I went to WebStock 08 in Wellington afew weeks ago . It was a hugh gathering of New Zealand webby brains and some brains from further aboard.
What was good ?
Michael Lopp - what a star ! I went to both of Michael sessions, he is a project manager from Apple. I was really surprised how Micheal could related to the NZ audience which was fulled with more small businesses or smaller budget punters (aka not the same size has Apples budget ! ) . I really enjoyed his simple tips on handling bossess wants, handling new ideas impacting on the project scope and what makes a good small team.
Peter Morville author of Ambient Findability: What We Find Changes Who We Become , gave a wondering session remindering all that websites SHOULD allow users to find the information they are seeking, have users more than one o two ways to find what they are seeking. Also,we were jogging on the user diagram called "Facets of the User Experience", which is the great to help explain to middle mngt or your boss to get extra budget why made your site usabllity and findability .....
Nat Torkington gave a really interesting talk about the future looking at trends ..... Has we all thought
- being mobile is going to be key on the future . People are just to busy ....
- sharing information , thinking about sharing autherication
or services
- being found is key ....
and Dan Cederholm just mading sense with his stand that all design should be simple and for the user ....
In summary =
- Open ID (sharing the user autherication, only having one login )
- Design is still not good on the web. We should look at the actual content and users - just not shoehorning content into into handy CMS template ....
- Thinking about sharing data/services on your site ... what about using mircoformats ?
- Websites are not the product (please somebody tell marketing dept ?) .... its only a means to service the user , other way to get information. Think wider - what is the information you are providing and how ? (by text or email or ? )
- keep a watching briefing on sites like flickr, twitter and what goolge is doing with its personalisation search and all that data they are collecting ?
