Summer of WordCamp

It’s been summer for about a week now. Whether you’re on vacation or burning the midnight oil, attending a local/nearby WordCamp is a great way to spend a weekend. Meet other WordPress users, developers, designers & consultants, learn a little something, maybe share a little of your own experience and knowledge, and break bread (or raise a toast) with new friends and collaborators. Here are the WordCamps scheduled for this summer, along with what I know about them.

July 3: WordCamp Germany – Berlin, Germany. I love it that they’re using BuddyPress for their event site. They have multiple tracks, and what looks to be a nice variety of sessions. It’s only a few days away, so if you’re thinking of going, get your tickets now!

July 10: WordCamp Boulder – Boulder, Colorado, USA. This was WordCamp Denver last year, but the organizers have decided to mix it up and go back and forth between Denver and Boulder, which also has a thriving tech community. This year the venue is the Boulder Theater (so pretty!), and there will sessions for bloggers and devs alike, plus a Genius Bar to help people get their WordPress sites all fixed up. The speaker lineup looks good, and I hear they’re pumping up the wifi this year. I’ll be there, likely hunched over a notebook with Lisa Sabin-Wilson (author of WordPress for Dummies and BuddyPress for Dummies) to talk about the WordPress User Handbook project, and/or hunched over a sketchbook with Kevin Conboy (designed the new lighter “on” state for admin menus in WordPress 3.0) to work out a new default WordCamp.org theme (using BuddyPress). You can still get tickets!

July 17–18: WordCamp UK- Manchester, England, UK. The roving WordCamp UK will be in Manchester this year, and is probably the closest to BarCamp style of all the WordCamps, using a wiki to plan some speakers/sessions and organizing the rest ad-hoc on the first day of the event. I’ll be attending this one as well, and am looking forward to seeing WordPress lead developer Peter Westwood again. I’m also looking forward to meeting some core contributors for the first time in person, like Simon Wheatley and John O’Nolan. Mike Little, co-founder of WordPress, is on the organizing team of WordCamp UK. Tickets on sale now!

July 24: WordCamp Nigeria – Lagos, Nigeria. Their site seems to have a virus, so no link from here, but if you’re in Nigeria and interested in attending/getting involved, a quick Google search will get you to the organizers.

August 7: WordCamp Houston – Houston, TX, USA. Houston, Texas, birthplace of WordPress! Fittingly, Matt Mullenweg will be there to give the keynote. WordCamp Houston is running three tracks — Business, Blogger and Developer — in recognition of the fact that people who are interested in using WordPress for their business may not actually be bloggers or developers themselves. This used to get labeled as a “CMS” track at previous WordCamps (including NYC 2009), but with WordPress 3.0 supporting CMS functionality out of the box, “Business” is a much more appropriate label. Who wants to bet on if there will be BBQ for lunch?

August 7 : WordCamp Iowa – Des Moines, Iowa, USA. Another placeholder page. Happening, not happening? I’ve emailed the organizer and will update this post once I know more.

August 7–8: WordCamp New Zealand – Auckland, New Zealand. They haven’t announced this year’s speakers or topics, but they’ve been running polls to get community input into the program. Of note: in 2011 WordCamp New Zealand will be shifting seasons and will be in February instead, when the weather is nicer.

August 20–22: WordCamp Savannah – Savannah, Georgia, USA. Disclaimer: I am completely biased about Savannah, since I’m one of the organizers. This will be the first WordCamp in Savannah, and it’s being held at the Savannah College of Art and Design River Club, an awesome venue that used to be a cotton warehouse or something like that. Since Savannah doesn’t really have a cohesive WordPress community yet (though a fair number of people from Savannah attended WordCamp Atlanta earlier this year), this WordCamp is aimed squarely at building a local community. We’ll have a local meet-and-greet, regular sessions with visiting speakers (lots of core contributors coming to this one, plus Matt), and on Sunday it will be combination unconference/genius bar/collaborative workspace. Oh, and a potluck! We’ll also be running a pre-WordCamp workshop for people who have never used WordPress but want to get started, so that they’ll be able to follow the presentations and conversations littered with WordPress-specific vocabulary over the weekend. Ticket sales just opened, so get your tickets now.

For a schedule of all upcoming WordCamps, visit wordcamp.org. The autumn schedule is already packed! If you don’t see WordCamp in your area and are interested in organizing one, get more information and let us know.

