On The Creative – Tech Divide

NOTE: This post was originally made to reply to my friend Aaron Hockley’s Advertisers, Marketers, and the Portland “Tech” Scene, but contains a thought that I’ve been wanting to write for some time. Aaron’s post provided a good ‘push’ for me to get it out. My thanks to him for writing it.

I have a confession to make.

As a brand strategist by day and (secretly) a geek by night, who is very lucky to have the chance to hang around both communities, I often envy the latter.

I love both communities to death, and wish that they could comingle and share ideas (in events like Lunch 2.0), but I see an inherent problem. Now if you excuse me as I stereotype both folks to illustrate my point. No harm is meant.

Geeks may be inner-focused, but are also community-minded and are not averse to sharing. Creatives may be social and outgoing, but are really protective of their “secret sauce.”

Proof: go to a BarCamp meetup, then to an AIGA networking event. I can attest that almost everything, down to the atmosphere of the room, was different.

This is very apparent in my effort in co-planning Cre8camp after attending and being inspired by the last BarCamp Portland. Right from the start, there was thoughts that “making oneself vulnerable” by sharing knowledge—a factor that’s elemental to BarCamp’s success—must be approached differently for a creative audience.

Because code is objective, but design is subjective—so to speak.

Thought experiment: critique a page of HTML, then a piece of ad.

HTML
Here’s what you did wrong. You use deprecated tags and non standard compliant practices. Done.

AD
Art Director: “Isn’t the type too dark?”
Account Executive: “But the client insist on using dark type.”
“Too light?”
“Again, it depends on the eyes who see it.”
“Too big? Small? Strong? Weak?”
“What about the headline?”
“The imagery?”
“The choice of color?”

Code can’t lie, or be justified beyond what’s already written. Design and ad solutions, on the other hand, must be defended and justified. Code is firm. Creative is debatable. So geeks don’t mind sharing, because, hell, more knowledge is better, right? while creatives may be inhibited to share their “secret sauces.”

Again, it’s because code is objective, and design is subjective.

My ad side says: I envy the geeks, because you are inherently open and collaborative. My geek side says: I admire the creatives, but you are inherently in a position to judge anyone by a matter of taste.

I’m overly generalizing—pardon—but you get the idea. My point is: these approaches aren’t inherently right or wrong. They’re just different. And different is good. Because different viewpoints always makes for better end product and cutting edge solutions.

But “different” also don’t mix, and that’s what frustrates me.

Because I believe that folks from both industries can do great things by learning from each other’s strengths, weaknesses and experiences. Right now—and, again, to generalize—we are too different. Too separate. Too averse to communicate. And events like Lunch 2.0 (or maybe another event that will draw both crowds) could be pioneers that dare to bridge the gap.

“Mashups and Alchemists”, there’s your call to action.

Announcing The Link En Fuego Layer Tennis Series

But first, a little history.

Layer Tennis as a competitive sport was started by Coudal Partners as Photoshop Tennis, followed by Veer as Lightboxing, then revived again as Layer Tennis last fall.

This one is done over email, recapped over blog posts, and played among close group of friends as substitute of smack-talking and pushing each other around the bush.

In order of appearance (and if somebody still have the time to make a volley) the contestants are:

1. Bram Pitoyo
2. Jackson Sherwood – skipped
3. Tori Hartke – are you still game?
4. Allison McKeever

(If nobody among us have time, I may open it to the Twitterverse—perhaps starting with local designers. The ambitious idea, then, is to have enough designers that the list would go on ad infinitum. Everyone may not volley more than once, but she will get to see volleys from every designer. Rinse and repeat.)

Here we go. The first volley:

Download PSD.

We will see you soon.

Beer and Blog – Make your blog load fast and save the environment: An Event Review

Beer and Blog – Make your blog load fast and save the environment

When: Friday, June 6, 2008, 4:00 PM – 6:00 PM

Where: Green Dragon Bistro & Brewpub

What It’s About: Jason Grigsby from CloudFour talks about optimizing website, then shows you how to do it. Unfortunately, I am not technical enough to fully comprehend the latter part of the presentation, but any web developer and geek worth her salt should know these. Anyway, on to the notes.

*** BEGIN PARTIALLY COMPLETE EVENT NOTATION ***

2003, John and I worked at another company. Our datacenter reached max capacity, and the power company wouldn’t give us more electricity. We end up spending a lot of times optimizing 60 customers site to make them run faster. This is the kind of stuff that a lot of web dev don’t pay a lot of attention to today, or even back in 2003.

Recently, I realized how important this is for the environment. In California, datacenters can’t get more electricity. How people deal with thes: companies that have big network are load balancing to another country.

What about the regular web developer? We can do things to make site use less CPU time and bandwidth. It’s like recycling a can: not big, but if everybody is doing it, then it will make a difference.

In a Google survey, only 5% of the page is HTML document. The other 95% is CSS, JS, images and other stuff. So, really, the vast majorities of what the user will feel to be different is the parts that loaded after HTML. Another research showed that the size of typical pages have tripled since 2003, and the objects contained within it have doubled.

Clearly, then, there is a lot that developers can do to optimize the way they currently do things—if not for performance’s sake (which can be a non-factor with high-speed internet connection), then for the environment’s.

Yahoo! has guidelines on improving web pages performance. Jason discussed 13 of them. Some notable ones:

1. Install YSlow for Firebug, which will give you metrics and score to judge and improve your site against.
2. Make fewer HTTP Requests. This is the one of the most important thing that you can do to optimize your site. Firefox 2 and below only make 2 HTML requests per website at a time.
3. Sites that has a lot of CSS and JS files should combine them in a single file. Images, on the other hand, can be hosted on several domains to balance the load.
4. Use content delivery network: things that will allow you to geographically put content closer to the user. For instance, Google launched the AJAX Libraries API last week.
5. The simplest thing to do—but one that not enough people does—is Gzip your files.
6. Every time a site is loaded, a browser will check its header for update. This is important, but only if it’s updated. But elements like header graphics, and things that don’t change for a while don’t need to be updated and ‘checked’ by browsers all the time. Therefore, setting your header to expire in the future is a big deal.
7. This one is common practice: but put stylesheets on the top and script on the bottom.
8. Minify Javascript, particularly if you’re doing mobile web development.

*** END EVENT NOTATION ***

Technicality: ☝ ☝ ☝ ½
Translation: The fact that I only had enough aptitude to take note of the first part of the presentation—and not the second—should tell you. However, don’t let this deter you from learning and attending more presentations by this local mobile web dev maven.

Interestingness: ☝ ☝ ☝ ½
Translation: All suggestion is simple and practical—indeed, much like recycling a can to help the environment. In fact, I’m doing it on my professional website as we speak.

What I Learned From The Event In Six Words:
Change the world. Optimize your HTML.