Tags: ick

Conference organising in 2026 - QuirksBlog

The conference circuit is in a slump these days. That won’t change as long as people don’t buy tickets. And a good conference circuit is typically something that you start to miss only when it’s too late.

Sometimes I look back through my blogging archives and notice what’s changed over time.

For example, I used to write quite enthusiastically about the arrival of a new operating system from Apple. That is no longer the case, to put it mildly. I’m currently holed up on Sequioa, trying to resist all the nudgings to “upgrade” to the tacky design nightmare that is Tahoe. I feel like the protagonist of Pluribus.

I used to write about software I really liked. Sometimes it was software made by Apple. More often it was from some independent developer.

Like, I remember how much I loved a little application called Quicksilver. It just did one thing. You pressed control and space and then started typing the name of any programme installed on your computer. After a few characters Quicksilver would show you the match, you hit enter and the programme launched.

If that process sounds familiar, it’s because Apple ended up incorporating it into their own Spotlight feature. Quicksilver got sherlocked (ask your parents).

Recently though, Spotlight got worse and worse at doing its one job. It’s been laggy and inaccurate, even though I set my Spotlight indexing options to only index the Applications folder.

Then I found TinyStart. It’s like Quicksilver reborn!

A tiny launcher for macOS, fast and focused on the essentials.

Actually, it does double duty. As well as being an application launcher, it’s also an emoji picker. 👍

Best of all, not only is TinyStart a return to the focus and quality of software of yore, it’s also a return to the pricing model. You buy the software—for a measly €5—and that’s it. You own it now. There’s no subscription you have to pay every month.

I love everything about this.

You should come to UX London in the first week of June. Why? Because it’s going to be awesome, that’s why!

You probably knew that already. You probably already decided to get a ticket because you’re smart like that.

But don’t dilly-dally! Early-bird tickets are available now but in just over one week, they won’t be.

So get your ticket by Friday, March 27th. If you get your ticket now, it’s a win for everyone. You get a cheaper ticket. We know for sure that you’re coming.

Every time someone buys a conference ticket in plenty of time, the conference organiser sleeps a little better at night.

If you need to convince your boss, you can give them these reasons to attend. I even made an email template you can use a starting point for making the case.

You could come for all three days of UX London, or you can pick just one day.

Tuesday, June 2nd is discovery day with a focus on user research. You’ll hear from great speakers like Melin Edomwonyi and Maria Isachenko as well as getting workshops from Natasha den Dekker and Feyikemi Akinwolemiwa.

Wednesday, June 3rd is design day where it’s all about the nitty-gritty details. Not only will there be great talks from Andrea Grigsby, Julia Petretta, and Hidde de Vries, there’s going to be the best-named workshop ever from my colleague Chris How: Yippee IA!

Thursday, June 4th is delivery with a focus on design systems and collaboration. Alex Edwards, Lucy Blackwell, Rachel Ilan Simpson and Ben Callahan will all be giving talks (and Ben’s doing a workshop too).

That’s not even close to the final line-up. I’m confirming more speakers right now and getting very, very excited about how it’s all shaping up.

You know you don’t want to miss this one. So get your early-bird ticket now while you still can.

Not long now ’till Web Day Out — just three weeks!

It’s also not that long until the start of a new financial year so if you’ve got training budget that needs to be used this year, send your team to Web Day Out. Not only is it excellent value for money, it’s also going to have an incredibly high density of knowledge bombs per talk.

CSS! Progressive web apps! Web typography! Browser support! And much more.

If you like the sound of Web Day Out, you’ll also like State Of The Browser, which is just ten days away. In-person tickets for that event are now sold out, but online streaming tickets are still available.

Better yet, if you buy a ticket to Web Day Out, you automatically get a free online streaming ticket for State Of The Browser!

So get your ticket in the next ten days, enjoy State Of The Browser from the comfort of your own home, and then enjoy a trip to Brighton for Web Day Out on Thursday, 12 March. See you there!

