Blog : Sally Jenkinson

Fourth Source article

Mon, 14 May 2012 16:13:00 -0500

Seeing as it's been officially released into the wild now, I'm pleased to say that I've written an article for Fourth Source, an independent online digital media marketing publication. The article is "Developing an effective mobile strategy".Working with clients to identify the options available to them, and discussing why certain approaches may be more feasible than others should be an important part of all new projects. I'm lucky enough to work with a great Strategy team who keep me on my toes, and I look forward to being challenged by new developments in the future. I'm looking to do more writing on industry topics, so if you'd like to discuss requirements for upcoming articles please get in touch.

Internal surveys - 5 tips

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:02:00 -0500

At Lightmaker, our strategic work often revolves around gathering the opinions of others and feeding these into our plans for projects. Whether stakeholders or users, asking the right questions and opening topics up to discussion can often help uncover views that would otherwise have been missed. When working on internal business strategy I think it's important to bear the same principles in mind, and as such I recently carried out a survey of all UK studio staff in order to get their opinions on technical change. Allowing the business to grow organically around technologies and processes that are important to the teams who make the magic happen, rather than dictating top-down can help to ensure that workflows effectively keep up with the fast-paced changes in the industry.Planning the survey and feeding back to the Directors and those surveyed helped to highlight some important considerations that can be used as a guide for others carrying out similar activities: Come with an open mind - there may be specific topics you want thoughts on, but be careful not to impose your personal views, whether in wording your questions or feeding back to the business. Create an effective selection of questions - don't ask too many, make sure you get enough detail, and make sure questions are structured in a way that is easy to analyse. Free text fields are important for capturing detailed opinions, but selection-based questions can help to identify trends and general consensus much more effectively. Give those surveyed enough information - be very clear on why you're asking questions, how data will be used, and who it will be shared with. Your choices in these areas may slant the responses you're given, as people may be more willing to share views in certain situations rather than others. It may be more appropriate to offer the option of anonymity, however it's good to have the ability to follow up with individuals if possible. Being clear on who the data will be shared with and the format that it will be presented in will help those surveyed to be comfortable with what they are feeding back. Make sure results are acted on - whilst surveys can be a valuable activity in their own right, creating some action points and associated timescales based on the feedback will ensure that valuable opinions do not get forgotten about. Collect more information - other industry surveys such as those from A List Apart and .net magazine run annually, and allow new information to be compared with that from previous years. Alternatively, comparing results from different sources, such as different global offices, can also help to highlight areas which may not have been flagged up in individual surveys.

Site redesign

Sat, 21 Apr 2012 19:03:00 -0500

Regular readers (hi Mum), may notice that things are looking a bit different around here. After a long, drawn out process, I have finally put up the latest incarnation of my site. Those of you visiting on a mobile or tablet device will likely notice the most difference, as I've gone responsive. Responsive design is something that I really believe in, and it was important to me to start making some changes to reflect that.There are still a few bugs to iron out, a few changes to make, and things I want to tidy up, but I wanted to get the site out there and make changes as I go along. If you notice anything and want to send me a useful error report please get in touch. I started redesigning the site midway through 2011, which, for me, is the most difficult part. I'm not a designer by nature, but learning and challenging myself to work at something is one of the reasons that I started a personal site in the first place. As such I went through a few iterations in Photoshop and eventually got to the stage where I started building and prototyping in the browser. After the basic structure was done I didn't feel the colour scheme was what I was after, and I therefore needed to change a lot of the core CSS. I'd been looking into Less and Sass for a while but had never implemented CSS pre-processing into a proper individual project, and this seemed like as good a time as any considering the changes I'd be making anyway. I also amended my basic prototype to be responsive, however at the time I set my breakpoints to start from the full site downwards, which is something that I'll be looking to amend. I re-wrote a lot of my content, including removing some elements that I'd originally planned to include as I realised I was including things for the sake of technology rather than on the basis of importance. An example was some content I was struggling with images for, which I wanted to put in a carousel that responded to touch gestures. I realised that my struggle to match meaningful images was tied to the fact that the information wasn't actually important, and wasn't conveying anything extra. Once everything had been stripped right back it felt a lot more effective. The final site was built using HTML5, CSS3, jQuery, ColdFusion 9, Sass, Photoshop and Git.

Adobe Shadow

Mon, 12 Mar 2012 08:08:00 -0500

Developers hate inefficiencies. We hate repetitive tasks. We hate having to re-type something we've not 30 seconds ago typed in on a different device, especially considering we're likely surrounded by about 10 of the damn things. This is why I love Adobe Shadow.Adobe Shadow is a new inspection and preview tool which aims to remove some of the common pains of the present day development workflow. Mobile is a given for new projects nowadays, and since it's preferable to view output on real devices rather than emulators it's easy to end up in a situation where time and patience is wasted on frequently refreshing a sea of devices littering your desk. The concept behind Shadow is that of device pairing and synchronised browsing. Once devices have been paired, whatever is being viewed on the desktop is reflected across all devices which have the client application open, saving many, many refreshes. This includes switching tabs, and works across localhost, intranet, and internet sites. Not only is this an excellent time saving tool, but arguably more useful is the built-in ability to debug each device using the master device. Opening the Chrome extension shows a list of all paired devices, each with "<>" next to their name. Clicking on this allows remote debugging of the devices, including the ability to make changes on the fly, computed styles, layout highlighting, and all of the main features that you'd expect. This element isn't without its problems, and I'm intermittently seeing this issue regardless of the sites I visit, but for a Labs release it's a strong tool. Bugs aside there are obviously certain limitations that users should be aware of - each device needs to be on the same network, each will be using its own session, and anything requiring user input will not be replicated across all devices. The setup process will take you a matter of minutes, and goes something like this: 1) Download Shadow from Adobe Labs (for Mac or PC) - http://labs.adobe.com/downloads/shadow.html 2) Download iOS and/or Android client apps. For bonus 'efficiency' (lazy) points, push the app download to your multiple devices from the web version. iOS - http://www.adobe.com/go/sd_ios_app Android - http://www.adobe.com/go/sd_android_app 3) Download the Google Chrome browser extension - http://www.adobe.com/go/sd_chrome_app 4) Load up Shadow on your desktop, and open the clients on your devices. 5) On each device a Connections screen should pop up. If not, bring it up using the branched icon. 6) Select the master device running the PC/Mac helper application, and you'll be given a passcode. 7) Open Chrome, and you'll see that the Shadow icon has a little plus symbol. Click it to view the devices requesting pair permission. 8) Enter the passcode for each device. Done! For more information, including an installation guide and a video demonstation go here: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/shadow/ Shadow is a very promising tool, and one that I can see being a central part of my development workflow and the output from the studio at work. As "mobile first" principles and a mobile perspective are applied by default to an ever increasing amount of projects I'm excited to see more tools spring up which will be able to streamline what we do.

