This one’s a bit painful for me to watch, for a few reasons.

First, my talk had a lot of time-based elements (audio and video), which meant I really needed my 45 minutes, but I started late, and I was the last talk of the day, so I had very little wiggle room. In the future, I’ll definitely insist on speaking earlier if this is the case. I’m a fast talker anyway, but it sounds like I’m trying to break a vocal cord land speed record to get the event wrapped up on time.

Secondly, every piece of technology that could fail did fail in the course of the talk, including the projection screen, audio playback, microphone and presentation wand. I’d never attempted a talk that relied so heavily on tech, and I doubt I’ll do so again for a long while. There are way too many unknown variables, any of which can completely derail your message if it goes awry.

Lastly, I packed way too much into a single talk. I neglected the fact that I’ve spent the last decade thinking about the convergence of my varying interests, and it’s unfair to expect an audience to catch up in under an hour. Attendees who talked to me afterwards tended to gravitate toward one portion of the talk or another, which tells me I would have been more successful if I had exercised a bit more restraint.

Problems aside, I still believe in the ease and control scale I proposed, and that idea is probably presented better here than in the presentation materials alone.

Watch the recording on blip.tv

This is the cliché, inevitable “sorry I haven’t been updating very much” post.  I still adore blogging and am not quite ready to become a Tumblr convert or anything. I’ve just been engrossed in some pretty exciting stuff!

This Summer I was promoted to Lead Experience Designer at Waggener Edstrom Studio D, where I manage an awesome team of designers creating web sites, infographics, branding and more. While I can’t share any of the cool stuff we’re working on yet, I can share my team’s blog where we post all manner of strange things.

Visitors of this site are probably familiar with Ramps, the game I made as a student project back in 2007 (according to my analytics, it’s still by far the most popular thing on this domain). I’m excited to say I’m finally building a follow-up in collaboration with developer Tim Sears. It’ll be for the iPhone and iPod Touch, and we’re aiming for a December release, right in time for the holidays. Stay tuned!

I was thrilled to attend An Event Apart San Diego this year, where I had the chance to meet and briefly chat with Jeffrey Zeldman (picture above), Jeremy Keith, Eric Meyer, Ethan Marcotte and Andy Clarke. It was an amazingly insightful and well-rounded event, I highly recommend it.

I went down to San Diego early so I could see Gorillaz live (great seats, huh?), followed by a trip to the San Diego Zoo and SeaWorld. I captured some of the lively critters on video:

A redesign of this site has been in the works for a while, but is progressing slowly amongst other projects. Forrst members are welcome to take a peek and offer feedback.

I’ve collected and organized the data I captured from the live audience at CyborgCamp Portland. I have a mostly finished interface that uses HTML5 video and canvas to show a live timeline of points of feedback in sync with the original montage, but am struggling with performance on a live server. As soon as I resolve that, it’ll be published for your enjoyment and consumption.

This blog is near and dear to me, and will surely be more lively following the redesign, which I hope to complete early next year. Until then, watch this space for updates to the above projects, and remember you can always follow me on Twitter for frequent, bite-size snippets of goodness.

I had a blast speaking at this year’s CyborgCamp Portland. Many thanks to those who attended or tuned in to the livestream!

My slides are available, appropriately enough, on Slideshare.

Most of the videos I showed are available on YouTube. I’ve created a playlist for your convenience. Please note that some of the videos have strong language that I censored for my presentation. This playlist does not include the Eric Schmidt interview (viewable here), the Objectified clip (watch it on Netflix or buy it), the Human Giant sketch (it’s from season one), or Radiohead’s Idioteque performance on Saturday Night Live (because NBC kind of hates the internet).

This is arguably the most ambitious topic I’ve ever tackled. If you have any reactions, comments or criticism, please let me know in the comments or on Twitter!

This Saturday’s going to be awesome! Why? CyborgCamp’s back, that’s why!

The main event happens this Saturday from 9am-6pm, though there’s a pre-party Friday evening and a hackathon on Sunday if you just can’t get enough man-meets-machine goodness.

I’ll be presenting in the afternoon. My talk is called “The Uncanny Valley of Interaction Design.” If you’re a fan of robots, animation, comics, film, music or web apps, you won’t be disappointed. This is also my first presentation with video and (time permitting) an audience-driven Twitter experiment.

More information and tickets (which are a steal at $10) are available from the CyborgCamp Portland site. Will you be there?

Update: Tickets are now sold out! Be sure to tune in to the livestream on Saturday. My presentation starts at 4:15pm (PST).

CyborgCamp (a brainchild of my favorite cyborg anthropologist) is coming to Portland again this October, and I’m a featured speaker! Given the event’s international scope and amazing past speakers (including Ward Cunningham and Bill DeRouchey), I’m truly honored (and just a little terrified).

For those unfamiliar with the event, CyborgCamp is an unconference exploring the future of humans and computers. It started here in Portland in 2008, but has since extended to Seattle and Brasil as well. I designed the circuit-stalk logo, and was a happy attendee at the inaugural event.

I’ll be speaking about the man/machine conflict in popular culture mirroring a similar dichotomy in real life, especially design. It’ll be a fun discussion with plenty of references to Terminator 2, the first Tubeway Army album and those retired Mac versus PC ads.

The event is at WebTrends on Saturday, October 2, from 9am to 6pm. Tickets are just $10 if you buy before September 24, which is an amazing deal considering you’ll also get breakfast and coffee. For more info, check out the CyborgCamp Portland home page or follow @cyborgcamp on Twitter.