For too long now events like this have been the property of London, dragging the digital world to capital and delivering a thoroughly mediocre affair. It’s about time the North had a platform to attract an international audience, and show our selves off a bit.

SAScon is a truly international event, with celebrated practitioners from the US, Spain, Holland, Belgium and Iceland sharing the stage with some of Manchester’s own, Paul Fabretti from Gabba and Neil Hardy from the Co-operative group to name but two. Personally I can’t wait to hear some more on the darker arts of SEO from Ralph Tegtmeier, who, according to Aaron Wall, is “one of the most insightful minds and original voices in the search game”.

A great deal of credit needs to go to SEMPO and Manchester Digital for delivering SAScon at a time when the digital landscape in the North demands it. We have some of the most innovative minds and cutting edge ideas, not just with the digital agencies, but with the digital departments of our regions forward thinking companies.

Up here in’t North have always been willing to take a punt, always keen support and embrace new initiatives, happenings and events, as the success of Manc Twestival proved. SAScon has the potential to be a permanent fixture on the digital calendar for digital marketeers from around the country. If you can make it, please go, it will be great to see you there.

www.sascon.co.uk

@sasconference

#sascon

Ask questions at panels either during or at the end. All the speakers are more than happy to talk. Just so you understand the scale of  SXSW, there are about 15-20 events (panels, keynotes, lounges, trade show events) starting simultaneously each hour of the day from 9am to 5pm from the Friday through the weekend till the Wednesday. Then there are the evening sponsored mixer events of which there were about 3 or 4 each night, dotted around Austin starting early doors 6-8pm. The major sponsored events started at 8pm and went on till 2am. Believe me its a marathon not a sprint and there were several who peaked too soon!

My advice would be to pick a mixture of different types of events in advance. So some panels, some keynotes etc and try new topics or events with weird titles or unusual speakers. Have second choices as well because some get full quickly. Don’t get drawn into attending just events that you have a personal specialism in. Some people did that and came away frustrated that they already knew the stuff they had just listened to. The fact is if you are a bit of a social media guru already for example, you should be on top of your game anyway, so perhaps go to some of the more geeky stuff about SM and try out a few other new topics. You’ll be amazed who you sit next to and what you learn. Also I learned that if you don’t like what you are hearing it is perfectly acceptable just to get up and politely exit stage left.

Street art Austin style

Austin is a compact city and the convention centre, where the trade show and most of the events are, is central with some events spilling to the adjacent Hilton or Radisson Town Lake. Bottom line is you can walk everywhere as long as you stay in either the aformentioned Radisson Town Lake as I and most of the Digital Mission did or the Four Seasons or the Hilton or the Marriott Courtyard. This also affords walking in the evening to the famous 6th Street where most of the mixer events are hosted. Beware hotels out of town or near the airport as taxis take their toll. As I have said in previous posts about SXSW,  Austinness is extremely important to the success of SXSW. The city and its people are fantastic.

I now appreciate the US market and how to set up business there. I also learnt that usefulness is often better than innovation because of the sheer scale of the opportunity in the US.

Smart/engaging/ pioneering people to follow (There were so many but here are 4 less well known)

1/. Brynn Evans – Social Anthropologist

A great slideshow from Brynn http://www.slideshare.net/bmevans/designing-for-sociality-in-enterprise-search

http://brynnevans.com/

@brynn

2/. Max Ventilla – Rich smart guy whose business was bought by Google

User driven design http://ventilla.posterous.com/preaching-user-driven-design

http://vark.com/

@ventilla

3/. Valerie Casey – Inspiring co-founder of Designers Accord

Graphic of Val Casey's keynote

Surely the most inspiring speaker all week

www.designersaccord.org

@valcasey

4/. Clara Shih – Author of the Facebook Era and CEO of Hearsay Labs

http://www.thefacebookera.com

@Clarashih

What is going to be huge (if the following are obvious to you then apologies)

Spotify when they break into the US (No brainer, but Android mobile app looked great)

Twitter’s @store – Because everyone loves Twitter

Mobile video and open source video technologies (Down with YouTube and Flash etc) – Especially as mobile devices will overtake PCs globally as the method of choice for viewing video by 2013.

