I love data visualization.  Pie graphs, bar graphs, line graphs, spider graphs and more.  I wish I had more time to be obsessed with it.  I'm constantly thinking about the internal tools I could build with Flex and its insanely awesome data viz libraries.

Unlike Doug McCune, one of my one of my Flex heroes, I can't call myself a Data Visualization Engineer.  I'm more of a Data Visualization Tinkerer.  I can spend hours surfing around looking at the coolest tools (SpatialKey for instance), the most mind blowing ( just scroll through the examples ) and the funniest.

Without a doubt, data viz is on my mind lately, and CurrentMarketing is always trying to bring the best tools to bear in unconventional ways.  I'm juggling a few projects right now using internal and external tools to give our account, media and client people all the data they need at their fingertips.  Scrolling through Excel sheets is lame.

But .. those are our tools and I can't show you right now.  Maybe this whole blog post is just fluff so I can embed a couple of funny graphs.  I think I'll work on a pie graph to show the chances of that.

However, while you wait:

There's no hiding it: I'm an Apple geek through and through. Apple at home, Apple at work, Apple when I travel. Personally, I own 2 iPhones (3G and 3GS), 3-4 iPod shuffles of various sizes, an iPad, and a MacBook Pro as my primary home computer. Now, I'm not crazy enough to stand in long lines during launches; I know I can get what I want just a few days after release. But suffice it to say, I'm an addict for Apple hardware.

However, I'm damn glad I waited on the iPhone 4. Display issues, reception problems, instructions to hold the phone a certain way or to buy a "bumper". This release has been a big flop and that's unusual for Apple, especially in the past few years. Following on the recent footsteps of the phenomenal release of the iPad (which I personally wouldn't recommend to most people), this release of the new iPhone has been laden with bad mojo.  Apple's initial response was "you're doing it wrong", but now even Consumer Reports says they can't recommend the iPhone 4.

As innovative as the case-as-antenna is, I can't believe this design made it out of Apple. The average user immediately saw the limitations once the device was in hand. This is what happens when you're too close to your project. You know how to hold it, you know how to click its buttons. I know Apple has vigorous testing of their software, but have they ever really had to do so with the physical case? I find it hard to believe they tested the physical phone case itself as meticulously as they do the software -- or they did, but decided to let it out in the wild anyway with crossed-fingers, hoping that no one would notice. Steve Jobs is obviously not beyond hubris, so this is a possible scenario.

Then again, done is better than perfect. That is a mantra that the IT world has to stick with, or nothing would ever get released.  You can release patches, fixes, and new code to push towards perfection.  But how do you do that with hardware like the iPhone case?

You begrudgingly and snarkfully give away bumpers, that's how.

I just flew back from San Francisco this weekend and boy is my brain tired!

Seriously, I think it is full.  I attended 5 - 6 sessions per day and though most of them seemed on the outside to be the 30,000 foot view, I still took a lot away from them.  Tons and tons of notes to pour over still, and even more research to do, triggered by those notes.  The nice thing is that unlike several of the sessions I attended at SXSW and Flex360, there was very little pushy selling.  Surprising seeing as this is Apple we're talking about, but I suppose it's because they had a captive audience of devotees already.

My NDA prevents me from telling you about [redacted] and the [redacted].  Though good ol' Steve showed a bunch of cool stuff at the Keynote and shared that stuff with the world, the developers at the conference got deeper looks at [redacted] and it was so cool!

Top Memories from WWDC:

• The sheer plethora of information crammed in my brain.
• Free WWDC lettered jacket when I picked up my badge.
• Listening to Ok Go live at the Bash (plus the free beer of course).
• Eating at Jolibee's, a Filipino fast food restaurant across the street from the Moscone center.

Odd Memories from WWDC:

• What the hell was up with Yellow Shorts Guy?
• People lining up at 3am so they could see a glimpse of Steve Jobs (I lined up 20 minutes before doors opened).
• Speed testing my hotel wifi signal to find out it was only slightly faster than a 56k modem.
• Steve not saying Mac or OS X one time during the Keynote.

Side Note:  Still not happy with the iPad.  It most certainly is NOT the future of computing.  Taking notes in a session with it was nigh impossible.  Can't feel the home keys, can't type accurately enough unless you're staring at the iPad and not the presenter's slides.

Also, funny enough, the "Full Web" apparently doesn't include Apple's Developer forums.  You can't post to their forums using the iPad -- it just won't work.  Sucks when you're trying to chat on the WWDC forums.

I'll stop ranting now before they [redacted] my [redacted].

I was lucky enough to get my order in early and now I'm headed off to San Francisco in June.

It's not all awesome seafood and Rice-a-Roni though -- my brain is probably going to melt from all the info I'm going to absorb. CurrentMarketing is continuing to push the boundaries of what an agency does in-house and our already hi-tech group of geeks is playing around with mobile development! And so far it has been a heck of a trip. As resident Geek In Charge, I'm heading out to WWDC to cram my cranium full of as much info as possible.

