Crastinate

On March 12, 2007 I will be moderating a panel for SXSW Interactive called How To Create A Kick-Ass In-House Design Team and I'm very excited about it. I have lined up some truly kick-ass panelists and I think it is going to be a lot of fun.

Having attended several SXSW Interactive conferences over the years, I noted that much of the conference tended to cater more to agency designers. I think that had a lot to do with the background of the presenters, because the audience for SXSW is fairly well distributed. I decided to address that imbalance by presenting a panel specifically for in-house designers.

The panel will address challenges faced by in-house design teams, large and small, and the unique opportunities that in-house design teams have to shape a company's products, brand, and strategy. My vision for the panel is for it to be heavy on practice and light on theory. For the panel, I wanted people who've really gotten their hands dirty building great in-house teams, and who continue to make great teams even better. The panelists:

• Lisa C. Anderson, Director of User Experience for the Small Business Division of Intuit


• Irene Au, Director of User Experience for Google


• Ed Garaña, Creative Services Manager for Hoover's


• Tjeerd Hoek, Director of User Experience for Windows at Microsoft

Given that line-up, I suppose I could have easily called the panel User Experience For Fun And Profit. Perhaps we'll host an after-panel.

If there is anything you think should specifically be addressed by the panelists, leave a comment. Otherwise, see you in March!

Permanent moon base planned: NASA wants to start building way station for Mars voyages near south pole by 2024

Following in the footsteps of the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station, NASA has announced it will be constructing yet another ridiculous boondoggle on the surface of the Moon.

NASA's reasons for returning humans to the Moon are baffling. For each of the reasons given, Mars is clearly the better destination.

Human Civilization - Extend human presence to the Moon to enable eventual settlement.

Human settlement beyond Earth is all well and good, eggs in one basket and all that, but Luna shouldn't be at the top of anyone's list for places in Sol System to live. It has no atmosphere, crazy radiation, and very little water. Mars has an atmosphere, less-crazy radiation, and lots of water. Mars also doesn't suffer from that two weeks of complete darkness problem.

Yeah, yeah, I know, put the base in permanent sunlight at a pole and mine (theoretical) water in a nearby crater. That's some settlement, yup.

Scientific Knowledge - Pursue scientific activities that address fundamental questions about the history of Earth, the solar system and the universe - and about our place in them.

NASA is trying to make the comparative planetology argument here, but it doesn't fly. Scientifically, the Moon is good for one thing: radio astronomy. We can build a huge radio telescope on the far side in a big crater using materials mined from the regolith. But that can be automated. Geology is important, yes, but robots can do that, too.

If you really care about "fundamental questions about the history of Earth, the solar system and the universe - and about our place in them," then Mars is the place to be. Mars is great for comparative planetology because it has a number of similarities to Earth - many more than Luna. Additionally, Mars may be a destination for paleontology and, perhaps, astrobiology. The Moon can't even come close to that claim.

Exploration Preparation - Test technologies, systems, flight operations and exploration techniques to reduce the risks and increase the productivity of future missions to Mars and beyond.

This one is, I think, the most egregious. It implies a couple of things that are just plain wrong. One is that we need to use the Moon as some kind of waypoint between Earth and Mars. This is criminally stupid. Imagine gasoline cost $10,000 per gallon and you had to drive from Houston to Chicago. You wouldn't stop to rest in Seattle along the way, would you? But that is exactly what NASA expects us to do.

Space travel is expensive and it requires a lot of energy. This energy is typically expressed in terms of delta-v, the change in velocity one needs to make to get from point A to B. As Newton explained to us, things in motion tend to stay in motion, so stopping at the Moon before we head to Mars is a bad idea. It takes a lot more energy to leave Earth, land on the Moon, leave the Moon, and land on Mars than it does simply to go from Earth to Mars.

In fact, it takes less energy to get to Mars' surface from Earth's surface than from Earth's surface to the Moon's surface. This is counterintuitive, because the Moon is closer, but distance has little to do with it. It is the gravity well that is important. And while Mars has a deeper well to descend into, it has an atmosphere: free brakes!

If you are going to test exploration techniques for Mars, you should do it in an environment analogous to Mars. Luna ain't it.

Global Partnerships - Provide a challenging, shared and peaceful activity that unites nations in pursuit of common objectives.

Blah, blah, blah. Too bad nobody called Russia first, because they forgot to put the Moon down as a line item in the budget. And I'm sure China is so excited to share.

Economic Expansion - Expand Earth's economic sphere, and conduct lunar activities with benefits to life on the home planet.

Yes, perhaps we'll have cracked the fusion problem by 2024 and we'll be hunting for some helium-3. I won't be holding my breath. If NASA is serious about economic expansion (or, really, about any of these issues), they'd crank up an Apollo-style program to build a space elevator instead.

Public Engagement - Use a vibrant space exploration program to engage the public, encourage students and help develop the high-tech workforce that will be required to address the challenges of tomorrow.

To boldly go where we've been before, yup, that'll engage 'em. These "challenges of tomorrow" were challenges in 1960 and were solved nine years later. Since then, we've been going around in circles and they're asking for another 15 years to go back. For the money we've spent on Iraq, even I could be living on Mars right now.

I was working on becoming an astronaut up until my sophomore year of college. I'm glad I changed direction, because I would be going nowhere very, very fast if I hadn't.

UPDATE: The New York Times shares my opinion in this matter.

As a recent transplant to the Bay Area of California, I've come to notice some differences. One of the most striking is that entry and exit ramps for freeways are typically not placed where I expect them to be. In Texas, if I'm on the west side of a freeway and I wish to go north, I need to cross the freeway and make a left turn towards the north. This will lead to an entry ramp where I can get on the freeway.

In California, this is rarely the case. Instead, you would cross the freeway and make a right turn heading south. This puts you on a great circle which winds around and drops you quickly onto the freeway, heading north - the opposite direction that you had to turn.

Sometimes it plays out as I described for the method in Texas, but you never know beforehand unless you are familiar with the junction. My expectation to make a left turn, when that was the direction I wanted to go, initially had me in the wrong lane on several occasions causing me to have to make a mad scramble to the right hand side of the road. But sometimes it is on the left. So very odd.

The reason for this right-turn-to-go-left business, I figured out, is because there are no frontage roads for freeways in California. Frontage roads are so common in Texas that there is even a Wikipedia entry about them specifically. It is just something I'll have to get used to - when in Rome, and all that. There are benefits. The freeway isn't lined with the traffic-inducing sprawl of businesses clamoring for my attention and there is more room for lanes.

Another difference I've noticed is that there really isn't a fast lane. In Texas, the left lane is reserved for passing only, though it doesn't really play out that way. Still, the fastest traffic is most commonly in the left lane and passing is done on the left. Not so, here in California. Cars traveling at a variety of speeds can be found in any given lane. I have been passed a number of times on the right, even when the left lane was completely open and it wasn't designated as a carpool lane. I am not a slow driver.

There are no gas stations in the area where I live. I have to drive a ways before I find one. In Texas they blanket each corner of an intersection. We do love our petroleum products in Texas. Maybe I'll give up my gas guzzling Xterra for a hybrid. That said, my commute is shorter and the view is more pleasant than the one I had previously.

Finally, In-N-Out is awesome, but it's no Whataburger.