Computer Science > ICT

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:22:00 -0500

It was announced last week that the UK government will be replacing the current Information and Communications Technology curriculum with that of a Computer Science focused course. In a move that has been strongly welcomed by the development community, it will mean a dramatic about turn from this time last year when the government were then considering making ICT a non-compulsory part of the curriculum. As someone who studied ICT throughout my school life, taking qualifications at GCSE level (age 14-16), then IT at AS and A-Level (age 16-18) I think that this is a great move. The current system revolves heavily around theory rather than practice, and is often criticised for the extent that the Microsoft Office suite is taught, with a key observation being that it seems to teach students how to be end-users rather than creators. In a world that revolves so heavily around digital, this is a real shame on several levels.Understanding the core principles of coding lets pupils better understand what is going on in the technology they use. It improves problem solving skills, and the ability to break scenarios down into small, logical tasks, which are skills that can be carried over into a variety of other disciplines. I also personally believe that it makes people better users - if something is running slowly, users know not to sit and refresh constantly. If something isn't working, they may be able to find a workaround. Most importantly, learning about the mechanics of programming gives people the chance to create something themselves and feed back into the system. Instead of being one of billions of Facebook users criticising the latest redesign and direction, they could be inspired to start something they believe in more. If something doesn't work how they want, they can make something else that does. Instead of trying to find a tool that serves up tweet information exactly how you want it, or for free, why not use the API? If there isn't an app out there that lets you keep a task list in a way that fits in with your workflow, make one. A lot has been made about the number of students taking ICT dropping - in 2007 81,100 people took the ICT GCSE, falling to just 31,800 in 2011. At the next level up, A-Level Computing fell for the 8th consecutive year to 4000 students in 2011. From personal experience, I would cite an outdated syllabus that includes dry content which just doesn't connect with students. At the time I wouldn't have recommended my course to anyone, and I was likely one of those most enthused about IT in general. This enthusiasm, word of mouth, and encouragement from peers to learn in their free time is what we need to capture with the new curriculum. With all of this said, what we don't want to lose is a course that promotes general computer literacy and competency with commonly used software such as Microsoft Office. There is definitely still a place for this in schools, especially since a significant amount of children in the UK do not have access to a computer at home. These skills could be incorporated into a General Studies or Professional Skills environment without impacting on the ICT curriculum. With a great deal of public interest around coding at present hopefully the shift in curriculum will grab the interest of young IT talent. Schemes such as Code Year and 12412 are proving popular with the uninitiated - if Mike Bloomberg, the Mayor of New York City is able to sign up to start learning then hopefully school children and adults alike will also start grabbing a keyboard. An announcement that BBC Learning has commissioned Mega Bits, a programme which aims to encourage children to write computer code, may also encourage other parties to commission more in this vein. There will likely be a number of challenges that will come from the shift in curriculum, with lack of qualified teachers being the main problem cited. There will also be challenges and investment required in order to keep courses relevant to new developments, and ensure that content being taught reflects best practices. This is not just a school level change - it is important that University courses stay relevant too, and offer good links with the industry. This will require commitment from the government, schools, universities, and teachers on an individual basis. Whilst this will be a huge challenge, it needs to happen rather than keep courses outdated and irrelevant. A large amount of developers have spoken positively and offered their help in bringing about this change, and I include myself in that. Having given sessions in a number of academic institutions, I have been saddened that two attempts to contact my old school offering to speak about a career in the industry or to get involved in sessions have not even been met with a reply. My approaches were both pre-announcement of the ICT changes, and I hope that more schools are now willing to embrace the wealth of talent and passion that lies within the developer community. If you would like to get in touch regarding any of the above, please contact me in the comments below, on Twitter (@sjenkinson), or using sally [dot] jenkinson [at] gmail [dot] com.

2011 / 2012

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 19:46:00 -0500

2011 was a tough year, but a very good year. Whenever New Year rolls around I inevitably tend to start thinking about where I was and what I was doing at the same point a year ago. Usually I can't believe how much things have changed, and this year is no exception. This year has been incredibly busy, both personally and professionally, and has been unlike anything previous. There have been some amazing highlights, but it has all come after an awful lot of hard work, and I've learnt a lot of tough lessons about what not to do. I've spent a ridiculous amount of time in planes, trains and automobiles, I've gone 8 months without a proper break, my twitter feed has seen many rants about the M25 and Xbox Live, and I've learned to live with very little sleep. On the positive side I've bought my first home, moved across the country and transitioned out of the office every day, been given some exciting responsibilities at work, I've met and worked with some great people, and I've been able to travel to places and events that I've wanted to go to for ages.