Objective-C coding classes, core framework hands-on labs, and of course user experience (UX) sessions.  Not to mention what I'll learn just talking to people there.  Getting the feel for everything happening in iPhone development that is between the lines.  I usually find those between-session and after-hour conversations to be almost more beneficial when going to a convention.  And of course I get to hear about all the new Apple products first hand -- that's pretty dang sweet.

Stay tuned to this blog.  I can't wait to say "There's an app for that ... and we built it."

The Geeks are on the move!

Though we're still currently living out of boxes and working on the finishing touches, the Geek Suite is now officially located on the first floor of Bakery Square with the rest of CurrentMarketing.

Now to make a checklist of things for our side of the building:

• Ping Pong Table (CHECK!)
• Awesome new office for me, the Geek In Charge (CHECK!)
• Super new office for my kickass team (CHECK!)
• A vintage coke machine
• A few iPads so we can have our very own (I mean, shared with everyone else at CurrentMarketing) iArcade!
• Fire pole (cause there is an access panel in my ceiling that looks ready made for such a thing .. just sayin')
• Disco ball (since Louisville exports 90% of all of the United States' disco balls)
• Our own mini-hadron collider (oh, that's top secret, forget you read that)

Of course, that's just part of the list.  And now for a sneak peek of how the Suite looks so far:

For me, the 3rd Quarter ads were mostly a disappointment, but maybe that was just because my Colts were starting the slide down to defeat. I'm going to break it down this year into three categories: Horrible, Boring, Awesome. Very fine-grained, right?

Horrible

E-trade Milk-A-What Commercial. I admit that the baby Lindsey popping out with "Milk-a-what?" is pretty funny, but then I realize e-Trade is suggesting the male baby cheated on the other baby he's trying to hide Lindsey from. Baby hook-ups are disturbing, that's all I'm gonna say.

Both Beer Commercials. One with Lance Armstrong and one with floating beer . I'm very disturbed that during the Super Bowl's third quarter, both beer commercials that ran touted how few calories they have. It's beer dammit!  The fact that a low-calorie beer exists already offends me, but then to have the audacity to advertise it is a slap in the face. If you go out to get a beer and the first thing that crosses your mind is "I wonder how many calories this is?", you shouldn't be drinking beer.

Boring

Google's "falling in love abroad" commercial. You know how much fun it is to watch someone else surf the internet? It's not. So much so that I don't think I really can say much more about this one.

Round up's commercial was just .. meh. Did they even know they were showing on the Super Bowl? They literally did nothing cool or worth talking about the next day. Sure, their product was a bit animated, but they've done that before in non-Super Bowl ads too, so it was nothing new at all. Seems like a waste to me.

Awesome

VW's punch buggy ad took me back to being a kid. Who DIDN'T play that game? Hitting people in commercials is funny, first of all (just look at the Dorito's kid commercial everyone is talking about). Then a few key strikes were the best: kid looks like he punches his grandpa in the crotch, pregnant woman punches her husband and the Amish dude punches the other guy in his buggy. But nothing, NOTHING beats Stevie Wonder punching Tracey Morgan and calling out "Red one." I'm pretty sure I have to go buy a VW now -- it is a miracle car!

And though there were no special effects, no flash, no jazz .. THE GRISWALDS WERE ON TV! To be honest, the commercial actually made me want to check out the HomeAway website (I did) and go back (I will). But just for the fact that the Griswalds were in the commercial made me sit up and take attention, and I hope to all that is holy that this becomes a series of commercials. I really see the potential for them to tell a small "Vacation" story across several months of spots.

So recently I've been looking for another brainiac for The Geek Suite.  Usually when I put the search out, I get a metric crap ton of Graphics Designers posing as "web developers" trying to get their foot in the door here at CurrentMarketing.

So many in fact that on my last few job postings on various boards I've had to explicitly say "If you consider yourself a Graphics Artist, don't even bother contacting me".

However, inevitably, I get blasted by all of these resumes from graphics artists anyway, though a few legitimately do appear to have some web aptitude.  I'm willing to train people and let them learn, but I'm going to post a few points of interest below on what NOT to do:

Do not send me an email without punctuation or capitalization.  I'm a geek and have been for a long time.  I know net speak is rad and gnarly.  Sending me "hey man i want to work for you i like to program and i do 2d art 2" is neither.  Programming is all about punctuation dammit!  I might have paid more attention if you threw in random $'s, ;'s and +'s.

Do not write me an email to say "Hey I saw your request not to be contacted by graphics artists, but let me show you my art portfolio".  I don't care if you can draw a bowl of fruit or design a logo.  Reading comprehension for the win my friend; FOR THE WIN.

Do not say you're a web developer, but then leave your resume's objective as "Graphics Artist looking to establish himself at an ad agency."  Why should I pay attention to you, if you can't pay enough attention to lie on your resume about being a "web developer?"

Do not tell me you can use Microsoft Word and Excel.  So can your mom.  Maybe I can hire her.

Do not tell me you are "proficient at FTP."  What does that even mean?  I will say thanks to the last person who actually told me that.  My department got a giggle out of it.  You know who you are.

Do not even bother contacting me unless you're willing to take a test.  Don't say you're interested and then bail when I need to ask you a couple questions.  They're not even hard!  Chicken.