Fixed rate shipping module available at GetShopped

Available at GetShopped.org now, the fixed rate shipping module allows local and small businesses to charge with fixed shipping rates. Special and custom shipping options are available, including adding separate locations. As explained at GetShopped:

…for example if your business is located in Manhattan you may offer free shipping in Manhattan, but charge a little fee for the delivery in the rest of New York. Or if your business is in Italy you may want to charge extra for delivery to islands like Sicily and Sardinia.

You can download this plugin from the WordPress Plugin Directory. Keep in mind, you will need the WP e-Commerce plugin as well.

If you are a small or local business selling products online, you need to check this one out!

Michael Kuhlmann releases Hope Theme, donates all sales to charity

Michael Kuhlmann has released the Hope child theme for the Carrington Business framework and will be donating the proceeds to World Vision. 100% of the proceeds to be exact.

World Vision, a Christian humanitarian organization, states that it has provided assistance to over 100,000,000 people in 100+ countries. They help struggling communities across the world by providing necessities like clear water, food, and an education.

Kuhlmann wrote this about why you should buy Hope:

Because everybody deserves at least the most basic necessities in life. Thinking about how many water faucets are in and outside of your home, how would you feel if you only had one — that spewed dirty water. It’s a sad fact of life but one that can be changed, starting today. And if you’re a WordPress fanboy/girl, then this child theme is definitely for you.

You can purchase the Hope child theme for $17.

EU Opens Antitrust Case Against Google, Gives Me Comic Material

The European Union believes that Google has been up to some underhanded and generally illegal business practices in its SEO and paid search practices. I thought that since I’m in the EU, I might be able to shed some light on that. Really, I just thought it would be interesting to talk about. The EU [...]

Take The Initiative and Create Your Own Projects

During my last job with a large corporation, people started to get laid off. Many fellow creatives came to me, as they had no idea what they would do if they were let go. I had come to that small city from New York and my experience was varied and impressive to those who started their careers with this company. Their parents had hoped for their own children to work there and eventually retire in the same homey place. They were anchored in this town that held no other industries. Like layoffs in a town that has a steel mill, there weren’t many options to those looking for work.

“You’re creative,” I would tell people before my turn came in the next to last round of layoffs (which is some comfort). “You can do so many things that are creative. If you get pushed out the door, make your own projects!” Then advise them where to go and spend the rest of the day creating a book, or painting a series for a gallery show, or create postcards, greeting cards, dolls and websites. This was usually followed by the persons to whom I was speaking to, to ask about something they obviously wanted to explore; leading to a discussion, usually joined by others as well, on how to achieve it. The dividing line is how badly does one want it?

Take The Initiative!

Tailor (A) gives creative (B) a snappy new “power suit”, SO irresistible that the client (C) hugs the suit (D) causing it to hit paddle (E), smashing expensive vase (G) and wasting a perfectly goof head of cabbage (I). Further destruction reigns havoc (K – P), dousing all competitors with a toxic chemical (Q). Illustration by Rube Goldberg.

I’m a big believer in self-propelled initiatives. It’s how I make a living. Writing for Smashing Magazine is an initiative. Everything is done before Smashing ever sees it. Authors have to come up with the idea, research it for presentation, get the approval and then write it and submit it. It’s initiative. As with what you may perceive as easy to pitch an article, most initiatives are simple!

All of my career I’ve had people come to me to relay that they have written a book and need a cover or images for the inside so they can send it to a publisher. I tell them they don’t need all that. Just send in the manuscript with a self-addressed-stamped-envelope (many publishers have digital submissions on their sites) and the publisher will choose cover designers and illustrators themselves.

Some people smile at the realization that their dreams were an easy step closer. Some didn’t believe me and insisted I design something for them (and draw, because I’m an “artsy-type!”). I look over the pages and tell them it’s an idea that shouldn’t be “set aside lightly”. They smile and then I tell them it should be “thrown with great force” (with apologies to Dorothy Parker). Some people want it to be done for them. Maybe it’s the prompting of a contest or a “might-as-well-take-it” project.

Would you rather be working on a low-paying project that is screwing you up at every turn or invest in yourself with the time put towards your dream project? It’s not hard coming up with an idea and creating the images, code or what-have-you. The difficult part is making yourself do it and then selling it and that’s where most people fail.

One of my recent favorite self-initiative stories was about an injured creative with time on his hands and a need for income. Dave is a designer at the Iconfactory and responsible for the ultimate Twitter icon Ollie the Twitterrific bird; he had broke his foot while playing soccer over the Fourth of July. That meant that the poor guy was relegated to staying off his feet at home. Rather than wallow in self-pity, he decided to use the opportunity to keep himself from going completely Rear Window and offer up his design skills to the large Web community — and successfully so!

