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:
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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.
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