That about sums up this last batch of candidates.  I'm still sifting through some (we're hella busy here at CurrentMarketing).  At least some people have done it the correct (or at least semi-correct) way.

If you're reading this and you know some fresh face who knows HTML, CSS and JavaScript and perhaps wants to learn more and work at a great place, get them to contact me.  Tell them I'm The Bouv and to use the Googles to find me.

As Geek In Charge at CurrentMarketing, I'm a tough boss -- a veritable taskmaster.

For the past few months in our new suite upstairs, I've denied the other geeks a conference table to meet at next to our monolithic white board. They've been forced to huddle near it standing!  I know, I'm horrible, but at least it amused me for a time.

However, even I tired of their incessant whining and mewing, so I finally bought our new table.  I tried to find one that would be as ugly, uncomfortable and torturous as possible.  I think I succeeded:

Pay no attention to the whiteboard, that is our secret programming language. It might look like:

A skull
A submarine
E=MC2 ---> Web 2.0

But don't ask, your mind couldn't even handle it.  Seriously.

Other than the new table, I've also forced upon them two hideously devious chores:

First of all, once every few weeks, someone in the Geek Suite needs to give a post-lunch presentation.  It can be on anything they've learned, discovered, taught, read or so on.  In a few weeks, I'll be hosting an advanced SQL presentation to talk about some neat tricks I've been using in a recent project.  And just today we had our first volunteer.  Jonathan brought in his Arduino/Flex/Nintendo Nunchuck kit he's been hacking on and shared his code and app via a projector onto the whiteboard (and using our new table!)

Secondly, everyone can use a small part of every week to work on their own personal project that benefits CurrentMarketing.  If it is personal, how does it benefit CurrentMarketing?  Well, there are lots of cool ideas floating around that we don't always have time to work on, or that are necessarily billable work.  Flash/Flex apps we want to make.  Widgets for websites that are drop-ins.  Process automators that we've always meant to do, but haven't.  Without deadline, without a project manager hanging over you, bounded only by their imagination.

Sickening right?  I know I'm evil ...

... but sometimes when I'm not looking, I think they might be enjoying all this.

Masochists I say.

We were back at again this year at Run for the Rose with a kick butt team, light rain, toy horses and of course the bottles of wine! Best part, no one on our team fell.

Thanks to the CurrentMarketing players who took part in the race while the rest of us stayed back at the office:   Allison, Nick, Brandon, Lindsay, Megan, Jonathan, Rob, Jacky, Donovan, Dennis, Mel, Cathy and Luke!

I had a great time at SXSW:Interactive 2009 and I think going back next year is a definite. I'm no party goer like some of my other Louisville comrades, but I did get to meet a lot of people and get a great pulse on where all things interactive and social media-esque are going.

I do have a few notes to share though:

• Holy crap, you have to walk a lot.  Especially if you're on the other side of the bridge from downtown.  On the plus side, I had lunch with a bat in the hotel and got to check out the SoCo (Southern Congress) side of town.  Which means I got to see Leslie Cochran -- the link speaks for itself.
• How to talk to programmers and the developer/designer divide are big topics to be solved.  Katy Miller and I took part in a core conversation that turned into a complaint-fest.  So after saying our peace about how we approach the topic, we ditched out.  However, we impressed several people apparently, because we were sought out for additional comments for the next several days!
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a still a big "huh?" to a lot of people, as well as being a dirty word to others.  I had a great session that went over everything CurrentMarketing already preaches, and learned a bit here and there as well.
• Tony Hsieh is an awesome, humble speaker.  He talks the talk and walks the walk of Zappos culture and his presence on stage isn't dominating, it is subdued and personable.  Gave us plenty to think about concerning our own culture.  Always great to see how the big boys do it.
• A few too many of the panels I attended were more on the salesy side (I'm looking at you Adobe and Hulu). But overall I'd say 75% of the sessions I attended were either reinforcing what I already knew/thought or gave me plenty to think about for days after.
• iPhone development appears as I had surmised from looking at the outside:  painful.  I sat in on a iPhone programming for web developers (like me) session and came away with lots of "We don't know why you have to do X" and "Yeah, it is confusing, but you sometimes have to do Y".  That and Objective-C is ugly.  The Interface Builder is sweet though.
• There is plenty of free beer to be had.  Nothing much more to say about that.  Just lots of free, beautiful beer.
• Giveaways were a big thing.  Both Zappos and Adobe had similar Match 5 Cards type of games.  And in one session, Adobe gave away a Master Collection of their suite of software.  Plus, I came home with about 10 new tshirts, not all of which fit me, but still.
• The Austin Convention Center was designed by a madman.  You can take an escalator from the 1st to the 3rd floor, but if you want to get to the 4th floor you have to go to a completely different escalator on the other side of the building -- and it doesn't connect to the 3rd floor.  One SXSW volunteer tried to convince me that I was already on the 4th floor, not the 3rd, when I went asking for directions.
• And finally:  SXSW Interactive is the place to be to stay on top of the curve and to check signals that you're going in the right direction.  It is also the place to be to see a bunch of social media nerds getting drunk and socializing outside of Twitter and Facebook, their natural habitat.