gotoAndSki(‘Switzerland’); 2012

Another year, another victory.

The 2012 gotoAndSki(); edition went as expected: awesome. Networking, fun, snow, friendship, geekness, talks, all of that was present in this great conference. Like in last year’s edition, everything went smoothly and we all ended up enjoying it.

Once again, congratulations to Fernando and David for putting up a different and great conference. I’m looking forward to be at gotoAndSki(); 2013!

New year, new life: my start as a freelancer

Afters 7,5 years working at Active Media, I’ve decided to change my life. I have so much to thank them, specially to Jorge Oliveira who has been a reference since my early start in the business.

But the time has come. I’m going to be a full time freelancer.

Projects for the future? Tons of them. But let’s take one step at a time. I’m available for hiring from now on.

Now, lets rock & roll!

5 content strategy guidelines to follow

Although I’m not the author, I must share and record in this blog 5 topics that Brad talks in his article on Smashing Magazine:

I’ll be speaking at Flash Camp Portugal 2011

It’s with an extreme honor that I’ll be in this years Flash Camp Portugal as a speaker.

I’ll be speaking at HTML5 portuguese community

This was a great surprise. I was invited to speak next Thursday (3 November) on the second portuguese HTML5 community event.

I’ll be speaking at gotoAndSki(‘Switzerland’);

It’s with great pleasure that I announce that in January 2012 I’ll be at gotoAndSki(‘Switzerland’); as a speaker

After spending some amazing days in last year conference, like I told in this post, it was with great joy that I got Fernando invitation to present the “non-geek” talk of the event. I called the talk “Hello Ideas” and it will be like this:

UXLx – A truly User Experience

Photo by UXLx

To much has been said about UXLx for the last days. You just need to do a search on Twitter to see that. So what can I add? Nothing special, really… “Awesome”, “amazing”, “perfect”, “mind blowing” are not new adjectives to characterize the conference. They were used last year and abused on this one.

UXLx is the world’s User Experience and Interaction Design best conference. Simple as that. It’s a 3 days event where the first 2 are workshops and some short talks and the last day is where the big names talk.

I had the fortune to work as a Partner while at Active Media. Actually what you see in this photo was developed by me (and designed by a colleague). Working with Bruno, the head master behind UXLx, was nothing but great. Fast decision maker, know what he wants, a dream of a client…

I’l try to resume what the conference was to me with some quotes and thoughts of who I liked the most. So, let the game begin.

read the rest of this entry

Internet Explorer 6 on Mac OSX

I never thought I would say this, but I finally have Internet Explorer 6 on my Mac!

No, I wont use it to browse the web casually, I’ll do it for development testing only. I promise.

You may ask why the hell am I going to do that. IE6 is dead, so it’s kind of stupid. I know. But tell that to the corporate company that has IE6 installed in all Windows PC’s and can’t upgrade because the IT department won’t do it because… well, just because.

SWITCH – The future belongs to them

Let me to tell you a story.

nce upon a time, a little boy borned in Portugal. This happened in 1992 and their parents called him Ricardo. It still is his name.

One day, in 2010, Ricardo brings us SWITCH for the first time, a conference about “technology, science, entrepreneurship, creativity and innovation in a network-friendly environment”. In 2011, one year later, the second SWITCH happens with 28 speakers and more than 200 attendees. It was last weekend. I couldn’t make it to the first one, but this one me and some Active Media folks (also one of the sponsors) didn’t miss it.

You might be thinking now:

“Wait, but 1992… we’re in 2011… that means that Ricardo is 18 years old? And he organized the first conference with only 17? Yeah, right…”

Well, you better think twice. It’s true.

Invisible Cities – a designer’s review

After reading the article “7 non-UX books you should read” on Johnny Holland Magazine, I decided to buy some. The first  I read was “Invisible Cities”, by Italo Calvino. According to Jeroen van Geel and Vicky Teinaki, the article’s authors:

Invisible Cities is a book that is experienced, rather than read. Not in an expansive, descriptive way – the novel is a mere 166 pages – rather, as if Mozart had been a writer. Taking place as a series of conversations between the explorer Marco Polo and emperor Kublai Kahn, the book has the feeling of the state of mind between dreams and reality – evocing deeper meanings without ever being too clever about it  (though apparently the structure of the novel is very clever indeed, employing such techniques as the Fibonacci sequence and sine waves). We’re never entirely sure if the cities that are talked about – the titular Invisible Cities, Cities and the Dead, Hidden Cities – are ones that Polo believes he has visited, or fables for the grumpy emperor. If I had to suggest a book that captured what magic was, it’d be this one.

If I wasn’t a designer, I would thought that it was a boring book. Why? Because I don’t like descriptive literature.