Some highlights • February brought a promotion to Solutions Architect - this was effectively a continuation of the work I'd been doing up to that point, but more focussed on sales and strategy in a senior capacity. I was also given the responsibility of managing our key partnerships from a technical perspective. Whilst I'd been busy previously, the promotion, coupled with one of my key technical colleagues leaving and not being replaced meant that I've been absolutely, insanely flat out ever since. It has been great, and has given me some fantastic opportunities and chances to improve myself, but I'm determined that 2012 won't be quite so hectic! • A lot of March was spent in Edinburgh, what with the (always wonderful) Scotch on the Rocks conference, then back later in the month to visit National Galleries of Scotland regarding an application we were building using Flex and AIR. I also managed to fit in my first bit of time off and only real holiday in 2011 and went Skiing in Courchevel for a week. Little did I know it but it was to be my last time off for many months! • May brought some big highlights for me. At the start of the month I gave presentations about mobile development at events in the Paris and Brussels Adobe offices. Public speaking is a big challenge for me on a lot of levels but is something that I really enjoy, so for me to be invited to do this was great. May also brought D-Link into my life in the form of the redevelopment of their global web presence, which has been a huge task but one which has been extremely rewarding. Heading up the technical strategy, doing a mobile strategy analysis piece, and learning about and stitching together multiple existing systems took up a large chunk of my year and continues to be something I am heavily involved with into 2012. At the end of the month, after having decided earlier in the year that I would be moving to Essex or Suffolk, my boyfriend and I reserved our first home in the form of a new build house in Colchester. • July was all about cardboard boxes and golf. We work with The R&A, and with The Open Championship being held in July as you can imagine things get very hectic. This wasn't helped by having to move out of my rented accommodation in Kent, and into a single room in the (common law) in-laws' house in Suffolk for an unknown period. The move was done over one weekend, many hours on the M25, and at the end of it I was now a (part time) remote worker. This switch from full time office work was one of the most rewarding parts of my year. • In October I was lucky enough to get to go to the Adobe MAX conference in Los Angeles, as an Adobe Community Professional, an Agency Partner representative, and as a MAX Award Finalist for our work with The Open. I'd been hoping to go to MAX for ages and it was a brilliant experience, made all the better by the wonderful community. I brought a lot of my learnings back to share with our clients, with one such opportunity being a very interactive day with the lovely Electronic Arts where knowledge was shared between both parties. • After 4 long months of visiting my house at least once a week to take photographs documenting the progress, it was finally ready for us to move in mid-November. Not one to make things easy for myself, my old car had been on its last legs with all of my driving around the country, and I ended up collecting my current car on the morning of our move. • For a variety of reasons I hadn't been able to take any meaningful time off since March that didn't involve moving, signing legal documents or other stressful obligations, illustrated by the fact that I was able to take 14 days off in December. The time off mainly involved sleep. A lot of sleep. I'd been travelling all over the US, Europe and the UK and was incredibly burnt out and sleep-deprived at this point, so it was a much needed break before Christmas. A real highlight was that whilst I was off it was officially announced to the office that I was to return from my break in my levelled up form of Head of Technology, which is a role that I'm very excited to carry forward into 2012.

Technology in 2011 and 2012 2011 was an exciting year for me with regards to technology, with a lot of emphasis around CMS, CRM and mobile. For us, 2012 looks to bring a lot more open source projects in certain areas, as well as more Sitecore and Microsoft stack projects in others. There is ever increasing expectation around mobile as standard, with content and user experience being key. As clients and users are becoming increasingly informed and interested in emerging trends, 2012 should hopefully bring some nice new challenges.

And so, into 2012... As I've stated before, I don't really do strict resolutions, but here are some things that I would like to do next year: • Blog more, speak more, learn more. I'm determined for 2012 to be less chaotic than 2011, to be more carefully planned, and for that to feed into being able to do the things that I think are important but have slipped this year. I'm also going to make sure I can take better care of myself as a person, and take proper time off. • Take more risks. • Update this site properly. Having struggled with a redesign since summer (I know I should give in and hire a REAL designer one day instead of torturing myself), I've finally got something I'm pretty happy with. It gives me a chance to do play with responsive design and mobile experiences (including some swipe gestures), and I'm debating using a proper CMS on the back-end, or creating an online/offline mobile interface for updating on the move. Now being a Samsung Galaxy Tab owner and travelling a lot, I'm really getting a taste for the ability to do stuff when I'm on trains and planes. • Use a notebook more. If you've ever met me, the likelihood is that I will have something scrawled on the back of my left hand. Notebooks won't change this (hands are for important, urgent notes), but carrying a dedicated, robust notebook for ideas will hopefully prompt me to think more, and to leave fewer fragmented thoughts across multiple devices, post-it notes, and scraps of paper. Big thanks to the nice people at Nice Agency for the notebook they gave me at MAX. It's serving me very well so far. • After an expensive 2011 with little chance to travel, I want to try to go somewhere exciting on holiday in 2012. I love travelling, and it's one of the things that makes all of the hard work so worthwhile. Happy New Year everyone!

Reflections of a (part time) remote worker

Mon, 19 Dec 2011 10:07:00 -0500

Earlier this year I made the tough decision to commit to moving out of Kent, and up to East Anglia. This obviously tied into decisions about my working life, which up until that point had revolved around heading in to the office in Tunbridge Wells every day for the last 6 years. After some very honest chats with the directors at Lightmaker, it was decided that both parties would give me working remotely a chance.Whilst it wasn't to be without its challenges, this arrangement was appealing to me for many reasons. Having done Open University as well as the odd days of working from home previously I knew I could be productive when let out of the big office-shaped cage, but I wasn't sure whether I would go utterly mad if I was regularly faced with nothing but my own company. I felt lucky to be given the opportunity to test the waters whilst still within the safety net of my supportive existing job. Like many who make the switch from full time office-based work to a different routine it took me some time to find out how best to make this work for me, and I wanted to share some of my learnings from along the way. As the title of this blog post may have given away, I'm not actually a full time remote worker just yet. I commute to Kent two days a week, and also regularly attend meetings in London around those days, so my time spent in my home office is actually quite infrequent. My experiences therefore revolve more around balancing the in/out of the office challenges rather than going mad from solitude, but hopefully they can help anyone contemplating a similar switch.

