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!

The speakers

As usual, a lot of great speakers.

Tom Krcha gaves us another insights of what’s happening with Flash and gaming. After met him at the last Flash Camp Portugal, it was nice to be with him again and see some crazy games that Stage3D can deliver. Whoever thought that Flash is dead, be prepared.

Mihai Corlan talk was made in a great mood. He shared what he think a great developer must do to master the mobile apps world. And some of his tips gave us new perspectives and a will to do more stuff.

Michael Plank started the second day. His knowledge of how to build interactive 3D games was superb. A walk through of all the process of a game was also showed, from artwork to code. One of my favorite sessions.

The first time I saw Mario Klingemann was at OFFF in 2006. Since then, he kept two things the same way. His aspect and his love for programming and mathematic. I mean, this guy doesn’t get old! After a time where he didn’t went to conferences as a speaker, it was a real pleasure to see him again. He showed us what he’s been working on: a skin detection mechanism. And he also showed some boobs. Not his, of course. Just a prove of concept of what skin is.

Steven Peeters showed us the power of ORM. Want to know more about this? Check it out here.

With “Simple P2P with Flash & Flex for the common mortal”, Peter Elst talk was really about that: making things easy. Of course, “easy” to this guy is build some libraries and provide some open source code to the community Thanks Peter!

Eugene Zatepyakin is what I call a fucked up mind. In a good way The algorithms he’s been working on “just for fun” are… well, I think that only Mario understood the numbers behind the work. In his spare time he’s developing a mechanism of image recognition. A kind of augmented reality but with images instead of a geometric figures. It sounds simple, but believe me, it’s not. He’s young, so I can not imagine what the future will bring to him. I’m sure we’ll hear about him in a future

Dominic Graefen moved recently to the Bay Area, so chat with him about that was always awesome. He’s the kind of guy that can fool anyone. Looking at him, you’ll probably think that he’s just a skater boy, or whatever. But when he starts coding… get out of his way! His talk was about what he think a productive developer should be and done. His experience give him the knowledge ro know that, for sure.

My talk

This year I had a different role. I was there as a speaker. I must admit that in the first minutes I was surprisingly nervous. I mean, in the audience were some of the best developers I ever met. And there I was, talking about creativity. But after the initial feelings, everything went as planned

Every year there’s a non-tech talk, and this year it was me who tried to put the geek minds to think different with “Hello Ideas”. Creativity, ideas, brainstorming, creative techniques… Those were the main items of my session. I’ve also made some creative exercises, witch produced some funny results. And at the end, the brainstorming session gathered all I spoke in the first half of the talk.

The final feedback was awesome, so I was happy Thanks everyone.

Active Media sponsorship

My former agency was also present as a sponsor. As always, they try to be upfront and it was very good to me to see them supporting the conference.

While working in there, I art directed the conference’s video trailer, wich was produced by João Madureira, Active Media in house motionographer, and the soundtrack was produced by David, the conference co-organizer. I think it ended up great with João and David putting all the pieces together is a perfect way  :)

See you next year?

Even if you are not related to the Flash world, if you’re a developer you really should be there next year. There’s a lot of things happening besides Flash. And of course, HTML5 is just around the corner So pack your bags, prepare your boards, and we’ll meet there in 2013!

Today I celebrate 1 month as a freelancer with this amazing “office” view. And the reason I say “celebrate” it’s because that’s what it really is: a celebration of life.

I’m having the fortune (or whatever you want to call it) of being working with awesome clients this past month wich is the base of what I consider a happy freelancer must be. And I’m happy, so thanks to them also

Through out this month I learned some valuable lessons. Some surprised me, others were a real revelation. None of them desapointed me. The everyday battle is to keep things like those. If you manage to do it, you’ll be fine.

Search your own happiness

That was my first lesson. I knew I’ll be happier, but not that much Although I was really happy in my last job (Active Media), it surprised me the ammount of income happiness you can achieve as a freelancer.
Everyday (or whenever I want) I lunch with my family, I spend a lot more time with my daughter and I see friends more often. And I’ve been working. A lot. So yeah, you can manage it.

Everyone should have an experience like this one

I now understand a lot more my former bosses. Running a businness it’s not easy. And that’s what you are: a businness.

