The lost art of simplicity

Josh Holmes (Feb 26, 2010 at 08:30)
Keynote at PHP UK Conference 2010 (English - US)

Rating: 4 of 5

Simplicity is a lost art in the application development space. The Wikipedia definition of simplicity is "Simplicity is the property, condition, or quality of being simple or un-combined. It often denotes beauty, purity or clarity. Simple things are usually easier to explain and understand than complicated ones. Simplicity can mean freedom from hardship, effort or confusion." This is a beautiful statement that we often lose sight of when we are building our applications. Instead we are on a never ending quest to fill out a checklist of features or to build something clever forgetting about the actual needs of our users to get a specific task done. This session takes complexity to task and challenges you to bring simplicity to the centre of your development with some straightforward ideas and guidance.

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Comments

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 10:11 by ijansch

Definitely keynote material. Very inspiring.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 10:15 by parsingphase

We'd be doing better as an industry if more people took this onboard. Possibly missing the need to simplify the user's supposed requirements. Good use of slides to support rather than repeat.

Rating: 1 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 10:16 by demianturner

Ugh ..

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 10:22 by dom.udall

Need to check out this XYZ Technology, getting a lot of mentions.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 10:33 by pbowyer

Lovely slides with great drawings and quotes; not a single bullet point in sight.
Josh is funny, entertaining and charismatic. Would listen to him again.

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 10:36 by pbowyer

That should have been a 4 - no way to edit my review = UI fail? Listen to Josh Holmes ;-)

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 10:46 by henrikbjorn

Interesting indeed.

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 10:58 by DUGi

Awesome talk!

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 11:03 by ellc

Type comment...

Rating: 3 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 11:13 by marcgear

Well presented, superb delivery, loved the illustrations on the slides, but the quotes were a distraction. Great storyteller and some good stories. Probably a little too long. Content was spot on, but nothing most people wouldn't have heard before. Keynote was a good spot for this talk.

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 11:29 by rowan_m

Enthusiastic and engaging guy. Entry level stuff, but good for a keynote.

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 11:38 by GingerDog

Good stuff.

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 11:41 by felixdv

Good to be reminded of the use of simplicity in project, it was an inspiring talk. Not too heavy and well brought.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 11:45 by akrabat

Excellent keynote by an engaging speaker. Quotes on the slides were a little wordy though.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 11:46 by ianb

Great talk for a keynote, interesting content, engaging delivery, and a good way to start the conference!

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 11:59 by dmi

Good talk on an important issue from an excellent speaker. Great way to stay the conference!

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 12:09 by alexp

Great speaker

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 12:36 by lornajane

Great speaker, beautiful slides, and a timely reminder message for us all

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 13:50 by JoJo

Very charismatic speaker

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 14:11 by stefan

great talk! it was very hard to match arals keynote of last year but this was an eye opener! well done!

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 14:26 by webraider

Great presentations, this wakes up everyone on a sleepy morning.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 14:57 by le6o

Nicely presented, light slides and memorable.

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 15:44 by phpcodemonkey

Enjoyable + engaging, though not really 'new'. Generally good fresh reminder of KISS. Nice start to the day.

Rating: 3 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 16:14 by kampernet

In my experience, NIH does not usually make things more simple. just lots of mini-systems for everyone to learn. For very new system brought into the mix, consider the cost of the learning curve.

Rating: 3 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 16:47 by Shrikeh

Good keynote catching an important aspect we sometimes overlook in our pursuit of end goals. Poor slides compensated for by a great presentation.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 17:29 by Anonymous

Slides reflected the talk... simple and not distracting from the speaker. No bullet points and no reading the slides! Great keynote. Engaging, and amusing.

Rating: 3 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 19:38 by PabloSerbo

A good talk, well presented. But slightly too long. Good marketing by our headline sponser Microsoft.

Rating: 3 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 20:11 by andytson

A bit long talk for saying what could be said in short time, but then again maybe some people need it drilled into their heads?

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 26, 2010, 22:34 by skinn3r

Really good and inspiring talk about what we always forget.

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 27, 2010, 12:14 by webmartjohn

I liked this.

@PabloSerbo i'm not sure where you spotted marketing by Microsoft in this talk - I was relieved that it wasn't anything to do with Microsoft, not that I have anything against them.

We can all learn the lessons of NIH Syndrome - good keynote, right spot for the talk.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 27, 2010, 12:40 by manes

Just a tad too long, brilliant overall.

Rating: 3 of 5

Feb 27, 2010, 14:04 by rjharrison

It felt like a random collection of stories and points that lacked structure and flow. Was it a talk about usability, design, engineering, software or philosophy? It was all of those things, which I think was the problem.

Good ideas, good speaker, not a good talk.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 27, 2010, 14:12 by bwaine

Motivational, it certainly woke me up and got set the tone for the rest of the conference.

Rating: 4 of 5

Feb 27, 2010, 14:31 by monxton

Surprised that I did not hear Josh use the words "lean" or "agile" thoughout his talk, when many of the ideas he presented were expressions of lean or agile practices.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 27, 2010, 19:40 by pavlakis

And that's what it's all about!
Great keynote!

Cool images on the slides - text wasn't needed IMHO

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 27, 2010, 22:23 by zegenie

Inspiring keynote, but the slides didn't really match up with the speaker. IMO too much text on each slide, and it was sometimes hard to get the connection between the slides and the content which was being talked about.

Content of the talk itself though was excellent - definately something more developers should think about. To sum it up I'd prefer it if the speaker had fewer slides with less text, or connected the talk more with the slides.

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 27, 2010, 23:49 by lsw01

Great keynote talk! Really set the tone for me for the rest of the day! Perfectly done, the amount of text on the slides wasn't a problem for me, gave me loads to think about, and well put across!

Rating: 5 of 5

Feb 28, 2010, 17:52 by rooster

Entertaining - a keynote needs to wake up the delegates ready to take on the day and Josh achieved this. The content was not overly specific or technical - and some parts were tough to agree on (write code that works now instead of code that could also be useful later is hard to swallow for OSS fans) but gave food for thought all the same.

Rating: 4 of 5

Mar 1, 2010, 11:07 by X4lt

Great presentation gave me something to think about.

Rating: 4 of 5

Mar 1, 2010, 11:44 by Gabriel403

Thought this was a great talk, very inspiring, gave me a lot to think about.

Rating: 5 of 5

Mar 1, 2010, 13:54 by loonytoons

This was a great talk for the keynote, just right for getting everyone's brains to wake up and settle into the right frame of mind for the rest of the day. I agree with a lot of the points that he had to make, others required a bit more consideration.

Also loved the illustrations on his slides, though some were a little text heavy.

Rating: 4 of 5

Mar 1, 2010, 14:36 by amnuts

I enjoyed the keynote speech. Some people seem to think it was a little longer, and in one respect I agree with them because it shouldn't be that hard to tell people to simplify things. However, I found Josh a really engaging speaker so the length of the speech really just blended in to the background. Would be happy to hear more from him.

Rating: 5 of 5

Mar 1, 2010, 17:59 by kanenas.net

I enjoyed Josh's talk. Couldn't agree more!!!

Rating: 5 of 5

Mar 2, 2010, 00:02 by Letssurf

Best talk I've attended.

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