Self-initiative is not easy for most people. Working for someone else provides a regular paycheck, security, after a fashion, and someone telling you what to do. No self-motivational projects needed. As one person commented on a past article on crowdsourcing,

“I recently participated in the LG “Design the Future” contest (yeah, I didn’t win)… but rarely do I get the chance to design a cell phone like product… it was a great exercise in creativity and it really let me flex my muscle… and they had some substantial cash prices (first prize was $20,000)… I feel like competitions like that are great for the industry. The rules were pretty relaxed and it really let people go hog wild and show off what they can do. Too often you’re forced to roll with the clients vision. It’s great to have a contest that let’s you be you.”

As I was arguing the pros and cons of crowdsourcing in that article, I just had to reply for his edification:

“I understand your point, but let me play devil’s advocate and explore another option. So you submitted something you really enjoyed designing and it stretched your creativity. You loved your final submission. You didn’t win and the client, I assume, owns it anyway. What if you had designed it but not submitted it and then sought out companies that might purchase the rights to the design? You would have taken a cue to create your own initiative and owned the product rights.”

Was the prize worth giving away all rights to the winner? What would the client have paid a design firm or freelancer to do the work? I’m guessing that the prize cost was considerably less than the one that would have run the company. So, who was the real winner? Which avenue held a better chance for him? The odds of him winning the contest and giving up the idea anyway without winning, or the odds of him being able to sell the design on the open market, or  maybe not, but owning it to try again? I can’t say.

Persistence in selling the idea and protecting it can be daunting. Even though, sometimes even an e-mail comes back right away that says, “I love it!”… and a check eventually arrives. (Note: you shouldn’t participate in such speculative design work as a professional in the first place and here is why — Smashing Editorial)

What Will Get You Started?

A tidal wave of ideas or bills (A) will motivate another creative nearby to foolishly open an umbrella (E) in a lame attempt to hold back the flood, causing what looks like a giant earring (H) to fall and pull the hammer (J) so it strikes a piece of metal (K), waking up the baby (L) who must be rocked to sleep (N) by a trained and poorly-paid dog (M), causing the attached backscratcher (O) to tear at your flesh until you decide it’s better to get off your rear and do something. Illustration by Rube Goldberg.

Your idea. Your dream. No one will do it for you. Even if you have to work at something non-creative — use the money to live, but make your dream the priority. Crappy job gets in the way of your dream? Find another crappy job! They’re everywhere and except for the slaughterhouse idea, they won’t drain your creativity. Have the idea? Now set your plan. Just like your previous boss who had always made projects go around and around, it’s finally time to make your own plan, knowing it will work better, and make it happen!

First, research who your customer is. Using Web sources or going to stores are the best way to find out some helpful examples of consumer habits (yes, marketing people never leave the office, they rely too much on figures supplied to them). See what people are buying and talk to them. I used to go to stores that carried products made by the company for which I worked for, and watched what people bought or didn’t and asked them why.

I would smile as I approached them, excuse myself and explain what I was working on and gathered their opinions. This is probably why my products sometimes sold very well. Know your consumer base!

Also, figure out costs and how you will cover them. You may need a loan or investors. What website and functionality will you need? Packaging, having stock, shipping, advertising, taxes? Is your dream project for you to start a business or do you want someone else to produce it? If you are producing it yourself, you can get a business loan, but you are about to take many, many risks. Get legal and financial advice next. It’s well worth the money and will give you the final tally of whether or not this will be your dream or nightmare.

If you are creating something to pitch to a company for their purchase or licensing a property (certain photos for calendars and cards, for instance), there are a similar but different set of rules.

Start with the idea and marketing, create a style guide and/or presentation. A friend of mine wanted to publish a graphic novel for a pitch for a property she was trying to sell but couldn’t afford upfront fees for an artist and writer and printer, so I told her to use a WordPress blog to post her promotional material that she already had and that would give her a great presentation — the easy way.

Research which company you think would want to take on the project. Again, go online or to a store and look around. Want to really impress potential clients? Ask the store’s permission to set everything up; take videos of shoppers and their answers. What better way to produce proof of a need and then give clients the means to fulfill it!? Let your imagination run wild! As with the man who was so excited by the contest he entered, stretch yourself creatively.