No one will do the work for you, so you force yourself to say bye bye procastination. And that feels so good… The reason I say that everyone should have an experience like this one is simple. You face some things in your profession with another perspective. You have to. If you’re beeing lazy, you don’t get the job done. If you don’t get the job done, you disapoint clients. If you disapont clients, they’ll never work with you. If they’ll never work with you, you start to loose clients. And if you don’t have clients, you businness is over. That’s the hard truth.

So if you’re working in an agency, don’t forget: your laziness is your worst enemy, not your bosses. If the company looses clients, they will loose you.

If you don’t love your clients, you’ll not succeed

I never though I would like so much of the client management part of the job. I learn a lot with my my former boss to manage expectations and some client management tips. And I’m applying them.
Fact is, if you’re not good managing clients you will not be a good freelancer. So if that is not your thing, learn. There are a lot of resources on the web to help you with that, but my basic “secrets” are:

• Be nice. No one wants to work with an arrogant bastard.
• Don’t promisse what you can’t do. You’ll end up loosing your client.
• Don’t charge too little. Your price is your value. Remember that.
• Be a partner, not a monkey. You should see yourself as a partner of your client. Show new ideas, talk with him. If you’re just a monkey who codes or design, you’ll become disposable. And you don’t want that to happen.
• Break barriers. Try to loose the formal relationship with your client. When you start to be known by your name instead of your profession designation, your relation will last longer

I try to do it all. Not as a scam, but because I really believe in it. I will not work with a client that I don’t like. That’s not arrogance, it’s just a search for a happier life.

Life is good

Yeah, you can make your life good. As I read once, it’s really easy to be a sad person. You just have to do nothing. On the other side, it gives a lot of work to be happy. So it’s your choice and only yours. No one should be running your life, except you.

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!

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:

1. Why is it important to convey this message? This speaks to purpose.
2. Where on the website should the message appear? This speaks to context.
3. Who is the audience? This speaks to the precision of the message.
4. What are we trying to say? This speaks to clarity.
5. How do we convey and sequence the information for maximum impact? This speaks to persuasiveness.

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

The event will be held this Saturday, December 3rd, at the Universidade Lusófona in Lisbon, so I expect you to show up if you’re in town.

I’ll be speaking about integrating WordPress and Flash in an easy and simple way and I will show how to do it. It could save you guys weeks of work, so I expect my experience will be any good for you.

This year we have a rock and solid panel. Manuel Barbosa, Paulo Moreira, Michael Chaize, Tom Krcha, Jean-Marc Le Roux, Tiago Dias, Fernando Colaço and Joshua Davis. You’ve heard it right. Joshua Davis will be closing the event

In a time that a lot of people says Flash is dead, it’s really important to show that it it’s not true. In fact, Flash is getting stronger in some areas, like gaming. It’s up to us to keep on moving and try to learn the best use to give to Flash. So let’s do it. Saturday is just one more day.

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

My talk will be about <video>. Here’s the teaser:

HTML5 Video – The search for a perfect solution

In a time where “thousands” of video player solutions are being offered in the cloud, why build something from scratch instead of opting for one of them?

The answer is quite simple: because.

Besides an overall control on accessibility and usability of the mechanism, there’s the part of discovery and learning. And if the <video> tag is still young, nothing like spend some time so we can know each other better. Just like in other relationship.

So, there it is. Hope you feel motivated and join me in the event. André will be giving the other talk of the way, so I’m sure you will not regret it

More info about the event here.

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:

The developers mind it’s a case study by itself. It finds creativity where a common person only sees numbers and letters. But it can also be lazy. 1+1 will always be 2.

That’s the pattern this talk wants to break. Sometimes 1+1 can be 3. Why not?More than a talk, “Hello Ideas” aims do be a collaborative brainstorming session where the speaker and the attendees will interact in the quest of getting better and different ideas.With the objective of giving mental tools and processes, we will be talking about different styles of brainstorming and how each one fits better in each individual or group scenario.With an audience composed on its majority by geeks and ‘technical’ attendees, tools and methods will be given to learn how not to kill an idea. This is an important aspect in a developers brain. Instead of asking in a first stage if it’s possible to build the idea, he should let it roll. One step at a time.How can we develop creative and imaginative solutions to business problems?
How can I do this if I’m a freelancer and work alone?
How can I generate ideas in a team environment?
In the end, all these questions will have an answer. And most important, the attendees will see that sometimes 1+1 is 3. Hello ideas.

There’s a portuguese version of this article in the Active Media blog.

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.

