Tales of a Designer

Beginners Guide to SXSW

SXSWi is a mere days away and I must say that I’m pretty excited. Although last years’ was a whole lot more crowded than I expected, it was a blast, and based on the panel selection, I’m sure there will be tons more people there this year. I’ve been pondering writing this for months now, and though I was beat to the punch, I still want to go over my take on a beginners guide to SXSW. So, After Andrew and I discussed what first timers might want to know, here is my advice:

Have business cards – There is nothing more embrassing than meshing with a [potential] client or business partner and telling them that you don’t have a business card. Make sure you have plenty, because you should at least expect to hand out as many as you get from others. And you will collect quite a bit of cards.

Plan panels wisely – There are a ton of panels this year. Make sure you plan which ones you want to see carefully, because though there will be a lot that you want to see, there are also a lot of crap panels as well, and you want to make sure you’re not sitting in one of those when there is another panel going on at the same time that you would rather be in. I would recommend ranking the panels you want to go to. Have a tangible list handy so if you’re in a panel you don’t like, you can easily find where another panel is you can go to.

Get to popular panels early – While on the subject of panels, you will probably notice some of your favorite designers on them. Get to those early because the good seats fill up very fast. And the closer you are to the front, the better the experience. Last year I had a front row seat to a panel with Jason Santa Maria and Rob Weychert, and it was a great experience.

Travel light – You will do a lot of walking between going to panels, and eating out, so pack light. A laptop bag might get heavy after a lot of walking. If you can part with your laptop, try using a notebook to take notes. And if you plan on attending the evening events, you definitely won’t want to have a laptop bag with you.

See the town – There will be some days that you aren’t in panels all day, so take that time to explore Austin. There are lots of cool places to eat, and things to see, so while planning panels, also plan some time to go check out the town.

Speak up – SXSW is no time to be shy. If you are, force yourself to talk and meet people. How often are you surrounded by hundreds, if not thousands of people who love doing the same kind of work as you? If you find someone you meet and connect with, go to dinner with them. It sounds that easy because it is. Everyone is there to network and meet more people in the industry.

Know your pitch – I’ve written about getting your pitch down, and being at a major networking event like SXSW makes it all the more relevant. Know how to pitch yourself because the people you meet, are trying to meet other people. So be interesting, and quick.

Go to the parties – Your SXSW experience is not complete unless you enjoy all of the evening events. This is where all of the real networking happens, and there is no shortage of parties to attend. List a few you want to go to, write the the addresses, and go have fun. You will thank yourself when the conference is over.

Use Twitter – I was not only shocked at how much buzz Twitter got last year, but also how useful it was. I signed up for my account last year while at the conference, and it’s interesting how much stuff I found out about, whether it’s happenings around town during the day, or events at night. It was very useful. So follow some people you meet, or stalk your favorite designers, but it could be worth it.

So those are my tips for you first-timers at SXSW. A lot of what I mentioned in basic networking stuff, but going to a new conference can be overwhelming at first. Iit is a great experience, and possibly the cheapest conference you will go to for that many days. I hope this is helpful.

If you are going to be there and want to meet up, shoot me an email and we’ll work something out.

If I’ve missed anything on tips for beginners, feel free to add in the comments.

Wordpress 2.5 Demo and Thoughts

Browsing at 9rules, I came across a member site linking over to a demo of the alpha version of Wordpress 2.5. As a Wordpress junkie, I had to give it a try, and thus far, I am liking what I am seeing. The admin panel looks a whole lot cleaner than the currently cluttered version of Wordpress. What helps this de-cluttering is the effective use of the main navigation.

In it’s current state, all of the options in the main nav is overkill. I would assume that on a typical login, the items such as User management, Plugins, and Settings aren’t needed since those things aren’t touched very often. Version 2.5 creates this separation by making the main navigation only the elements that are more relevant on a typical login: Write, Manage, Design, and Comments. I’m don’t 100% agree on Design needing to be there in that main navigation though. And I love the comments icon that shows the count of comments. Very nice touch.

Another major improvement is the dashboard. Right now, the dashboard is pretty much crap with a whole lot of irrelevant information. I personally don’t like seeing feeds from the Wordpress blog, or other Wordpress sites. What I DO like seeing is information relevant to my blog, which 2.5 has done. The Wordpress blogs feeds are still there, but closer to the bottom of the page and not as dominant on the page as they currently are.

The post pages are quite cleaner too, moving all of the right hand items down below the text area post for the content. Though it makes for much more scrolling, I don’t see it as a huge issue and it doesn’t make my eyes wander all over the page.

There are many more changes, however those were the couple that stood out initially. Since it’s still in alpha, I would imagine there will be many more changes, but as it is now, it is still quite an upgrade from the current state of the dashboard. I very much look forward to this new release though, which looks to be in just under a month. Is Happy Cog still on this redesign?

What do you think of the changes in the demo?

Revisiting Online Advertising

We’ve long established that online ads suck. More often than not, they are ugly and get in the way of what we’re trying to accomplish. But it’s time to look a bit past that part, and start focusing on the context in which ads are being displayed. There is still seems to be quite a bit to learn about the online population and how they interact with advertisements. In other words, when and where is the best time to place ads?

Joshua Porter wrote a great post about why social ads don’t work, and he raises great points further think about.

Social ads don’t work as well because people are being social, not searching for something.

This is spot on. Think of one time you were browsing your social network of choice and thought about clicking an ad? For me it’s extremely rare, and I’d imagine that a large percentage of other people feel the same. Ads seems to work much better on sites where your attention span isn’t required for long. Social sites don’t support this model. You can spend hours browsing profiles and interacting with the site, so force feeding ads won’t work because they are not within context of the users habits on the site. It’s like invading personal space. Have you ever had someone knock on your door trying to sell something, while you’re watching tv?

Search sites (like Yahoo, Google, etc.) are a little different, which seems to be why their ads are more effective. People are looking for something specific. When the results are displayed, they are either seeing relevant ads, or relevant search results. It’s within context. The user clicks the ad or result, then leaves.

News portals might fall between social sites and search sites, however, I’d say with user habits, they’re closer to social networking sites. I would imagine your average user goes to a news site to read news and/or just browse headlines.

But certainly search sites aren’t the only types of places where online advertising can work, so where else does this online advertising model fit in? How can more companies get a ROI on the millions of dollars being spent for online ads and stay within context of users habits per site? I don’t really have an answer for that one, but as the web is still new, there is lots to learn for advertisers, as well as those displaying ads on their sites.