Found the perfect prospect? Do your research and find the people you need to reach. There are many business networking sites. Search the company and find people and their titles. Get addresses and phone numbers. Call the receptionist and ask her/him who is the head of marketing or if they have an R & D contact person. If they don’t know, ask to speak to the secretary of the VP of marketing. Maybe she/he can get you closer. Also, use your network. Do any of your contacts know someone you are trying to reach?

Sounds difficult? It isn’t really; just keep in mind that it takes a lot of persistence, patience, as well as a good sense of humor. Once you lost one of those, you won’t make it.

A Non-Disclosure Agreement Is Standard

While feeding yourself (A), the spoon pulls the string (B), flipping a piece of drilled iron into the head of a parrot (E), who is knocked unconscious and knocks it’s beak into a bowl (G) which spills parrot food into a bucket (H) that sets of fireworks (K) inside your house with a razor sharp sickle (L) attached to it, cutting the string (M) and forcing you to remember the paperwork to enforce your rights by smacking you in the face with a contract repeatedly! Illustration by Rube Goldberg.

It’s standard to either have your own Non-Disclosure Agreement or pick up a copy of Tad Crawford’s book on contracts and forms. Bigger companies will insist on using their own. Bigger corporations, to their own detriment, usually have no access point for outside ideas. They are afraid your idea may be something they are working on and they will be sued down the line. Middle-sized companies will just tell you they happen to be working on the same idea. Document your contacts and submissions well.

I was recently told over a dozen product designs would not be used. I later heard the products were available in every catalog world-wide. Did they think my price would go up if I found out how well the work did? You bet it will! Keep your expectations high (expect the middle to low high) when negotiating. A recent question came in from an artist in Mexico who ran across a sleazy representative in the United States who was basically ripping her off for one of her licensed characters. She had jumped at the chance because it was her first time working in a licensing arrangement. I hope she followed my advice.

As with any business transaction… think! Anyone who rushes your decision is up to something. Do your research and see what you find.

Bless The Web And All Who Surf It!

Extended and dangerous hook (A) catches old fashion sign (B), causing electrical shorts that start a fire and the boot to swing back, kicking the football (C) over the goal post (D) and into a colander (E) which tips the watering can (G) to soak the creative’s back, pants and shoes, which will lead to misunderstandings and new nicknames. The string (I) pulls open the cage (J) allowing the bird (K) to go to eat the worm (M), as the bird had been starved in retaliation for all the Twitter fails, causing the shade to be pulled down (N), which reminds the creative to mail that proposal in his pocket. Using theiWeb only takes half the steps. Illustration by Rube Goldberg.

The Web holds a billion of possibilities. As I mentioned about my friend who built a blog, rather then going through the costs of print, you can hardly lose with a great idea and the ability to bring it to life on the Web. With e-commerce made so easy, how can you not have a site that sells something? At least most of the people I know have a Cafepress or Zazzle “shop”.

When I first started with web design, back in the days when processors ran on mud and sticks… and fire, which was new, I put up sites for my infamous chili recipe, one for each of my kids, a site for toy collectors, and it went on. Why? The Web was young and there were probably only 73 sites live and forty of them were mine!

Use your down time. Partner with friends and split the rewards. Ever hear of a group of social outcasts who got together and created something called “The Onion?” No? I haven’t either, but I do hear good things and that they crawled their way up to be, I believe, the number one humor site in the world. It must have started with an idea and someone’s dream.

(ik) (vf)

© Speider Schneider for Smashing Magazine, 2010. | Permalink | Post a comment | Add to del.icio.us | Digg this | Stumble on StumbleUpon! | Tweet it! | Submit to Reddit | Forum Smashing Magazine
Post tags: creative, initiative, projects, spec

Enhance your web forms with new HTML5 features

Please note that HTML5 is an emerging technique. These examples are not intended for use on a production site. Results may vary according to browser implementation. Please use Chrome or Safari for best results.

Required fields

Whose ever tried to submit a form and gotten an error message saying that you “forgot” to enter your email address? Probably not a lot of us: In fact, 99 percent of all web forms have at least one field marked as required.

In good ol’ HTML, we had to manually display that a specific field is required, most of the time by using a red asterisk. But with HTML5, you can set up a input field to be required:

<input type="text"  name="client_name" required>

And on the CSS side, something like

input:required {
    border: 1px red solid;
}

will save you a lot of time.

Two similar attributes are also available:

and

. They work exactly as the

attribute explained above.

