Web 2.0 Expo Berlin: The Wednesday Keynotes

Leisa Reichelt – Drupal.org redesign

How do you design for a large Open Source Community? That was the problem Leisa Reichelt
faced when commissioned to do the redesign of the Drupal.org site. 
“You can’t do it behind closed doors,” she said, “and you need to give
the community a say in what they consider their home.”

They
built a form in Google Apps, to solicit community members who would
give feedback during the design process. Wireframes were crowd-sourced
on Flickr. They monitor Twitter for the “drupal” keyword.

In the end, they have something like 12,000 opinions, but Leisa suggested that you don’t need to respond to them all.

“You look at the themes,” she said “and you give feedback generally, to show that they are being listened to. “

Rafi Haladjian of Violet

Violet is the company behind the Nabaztag – the infamous internet connected rabbit. The comapny has a two-stage plan:

• Step 1: Connect rabbits
• Step 2: Connect everything else.

They
believe that currently we keep data in a “fishbowl”, concentrated in a
single space in our homes, usually the PC. The remaining stuff is dumb
and unconnected.

They’re
going to push forwards with connected objects by launching the mir:ror
– an RFID-reading mirror that can talk to your computer. For example,
waving your Oyster card overit  will make your commputer immediatly
show you travel conditions. You’ll be able to buy RFID tags and add
them to your own objects and choose what they do.

He
wasn’t  very good at giving compelling examples of why things should be
connected to the internet – but boy, he believes they should be.