I spent part of Friday and Saturday evening at DCamp, an event devoted to connecting developers and designers for a series of ad-hoc conversations. It was the first of this new kind of un-conference that I’d attended.

My favorite session was Sarah Allen’s talk on Cinematic Web Design: the idea that interaction design can learn a lot from cinematography was backed up by a few great demos of her work on Laszlo applications and a clip from Casablanca. I’ve had trouble buying into all the Web 2.0 hype, but several notions from this talk are helping me sort the important ideas from the chaff.

I also took notes at a talk on Friday on usability in open source software: one of the key thoughts here were that one of the reasons that open source software UI design is so generally bad is partly because designers don’t really have the “currency” it takes to get to leadership roles on open-source projects. Coders can contribute patches, then become committers when their patches look good, and committers can become leaders; designers have trouble participating in this trust economy. (The schism between mantras was also pointed out: developers “scratch their own itches”, but designers avoid the thinking that they’re their own target users.)

Overall, I had a great time: I met several new people and had several good conversations.

Every year for the last dozen or so, KFOG has presented a free concert and fireworks show just across the Embarcadero from here. The view from our place is extraordinary on a normal day, but it’s KFOG Kaboom night when it really pays off.

They say 350,000 people show up for this - I’m not sure whether that counts the folks on the incredible number of boats that pack the Bay nearby to watch - but we four (Gina and I, and our friends Michael and Rina) had our own front-row seats.

You’re not a geek blogger until you’ve written a post live from somewhere out in the world: greetings from Phone Company Park, section 308. At this point, the local boys have a nine-run lead over the Cubs; they established this lead early, by scoring five runs in the first 14 minutes (and that’s counting the Cubs’ half of the first inning). Mr. Bonds has walked three times: pitched around once, and the regular way twice.

(If Danger had HTTPS access to my stuff, I’d have posted the photos I just took, but I don’t want to send my password over the ballpark’s WiFi network.)

(Update: photo posted.)