FSAUCE Round Up

If there was a theme to this years FSOSS I would have to say it was community. All the talks I
attended emphasized how important this element is in creating and sustaining good software.

The first talk I attended was with Jay Goldman and David Crow on Usability and User Experience. I really dug this talk. I've always felt that the UX element in software development is often overlooked in the development process. However I think this is changing, developers and companies are realizing the importance of good functional design and what it could do for them. Their slides on the evolution of the Word toolbar were great, its really no surprise that half the features requested by users already existed for more than one version. Jay and David also touched on the importance of community. Getting feedback from users and involving them in the design process (to a degree) and what great effects this has.

This was the main theme in Beltzner's talk (Product and User Design in Open Communities). Another great talk on design and the involvement of community. I'm not sure if I got this right but I reckon Beltzner said something along the lines of 'its not consistent design thats important but a consistent user experience' and that kicked around in my head for awhile.
I also found it interesting when he spoke on community compromise and how so many projects drive themselves into the ground by not saying 'no'. The options always there, you don't always have to do what the community wants and that most of these battles are a result of people becoming emotionally invested in their ideas.

The next talk I hit was the Facebook talk. Now I was really keen on hearing what these chaps had to say about building on FB and using it as platform, etc. Unfortunately thats not what we got. Instead we got a pseudo technical talk on scaling 1000's of servers using their Thrift framework. This stuffs interesting but not really applicable to me. I'm not even on one server let alone a thousand servers. I did come out appreciating the FB family a little more though, finding out that a lot of their stuff is under the BSD license and how 'open' conscious they were was a nice surprise (I always thought they were evil - still kinda do).

Overall I had a great time, kudos to Dave, Chris, Cathy, and all the Hulka Maniacs involved in executing such a massive gig so smoothly.