Learnings If your company doesn't have many remote workers you may find that you're faced with a perception that you've "gone part time", or that people don't think to include you in things any more. Worse, there may also be a perception that you don't actually do any work because you're unsupervised. I've recently been on annual leave for two weeks, and tweeted during it that I was settling down to watch a film. My friend, the lovely @goo, who hadn't realised I was on holiday tweeted back "@sjenkinson Working hard then...? lol". Be careful that your colleagues and your clients have enough awareness of your timetable to separate your working time from your personal time, or your reputation may unintentionally suffer. If you feel like you're being left out of things you would usually be included in should you be in the office, raise it. Most likely people won't realise that you had wanted to be included. Colleagues may also struggle to work with you in an efficient manner (for example scheduling video chats rather than waiting for a slot when you can attend meetings in person). Communication is key. If you use a shared diary make sure your movements are very transparent, and speak to colleagues about prioritising face to face time. A good webcam/headset setup can also go a long way towards easing communication frustrations. Physically taking yourself away from an office environment can help to alleviate meeting hell. The meetings I attend in person are now condensed into set timeframes, and are now considered more carefully as to whether I'm needed. This has really helped me to escape days full of unnecessary meetings. Snacks. Keep away. Unless you've got a lot more willpower than me (likely), never work in your kitchen. On the positive side, having a proper kitchen to prepare meals in has meant that I eat better at home than in the office, and I save money not buying M&S lunches all the time. Everyone will joke about you working in your pants all day. You'll laugh this off, but there will be days when you're under the weather or over-tired, and you will have to overcome the temptation of not putting any effort in. For me, if I'm not properly dressed I don't feel in the right mindset to work, so it's just not an option. Remember that you could also be summoned to a video call at any point! If you're sat on your sofa, not properly dressed, looking a mess, you'll do little to erase any wrong perceptions about your work commitment from any doubters. Working environment - choose your location carefully. Having finally moved into my new house I now have a dedicated office, which I'm tailoring exactly to my work practices. It's quiet, I have a noticeboard, and I can spread scribbled diagrams and paper all over the surfaces. For the last few months I've been using shared office space, which isn't for me. Similarly, whilst coffee shops are ok on occasion, I couldn't personally spend a day working in one. Find a place that works for you. Timings are very important. You may be the sort of person whose schedule and needs change daily, and you work to your own timetable. I need to fit in with the main office timings, and am required to pretty rigidly stick to 9-5:30. As the sole remote worker, if everyone else is starting work at 9am, they expect to be able to get hold of me then too. This was difficult working in a shared office, as most days I was expected to leave when they locked up at 5pm. Again - communication is key - explain to people so that they don't get frustrated if they unexpectedly can't get hold of you. Even if I didn't have to stick to the office timings I would still work to set hours, as I find that a routine helps me. I would probably build in time for non-work activities, like exercise, but it would be a routine none the less. If your schedule is quite fixed, it can sometimes make it difficult when you need to be flexible. If people need me to be in the office at short notice it can be hard, and likewise if I've booked my schedule so that I'm in meetings in the office all day and a client meeting comes up it can be difficult to rearrange things. This is the same as all other commitments though, so just do your best to build in flexibility when you can. Since working remotely I feel more detached, in a good way. Whilst I would previously fall into working through lunch due to lack of options, I personally find it a lot easier to switch off for a break now that I can get other useful tasks done during my day. This does work both ways though, and I know some people struggle with detaching home and work lives. Try to find a balance that works for you.

Summary Working from home isn't something that everyone can jump into easily, but an option to trial it and reassess after a few months is a valuable opportunity. If you're thinking about giving it a go, allow enough time for you to settle in, think carefully about your location, routine and communication, and be honest with yourself if it's not working - it's not for everyone!

Featured article - Adobe.com Success Story

Thu, 08 Dec 2011 12:26:00 -0500

A while ago, before we were nominated for an Adobe MAX award, I did an interview regarding Lightmaker's use of Adobe technologies for our work with The R&A and The Open Championship 2011. I'm pleased to say that this has been turned into a Success Story for the adobe.com site, and is now live. You can read the full story here:
Adobe.com case study Lightmaker news story

Adobe MAX 2011 - a first timer's perspective

Mon, 17 Oct 2011 14:42:00 -0500

Adobe MAX is Adobe's annual conference, which for 2011 was held in Los Angeles, USA. Every year 5000 conference attendees gather to share Adobe's latest big reveals, attend sessions by industry leaders, and join in with community and 'unconference' events. This was my first MAX, and was something which I have been looking forward to for a long time. Having never been to a conference outside of the UK I was unsure what to expect from a lot of things. Since there doesn't seem to be a great deal of first time information currently out there I thought I'd cover some of the basics...

The location There seem to be some who are less than thrilled at MAX returning to LA for yet another year in 2012, but from a first time perspective I thought the setting was great. The conference centre is slightly outside of downtown LA, around half an hour's drive from LAX, and is where the main sessions take place. Over the road from there is the Nokia Theatre, where the keynotes are held, which in turn is located on a square with assorted bars, restaurants, and other entertainments. Most of the recommended hotels are located within a few blocks of the conference centre, with the hotel I stayed in, the JW Marriott, located right next to the Nokia Theatre. The conference centre is your usual deal - main hall, other big rooms, other small rooms - all pretty functional, but does the trick. As expected wifi totally died (5000 geeks will do that...), so it was handy for me to be able to head back to the hotel quickly whenever I needed to do some work. Outside of some badly organised crushes in the upstairs hallways everything seemed to run pretty smoothly for me.

The pre-conference Labs are held before the main conference, and I believe these are always outside the cost of the main ticket. In addition special Summits are held on the day before the conference kicks off for the Community, Agencies, and Education. As I was attending MAX in two guises (one on agency business for Lightmaker, and one as an Adobe Community Professional) I optimistically thought I could try to do both the Agency Summit and Community Summit, but I really don't recommend this. Luckily I was attending with one of our company Directors, so he was able to cover the agency side during the day, and then I headed to join him in the evening. It was a shame that I couldn't do both, and I feel like I let a few people down by not attending during the day/evening, but it was a very tricky situation to balance. The Community Summit was a great opportunity for me to meet some more fellow ACPs, and to attend some great pre-conference sessions. As I'm looking to get more into speaking I found the two sessions on this topic of particular interest. Thanks to everyone that contributed to the summit, as I found it really useful.

