My Experience at FSOSS 2007

FSOSS 2007 was a great learning experience! Before I attended the event, I dreaded the idea of coming to school on my week off; however, the knowledge I gained was irreplaceable. Although I'm still a student, I create a lot of little applications in many different languages for class, and I have always loved the design aspects. I mean, why do we develop applications? I think that many people get so involved is the code or the next best feature they thought of that they forget who the application is for. The average user doesn't care about what happens behind the scenes; they care about how easy and suited the application is for them; which is why I enjoyed the presentations that Jay Goldman/David Crow and Mike Beltzner gave.

Mike Beltzner presentated "Product and User Experience Design in Open Communities", and Jay Goldman and David Crow presented "Usability Anonymous: A 12 Step Program for Better User Experiences", both of which I thought was quite interesting. They kept the audience a bit more lively and made the experience fun. Both presentations were about the user, and tips in creating better software for them; I think they both mentioned the same book, "Design Patterns" by Jenifer Tidwell. However, each presentation took a slightly different focus. Mike Beltzner discussed much of building a community and letting the users get involved, while Jay Golman and David Crow talked more about understanding the user in design decisions. Although I liked the slides that Mike Beltzner gave (very colorful), I thought I gained a little more from Usabiltiy Anonymous. Sorry Mike!

I was even registered for the Drupal workshop which I didn't attend since I wanted to go see the presentation on Facebook, but it wasn't what I thought it would be about. The presentation was great and they presented a lot of interesting concepts provided in Thrift, an open source cross-language development framework, but my brain must have been on off because it got a little too technical for me. On another note, facebook does provide cool little programming challenges every once in awhile and those can be fun to solve.

In the end, I think I liked my time at FSOSS. The food was okay, the presentations were fun, but the little things that were gained were more than worth the loss of two days of my break. Thanks again to all those who participated in making the event go as good as it did!