Placeholders

In a form, an input field always has a label explaining what kind of information is required. While you can currently use the

tag to display a label for a specific text field, HTML5 introduces the

attribute. As shown below, using it is pretty simple:

<input name="firstname" placeholder="Please enter your first name">

The HTML5

attribute works exactly as the

attribute, except that when the user click on the text field, the placeholder text is automatically removed so the user can easily enter his information.

The placeholder attribute currently works only in safari/webkit. Don’t worry about other browsers though, it is pretty easy to simulate placeholders using javascript:

Autofocus

A new HTML5 attribute is named

. If applied to an element, the element will automatically receive the focus once the page is loaded. This can be seen on some sites and most search engines.

Nothing complicated, just use the syntax below, and remember that in HTML5, there’s no more need for attributes to have a value like in XHTML 1.0.

<input name="search" autofocus>

Email fields

Asking someone’s email on a web form is extremely common because email is still the easiest way to contact someone over the internet. HTML5 introduces a new type for the input element, named

.

<input name="email" type="email">

Pattern attribute

When validating a web form, we have to validate the data entered by the visitor. The new

HTML5 attribute allows you to define a regular expression pattern. Only the data that matches the defined pattern will be validated. If the data doesn’t match the pattern, then the form will not be submitted.

This is, in my opinion, an extremely good thing, which will save lots of time to developers when coding forms. Though, remember that you should always validate data on the server side as well.

<input type="text" name="Phone" pattern="^0[1-689][0-9]{8}$" placeholder="Phone" required>

Url fields

Nowadays, many people have a website, blog, or at least a Twitter profile. This is why many web forms offer the possibility to enter an url.

HTML5 introduces a new type for the

element, designed specifically for entering urls:

<input name="url" type="url">

Although I didn’t test it myself, I heard that the W3C validator will raise an error if the value of a url field doesn’t match a proper url structure.

Date pickers

Many businesses are offering an appointment request through their website. In that case, the visitor has to specify the day they would like an appointment. HTML5 introduces the

type for the

element:

<input name="day" type="date">

When clicked, the

attribute will display a date picker so visitors will simply have to choose a date instead of entering it manually. Unfortunately, except in Opera, most browsers don’t have it implemented yet.

Note that a date picker can be implemented on your forms using the following types:

<input type="date">
<input type="datetime">
<input type="month">
<input type="week">
<input type="time">

Isn’t that user friendly? Personally, I can’t wait to implement this in my forms but as I said earlier this isn’t very well implemented in browsers at the time of writing this post. Of course, Javascript is always here to help. On this site I found a simple fallback implementation for the

HTML5 attribute:

var i = document.createElement("input");
i.setAttribute("type", "date");
if (i.type == "text") {
    // No HTML5 native date picker support, use jQuery or your favorite framework to create one.
}

Search boxes

To enhance ease of retrieving information, many websites have implemented their own search engine. HTML5 has created a new type for search fields.

<input name="q" type="search">

For now, the only difference with regular text inputs is that, if you use Safari, the search box will have rounded corners. But maybe interesting functionalities will be implemented in the future. Let’s hope, because right now I have to admit that I don’t really see why we should use this type.

Sliders type and step attribute

HTML5 is also introducing sliders: A new type for the input element, which allows visitors to easily select a number instead of entering it manually.

<input name="number" type="range" min="0" max="10">

The example above allows the visitor to choose a number between 0 and 10. If you want the slider to be incremented/decremented 2 by 2, you’ll have to use one more new attribute: step. Here is an example:

<input name="number" type="range" min="0" max="10" step="2" >

That way, visitors will only be able to select numbers like 0, 2, 4, and so on.

Like CatsWhoCode? If yes, don’t hesitate to check my other blog CatsWhoBlog: It’s all about blogging!

Enhance your web forms with new HTML5 features

AT&T launches health care business

New AT&T ForHealth division will tap into wireless and cloud-based services to help people electronically monitor their own health and let doctors more securely store medical records online.

Microsoft puts name, date to Aurora

Microsoft reveals details of the next generation of Windows Small Business Server, including names and the final feature set.

Facebook to Foursquare: You’re out

The latest additions to Facebook Places seem to go head-to-head with check-in start-up Foursquare, offering an easy way for local businesses to market deals. Given how big Facebook is, will this be “game over” for Foursquare?

AT&T launches health care business

New AT&T ForHealth division will tap into wireless and cloud-based services to help people electronically monitor their own health and let doctors more securely store medical records online.