I have the honour and terror of presenting at @media Ajax on home turf this November. It’s a privilege to be speaking alongside the likes of Brendan Eich (creator of Javascript), Douglas Crockford (inventor of JSON), John Resig (JQuery lead) and about a dozen other top dogs.
In a lineup like that I clearly can’t talk about nuts and bolts Javascript. Instead I’m taking a slightly unusual tack for me: revelations. Since Ajax came along my job has changed in ways I wouldn’t have predicted. Technically I’m a flavour of designer yet after many years of specialising I’ve found myself having to skill up again.
- To keep a handle on what the rest of the team produce I’ve become a testing fanatic;
- I’ve had to go back and relearn how to program - not to necessarily produce back-end code but to understand what the real implications of my design decisions are;
- I’ve been converted to Agile practices as a means of effective collaboration.
None of these things are traditionally within the remit of ‘design’ but they all feed into producing a successful app. To try and describe these changes and what I’ve done about them I will be presenting But I’m a Bloody Designer! on the first day, straight after the keynote by the Ajaxians.
So, the lineup’s great, it’s in London. @media Ajax: coming soon. Say hello if you decide to come…