If you’re the kind of person who likes Web Day Out, you’re probably also the kind of person who likes State Of The Browser.

Web Day Out is all about what you can in web browsers right now, with an emphasis on immediately practical techniques and technologies. State Of The Browser is similar, but with room for fun demos that push the boundaries.

State Of The Browser is on Saturday, 28 February.

Web Day Out is on Thursday, 12 March.

It would be a shame if you had to choose between these two excellent events.

Well, you don’t have to!

If you buy a ticket for Web Day Out you can get a whopping 50% off the ticket price for State Of The Browser. Or if you can’t make it in person, your Web Day Out ticket gets you a free online ticket!

You might be thinking, “Well, much as I’d love to go to both events, I don’t think I can convince my boss to give me two conference days.” Worry ye not! State Of The Browser is on a Saturday, so unless you’re working an extremely extended work week, you still only need to take one day away from your desk to go to two events.

So don’t delay: get your ticket for Web Day Out. Then you’ll get an email with details on how to get your 50% discount for State Of The Browser (or your free online ticket, whichever you prefer).

But wait! What if you already bought a ticket for State Of The Browser? Check your email. You’ve been sent a very, very generous discount code for Web Day Out to thank you for getting your ticket nice and early.

I’ll see you at State Of The Browser in London …and then I’ll see you at Web Day Out in Brighton!

Reimagine the Date Picker – David Bushell – Web Dev (UK)

This is a superb way to deprecate a little JavaScript library. Now that you can just use HTML instead, the website for Pikaday has been turned into a guide to choosing the right design pattern for your needs. Bravo!

Pikaday is no longer a JavaScript date picker. Pikaday is now a friendly guide for front-end developers. I want to push developers away from the classic date picker entirely. Especially fat JavaScript libraries.

In exactly six weeks time, UX London is happening!

I am ridiculously excited about this year’s line-up—I can’t wait to see the talks and get hands-on in the workshops.

If you haven’t yet got your ticket, now is the time. There’s a flash sale this week: use the discount code FLASH20 to get a whopping 20% of any ticket. Do it before the end of Friday!

Whether you’re coming for all three days or choosing one focused day, you’re in for a treat.

• Day one on Tuesday, 10 June is discovery day.
• Day two on Wednesday, 11 June is design day.
• Day three on Thursday, 12 June is deliver day.

Head on over to the website to get all the details and then get your discounted ticket.

See you there!

I’ve been reading lots of modern takes on Greek classics. So when I saw that there was going to be a short of run of Sophocles’s Electra at Brighton’s Theatre Royal, I grabbed some tickets for the opening night.

With Brie Larson taking on the title role in this production, it’s bound to be popular.

I didn’t know anything about this staging of the play—other than it was using the Anne Carson translation—which is how I like it. I didn’t know if it was going to be modern, retro, classical or experimental.

It turned out to be kind of arty, but not in a good way. Arty like art school with all the clichés.

The production somehow managed to feel packed with gimmicks but also seriously underbaked at the same time. There must have a been a lot of “yes, and…”s during the workshopping, but no subsequent round of “no, but…”s. So we got lots of ideas thrown at the wall like spaghetti. Very few of them stuck.

Instead of enhancing the core text—which is, thankfully, indestructable—most of the gimmicks lessened it. It’s like they were afraid to let the play speak for itself and felt like they had to do stuff to it. Most of it ended up creating an emotional distance from the story and the characters.

It wasn’t bad, per se, but it definitely wasn’t good. It was distinctly mediocre.

Now, take all of this with a big pinch of salt because this is just my opinion. The very things that turned me off might tickle your fancy. Like the way it was half way to being a musical, with characters singing their dialogue in that monotone way that they do in Les Mis (but this is like Les really Mis). And the vocal effects that did nothing for me might be quite effective for you.