The keynotes Having watched MAX keynotes online before, I was particularly excited about attending these in person. Word had got around that it was going to be best to sit right in the middle of the theatre, which sparked some debate about whether there would be a 3D element to the intro. As it was, the intro sequence was incredibly realistic digital video merged with a live violin/dance sequence, played over three enormous screens (11.5m/38ft high, 400 foot wide, with 300 million pixels per secord). At two points I honestly thought the background was real from my vantage point near the sound desk. It was amazing to see in person, and whilst the videos below don't nearly capture the awesomeness, I'd encourage anyone to check them out. The Adobe video from the day shows the live event: http://tv.adobe.com/watch/max-2011-keynotes/creativity-unleashed/ I'd also recommend watching the video material from Elastic Creative/Kenwood Group alone to appreciate it better: http://vimeo.com/30110168 (note this version does not have the dancers on stage) The day 1 keynote introduced the concept of the Creative Cloud, which I feel will be of great benefit to designers' workflows. I use Dropbox a lot, and I can see the sharing element of CC being a big deal for those working across multiple devices. The acquisition of Typekit prompted a lot of cheers, and the reveal of the new Touch Apps certainly got a lot of people thinking about how they can be more productive when not at their main workstation. As with many people, I think Proto was a very interesting concept. Whilst it's unlikely to replace tools like Axure, the rapid prototyping and collaborative element look extremely promising. I'm also getting more into Kuler, so I was interested to see this working on a tablet. One of the big reactions from the crowd came to Photoshop Touch's 3D layer effect, whereby the image could be tipped onto its side in order to see the layers. There was some incredibly cool stuff shown and you can catch up with all of the information on Adobe TV: http://tv.adobe.com/show/adobe-touch-apps Day two was meant to be more on the development side, and whilst I should have found this more exciting I actually found it to be a bit disappointing. Personally, the keynote focused too much on promoting other companies, and less about Adobe, which is what I was hoping for. It was a bit too marketing, and not enough techie for me, although that's just my opinion. The acquisition of Nitobi/PhoneGap didn't have the same buzz as yesterday considering the news had already broken, and the run through of PhoneGap was old news to most people. A lot of the audience were hoping for a big device giveaway on a par with the previous year, and I think this probably contributed to some of the disappointment, but sadly it was not to be. Myself and 4999 others would have to head home Galaxy Tab-less...

The sessions If there's one lesson that I feel should be shared - you will not (most probably, unless you're superhuman) attend all of the sessions you book up for, especially on the day after the Bash (more on that later). I managed to attend a decent amount, all things considered (work, jetlag, hangovers...), and the sessions that I did attend were incredibly useful. For me, one of the best things about MAX is hearing Adobe employees and other leading lights in the community speak in person about things they are passionate about. It helps me learn much better than watching videos or reading articles, and is something I love about conferences. I attended sessions spanning the new Touch Apps, Flash Builder and Flash Player, AIR, large-team workflows, Facebook apps, and also swapped out some of my existing standard sessions for Unconference sessions. I believe all of the sessions (not labs/preconference) are available here: http://max.adobe.com/online/

The Unconference and Community area The Community Pavilion (a hall within the main conference centre) was host to much of the swag giveaway, the main sponsor booths (with devices to play with), the Adobe booth, an award showcase area, plenty of activities (photo-related, table tennis, table football, basketball games), the Community Lounge and other chillout areas, and a really clever but messed up art installation sponsored by Intel! To whoever created it - it was cool, I just don't like crazy dead-looking faces... The top line is that the Community Pavilion has something for everyone, and is usually the place the most people go to when they're not in sessions. There or a bar, anyway. It's also where the MAX lunch was served every day. This consisted of a salad, hot option (e.g. noodle box), desert, crisps, drink. No trays were provided, so lunch was usually accompanied by the sound of assorted items falling to the ground as they were being carried to the tables. As mentioned, whilst I'd booked up for all of my sessions in the 'main' conference, I swapped some out to attend Unconference sessions instead. The Unconference is held within the main hall, in little curtained off rooms. This serves to make the atmosphere a lot more relaxed than main sessions, albeit somewhat noisy when they're going on next to the basketball! My favourite session of the conference was Tim Cunningham's Fishbowl Session on developer best practices. Unfortunately I had to leave early as I needed to head to the Awards, but I really hope that this format is used again next year.

Sponsor Welcome Reception I was unsure of what to make of the mysterious 'Sponsor Welcome Reception' featuring on my scheduling app. Fearing a stuffy room with strictly one glass of beverage in a plastic cup, and people trying to sell devices to me, I headed over to the Community Pavilion alone, and half thinking I'd just go and get some sushi instead. In actual fact I found this to be great fun, and I would recommend it. The Pavilion had been transformed with tables of some really great food amongst the usual exhibits, with bars dotted around the room. They were however serving beverages in plastic cups, but the fact that these were not limited went a long way to me not minding! I thoroughly enjoyed the ribs and the chilli. Food was had, drinks were had, temporary tattoos of the Android and Flex logos were gained. What did put a bit of a downer on the night was the lights being turned off on the dot of 8, and everyone basically told to get out. Not cool, but efficient I guess.

Meet the Teams The Meet the Teams event was straight upstairs after the de-lumination of the Sponsor event, and most people headed to this seemingly because of the promise of more free alcohol. For me, this could have been handled a lot better. Everyone piled into the somewhat narrow corridors upstairs in the venue, and into a 'design' or 'develop' room. Different product teams appeared to be around the edges of each room, but it was hard to identify who was where amongst all of the people, and the general chatter made it quite noisy in reasonably small rooms. I didn't stay long, and thought that this could have been dealt with better in a more structured Q&A session.

The MAX awards Being at MAX on Lightmaker-duty, I was incredibly honoured and excited to be a finalist in the 2011 MAX Awards with our work for The Open Championship. We had created a 'Score Centre +' app for desktop using Creative Suite and Flash technologies, which included multiple live video streams, radio, statistics, hole flyovers, game integration, social media and news aggregation, and lots more. The Flash platform also allowed us to reuse code from the Score Centre + in order to create our Android version of the app, which used AIR for Android. You can see a video of our entry here: http://max.adobe.com/experience/maxawards/ Sadly when our time came we didn't win, but Rainn Wilson's hilarious hosting (and the free beer brought to our seats) went a long way towards cheering us up. Hopefully we'll be back next year!