Andrew Travers - From Idea to I agree

“We are not Artists, we are Designers and we’re here to solve problems”
“Humility isn’t a tactic, it’s a mindset”
“Define the problem”

Dan Brown - Effective Design Documentation without a Fuss “workshop”

I kind of hate doing documentation. But sometimes I have to. And I will have to even more in a near future… So, what’s better that learn from the best?

“What does a document good? It tells a story.”
“The firsts pages should be summaries. Quickly show what’s inside de doc.”
“A summary should have: purpose, range, themes, decisions/findings, context.”
“A document has a purpose”
“A document has to encourage conversation.”
“A document has to inspire action.”
“A document has to be structured.”
“A document has to have next steps & conclusions.”
“A document has be used to move forward.”

Nice tips aren’t they

Nick Finck: The Cross-Channel Experience

“70% of users search online and buy offline.”
“To us there are channels (website, print, tv). To the user, there aren’t. It’s the same brand.”
“Know the context of use.”
“A cross-channel experience can only be successful with collaboration.”

Stephen Anderson: Critical Thinking Skills for UX Designers

“It’s not about the tools, it’s about the thinking process.”
“Z-Shaped thinker explores different perspectives.”
“Learn from other dsciplines.”
“Embrace constrains.”
“Challenge assumptions.”
“Appreciate details.”

Kristina Halvorson: Content/Communication

“Content requires time and attention.”
“Simplify.”
“Strategy is a plan to obtain a specific goal or result.”
“Show your client what happens when there’s no content strategy.”
“Quote experts to support your theory. Client will see it with another eyes.”

Josh Clark: Cage Match: Mobile Web vs. Native App

“Mobile Mayhem: every platform has its own culture.”
“iPhone is about personal connections. Android goes for tools and technology.”
“Mobile only means ‘small screen’.”

Dario Buzzini: The Manual of Detection

“We write stories, not manuals.”
“We design experiences, not procedures.”
“We strive for beauty.”
“As a designer, learn how to talk the right language.”
“See the evidences. Even if the client don’t.”
“Ask the right questions.”
“If you want outstanding solutions, look for outstanding people.”
“Designers lie.”
“Don’t over complicate.”

Don Norman: Living with Complexity

“Wasting your time is when best ideas come.”
“Examine the obvious.”
“Never solve the problem the client asks. It’s always the wrong problem.”
“Never start with the solution.”
“Complex != Complicated.”
“Sometimes simple thing are complicated.”
“Look for hacks.”
“Don’t show everything instantly. Discover is part of the fun.”

Same time next year?

You bet!

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.

I had that experience before, so it’s never a bad idea to play safe.

So, if you’re in the same position I was in that times, here it is:

Try it for yourself and enjoy it. Not.

Note: The app was kindly shared by Ivo Gomes in his Facebook page. Thanks

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.

The Team

Ricardo is an example of what a teen entrepreneur is. It bugs my mind how a teenager can do this… Things do change. And seeing the SWITCH team made me realize that teens are getting adults sooner that we got in our time. I’m not saying it’s a bad thing, but something to reflect.

I really do admire their will and gives me hope for the future. Although I’m not that old (I’m only 31 ok?), 10 years represents a generation.
And having a 2 years old daughter (almost ) feels good to visualize that she’s going to have as an older generation the kids from now. And I hope she crosses her road with the SHIFT team in a future nearby!

Anyway, just want to publicly congratulate Ricardo and the amazing people behind him and that had provided me such inspirational talks and good moments.

The Speakers

I’d like to start to tell you about the workshop that Jorge Oliveira from Active Media gave. If you’re looking to work for an agency, take a close look at “Stop Sending CV’s”. It has it all. [BTW, I work with him].

About the talks, and with some exceptions – like always – it was a great conference regarding speakers.

I had like 1oo written lines about my favorite speakers but I just deleted them. I love photography, but sometimes I see a perfect spot to shoot a pic and I don’t do it. If I do it, it just stops being a place in my mind, a figure in my brain, and becomes just one more picture lost amongst many others.

Being that said, I’ll write just one sentence: José Fontainhas, Ji Lee, David Rowan, Boris van Zanten, Ana Silva, Andrea Vascellari, Miguel Muñoz Duarte, André Marquet, Zé Pedro and Ricardo Diniz – THANK YOU!

As a conclusion…

..next year you can count me in for sure. And chances are that the initial storytelling will be repeated in a way that no one complains.