IDEA 2008: An Interview with Bill DeRouchey
Written by Russ on August 18, 2008 – 4:22 pmIf you do not know by now, IDEA 2008 is going to be in Chicago on October 7-8, with a pre-conference on October 6th, put on by MAYA Design. The conference is going to fantastic–we’ve recently added Jesse James Garrett to speak about the Aurora concept browser.
Behind the scenes, I’ve been the “Event Coordinator”–and while it has not always been clear to me what that is (it’s mostly “do as much as I can in every situation possible–fast!)–and it has been a lot of fun working a little deeper with the Information Architecture Institute and getting to understand “how things work” a bit more.
One of the roles I took on was to interview some of the talent. We’ve got a great line up for IDEA 2008, including:
- David Armano
- Jason Kunesh
- Dave Gray
- Elliot Malkin
- Edwin von Gal
- Jesse James Garrett
- Chris Crawford
- Albert Canas
- Jason Fried
- Aradhana Goel
- Bill DeRouchey
- Andrew Hinton
My first interview was with Mr. Bill DeRouchey.
Many moons ago, Bill and I happened to have been up late on the same night. It may have been a weekend–well, it was any night, really, as we’re always up late. Christian Crumlish had turned me on to some Brian Eno music and I was asking about alternatives. I don’t even recall what the selection was, but Bill made it–he set up a muxtape for me so I could find some new tunes to work/study by.
I checked out his website, watched is presentation from Interaction08 and we started some email chatter. Before long, we were doing random emails, talking about book ideas, swapping war stories and a bunch of general back-and-forth humor.
We built some trust.
We became friends.
We hashed out a panel for SXSW called “Friendship is Dead” (and you should vote for it, please!).
We reviewed secret paperwork for each other.
We (gasp!) even spoke on the phone!
And I even asked Bill his thoughts about this in the interview that is now live on Boxes & Arrows:
RU: Over the course of 2008, you and I have become “friends”—at least I’d say that, and I believe you’ve said that. We most likely will not meet face-to-face until October at IDEA in Chicago, yet I’d say we have built a level of trust and respect for each other—we’ve even worked “virtually” on putting together a panel presentation for SXSW together. How do you think that happened, and who should we blame?
This fascinates me too. It’s true. We’ve never met face to face and we’ve only talked on the phone once, but we’ve had enough online interaction to build both trust and friendship. How the hell is that possible? Tracing it back is an interesting case study. On Twitter, I noticed a few friends (people I have met f2f and trust) keep talking to @russu. Okay, I’ll see what this guy is up to. Seems harmless enough, okay, follow. Then we made some connection on music, and the conversation developed from there. But is this really different at all from meeting people in the “real world”? You meet through mutual friends, connect on something simple, and then just keep talking. That’s the beauty of Twitter. People are giving you many opportunities to connect in some way. Sometimes it clicks and you make a new friend. If you never actually meet, so what? Yes, it’d be a shame, but geography should never be a barrier to connecting with other people.
Please take a moment and read the entire interview, and get to know Bill DeRouchey a bit better!
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