CHI 2011 Tweets: May 12–14

• Buxton: Jobs revived Apple with people already employed there, such as Jonathan Ives. The culture needed changing, not the people.
• Gerken et al present method called Concept Maps to elicit developer’s mental model of API. A related resource: apiusability.org
• Missed Wrangler (creating data transformation scripts interactively), but saw Jeff Heer’s BayCHI talk on it. Good stuff!
• Substance introduces data-oriented paradigm: data is tree of nodes, facets are behavior that can migrate from node-node
• Shared Substance is a framework on top of Substance for multi-display apps, supports service-oriented and shared state.
• For lunch: Japanese-style hot dog (Kurobuta pork, mayo, teriyaki, seaweed) and shio ramen. Made possible by not eating breakfast.

Ethan Zimmerman’s closing plenary: Desperately Seeking Serendipity

• People move to cities partly because it’s less boring and there’s more choice
• Cities seem to provide more chances for serendipity, but people tend to stick to others similar to them (homophily)
• Media consumption also very local. >90% read media in their own country. Leads to Tunisia revolution not well covered.
• For serendipity, people must be prepared to take advantage of chances, and structures should be in place to create them.
• What lessons about serendipity can we learn from cities and apply virtually?
• Worth reading the “extended dance mix” of Ethan Zimmerman’s keynote. Only problem: you can’t hear him deliver it.

And finally:

• Nirmal Patel: “Updated online CHI program so each paper has a link to the ACM DL page.”