Social search –  Not only on the basis that networked people prefer to consult their network first before Google for knowledge, but there are now technologies out there that will select from your network based on social graph, your combined intimacy and their expertise who is best placed to answer your question.

Sustainability in interactive design – As interactive and technical  designers begin to consider the overarching sustainability of the systems they are scoping and implementing.

What’s still got a way to go

Location based services – monetization, monetization and monetization, yep same old same old. However I believe privacy is a bigger issue here.

Thanks

Chinwag team for organising a great Digital Mission – Sam, Emily, Juliet, Benjamin and Ed.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Shawn O’Keefe (no relation I think)  - Along with Hugh Forrest, Shawn is Event Producer for SXSWi, which means he is quite a busy chap but he still found time to come and speak to the Digital Mission on the opening day of SXSWi to give us some tips for getting the best out of the event.

Miles Galliford of Subhub, Chris Lee of Qhub, Rob Smith of Blueleaf, Jonathan Palmer of Mobilized, James Mayes of TweetJobs, Ted Han of VideoJuicer, Karen Barber of AudioBoo, Jasper Westaway of OneDrum, for keeping me entertained

Rackspace,  Mashable, Rudy’s, the worst BBQ in Texas (their line not mine)

Rudy's - Worst BBQ in Texas (Their line not mine)

Until next time. Its been memorable. Goodnight SXSW, Jon Keefe has left the building, please move towards your nearest exit.

Finally I will leave you with the Unicorn Kid, great headgear.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Yesterday (Saturday) was another full day of selling, networking and information upload. I discovered that BcToolkit is well liked and has merit, even the chaps at AKQA thought is was great and are going to give it a whirl. Thanks guys

There is a lot of talk from service-based companies trying to move away from services and into products because of the revenue visibility, IP and low direct costs. This is another notion that satisfies me seeing as as that is where we have been for the last 12-18 months with Ackura and Bctoolkit. The other thing that I learn’t is that unless you are trying to build a billion dollar corporation fast, then your product doesn’t have to be that staggering or innovative because there is space in the market.  What is important is that your product has to do what you say it will, and do it well. Focus on those core issues. A good analagy I heard was if you are going to open up a hot dog stand, focus on the hot dog not the stand or the mustard or the bun because without the hot dog you just have a “Stand”. There are tonnes of small business owners with one or two “me-too” tech products sold SaaS style that make a nice living thank you very much. The differentiator is often the niche markets that they are being sold into. I met a guy whose name I didn’t catch, he had a CMS for car retailers. The only unique thing about it was that he had packaged it as “The” CMS for car retailers. The web is the small guys friend in this respect because it allows them to compete in a way that wasn’t there 10 years ago.

Last night was the official opening party for SXSW as the film buffs have all started to arrive. It was held at The MACC (Mexican and American CulturalCentre) and it was an outdoor extravaganza which was basically a one night festival type gathering. One entertaining point in the evening was when a budding script writer approached myself and my partner in crime Miles Galliford @subhub and asked us if we would give him feedback on his script synopsis. Hmm maybe we shouldn’t have been so straight forward, anyway I hope they got him down from the roof OK.

Crowdsourced car from Local Motors

On the way to the event Miles and I happened across the latest crowd-sourced car from Local  Motors, the car manufacturer aiming to turn the car industry up side down by building cars based on the most popular suggestions and ideas from the likes of you and I. So if you fancy a car like this then sign up because the top voted contributors all get to buy one.

At these places you bump into interesting entreprenurial people who otherwise, let’s be honest, you would probabaly never meet. For example I enjoyed conversations with Alicia Navarro co-founder of Skimlinks, the simplified affiliate marketing company (which by the way is a great concept), Michael Smith co-founder of Hotbox which went on to become Firebox and Charlie Osmond from SM people Fresh Networks.

