No, not the competition to find the world’s biggest numpty. No, unfortunately, this competition is for who will be in charge of running the greatest sport. He opposes technology which our beloved game is crying out for. He belittles women by stating that the women’s game could benefit ‘if they wore shorter shorts’. And thinks homosexuals should ‘refrain from sexual activity’ while in Qatar. What century are we living in?
Like everything in life, I try to look at things from a neutral perspective. I’m sure a lot of people believe the English are now coming across as sour grapes due to our disastrous world cup bid. But hang on, if Qatar had bribed their way to victory then why even allow us to enter? What a waste of time, money and Bryl Cream (remember David Beckham was involved). It’s good to see Australia (another stung nation) is demanding the money it spent on its bid back.
I watched the poor FA representative say his bit in front of the baying wolves amongst the FIFA delegates. Then countries like Cyprus started sticking the knife in. I assume this is revenge for us tearing up Ayia Napa since the 90s. I can’t wait to give all these nations the bird when Sepp Blatter and his Forth Reich movement comes sweeping into their nation. OK probably gone a bit too far there, but there are some cultural points to be raised. Our nation has a live by the sword die by the sword approach to what we deem to be fair. Maybe a guilt trip since our empirical past but at the end of the day a good attitude to adopt. This is why we seem to commit so many troops to campaigns around the world to liberate them from tyranny (nothing to do with oil, purely coincidence)
To bring fairness to the World Cup process it should do a cycle globally so that everyone gets a chance to host. FIFA should set out the requirements to be considered to host the thing. This would include stadiums, travel networks, hotels and policing. The globe should be divided into 4 sections and all of the eligible countries for each section should be put into a hat. A nation from each section of the globe is pulled out at random. The 1st section winner will be the next world cup host, the 2nd section winner will be the host of the world cup in 8 years’ time and so on and so forth. These nations are then excluded in the next round of World Cup draws. If you make a complete hash of the tournament then you miss a go. I’m not at all upset that Russia and Qatar have the World Cup gig. They’ve never had it before so that’s fair. The process to get to this result has to change though.
How can the current system of schmoozing overly corrupt bureaucrats into voting for you be the process we currently adopt? FIFA is an organisation that apparently is built on ‘fair play‘?!? I guess ballot papers with 1 fucking name on it is also fair. Even if everyone abstained from voting I’m fairly certain Sepp would have voted and ‘Yeh! I won again!’ would be the scream at the end. Sepp Blatter is a complete hypocrite that we are now stuck with until the next FIFA elections. Given the choice of standing up against Sepp and his cronies or toeing the line I know which one I’m in favour of!
So on Wednesday I get asked if I would like to attend dConstruct at the Brighton Dome. My normal reaction to anything not predetermined within the last month gets an automatic ‘no’ response. However, I thought this would be good for me and would (if nothing else) mean 2 days out of the office.
Before I break down the event itself, I want to reiterate a few things. I’m a developer NOT a designer. As much as I would love to be both, it just ain’t gonna happen. You are talking about someone whose art teacher laughed at one of his projects to his face. Someone who by stage 5 of every single Photoshop tutorial gives up as the piece of shit on his screen looks nothing like the example. I really enjoy my job as a Software Engineer for a private investment company. We deal with the company’s portal which is only ever seen by a small number of clients. I develop in my spare time and am a keen learner of any new technologies. I don’t idolise other proficient developers/designers/gurus or wish to discuss developing down the pub with my mates.
My expectations
I am a man of logic and reason. I have never been involved with a project that has run perfectly. This should be ideal as it will show me an approach that I can adopt in the future and everything will be plain sailing.
What happened
Simon was a nice and approachable chap with bags of enthusiasm and experience. We followed the processes which he has adopted in the past with varying degrees of success. This doesn’t sound good ‘varying’. We were constantly reminded that every client is different and requires an agile approach. It doesn’t look like I’m not going to get the ‘perfect project process’ formula I was after. The team exercises were really good fun and reminded me of the initial excitement you get when starting any new project. Overall it was aimed predominantly at design agency-esq businesses. Which was probably right looking at the rest of the audience.
Relevance To Me – 3/10
Relevance To Designers – 8/10
Stuff Learnt
I need a new Macbook Pro (Everyone in there had a more recent model)
To start any project you need to consider all platforms (iPhone, iPad, Televisions)
I need to change my new site scripts to create media specific CSS
I need to use the Javascript moderniser script to upgrade all browsers to be HTML5 and CSS3 compatible
A good start. A really interesting talk regarding the history of businesses and how they’ve adapted. Also what role innovation plays in success and how it can go wrong.
Stuff Learnt
Your product needs to be good and different
Innovation is the key to success
Businesses need to be constantly designing and taking risks
A humorous talk with some visually amazing slides. It was all about gathering as much inspiration as possible, considering what you have, and then reducing it to perfection. Unfortunately not relevant to anything I’m involved in but I’m sure this will be a useful approach for the designers.
Stuff Learnt
Sometimes you shouldn’t need to explain design decisions, they should just happen
This talk was about how information is beautiful. I did feel that this would be more for me. I wasn’t disappointed. He had some excellent examples of misleading information. And how that putting information in another context can create some compelling results.
Stuff Learnt
Despite having quite a dry data set, it can be made more interesting
You can establish patterns more clearly once the information has been organised in a more visual manner
The media clearly have an Outlook reminder for scaremongering
This discussion was about Typography. A subject I have little knowledge of. She was very enthusiastic and clearly loves what she does. It was a mainly male audience so I wasn’t sure about the shoe analogy really worked for the audience. Give a girl a microphone and it won’t be long before they start banging on about shoes (sorry I couldn’t resist). To be fair the analogy did work quite well.
