June 2009 Archives

Last week at this time, I was experiencing the first day of one of my favorite professional events, An Event Apart in Boston. An Event Apart (AEA) is a web conference conceived and developed by Jeffrey Zeldman and Eric Meyer (not too shabby!). According to their web site (http://www.aneventapart.com/), they put the event together to create a conference that THEY would want to attend. Mission accomplished, fellows!

AEA Boston started off with Jared Spool giving attendees some insights into how Amazon has evolved their site to sell more product and drive consumers to their site. Anyone who has seen Jared speak will appreciate the energy and enthusiasm he brings to his presentation. How wonderful to learn so much while laughing (and laughing)!

I had the opportunity to speak briefly with Jared before his presentation. I hope we can get him to come back to Penn State sometime, and I plan to explore the possibilities. More on that if and when...

As I listened to the fabulous lineup of speakers, I was struck by the quality of every presentation. Each speaker would make a wonderful keynote at our Penn State Web Conference! Even though the speakers all wore jeans and most wore t-shirts, they exuded professionalism through their demeanor, unique message, speaking skills, appropriately accomplished visuals, and ability to connect with their audience. No talking head reading from his/her bulleted list of boring slides on this agenda! And humor (geek humor, admittedly) was used extensively and quite appropriately to drive home key points in an offbeat manner. Let's just say that if IE6 were in the audience, he/she would have either slunk out the back door or sued for defamation of character ;-)

As with my experience at AEA New Orleans last year, I had the opportunity and honor to have breakfast with Jeffrey Zeldman on day two, though this year, I also sat at his table for lunch on the first day. I couldn't help but feel somewhat sorry for him...some of the others at the lunch table were so insistent with questions for him that the poor man was hardly able to take a bite of his lunch. Almost a full plate of food went off with the catering staff.

One of the outstanding speakers, Jeremy Keith, took some excellent notes while live-blogging on day one of the conference. You can view his notes at http://bit.ly/1dluZ. Well worth the read! The only unfortunate thing is that he didn't include notes on his presentation, though he did provide a link to his slides.

AEA was an awesome experience! So many potential keynote speakers, so little time. For the full agenda, you can visit http://www.aneventapart.com/2009/boston/.  Two days of keynote quality speakers was both exhilarating and mentally exhausting. I hope I can bring to Penn State some of the energy I took away from attending AEA.

Just a few of my takeaway messages from AEA:

• Pages do NOT need to look the same in every browser.
• Draw sketches of what you want your web pages to look like, no matter how rudimentary the sketch may be.
• Design should compliment and enhance content.
• Content constantly evolves and needs a strategy. The mindset of "launch it and leave it" needs to be challenged.
• Design horizontally, then vertically and use as many columns in the design as the content requires (examples using 17 columns were given!) to help with developing elegant CSS styling.
• Following web standards not only helps your sites to render well, it also simplifies style changes and helps search engines find your information.
• Fonts and colors do have a profound affect on the perception of your site.
• A culture of experimentation facilitates new ideas and creativity.
• Visitors will use your site in ways that you didn't anticipate.
• Creating reusable code/methods can allow you to spend more time on creativity and less on coding.
• Giving site users a voice allows them to connect with your message/purpose.
• The behavior you see on site analytics is the behavior you designed for.

I could go on...

P.

The anticipation is past. The plans have been made and executed, and it's all over except the shouting. Hopefully positive, wOOt! shouting will come through on the evaluations, but that remains to be seen. This week after the Penn State Web Conference is always bittersweet. I'm thrilled at how well things went at the conference and the workshops while being both happy and somewhat sad that it is over until next summer.

The tasks I turn back toward in some ways aren't as sexy as planning a conference. However, they bring their own rewards. I just read an inspiring blog post by a colleague that reinforced something that I have always felt. [She tells a great story, and I won't even attempt to top it!]. I believe that when we find our place in the world and live the kind of life and do the kind of work that matters to us, we raise the bar for ourselves and bring others up with us. If you don't love what you do, find ways to move your life toward what you do love. Even if it is just one small step at a time. You will not regret it!

So, instead of feeling let down because the conference is over, I feel re-energized and ready to take on the next challenge. Care to join me?

P.

As a teenager, I always wanted to be able say that I played to a sell out crowd. Never thought I'd get anything remotely near to it, but perhaps this is my big opportunity. I gave up the guitar long ago, but now I will be speaking to a full house at the Penn State Web 2009 Conference. Amazing!

We have never been terribly close to a sell out before, and I was surprised by the number of issues it raised. The conference venue could have fit a few more people, but we wouldn't have had a printed program or a giveaway for the last few. This situation made things a bit nerve-wracking, and yet quite exciting as we reached our upper limit. We would hate to turn anyone away, and yet we almost had to do so this year. Luckily, everything fell into place where we have exactly the number of attendees as the number of seats, programs, and giveaways. Again, amazing!

In past years, we wondered what it would take to get those extra 20 - 30 registrants that we needed for a sell out. Our attendance numbers have been almost exactly the same for the last 5 years. Not quite sure what put us over the top to reach our goal. The incredible agenda of outstanding speakers and topics? The dedicated, hard work of the best conference planning committee on the planet? Increased enthusiasm? No way to tell. With the challenging economic situation, we were unsure of how our attendance might be affected. We are more than pleased that it hasn't hurt us.

A tremendous amount of hard work and attention to detail are needed to pull together such a large event. We count on a great number of people to get on the same page and work together toward a single goal...bringing you the best conference we possibly can.

We hope you will enjoy it, that is, if you were lucky enough to get a seat!

P.