Almost five years after I wrote Stand out from the crowd, I find myself surprised at how some of the candidates my colleagues and I interview fail to follow basic interview practices, so I guess it’s time to share some tips with anyone trying to do well at their next interview.
Author archive
Podcasts I like
A few months ago, while I was still on maternity leave, I asked on Twitter for podcast recommendations. My son was getting more and more mobile, and we were going out more, so watching everything there was on Netflix while he napped on me was no longer possible, and the only podcast I was following was about being a parent, so I needed some ideas.
In Portland soon
Next month I’ll be speaking at View Source Conference. I’ve never visited Portland, or spoken at a Mozilla event for that matter, so when I was invited I jumped at the opportunity, and I can’t wait!
386 days later: returning to work after maternity leave
On August 19th this year I returned to work after being on maternity leave for over a year.
It didn’t feel weird. I think I was lucky: I knew my team was looking forward to my return; I knew I’d have plenty of things to catch up on but I also knew the ropes. Things change in one year, but a lot of things stay the same.
Responsive Day Out 2
Last month I had the pleasure of speaking at Responsive Day Out 2, in Brighton.
My talk focused on the work that we’ve been doing at Canonical in the process of retrofitting our main site, ubuntu.com, to be responsive. We thought it would be cool to share our process, as we had a feeling that, like us, many designers and developers don’t have the luxury of being able to start responsive projects from scratch.
We’ve written in detail about the project on the design blog, and hope to keep writing as we improve the site and learn new things.
You can listen to my presentation on Huffduffer:
And do listen to all the other speakers from this and last year.
Architect’s myopia
Before I get to my main point, I must mention (once again) the phenomenal quality of the hand-picked articles that are featured on the Give Me Something To Read website, the source of the piece I will be referring to in the following lines.
The article “The Architect Has No Clothes“, by Michael Mehaffy and Nikos A. Salingaros, explores why modern architecture feels so cold and inhospitable and how that might be easily explained by a phenomenon called “architectural myopia”. The authors describe how this consequence likely has its causes in how architecture is taught and how the methodologies used in the classroom deprive future architectures from any empathy with those who will in the future live and use their creations.
It’s not my goal to provide a summary, as the article does a much better job at explaining this fascinating theory. But I started thinking about whether it would be fair to conclude us web designers might sometimes suffer from a similar malady. I also found it interesting that this profession I hear mentioned so many times as so established and as the ideal model to follow is, like our own, still finding its own ways.
The Pastry Box Project
I wanted to call your attention to The Pastry Box Project, which started this year on 1st January, and aims at collecting thoughts from 30 individuals that are “influential in their field”, one thought per day — I can say I’m happy to have been asked to participate (and do visit my thought’s page).
After a restless start to the year, I finally had time and head to sit down and read through the first few weeks of thoughts. Some are longer than others, but invariably there is something alluring about diving in so quickly and for such brief a moment into someone else’s mind.
The Mechanical Revolution, DIBI conference (video)
Last June I gave a presentation at DIBI Web Conference, in Newcastle. For those who weren’t there, or couldn’t make it to the Design Track sessions, here’s the video.
The wonderful calc() function
Sitting right at the top of my CSS wishlist was always the implementation of the calc() function. With it now being supported by not only Firefox 4 but Internet Explorer 9, I think it’s time for a quick overview on how useful calc() can be and why it would be great to see more usage of it.