Presenting
Much of this week went to preparing the panel discussion and the presentation for COSCUP. The panel is recorded and handed over (thanks Bosch, Stephen, Ed, and Conor), and we should be able to wrap up the presentation by Monday as well (thanks Johns). After the conference, I'll also upload them to YouTube and share.
I've worked on several presentations (playlist, and one more at Offscript) about the community and open design now (most with Johns). It's always a bit tricky to capture what the community is and does, and also give some shape to the idea of open design. I also try to not repeat presentations but mix some of what has worked well and mix in some new bits. Part of the reason is simply that we mostly had ambitions and ideas at the start of the community, but now we have done and learned a lot of things. A central part of this presentation is to showcase more specifically what design activity has been done in the community. From branding, to "UX bug fixing", design sprints/process/documentation, campaigns, accessibility testing, etc. Previous presentations talked more about projects and what they do, here we go into activities. I think it's a nice perspective that demonstrates very well what the community and open design is about - creating a friendly and collaborative space, building community resources, and helping each other tackle diverse (bitcoin) design problems.
I think I mentioned it before, but I hope that doing this type of presentation 1-2 times a year, and putting the effort in to reflect on what is going on, helps tell the story of the community over time. If (!?) done correctly, it might help us be more in tune and focused. It would be awesome to get a lot of different people put these presentations together and also present. I am sure what I show and say is fairly tinted through my view of the world. Will have to try to make that happen.
Nooooooow, in different news, the JAM (JoinMarket Web UI) team is looking for design help with a website. I put together a brief summary in the video below if you're interested. Should be a great way for a newer designer to get hands-on and make something interesting, useful, and impactful.
The Summer of Bitcoin students presented some really good design directions this week. thunderbiscuit ("the client") was also really excited about it. So great to see.
Other things from this week:
Cleaned up the Sticker Set Figma Community File (issue) - conference season is coming up
Started writing on the privacy page revision, hope to get that to PR status next week
No progress (ðŸ˜) on the security page. Have to push that one over the line next week.
Nice progress by Shashwat on implementing the onboarding views on the Bitcoin Core app, and great to see Jakub contribute on the design side.
Next week, I've got the usual newsletter, community and project call prep, as well as COSCUP on the weekend (which should not require much effort anymore). I'll have to set these aside to specific times, so I have enough space to get through the deeper tasks that require more time and focus (long list of things to do there). Dedicating half-days to specific projects seems like a good way to do this. We'll see. Sunday evening is usually when I map out the following week and create those buckets.
Have a good weekend and hope it's not too hot where you are.
💦🔥