Last weekend, LessConf, a two-day conference about technology, startups, and business, was held at Georgia Tech Research Institute in Midtown Atlanta. This was the second iteration of the event; last year’s was in Jacksonville. Organized by Steve Bristol and Allan Branch, this was without a doubt the best tech event I’ve ever been to. Both Steve and Allan were incredibly chill and, more than anything else, just wanted everyone to have a good time. And that I did.

Day 1

Flickr: jay_tennier

Upon registration, attendees were able to pick up a copy of Seth Godin’s Linchpin, as well as various other stickers and giveaways. After a hilarious intro, the talks kicked off around 10:30. The lineup for the first day consisted of the following amazing speakers:

• Cameron Moll (AuthenticJobs)
• Chris Wanstrath (GitHub)
• Saul Colt (Thoora)
• Dan Martell (Flowtown)
• David Hansson and Jason Fried (37signals)

I especially enjoyed Cameron’s talk about finding inspiration in design. The difference between influence and inspiration was an interesting concept: influence is actively sought, while inspiration is not. Valuable insight was also given on how to capture inspiration when it surfaces; Cameron mentioned setting up a wall of paper next to a workspace, as well as keeping a dive slate in the shower. As someone primarily focused on front-end web development, I was able to gain new perspective on how to approach a project by taking a step back and becoming passively engaged. The revelation also hit me that good design shouldn’t always be focused on logic, but on how you feel.

Lunch was a great networking opportunity; my associate Adam and I had the chance to sit down with the Grooveshark team and exchange ideas. Shane’s Rib Shack catering provided by Balsamiq was also much appreciated.

The afterparty was held at Whiskey Park, inside the W on 14th Street. It was a prime location to talk with Shane Reustle, Geoff Hamrick, Chris Wanstrath, Julia Roy, and many more awesome people. Like everything else associated with the conference, it was about as off-the-hook as it gets. Loud music, dim lighting, flash photography, and free drinks (sponsored by MailChimp) made a perfect close to a day full of intelligent geekiness. It’s just how New Dorks roll.

Day 2

The second day of the conference started with bacon-infused pancakes, sponsored by Storenvy. After a good half-hour of catching up from the last night, the second round of speakers kicked off with:

• Alex Hillman (IndyHall)
• Peldi Guilizzoni (Balsamiq)
• Clay Hebert (TribesWin)

Clay’s talk about becoming a linchpin was extremely inspiring; the value of resumes was discussed, with him outlining that a traditional PDF leaves little room for creative expression. A great example was shown through a Foursquare mockup resume, in which badges represented positions and achievements. In short, be so good they can’t ignore you.

The education portion of the talk also spoke to me; Clay expanded on how the current educational system trains the factory workers of tomorrow, primarily instilling the ability to follow instructions in graduates. From my personal experiences, I can unilaterally vouch for these observations. Question the status quo. Break rules. Be a leader.

At 11 that night, the final afterparty kicked off at Noni’s Bar and Deli, where Regator’s Kimberly Turner was DJing. I was interviewed by BZD Films about both Rank ‘em and the conference in general, and also had great conversations with Jessica Barnett, Janette Crawford, Chris Turner, and everyone else who made it out. I really didn’t want the two days to be over, but had an outstanding time and look forward to next year.

Final Thoughts

LessConf rocked. The end.

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to give a talk at Atlanta’s second Ignite, held at the Georgia Aquarium’s Oceans Ballroom. I also attended the inaugural event back in August, and as someone with a relatively short attention span, really took a liking to the rapid-fire format of the presentations.

What is Ignite?

IgniteATL 2009. (Flickr: timdorr)

Presenters talk about a topic using 20 slides and 5 minutes. The concept originated in 2006 in Seattle, and has since taken off in cities across the globe. It’s a great way to get an overview of something without sitting through hours of material, and if you get bored, five minutes still goes by quickly. The format’s a refreshing change from the typical setup of most conferences.

Thoughts on Speaking

My talk was about Hackintoshing, the process of running and installing Mac OS X on a standard PC (slides available here). I’ve been interested in the topic for years, and thought Ignite was the perfect opportunity to share my knowledge and experience. I was also inspired by Chris Morrell‘s talk about overclocking last year – a technical topic paired with a passionate presentation seemed to be the right mix.

What surprised me was the humor with which the content was received. Apart from a semi-planned joke about Hackintoshing being “insanely great”, everything I said was in all seriousness. But the audience started laughing (hopefully not at me), so I ran with it.

