Design & Content – Better Together

Back in August, I attended the Design & Content conference in Vancouver BC, which brought together designers, content strategists, and other agency types to talk about how we can better collaborate.

Since the conference, a number of the key videos have been published. I’ll highlight a few here, but many more are available on the conference site blog.

(Note: some NSFW language in this presentations – designers and content strategists can get, let’s say, colorful in expressing their passion. If you are easily offended tread carefully).

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Designing from the Content Out – NERD Summit 2015

Just gave a talk this morning at NERD Summit 2015 about Designing from the Content Out.

At NERD Summit, like last year, they have the presenter log into a google hangout account they control, and do the talk as a screen-shared presentation, recording audio directly from the local laptop mic.

It doesn’t give you the video of the speaker AND slides at the same time, but it is crazy effective and efficient – my video was live as soon as the talk was done!

I also sat in on the business panel – but that I guess gets recorded differently (video camera setup). Will post here if/when the video gets posted.

 

Updates to YouTube-Podcaster-Feed-Creator

This weekend I rolled out some updates to the YouTube-Podcaster-Feed-Creator.

This script, which I use to get a true RSS feed with enclosures for video versions of podcasts who use Google Hangouts or otherwise post their videos to youtube, had been broken by Google’s deprecation of their old API as they rolled out v3.

In the old (v2) API, you could just make calls out to an http endpoint like this:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/users/username/uploads

And you’d get back a response you could parse to see all the uploads under that username, out of which you could construct an RSS feed.

For the new API, you need to first generate a server key. Create a project in the Google Developers Console, enable the YouTube Data API v3, and then generate a server key.

For any given podcast, you need to find the relevant Playlist ID. In general, the easiest way is to use the Google API explorer youtube.channels.list, put in contentDetails for “part” and username under “for Username.”

In the results, you’ll see a JSON structure – you’re looking for “uploads” under “Related Playlists” – that playlistId will work with the script to find all videos uploaded by this user.

Configure the script with your API key and the playlist ID, and you get a valid RSS feed with enclosures.

Note: I’ve discovered the feeds produced don’t work with PocketCasts on my iPad – you just get the YouTube Device Support video – but they do work with Downcast.  My guess is they are doing some caching or other server-side stuff that interferes.

What the Drupal Community Can Learn From WordPress: Philosophy Driven Development

(Image courtesy of Maura Teal)

I’ve written now a couple of times about what I think the WordPress community can learn from Drupal, and specifically Dries’ keynotes at DrupalCon, which I always make time to watch.

Now it’s time to talk about some learning in the other direction.

The occasion isn’t Matt Mullenweg’s State of the Word talk from WordCamp San Francisco, though those are always worth watching, nor his recent interview on WP Tavern, though that’s also worth listening to.

Instead it’s a talk by Aaron Jorbin at WordCamp Philly on Why WordPress Works This Way. (The video isn’t yet up on WordPress.tv – I will embed it here when it is).Continue reading →

Managing an Agency Business

Tomorrow night, I’m happy to be a part of the ninth event in the Managing an Agency Business series – this one focused on “managing people, projects and processes to increase day-to-day success as your agency.”

I’ve attended most of the events in the series – I think I missed one or two due to travel – and I’ve always been impressed by the quality and usefulness of the conversation. Hopefully I won’t be the exception to that rule. ;)

My fellow panelists will be Rebecca Marani from Boston Interactive and Adam Gesuero from Image Conscious Studios.

If you’re in the greater Boston area, come say hello. (register here)

Venue: Boston Interactive Headquarters
Address: Schrafft’s Center at 529 Main St, Suite 212 Charlestown, MA 02129
Date/Time: Tuesday June 16th at 6:00pm