Stuff Learnt
Legibility is vital in a font type
The character of the font should emote the context it sits in
He opened by showing a tweet from one of the audience which was a picture of the guy outside the Brighton Dome stating ‘Only 16 hours until the Gruber!’. He asked the guy to raise his hand, and these really excited hands came up waving frantically. I turned to my colleague ‘what a douche’. He discussed that any project is only going to be good as the controlling force behind it. The analogy he used was that of film directors, particularly Stanley Kubrick. Who took control of every single aspect of the filmmaking process.
Stuff Learnt
If you are in charge ensure you listen to the people with more talent than you (a key lesson I wish some previous project managers I’ve worked under would have listened to)
Hannah started with some improv live music which was awesome. That was until the dick whose phone rang mid-way through. Hannah discussed the importance of improvisation in design teams. She mentioned the developer fort where a team of techies go to a castle and have to build something from scratch with no Internet. Sounds like a great team-building and inspirational exercise.
Stuff Learnt
To improv you need to be able to be awesome at the tools you use (basically I need to step up my Photoshop learning)
An interesting (if not depressing) look at how historically we have managed to lose so much interesting data. That we are at a frontier of information and should therefore ensure that we keep everything. A really great example was used regarding the Iraq war Wiki page. I won’t spoil it though in case he does another similar talk.
Probably the most visually stunning presentation. Some great videos and animations. The talk did get me excited about the prospect of household items all being plugged into the Internet. I found the boundaries on ownership particularly interesting. Basically, because our stuff would be wired into the network we would know where it was via geolocation. So no matter where it was or who had it we would still know it belonged to us.
A good one to end on, as definitely the most amusing of the speakers. He started by calling everyone ‘nerds’ and then went into the difference between ‘nerds’ and ‘geeks’. A ‘geek’ will come around and fix your PC for you, and a ‘nerd’ will want to talk about the PC for an hour before fixing it. A ‘nerd’ is really obsessed with something.
Stuff Learnt
I’m a geek and not a nerd
Don’t stay obsessed with just one thing (he gave an example of a Photoshop expert whose clients dried up)
Score – 7/10
Conclusion
Overall, it was a great experience and I’m glad I went. I’m too logical in my approach to things to get enough out of the 2 days. I was getting fed up with the analogies by the end of it all. I’m sure for the designers this would have been perfect. I did actually speak to a couple of people who had attended previous events and they all suggested that it wasn’t as good as previous years.
Why is everything in life so black and white. Governments through history have either adopted a treat, everyone, the same policy or a more extreme right-wing policy. Neither of these really makes any sense to me. It’s a simple fact of life that everyone is different.
The thing that has sparked this particular rant off is that we are currently living in an environment where punishing everyone for the sins of the few seems to be how we now legislate for things in this country. A great example is alcohol. I enjoy a good old knees up but according to the law because some people enjoy tearing up the high street on a weekend I’m not entitled to cheap alcohol. That’s hardly fair, is it?
OK, I need a term for the people that ruin it for everyone else. I’m going to call them the ‘idiots’. Previous examples of right-wing political groups have always persecuted the wrong people. Why go for the Jewish or specific African tribes when there are the ‘idiots’ amongst us. Idiots exist in every walk of life. They can be any age, any colour, any religion, and any class. People should only ever be judged by their actions.
I’m proposing a new citizenship system that is actually‘fair‘ and not the David Cameron definition of ‘fair’. You’ll have to excuse the lack of political lingo as this proposal won’t be hiding behind any blue sky management spiel but will be in plain and simple English. Are you ready for this? It’s good!
When you are born in this country everyone is given a card. If you come here from abroad and pass our citizenship criteria then you also receive a card. The card in practice will be a little more complicated than this but for simplicity, we’ll say that when you receive it the card has a ‘green’ status. So to start with it’s a level playing field for everyone. Now, as long as I’ve been a good boy when I scan my card at the checkout for booze it sees it’s ‘green’ and lets me have the discount. Now, for the medium idiot (a bit of a wally) who maybe has an ASBO and a history of violence would have an ‘amber’ status. Unfortunately for him, due to his previous misdemeanours would pay a higher levy on his alcohol. You can probably work out what comes next. The big idiot (Mayor of Idiotsville) who has spent time in prison for repeated offenses. He would have a ‘red’ status on his citizenship card which would prohibit him from buying booze completely. This example is specific to booze, I like booze, but it could be used for other luxury items.
I understand that people can change so this will be a two-way system. The Mayor of Idiotsville can get in the ‘green’ again by being a good citizen. Cameron is currently promoting a scheme to keep the local services running on a voluntary basis. This would be a perfect way to gain points and become a good citizen again.
I would also give more powers to the Police by allowing them to punish citizens by having the authority to set ‘amber’ or ‘red’ statuses. This is where we would need to expand upon the traffic light system, to a more granular point system. Perhaps something like this.
Green – 100 – 75 points Amber – 75 – 50 points Red – 50 – 0 points
The High Courts would have the authority to give 0-100 point reductions. The Police would be able to give up to 10-point fines on the spot. These on-the-spot fines would need to be authorised by two Officers.
There are a few holes in the proposal. A physical card-based system will always have problems, just look at the Labour identity card farce. So maybe some kind of thumbprint scan? Getting it passed the loony left big brother-fearing brigade would also hold this up. I don’t think I’m suggesting anything too crazy though. I’m just sick to the teeth of the generic one rule for everyone approach. The majority of people aren’t complete imbeciles, so please please please give us the credit we deserve. I know a bag of nuts ‘contains nuts’, I know I shouldn’t drink bleach, and that you shouldn’t allow children to play with paper shredders.
That’s it. Vote for me for PM. By the way, I do not and have not ever read the Daily Mail.