Venue and Logistics

Oceans Ballroom (Credit: Wolfgang Puck)

For publicity purposes, the Georgia Aquarium was a great option. A cash bar and spread of various fruits and cheeses was nice, as well as the ability to carry them into the presentation area. However, I still don’t hold anything against last year’s choice of GTRI (Georgia Tech Research Institute) due to individual power and Ethernet ports.

IgniteATL also teamed up with Rank ‘em, a startup I’m working with, to provide a site for attendees to rank presenters by dragging and dropping. The rankings were then averaged to provide a list, top-to-bottom, which represented the crowd’s opinion. At the end of the night, I was fortunate enough to end up being ranked as the top speaker out of the 18. Post hoc ergo propter hoc.

Takeaways

From the perspective of a speaker, I had a great time. The experience of sharing my passions in front of a large group of people was really invigorating, something that I hope was conveyed by the talk. I’d love to put something together for future Ignites, in Atlanta or elsewhere.

Have you ever been to or spoken at an Ignite event? What did you think?

Launch Day

I’ve never been to an Apple product launch before, and was excited about experiencing the unique culture surrounding Cupertino’s releases. I arrived at Atlanta’s Lenox Square to be 16th in line – not too bad, considering the hundreds of people that showed up. At first, I was a little hesitant about having to wait a few hours for the doors to open, but the time passed really quickly, fueled by great conversations with Mark Bowling, Taft Watson (the first one to get the original iPhone in Chicago), and other like-minded technology enthusiasts. At 8:30, the doors to the mall were opened, and we were herded to the outside of the Apple Store until 9:00. Right after 9, the lights were turned on, followed by all the store employees running from both directions – clapping, cheering, and high-fiving. It’s about as close to sports and tailgating as I get.

The crazy thing is that very few of the customers were chiming in, but it still felt like a huge deal. Geniuses held HD cameras high above the crowd as the first group of us were filing into the store, scrambling to get a look. I first played with a demo unit, went to grab a case, and then was approached about my reservation. For as many people that were there, the entire process was surprisingly smooth. After getting checked out, I headed home to unbox and start using the device.

Impressions

Unboxing

As with any Apple product, the unboxing was an phenomenal experience. The iPad sat atop a USB cable and power adapter, separated by a few foldout documentations. When first powered on, an iTunes connection was required, although the presence of a full charge got me through the day. There’s been some buzz surrounding issues with USB charging, but I don’t see it as a pressing issue – especially considering the fact that the iPad’s battery life is excellent. I went ahead and synced my music library, podcasts, movies, and a selection of apps I downloaded the previous night. After making sure all content was synced cleanly, I went through the Settings menu to personalize everything to the same configurations as on my iPhone, as well as to enable MobileMe syncing.

Apps

There’s a few great apps for the iPad, a solid amount of good ones, and a lot of bad ones. The majority of the outstanding ones are a bit more expensive than their iPhone counterparts, but (especially with games) the prices aren’t terrible considering the amount of development work involved. My wish list’s currently at around $150 worth of apps – something that’s not happening anytime soon. Here’s a few favorites that I’ve already installed:

• NetNewsWire
• Evernote
• WordPress
• Twitterific
• Pandora
• Netflix
• Fieldrunners
• Tap Tap Radiation
• RealRacingHD

NetNewsWire is much faster than the iPhone version, and Netflix’s streaming capabilities are pretty cool. But as great as the first iteration is, it’d be nice if Netflix would offer a richer experience than just a site-specific-browser.

Running iPhone apps, however, is an overall bad experience. When scaled down, I feel cramped to use the app with the presence of a large screen surrounding it, but enlarging the app yields to pixelation. As suggested by Ajai Karthikeyan, antialiasing would be a great solution.

The Big Picture

The iPad will succeed in extremely general and extremely specific uses. There isn’t a better device for surfing the web on the couch; the same goes for using Twitter at a conference or doing a one-on-one presentation with Keynote.

But when it comes to day-to-day use and significant productivity, there’s still a huge need for the form factor of a desktop/laptop, not to mention their distance from the technical specifications of the iPad. In short, it’s a luxury item right now. Yet the tablet sector’s really starting to take off, and following the release of devices such as the HP Slate and JooJoo, the luxury factor will begin to decrease.

What’s your opinion on the iPad?