that you can tour while waiting for the boat.
Robben Island is of course where the apartheid government sent its most dangerous prisoners, including Nelson Mandela, who was imprisoned there for thirty years. I might have imagined, during the days of anti-apartheid marches and dancing to "Free Nelson Mandela" at high school dances that I might some day visit a post-apartheid South Africa, and see Robben Island turned into a monument to the human ability to rise above adversity. I don't think I could have imagined that you would get there by going through a shopping mall, or that I would have a surprisingly inexpensive fancy restaurant meal within sight of it. I certainly don't think I would have thought that the restaurant patrons would be mostly white, and the serving staff mostly black, still.
After Interaction’08
I had hoped to do a Rebecca and blog the heck out of Interactions'08, but the fact is, there came a point where all I could do was sit back and let it wash over me. With eight sessions a day for two days straight, there was a lot to think about, and a lot to take notes on.
Plus, as it turns out, the whole thing is going to be available online as streaming Flash movies anyhow. The TED talks have really, I think, changed the game in terms of how a conference's knowledge can live on as a continuing provocation/education and publicity for what the conference does. It will also, I'm sure, change the game for conference speakers -- in the same way that John Darnielle of the Mountain Goats has admitted to being super-aware that he can no longer reuse a joke onstage without someone in the audience having already heard a bootleg of the first time he told it, streaming video will make regular conference speakers break out of their practiced shtick or risk seeming like hacks. (How you balance the need to build on earlier thought with the demand for novelty is the next problem, I guess.)
So for now I'll just congratulate the tireless Dave Malouf, Dan Saffer, Joshua Seiden, Liz Bacon, my colleague Robert Reisman, and the rest of the IxDA board, the volunteers, and the faculty and staff at SCAD for a truly extraordinary conference experience. The quality of the dialogue, the intensity of the energy, and experience of the place were all extraordinary. I am so honored to have been a part of this first-ever conference for interaction designers, and I can't wait for 2009.
(If you can't wait for the movies to be online later this week, or don't have 20 minutes to spare to see me race through my deck, Core77 did a bite-sized writeup of my talk and a few other talks as well.)
From Savannah to South Africa
I’m at Interactions08, the first annual conference of the Interaction Design Association, and it’s being held at the Savannah College of Art and Design. It’s a beautiful day in Savannah, and I’m looking forward to the conference — and, uh, to finishing the slides for my talk, which I’m giving on Sunday. Come on down, if you’re here!
I got bad advice on the geography of the South, or I would have scheduled my trip differently to see John, who is fighting the good fight with the Conservation Voters of South Carolina. As happy as I’d be to see him, it’s probably just as well it won’t work out this time, since my schedule is insane — on Wednesday morning, I’m flying to Cape Town as the frog representative on a research trip for Project Masiluleke. I’m not sure how much Internet access I’ll have, but I’m hoping to blog the hell out of the trip.