Let your passion out into the world. Every single one of us is great at something unique, and we owe it to ourselves to share that with the greater community. That’s why I produce all this Axure stuff – because I’m good at it, and it makes people happy. Seriously: happy! That’s a damn good feeling.

Few professions provide this opportunity, this interconnectedness and openness that allow people of any age or location to make an immediate, positive impact across the world. Throughout the conference, as I sat through presentation after presentation of really cool people making really cool things, I realized yet again that the world is there for the improving. For each of us. So take some time outside of work to make something awesome – you’ll get back a thousand times what you put in.

Thanks.
-Loren

I invite you to check out some new content and some reorganized content at the work and projects pages, a better footer, and one miserable defeat to Internet Explorer’s vicious bug engine (can you find it?). I should also mention that IE6 is dead to me.

Thanks to everyone who reads and comments, expect more good content to follow.

It’s easier than I thought

By far, the most difficult part of making these lifestyle changes was committing to them and making the jump.  Once the decision was set in motion, the steps to making it all work appeared naturally.  Some were harder than others, but with a clear path came simple decisions.  I started working freelance with Rod Ebrahimi, forming BIG.  I began using Twitter and blogging, interacting with the community to meet great people, forward thinkers, and potential clients.

Then it was a matter of grabbing my Macbook, making sure most of my documents lived in the cloud, preparing clients for the time change, setting up the trip, and hopping on a plane.

It’s harder than I thought

That isn’t to say that everything has been easy.  There are challenges to working abroad.  The internet is run by a hamster in a wheel here in Argentina.  My workspace environment, at the moment, leaves a lot to be desired.  Tossing out my established routine has until recently disrupted the zen-like days and weeks where I could achieve great productivity.  The side trips, exploration, restaurants, bars, nightclubs, plays, revoluciones, tango, and all that there is to a new country certainly cut into what otherwise would be career time.

But every minute is worth it.  You can’t make up for this type of life experience.

It won’t last

My final, and personal, opinion on the matter is that it won’t last.  Not for me.  Although many of the barriers to working across the world have fallen, some still exist.  Skype has failed me far too many times during client meetings.  I miss all the conferences.  Face time with clients and coworkers is non-existant.  My experience in South America has been an absolute blast, and I’m thankful for the opportunity to take such an extended trip while working.  But I will be returning to the USA on my scheduled date later this year, and will be excited to get closer to the action.

Jeff Harrison figures out how to do Drag and Drop interactions.

Axure releases excellent Widget Libraries for 5.5 (beta available here).

W. Scott Williams made a nice Sliding Drawer widget.

The current version of the beta reflects some awesome new functionality.  There is a much-needed dynamic panel manager, a Location and Size pane, 9-slice image scaling, and the ability to change the way drag-selecting objects works.  There is also native support for loading custom widget libraries, of which there are an increasing amount.  Heavy Axure users will understand how great many of these updates are.

Read the full announcement and explore all the updates at Axure’s blog.

Feature Creep, the result of giving in to the attitude that “this feature would be nice” in your product, inevitably results in increased design and development costs, bloating of your product, and a reduction in simplicity.  Here, I propose a strategy for the discovery and brutal elimination of unnecessary features.

Ideas reproduce.

Those driving ideas and products tend to be idea generators – people who bubble with enthusiasm and want to leverage every possibility in their upcoming product or version.  As creatives involved in the process, designers also think up options and features that may provide usefulness.

During the brainstorming phase of a project, the team ideally produces a wealth of directions that the product can take, and explores all avenues.  Ideas flow freely, bounce off each other, and breed like rabbits.  They should be remembered, captured, tagged, identified, explored, and discussed.

Then, they should be decimated until only the best remain.

Natural selection.

After the optimistic, criticism free generation phase of the project, it’s time to take the gloves off.  Set expectations with the team and ground rules for discussion.

1. Ensure you have defined your problem.

   Without knowing what you’re solving, the solution will be meaningless.  Write down the problem as concisely as possible.  This should have been done before the brainstorming stage, but sometimes the problem can shift as brainstorming continues.  Do not leave this step until your problem is identified.

2. Collect your solutions.

   Your brainstorm session has ideally generated a wealth of interesting and insightful solutions.  However you have decided to manage your solutions – sticky notes, bullet points, twitter posts -collect all of these solutions in a single place.

3. Evaluate each solution relative to the problem.

   How well does the solution address the problem?  Which is simplest?  Examine each solution with the highest suspicion.  It should stand up to attacks from many angles, supported by how well it addresses your original problem.

4. Sidebar all solutions that don’t directly relate to the probem.

   Some of your solutions will be crazy, head-in-the-clouds, never buildable, frilly junk that were fun at the time but can probably be tossed now.  Others are great ideas that could be included in a “version 2″ of the interface you’re building, and these can be kept on the sidelines until later.

5. Design and enjoy your clean, simple, realistic interface.

   With this now-limited solution to your problem, you will have a manageable design and development project, in which you have the resources to focus on quality interaction, simple visuals, and standards based development.

This means I never have to use a password manager, have many unique passwords, and can even “guess” my password for accounts that I haven’t logged into in years.  There are many security benefits to having unique, strong passwords for all your accounts.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Take the “title” or “name” of the website, company, or service – whichever jumps out at you first.

2. Choose a length.

Many sites will enforce a 6 or 8 character minimum, so I’d recommend something at or above 8 characters.

3. Begin the algorithm.

What you want, ultimately, is to use some of the characters from the site name, transformed enough to be difficult to decipher, mixed in with various other characters to form a strong, random, and yet recreatable password.

4. Fill in the blanks, using alphanumeric, capital, and non-alphanumeric characters.

Capitals, numbers, and non-alphanumerics greatly increase the strength of your password by using a larger set of choices.  Keep in mind that these characters will be the same in every password you have.

5. Repeat, repeat, repeat!

Keep using this technique for all your passwords, using the same algorithm each time.

6. Remember…

Be creative in your algorithm, keep the fact that you even use one a secret, and make sure the “variable” letters are tough to determine.  If I host a random site called www.blah.com and I see your password in my database is “halb1234″, your algorithm will not be that tough to figure out!

Once you have put this technique to full use, upon arriving at a site, your account password is simple to recreate by using the same algorithm.

Now I may be no mean shakes at writing, but I sure as heck know how to do a thing or two.  Like many of us out there, I’ve learned, explored, travelled, worked, read, saw, and met.  But in terms of the greater knowledge, the wealth of information out there on the internet, I’ve stopped providing.  I’ve become a black hole into which information constantly pours, but not often enough do the distilled results find their way back out into the world.

How many of you:

• Watch TV / Movies but don’t make any?
• Read books, magazines, and blogs but don’t write any?
• Listen to music but don’t record any?
• Learn important things but don’t teach any?
• Enjoy fine art but don’t produce any?
• Watch sports but don’t play any?

I’ve been guilty at some point or another of each of these things.  In that vein I’ve created this site into which I can pour my creative output, and perhaps you can pick up a thing or two.

So ask yourself: What skills do you have, and what can you contribute with them?