Jeff’s Austin Blues

As always, there are more panels I want to see than is possible, unless I can clone myself.  After being shut out of a extremely popular panel and following it on Twittter, it occurred to me that I can attend my first choice (or second if the first is full) in person (synchronously) and the others asynchronously on Twitter, YouTube, etc.

I planned on attending three panels in a row in the same room.  The first was nearly full, the second may be 2/3 full. So I went out in the hall to charge the laptop’s battery.  Bad plan, the line to get back in goes down the block and around the corner.  I’ll be attending asynchronously (see next post).

Awesome pair of panels – 1 client (a non-profit) and 4 designer’s design process and solutions.  Showing the intermediate steps, work products, etc.  Informative, fun, enlightening, and entertaining.  The first two presenters clearly had presented or worked together and had an engaging tag team style.  The other two didn’t work as well together, but they were fine by themselves.

Any one would have been good, all four was fantastic.  Look on YouTube for “Right Way to Wireframe” to catch their time lapse videos.

As they say, “It opened to mixed reviews.”  The first session I attended, Beauty in Web Design, was full.  I was willing to climb over a dozen feet to get a seat, but there were many more people standing than empty seats.  Good, though high level, review of beauty and design philosophy.  The most memorable line, “Where are the Website masterpieces.”

My second session, What Are Analytics? A Guide To Practical Data, had a waiting line that I escaped by not realizing that it was there and walking in through the other door.  It didn’t say anywhere it was about Social Media (SM), but it was largely about tracking the presence and sentiment about a company in the SM.  I was expecting a talk on how to make sense of the data in Google Analytics (GA).  Near the end of the talk there was a brief mention of GA.

Because I wasn’t real interested in the talk, I finally started using my Twitter account (@AustinBlues) that I’ve had since last SxSWi.  Threw a few tweets into the Tweetstream and had the ego boost of seeing one re-tweeted.  This practice was good preparation for the next session.

The last session of the day, Simple Steps to Great Web Design, was back at the room where I attended the first talk, there was a line that I couldn’t ignore.  When it became obvious that I wasn’t going to be able to get in, I found a talk with a power outlet and tried to follow the talk on the Twitter (#simplestepsgreatdesign). Not ideal, but picked up some useable information.

Unfortunately, there was a fire alarm and the Convention Center  was evacuated.  I was tired and called my wife to pick me up.  The alarm was false and the talk did resume with some empty seats.  Sorry I missed it, appears to have been a very good talk.

UX = User eXperience. Very good presentation on dubious proposition (IMHO of course). Or maybe not. How to be and manage user experience part of a project, probably but not necessarily a Website. “Design the box” is an interesting exercise even for products/projects that won’t ship in a box.

Links: slides and followup.

Both of the book readings were content-lite, mostly reciting their media appearences. I’ve saved the URLs, maybe there’s something there but I wasn’t intrigued by the presentation. Of course, both of these are print authors, not tech presenters like the other sessions.