#MozNewsLab week one lectures by @azaaza @burtherman & @amandacox now online

The participants in the #MozNewsLab are kicking-up such an amazing storm of ideas, that I’m finding it hard to concentrate long enough to put my own thoughts to keyboard this week.

So, in lieu of some suitably witty update, here’s a quick re-cap of the first week’s lectures:

The week kicked off with a lecture by the renowned interface designer, Aza Raskin. Aza recently held the position of Creative Lead for Firefox, and he’s now working on a start-up called Massive Health.

Aza’s lecture focused on designing in the open and rapid prototyping. You can find the slides here, or watch the recorded lecture (with synced slides) here. The #MozNewsLab participants also took great notes here.

On Wednesday, the lab heard from journalist-entrepreneur Burt Herman. Burt shared his life experiences – from his time as journalist with the Associated Press, to his current adventures as co-founder of the award-winning journalism tech start-up, Storify.com

These two lectures dovetailed perfectly together: both focused on the strategy of rapidly iterating software product ideas, being willing to kill early ideas if necessary, and incorporating user input into the development & design process.

You can find Burt’s slides here, and his recorded lecture here. (Notes here.)

We closed out the week on Friday with a mind-expanding, 1000 mile-per-hour, lecture by Amanda Cox. Amanda Cox is a graphics editor at the New York Times, where she creates charts and maps for the print and web versions of the paper.

Amanda’s lecture was the perfect finale for the week – it provided a whirlwind tour of how the New York Times graphics desk thinks about the data that it presents online. Slides here, lecture here, and notes here.

Week two is already off to a great start. John Resig is scheduled to present later today. It’s an exciting week in the #MozNewsLab.