Dairy of a Madman

BarCampBirmingham2 is coming up this weekend. It’s a gathering of tech-minded folk in town — from their wiki, “BarCampBirmingham is a user generated conference created around an open, participatory workshop-event, with content provided by participants. Those participating choose the session topics for the day and then present to each other. It’s free. It’s fun. It’s a great way to meet the local technology community.” — and for some reason I’ve decided to head a session on design for New Media (i.e., the Internet).

Not that I don’t know what I’m talking about - except, it’s one thing to be at the top of the game in a world filled with people that can barely check their email, and another all together to feel comfortable in a room filled with people that do this sort of thing every day, for a living (or worse, spend every waking minute thinking about information systems or programming or whatever their devouring passion is).

My biggest problem in doing web design is that — compared to everyone else in the field — I’m scattered. I’m not a techie, as much as the programmers and security guys and the engineers are, and I’m not a designer with a natural eye for graphics and layout and the like. I’m somewhere in-between, the classic ambidextrous divide, equal parts right- and left-brain. I’m trying really hard to convince myself that this is a strength — there aren’t too many people with strengths in both areas — but it keeps coming back in my mind that it’s a weakness.

I’m guessing most Jack-of-all-trades probably struggle with this.

I’ve thought about designing for the Internet a lot — touched on it once here, in fact — but I can’t manage to unscatter (I guess the actual term I’m looking for is “organize”) my thoughts. I don’t want to come screaming in with a list of problems and no solutions, but in the forefront of my brain that’s what I’ve got.

Any of you reading that do work with websites, or even read them — any thoughts or suggestions?

• BarCampBirmingham2
• April 12th, 9 AM to 3 PM
• Innovation Depot, 1500 1st Avenue North, Birmingham, AL / Google Map