Last March, Luke sent an email:
We should have a mobile web/responsive design/multiple devices + web retreat sometime soon. Small intimate group of folks meet-up at a conference center in the woods for a long weekend and discuss/collaborate/etc.
Josh replied:
LOVE it. Color me deliriously enthusiastic (a rather bright orange) about this idea.
Since then I’ve been anxiously awaiting this event. Last week, ten of us gathered for two intense days in a beautiful location outside Nashville. Our shorthand for the event was Mobilewood.
We set out with a few goals in mind:
- Was there some common ground between all of the different ways that each of us is trying to address device proliferation?
- Can we find ways to help web developers and designers start to plan for this changing landscape?
- How can we encourage browser makers to support device APIs and other tools needed to take full advantage of new capabilities in a more timely fashion?
- How do we break out of the browser ghetto?
The first output of our collaboration launched today. It is a concept we’re calling Future Friendly.
We realized that none of us felt like our approach was necessarily the right approach for the future. The landscape is shifting too quickly to be confident. There is no such thing as future proof.
We have principles, tools, techniques, and some gut instincts on what will work in the future, but we don’t have solutions. And that is to be expected based on this stage of mobile’s ascendence. We have a long way to go before we have push-button deployment of web technology for multiple devices in the same way we do other web services.
Thus futurefriend.ly focuses on the things that we think can help prepare people for the chaos that is sure to come. Our thinking doesn’t offer proclamations. Instead, these are the areas that we find ourselves thinking a lot about and see as keys for the future. They are the starting point for conversation, not the ending.
There’s more to come from last weekend. I can’t wait to explore some of the concepts in more detail. But for now, I simply want to say thank you to a fabulous group of people:
- Josh Clark
- Brad Frost
- Lyza Danger Gardner
- Scott Jehl
- Scott Jenson
- Jeremy Keith
- Bryan Rieger
- Stephanie Rieger
- Luke Wroblewski
I’m honored to have been included.