Sneaks Held in the Nokia Theatre after the Awards, the Sneaks were a chance to get a peak at some of the stuff that the engineering teams are currently working on. I wasn't expecting much, but this, for me, was what the day 2 Keynote should have been. The things shown were pretty amazing, and the banter between Rainn and the geeks was brilliant. The Sneaks were recorded and put online for the first time ever, so you can see them for yourself: http://tv.adobe.com/show/max-2011-sneak-peeks/

MAX Bash Wednesday night had already got off to a good start with the Awards and Sneaks, and it was followed by the Bash. This is basically just a big party, and was held this year in an open air car park over the road from the convention centre. Not knowing what to expect, I was pretty blown away. The setting was gorgeous - lots of crazy lighting and decorations, with my favourite being the tree above the dessert table. The car park was lined by food trucks of assorted cuisines, with more food on tables all throughout the site, and plenty of bars. There was an elevated podium where dancers performed with fire, a UV light tunnel, and an entertainment area with sofas, microwaves and popcorn, table-top games, and Kinect projected onto the wall. It was all pretty fairytale, and lent a slightly surreal atmosphere to the night. One of the highlights for me was that Weezer played a set towards the end of the Bash. I've been a long-term Weezer fan, and though I'm not so keen on their stuff in the last couple of years, I have very happy memories of sitting in a field at the Reading Festival many years ago, which was when I last saw them. I was slightly apprehensive when they first came out as it seemed like they may have been under the impression that they were playing to Adobe, and I hoped it wouldn't end up as a classic corporate gig. Luckily no such thing happened - Rivers was climbing all over the stage, appearing at the back of the crowd and walking through, and the finale was a big group drum solo. It was a great set, and I'm glad that a band I like so much were playing.

MAX and me So, that was my MAX. I feel very lucky that I got to go this year, and I had an amazing time. I have no idea what next year will bring, and whether I'll be able to go again, but I really hope I'll be able to. If anyone reading this is still unsure, I would recommend that you go if you're able to. If you're an employer, it's definitely worth it both on an educational and a business level, and you shouldn't just see it as yet another developer conference. MAX definitely has a lot to give to anyone interested in keeping up with technological advances in any capacity. I'll leave you with the following final recommendations:

If you're looking for people to drink with, head to the lobby bar at the JW Marriott.
Take an extra bag for swag! Seriously. I needed an entire suitcase.
Have an early night on Tuesday.
The Starbucks outside the Nokia Theatre is usually packed in the mornings.
Related to the above - The JW Marriott coffee shop does good bagels and jasmine tea.
Take a lot of business cards.
Book some time off to recover when you get back!

More photos are available on flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/greywillfade/sets/72157627840672578/

Computer Arts Projects issue 153

Mon, 15 Aug 2011 04:49:00 -0500

Computer Arts Projects issue 153 has been released, and features a nice full page spread on some of the recent work that Lightmaker have been doing. Alongside some shots of the work you will find quotes from me speaking about our work for The Open, whilst our US Managing Director also talks about our work with Maria Sharapova.

How I got started in ColdFusion

Mon, 01 Aug 2011 07:43:00 -0500

A while ago Steve Bryant came up with the excellent idea of August 1st being designated How I Got Started In ColdFusion Day, for which ColdFusion users tell their origin story. As a big fan of encouraging others to take up coding, I thought I'd bring my story to the table. Let's start right back at the beginning...We had computers in the house since I was young, and I've never felt any kind of fear or hesitation about jumping in and messing around using trial and error. I got to grips with DOS pretty fast, as was necessary in those days to launch games, and I remember some happy times using BBC computers at my primary school. The same school also had a physical 'turtle' device that you could put things on, program, and it would travel through the school corridors to its destination, and this concept fascinated me. Moving on, both technology and my usage of computers were changing. In secondary school the social elements started appealing more and more, and I would head home and use messengers to chat to my friends as well as exploring the new world of online communities. I'd also spend far too much time creating terrible graphics, feeling like I was a great computer artist until I looked back at them the next day (I still do this sometimes). In school that pesky turtle came up again - this time in virtual form, I was taught about Visual Basic for Applications, and I loved finding out about easter eggs such as the flight simulator in Excel 97. Looking back, I really appreciate the exposure that I was given to programming, especially considering that I was at a girls school. A lot of this was down to a fantastic IT teacher, who sadly left, causing the program to go incredibly downhill at A-level stage, where a lot of people lost their passion due to the replacement teacher's textbook teaching approach. I was probably around 14 when I started getting interested in creating websites. I went through a phase of creating awful looking things that were hosted using a variety of free services, and were initially built using products like FrontPage, or even Word. I know. I don't even want to think what the code would have looked like. It was only after getting more involved with online communities and reading blogs that I started to understand that you had so much more control over the output if you created it by hand. I bought a huge book about HTML and CSS which I have to this day, and I started using View Source to work out how things had been done. I never ripped off anyone's site, but I learnt an awful lot from grabbing the entire source for sites and adapting it to understand how things worked. At this point everything was static. I had a blog, and that involved editing the homepage by hand, with archives being a copy/paste job into new files. It was all very tedious. On going to university that all changed. I'd known for a while that I wanted to do a computing course, and the course I ended up on taught me C, Java, Perl, PHP, Javascript, Actionscript, and... er... Lingo. We worked with Oracle and Access, and started making little basic CRUD applications. This was better - it does stuff! Doing a sandwich course, my third year was a year in industry. There was only one place that I wanted to work for (they'd done the Lego Star Wars site - they must be awesome!), which was Lightmaker. I went for my interview and luckily got the job. I was told at the time that I should look into ColdFusion, as that would be one of the things I'd be working with. Within a couple of weeks I had been completely thrown in at the deep end - doing some major updates to an existing site for a big client, pretty much on my own. I will always be grateful to Julian Wheaton and Chris Williams, who both gave me a lot of time and patience, and taught me a lot. Over the next few years I was a bit of an all-rounder - I mainly worked with ColdFusion or ASP, though I did a fair bit of Actionscript work too. At the time we were doing a lot of heavy, immersive Flash work, and ColdFusion was the natural pairing for a back-end technology. In general it made things so quick and easy to get done, and it was a great way to improve my general programming knowledge without getting bogged down with an unwieldy language or difficult syntax. From my humble student beginnings I started rising up the ranks, working on some huge client accounts and sites/brands that I genuinely loved, and even winning some big awards for some of them. The wonderful CF community played a big part in my development, as there are so many great snippets of code and bits of advice out there to learn from. My role is a bit different now, and I spend most of my time talking to people about technology rather than getting my hands dirty. That's not to say I turned my back on development - I have an R&D element to my role, and I do a fair amount of coding outside of my day job. I like to think that I've simply evolved, and have been able to bring in other things that I enjoy, such as meeting people and finding solutions for their problems. I am very glad that I got started with ColdFusion, as without it I never would have got to where I am today.