Even as I was watching it, I was thinking to myself, “Well, this isn’t really for me, but I can kind of appreciate that they’re trying to experiment.”

But then towards the end of the play, it went too far. Over the PA came samples of reporting of recent news stories; graphic, grisly, and crucially, real. If you’re going to attempt something like that, you need to earn it. Otherwise you’re just cheapening the real-world suffering. This play absolutely did not earn it.

Elektra has finished its run in Brighton and is now heading to London where it’s supposed to play until April. I’m curious to see how it goes.

una.im | Updates to the customizable select API

It’s great to see the evolution of HTML happening in response to real use-cases—the turbo-charging of the select element just gets better and better!

Tabloid: the clickbait headline programming language

Tabloid is a turing-complete programming language for writing programs in the style of clickbait news headlines.

Speaking of serendipity, not long after I wrote about making a static archive of The Session for people to download and share, I came across a piece by Alex Chan about using static websites for tiny archives.

The use-case is slightly different—this is about personal archives, like paperwork, screenshots, and bookmarks. But we both came up with the same process:

I’m deliberately going low-scale, low-tech. There’s no web server, no build system, no dependencies, and no JavaScript frameworks.

And we share the same hope:

Because this system has no moving parts, and it’s just files on a disk, I hope it will last a long time.

You should read the whole thing, where Alex describes all the other approaches they took before settling on plain ol’ HTML files in a folder:

HTML is low maintenance, it’s flexible, and it’s not going anywhere. It’s the foundation of the entire web, and pretty much every modern computer has a web browser that can render HTML pages. These files will be usable for a very long time – probably decades, if not more.

I’m enjoying this approach, so I’m going to keep using it. What I particularly like is that the maintenance burden has been essentially zero – once I set up the initial site structure, I haven’t had to do anything to keep it working.

They also talk about digital preservation:

I’d love to see static websites get more use as a preservation tool.

I concur! And it’s particularly interesting for Alex to be making this observation in the context of working with the Flickr foundation. That’s where they’re experimenting with the concept of a data lifeboat

What should we do when a digital service sinks?

This is something that George spoke about at the final dConstruct in 2022. You can listen to the talk on the dConstruct archive.

I went along to this year’s State Of The Browser conference on Saturday. It was great!

Technically I wasn’t just an attendee. I was on the substitution bench. Dave asked if I’d be able to jump in and give my talk on declarative design should any of the speakers have to drop out. “No problem!”, I said. If everything went according to plan, I wouldn’t have to do anything. And if someone did have to pull out, I’d be the hero that sweeps in to save the day. Win-win.

As it turned out, everything went smoothly. All the speakers delivered their talks impeccably and the vibes were good.

Dave very kindly gave shout-outs to lots of other web conferences. Quite a few of the organisers were in the audience too. That offered me a nice opportunity to catch up with some of them, swap notes, and commiserate on how tough it is running an event these days.

Believe me, it’s tough.

Something that I confirmed that other conference organisers are also experiencing is last-minute ticket sales. This is something that happened with UX London this year. For most of the year, ticket sales were trickling along. Then in the last few weeks before the event we sold more tickets than we had sold in the six months previously.

Don’t get me wrong: I’m very happy we sold those tickets. But it was a very stressful few months before that. It felt like playing poker, holding on in the belief that those ticket sales would materialise.

Lots of other conferences are experiencing this. Front Conference had to cancel this year’s event because of the lack of ticket sales in advance. I know for a fact that some upcoming events are feeling the same squeeze.

When I was in Ireland I had a chat with a friend of mine who works at the Everyman Theatre in Cork. They’re experiencing something similar. So maybe it’s not related to the tech industry specifically.

Anyway, all that is to say that I echo Sophie’s entreaty: you should go to conferences. And buy your tickets early.

Soon I’ll be gearing up to start curating the line up for next year’s UX London (I’m very proud of this year’s event and it’s going to be tough to top it). I hope I won’t have to deal with the stress of late ticket sales, but I’m mentally preparing for it.

