SXSWi 2006 - Day 2
Web Design • March 17th, 2006Sunday didn’t feel as juicy and energetic as Saturday. I couldn’t connect with some of the panels, but maybe that had more to do with my physical exhaustion from a serious lack of sleep. However, a few ideas resonated:
Respect Your Elder Bloggers
After reading about it, I’m sort of curious about Ronni Bennet’s blog, Time Goes By. What was said:
- According to the statistics, in a few years (2020?) 20% of the U.S. population will be elder.
- When you retire, you lose your social network. Families live far away, friends die… You can start becoming isolated and depressed. This is where blogging and other Internet activities come to the rescue.
- For elders, blogging = friendships
- Blogging makes you think about your next posting. Your mind is conscious, constantly looking for stuff. So, there you have it: a proactive way to fight senility.
- Internet friends actually listen. Physical friends mostly talk about themselves. Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes you want to be listened.
On how to design for an elder audience:
- “Ageless design” is good for everybody
- Story telling is more memorable for older brains
Tagging 2.0
I could hardly keep my eyes open. To make it worse, I was mostly distracted by the repetitive sound of the door shutting behind the many people who left the panel midway.
Heather Armstrong and Jason Kottke Keynote
This was a hard decision. People I read like Cameron Moll, Dave Shea, and Kelly Goto where going to present “Demystifying the Mobile Web” during the same hour slot.
Up until Saturday, I thought I would attend their panel and skip the guilty pleasure of seeing Dooce speak… But Saturday night, after my friends and I left the Iron Cactus and went to the hotel, I got a call from my friend Jennifer who had gone back out looking for entertainment: “Hey, we’re back at the Iron Cactus and guess who just came in…” “Who?” “Heather and Jon Armstrong” (silence, though I could hear her smiling)… (evil laughs). Jennifer (who never reads Dooce) added: “I’m going to get a picture with her. I just had to call you and rub it in your face”. So, Sunday after lunch I rushed through the halls to get in time into the main room where Dooce and Kottke would have their conversation.
Although I’ve tested to have geekish tendencies, after the keynote I did NOT do the very geeky thing to get on line to meet Heather and Jon in person… but there was a respectable line of people waiting… I took a bad picture of it and my camera’s Flash went off, which mortified me on top of Jennifer’s “Come on! You want a picture with her” claims. Well, I’m shy and although I enjoyed seeing several of my web celebrities in person, I know I would feel very stupid approaching them just to say “Hi, I’m a big fan”.
What was learned: Ad revenue might be a better option than a subscription model when attempting to monetize your blog. Better yet: Ad revenue, combined with the option to see an ad-free version of the site in exchange for a subscription.
DIY Now More Than Ever
Although several smart points were made, I don’t seem to have enough notes on this one. The few things I wrote down:
- Nolo is a good resource on legal issues
- WordPress. Zeldman recently switched to it, so I thought I’d try it as a step above Blogger. So far, the installation was easy, and I’m liking…
- Focusing your business to a niche works best if you pursue the ad business model. Of course.
- And the smartest, most memorable comment came from Matt Mullenweg from WordPress: “Ideas are just ideas. 90% of the success is in the execution”
Holistic Web Design
Great panel on the compromises and synergies that make a better product when working on multi-disciplined teams. Moderated by Garrett Dimon, and including web gurus Shaun Inman and Jason Santa Maria.
I don’t have any notes, but I’m sure one or several of them will be posting about it.