Google+ one week in...

Thu, 07 Jul 2011 09:15:00 -0500

Like most people, hearing about Google+ last week caused me to immediately sign up to be invited to the Beta. Shortly after I was lucky enough to be sent an invite using a well known loophole, and took it upon myself to start shooting out invites to friends, colleagues and family members in an attempt to start filling my circles with fellow users. After using G+ (yeah, I'm on that naming convention bandwagon) for a week, I thought I'd write up some thoughts on the service now I've had some time for it to settle down.
Stream The week has seen some noticeable trends. Initially it was inevitable that all posts seemed to be either simple test items, invite attempts, or the inevitable pictures of cats whilst people tried to find their feet. At present my stream now seems a bit uncluttered - it's a mix of useful (G+ tips, recipes, articles), people using it like other social networks (reposting tweets already posted elsewhere etc), using it for posing questions (a bit like Quora), and those who have just joined and are back in the test phase. There's clearly a split in how people are using the service, and it comes across that it will take a bit more time for people to find consensus on how it should be used. I myself haven't posted anything publically yet. I think that like many others I'm trying to work out how G+ fits in with my overall online ecosystem - I have Facebook for more personal things, twitter for the more everyday, reactive communication, linkedin for professional networking, and I'm not sure which 'persona' fits G+ best. Is G+ trying to be all of these? Will it work, or will it end up with its own completely distinct personality? Sparks I like this idea. I am at my core a very lazy person, and I like nothing better than being spoonfed things of interest to wrap my brain around. Google, of course, are very well qualified in the whole arena of surfacing relevant content based on keywords, so I have very high hopes for this. It's not the finished article yet, and it will be intesting to see how the whole +1 concept plays into it long-term. I'm currently using this both for personal and professional reasons - I've populated my Sparks list with a wide range of 'interests' in order to see how well the concept works in different arenas, so these span things like "content management", "sitecore", "coldfusion", "mobile", "android"... all the way to "colchester", "jakarta", "tokyo" and others. I'm still looking for an effective term for vinyl toy figures, so if anyone has any suggestions please let me know! Photos Photos from your circles In all honesty this hasn't grabbed me as much as it hopefully will eventually. I like the concept, but since my photo stream is currently full of my contacts' profile pictures it's not really the life-commentary-in-pictures that I hope it will be. I was a big fan of Moblog some time ago, and I could see this eventually being a more personalised version of that. Photos from my phone This clearly still has a few issues - on loading it up a few days ago it had one photo from before I had G+, one after I'd signed up and had enabled instant upload, but not one that I took and shared in a stream as a test and which had previously shown up. I have since used the tool to import all photos from my phone, which seemed to work quite well, however it still has not synced a photo I took as a test after this task had completed. I'd be interested to know others' experiences with this. I'd love it if this could be made more reliable, as I think this is a fantastic feature - firstly I rarely back up my photos, and they tend to just sit in my phone. This will hopefully prompt me to do something with them. I also frequently use my phone camera as a reminder (I understand this contradicts my previous point!), so if there was a way of tagging photos/or turning this into more of a productivity tool that would be great. Huddle I was intrigued when a new icon popped up on my phone one afternoon, and it turned out I'd been included in a huddle. It seemed to work quite well at the time, though subsequent attempts have seemed to include long delays between messages being sent and received - I guess everyone else is messing around with it! If it works (and can be rolled out to a variety of mobile platforms), this has the potential to be VERY useful. It wil also be interesting to see how it impacts on services such as WhatsApp. Video chat Whilst not something I would use day to day ('proper' services like Webex, GoToMeeting and Connect will still likely be my business tools of choice until this matures significantly), I can still see this being fun for families around the world, or with friends who want to group chat. Where I used to come home from school and immediately spent all evening on AOL chat (I know) with my friends, services like this can now port entire friendship groups onto new services. Facebook's recently announced Skype offering has been seen as a retaliation to Hangouts, but it presently only facilitates on to one video calls. This one isn't over yet... Circles After adding everyone I knew of in some capacity, my Find and Invite tab has now become somewhat counter productive as I can't find anyone new that I actually know. I have a lot of Twitter contacts in my circles, and the suggestions now seem to be a lot of people who I have no connection with whatever. It know the whole idea of circles is that the names are private, but it would be good to have a way of tagging people - John Smith is in X, Y, Z's circles, and has been tagged with 'funny', 'cats', 'tunbridge wells' - a bit like Twitter's groups I guess. I really like the visual element of Circles as well as the simplicity of the privacy mechanism. I'm sure some loopholes will happen, but for now this seems like a really nice way to organise people. The subtle animations (try deleting a circle) are also very cool little touches. Final thoughts As has been pointed out in several arenas, the non-geek community uptake will be key to establishing G+'s overall success. At present I have 15 family and friends in circles compared to 65 professional or community contacts, which seems to be pretty similar to most at the moment. A lot of people just don't seem to 'get' G+ and why they should use it over Twitter/Facebook, so it seems that Google needs to come up with a clever marketing strategy for the masses. I know I've pointed out a fair few flaws in this review, but my overall feeling is one of excitement. There's an awful lot to like about Google+, and I'm looking forward to its evolution. Let's not forget - this is a still a Beta, despite our high hopes! In addition to the recommendations I've already suggested, some other changes I'd like to see would be: Sparks - remove the featured recommendations and create a landing page featuring the user's selections. Create more of a dashboard - instead of mimicking Facebook's landing page I'd prefer to see more of a Google homepage complete with customisable widgets. This would personally help me make better use of Sparks, and would be great if I could tag my Instant Uploads to be flagged up on the homepage. Profile > Places lived - I like this, but it should have the ability to be made bigger, or perhaps to involve a more complex Google Maps integration should people wish to map more information.