Digital Litter Picking – Terence Eden’s Blog

I like this framing:

If you’ve ever corrected a typo in an Open Source readme, or added alt-text to an image, or tidied up some broken references in Wikipedia - you’re doing Digital Litter Picking. You’re cleaning up after others. And I think that’s a marvellous way to spend a little time.

Generated images for non-generated text and video – Baldur Bjarnason

This!

Using extruded synthetic art will not do your writing or video any favours in the long run.

Chicken Pics

Erika’s chickens (featuring a bonus Kristina, who is not a chicken).

Just look at who’s speaking at UX London this year! That’s a damned fine line-up, if I do say so myself. Which I do.

If you haven’t procured a ticket yet, allow me to gently remind you that early-bird ticket sales finish on March 14th. So if you want to avail of that bargain of a price, get in there now.

The event will be three days long. You can buy a ticket for all three days, or you can buy individual day tickets (but buying a three-day ticket works out cheaper per day).

The first day, Tuesday, June 18th, focuses on UX research.

The second day, Wednesday, June 19th, focuses on product design.

The third day, Thursday, June 20th, focuses on design ops and design systems.

Each day features a morning of inspiring talks and an afternoon of brilliant workshops. I’ll be adding titles and descriptions for all of them soon, but in the meantime, don’t dilly dally—get your ticket today!

Bill Oddie taught me how to make web sites - Hicks.design

I remember Jon telling me this lovely story when we first met in person. I love the idea that we had already met in a style sheet.

I also love the idea of hosting your own little internet archive—that Bill Oddie site still looks pretty great to me!

It’s a lot like an embarrassing family photo, but I’m owning it!

The Origin of Online Handles - Jim Nielsen’s Blog

My secret is safe.

The output of generative tools based on large language models gives me the ick.

This isn’t a measured logical response. It’s more of an involuntary emotional reaction.

I could try to justify my reaction by saying I’m concerned about the exploitation involved in the training data, or the huge energy costs involved, or the disenfranchisement of people who create art. But those would be post-facto rationalisations.

I just find myself wrinkling my nose and mentally going “Ew!” whenever somebody posts the output of some prompt they gave to ChatGPT or Midjourney.

Again, I’m not saying this is rational. It’s more instinctual.

You could well say that this is my problem. You may be right. But I wonder what it is that’s so unheimlich about these outputs that triggers my response.

Just to clarify, I am talking about direct outputs, shared verbatim. If someone were to use one of these tools in the process of creating something I’d be none the wiser. I probably couldn’t even tell that a large language model was involved at some point. I’m fine with that. It’s when someone takes something directly from one of these tools and then shares it online, that’s what raises my bile.

I was at a conference a few months back where your badge featured a hallucinated picture of you. Now, this probably sounded like a fun idea. It probably is a fun idea. I can’t tell. All I know is that it made me feel a little queasy.

Perhaps it’s a question of taste. In which case, I’m being a snob. I’m literally turning my nose up at something I deem to be tacky.

But isn’t it tacky, though? It’s not something I can describe, but there’s just something about the vibe of these images—and words—that feels off. It’s sort of creepy, but it’s mostly just the mediocrity that sits so uneasily with me.

These tools do an amazing job of solving the quantity problem—how to produce an image or piece of text quickly. And by most measurements, you could say that they also solve the quality problem. These outputs are good enough to pass for “the real thing.” The outputs are, like, 90% to 95% there. And the gap is closing.

And yet. There’s something in that gap. Something that I feel in my gut. Something that makes me go “nope.”

Making or using generative ‘AI’ is, all else being equal, a dick move – Baldur Bjarnason

Because you’re allowed to do something doesn’t mean you can do it without repercussions. In this case, the consequences are very much on the mild side: if you use LLMs or diffusion models, a relatively small group of mostly mid- to low-income people who are largely underdogs in their respective fields will think you’re a dick.