Good Morning, CUSEC

Posted by Skrud at Saturday, January 21st 2006 at 7:25pm

I slept in this morning (by about 8 hours or so) and missed the last day of CUSEC. The most upsetting thing about that is not being to say goodbye to all the out-of-towners (especially the Waterloo folks, you know who you are). David Heinemeier Hansson cancelled his keynote yesterday, because his flight out of Seattle was cancelled due to weather. This meant that Chad Fowler would be putting together an ad-hoc presentation on Rails. I hope he took out his saxaphone.

I think the highlight of this year’s conference was Kathy Sierra’s keynote called Creating Passionate Users. She spoke of psychological flow states and a lot of tricks about how the mind and brain work. She was very engaging and got a lot of the audience participating and following along with her speech. Considering the topic was about how to keep people interested and gain their passion, her speech itself was a case-in-point. She mentioned a number of books about psychology and the brain such as Flow by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi and O’Reilly’s Mind Hacks. I really want to pick these up and start reading them now.

Interestingly enough, I was having a conversation with Robert earlier where he mentioned a relative who went from electrical engineering into neuroscience and warned me that it _is_ possible, and not to be surprised if somehow I end up doing something similar. In which case I will probably mess with Stuart’s brain, perhaps as revenge for running his hands through my hair during Like A Virgin at the karaoke party.

One of the interesting things about passionate users is that apparently learning is the key to creating them. The product, whatever it may be, should have a learning curve. If the curve is too steep, you will assume that it’s too hard and give up. If the learning curve is too simple, then you won’t be challenged enough and give up. But if it’s just right, then you’ll achieve a state where you’re having fun. The product is engaging, and the you’re enjoying yourself. If you’re lucky, you’ll reach the flow state, which is where time just plain flies and the next thing you know it’s 10am the next day, and time to go to work/school. The best videogames are the ones that have mastered this aspect. You keep trying to get to the next level, and you lose yourself in the game.

Kathy mentioned that the flow state is a really important psychological phenomenon. If you don’t achieve the flow state, then you can start getting depressed. Just about all programmers are familiar with the flow state. It’s that zone you get into during a long coding session. Part of it is the feeling that you’re really close to success. That you’re just “one compile away” from a final, working build. This reminded me of an interview with Bram Cohen in Wired where he mentions that the best puzzles are those that make you think you’re really close to solving them. Like the Rubik’s Cube, which will dupe you into believing that you’re just one turn away from solving it, when in reality you should be trying to start over.

Having written some decidedly dry and boring technical guides on Unix and C programming, I’m inspired to try and spice them up a bit, maybe add a few faces, and see what happens.

Tags: cusec, events, geek, tech 5 comments