Mobile presentation slides

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 12:38:00 -0500

I'm back in the UK after what I'm enjoying calling a mini European tour, and I'd like to say a big thank you to everyone that came to see me speak about mobile development in Paris and Brussels this week. As a first time speaker this was definitely somewhat in at the deep end, but I really hope that everyone felt that the sessions were interesting and came away having learnt something. I've had some good feedback so far, so I'm hoping that I didn't do too terribly! I had great fun doing both sessions, and I'd love to do more presenting in the future. The Adobe User Groups do a fantastic job of creating a community, and obviously keeping attendees informed about a variety of topics, so I would urge you all to attend a local session if at all possible. Or perhaps submit a topic to speak about - it's not as scary as you might imagine! Thanks to Aurélien, Cyril and Steven for having me, to Claude for being a great chaperone, and to everyone involved for making the whole process so painless. My slides are posted below - thanks go to Ben Debnam for the sequence of graphics to go with the statistics - as a techie pictures of cats and devices I can manage, but Ben made my slides look a bit more like I know what I'm doing! If anyone has any questions please feel free to get in touch, either via email (sally dot jenkinson at gmail dot com) or catch me on twitter (sjenkinson). Slides at SlideSix: http://slidesix.com/view/Building-dynamic-mobile-applications-with-ColdFusion

Upcoming speaking events

Wed, 04 May 2011 16:46:00 -0500

I'm very pleased to announce that I will be a speaker on the Adobe ColdFusion User Groups tour at events in Paris on the 30th of May and Brussels on the 31st of May. The presentation I'll be giving will be:

Building dynamic mobile applications with ColdFusion The world of device development is one where rules and approaches can shift rapidly, but also one where excitement is high and there is huge potential for innovation. In this session we'll be covering why, as a ColdFusion developer, you may want to build mobile applications, and how ColdFusion is a great platform to power them. Using a real world project as an example we will explore the development process from brief to completion, examining the challenges you may face along the way. Sally Jenkinson is Solutions Architect at Lightmaker UK, an Adobe Partner Agency. With 6 years of ColdFusion experience, Sally has worked with clients including Electronic Arts, Innocent Drinks, The David Beckham Academy, Sony Entertainment and Disney, and is an Adobe Community Professional for 2011. Primarily responsible for technical strategy and partnership management, Sally works closely with Lightmaker's development team in order to produce award-winning websites and apps. Outside of work Sally can usually be found on Xbox LIVE, in a restaurant, or planning her next holiday.

Sally's blog can be found at sallyjenkinson.co.uk, and she can also be found on twitter at @sjenkinson

Slides and supporting information will of course be posted online closer to the event. I'm really excited to be a part of these events, and I look forward to hopefully meeting lots of you there!

Adobe announce Creative Suite 5.5

Mon, 11 Apr 2011 17:30:00 -0500

Today brought the announcement of Adobe's first mid-cycle release for Creative Suite 5.5. Instead of continuing with uninterrupted milestone releases, these will be moved to a two-year cycle, with mid-cycle releases keeping the product relevant and at the cutting edge of technology. There were two main sides to the announcement - functionality and licensing.
Licensing So is this just a ploy by Adobe to take our money more regularly? Quite the opposite - one of Adobe's big changes has been the introduction of a Subscription Edition in order to make upgrading more affordable and more suited to users' fluctuating usage scenarios. It is now be possible to subscribe to all versions of the main Creative Suite, as well as selected individual products (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Dreamweaver, Flash Professional, Premiere Pro, and After Effects) for a fixed monthly fee. For this you will get the software either on a month-by-month basis, or an annual basis depending on the subscription chosen, including access to the latest software updates for free for as long as you're still a subscriber. It is possible to convert current trials to a subscription, and the software is exactly the same as the 'traditional' versions. Subscriptions are being sold exclusively on adobe.com with pricing information here:
http://www.adobe.com/products/creativesuite/cssubscription.html
Functionality updates So now the money talk is out of the way, what do you get that makes it worth upgrading? The answer is a surprising amount for what is not a milestone release. These enhancements span a variety of products and include: Updates to both HTML5 and Flash authoring tools, showing once again that Adobe are more than happy for both technologies to co-exist. These tools are specifically designed to help the creation of mobile content for iOS, Android and BlackBerry Tablet OS as well as more traditional browser-based content. Dreamweaver contains jQuery mobile framework integration, PhoneGap, and WebKit engine updates, whilst Flash Builder 4.5 Premium and the Flex 4.5 framework cover those who prefer their development to be Flash-based. Digital publishing is a sector which is evolving rapidly at present, and updates to InDesign will allow designers to introduce elements such as "video, audio, panoramic view, 360-degree object rotation, pan and zoom of images, integration of HTML and HTML5 content and other interactive overlays". Again harking back to devices ("year of the tablet/mobile", anyone?), the integration with Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite will aim encourage more digital publications to be created for tablets in an increasingly simple fashion. Are we done talking about devices yet? Not quite... in addition to the above, Adobe are releasing the Photoshop Touch SDK, which you may remember being demoed at MAX last year in the form of a palette application interacting with Photoshop, now known as Adobe Color Lava. The SDK will let developers create Android, PlayBook and iOS applications which seamlessly integrate directly with Photoshop functionality. For a first look at the launch apps, and to get some ideas, have a look at photoshop.com. Finally there are great performance enhancements for video products in the Production Premium suite, covering performance upgrades for Windows and Mac OS as well as workflow and functionality improvements.
Final thoughts... Only time will tell, but the introduction of the Subscription Edition looks to be a smart move on the part of Adobe, and will perhaps help to tempt in some of those who may not have considered paying the full price in the past. The move to mid-cycle releases is also wise - developments move so rapidly nowadays that Adobe (as others) will need to find new ways to keep up in order to stay relevant, and this seems a great way of keeping the buzz around product releases whilst giving users the tools they need. I'll be upgrading my copy... will you?