Finally I’ll sign off with some short iphone video of Natal ( this is a link to an official Microsoft video), which was well used at the event. It is, if you want my humble opinion, going to revolutionise the way we decorate or build houses because in a couple of years time every house will include in it somewhere a massive plain white wall. Enjoy

Click here to view the embedded video.

Digital Mission stand at SXSW 2010

15,000 people have decended on Austin, Texas for SXSW. Before I say anything else Austin’s slogan is “Keeping it weird” and there are more live music venues here than any other city in the world and oh yes it is 75 degrees now. Get the picture? OK that’s the toursity bit over. Neither KMP Digitata or I have been to SXSW before and we will be back there is no doubt. KMP Digitata are here as part of @digitalmission organised by @chinwag. This event is inspiring, wierd, challanging, thought provoking, amazing for networking, highly educational and a good old fashioned work hard/play hard event that is about the future of the multi-channel digital world we work in.

We began with a masterclass organised by Chinwag giving us the low down on setting up businesses in the US. There were great insights from US lawyers and a selection of Brits who have successfully set up out here.

The evenings are filled with sponsored “mixer events” as they are called. OK, that’s one way of describing them. More accurately I would call it beer fuelled speed pitching. But I kid you not, I have been hawking my bag of brushes around events and exhibitions since 1984 and nothing I have been to compares with SXSW for networking and education. It is awesome as they say here. It is an investment of time and money because it is about learning for the future of your business. It is also about mixing, listening to gifted people from all over the world and exchanging ideas. Today I have had my suspicions confirmed about mobile video, met Jason Fried from our friends @37signals and learnt that strategic planning is so last decade, we should now practice strategic guessing. I urge you to buy his new book – Rework. More over the next couple of days if I make it.

We sent our own Rob Sandbach to the events in Manchester and Liverpool, who had the following to say;

The format of each event was similar: 3 or 4 talks in a small bar with a wonderful, intimate atmosphere which fostered social interaction with other web folk whether you wanted it or not! Comfy couches were par for the course if you were an early bird, sturdy pillars and walls to lean against if not. This might sound like a complaint but in reality the pub-like atmosphere was Speak the Web’s second greatest asset. It set the tone for an informal heckle inducing melting pot of forward thinking ideas to be churned out, discussed and disagreed upon in abundance.

The greatest asset was, naturally, the people. The speakers ranged from your best mate Joe, to Andy Clarke and each brought a unique style of presentation to the party. From #macfail filled presentations to #keynoterocks professional, rehearsed talks, the speakers brought a range of ideas, advice and predictions to the room. Andy Clarke’s forward thinking “Hard Boiled” presentation in Manchester was a highlight. Andy put forward an uncompromising agenda to deliver fantastic web experiences to capable browsers before facilitating an equally presentable, but perhaps less inspired, experience on less-capable browsers. Graceful degradation is too compromising, he argued, instead we should focus on, and design for, the bleeding edge; using whatever tool each the browsers affords us.

Jake Smith’s discussion at the Liverpool event on the use of custom fonts in modern design was frank (“95% of free fonts are a bit shit”), but fascinating for a non-designer-but-still-a-geek type like myself. As one might expect, CSS3 and HTML5 were hot on the agenda, but topics varied as far as mobile, SEO, and post-modernism inspired design.

Speak The Web was driven by a sincere desire to deliver a passionate calendar of events to the northwest web scene. All profits are going to local charities, with Andy Clarke and other speakers contributing their fee to the charity pool which reflects the passion of all speakers and attendees to bring this format of event to the northwest.

Here at KMP Digitata we look forward to seeing Speak The Web develop further and will continue to support this and other events in the North West.

Jon was selected thanks to Digital Mission, organized by Chinwag and UK Trade & Investment (UKTI), which enables digital companies to expand into overseas markets and attract investment outside the UK.

This is an exciting opportunity for the company and will also help promote the British digital industry over in America.

This is not KMP Digitata’s first trip over to America. Gez Daring went over to NYC at the end of last year to attend the Web 2.0 Expo and got to meet some of the leading figures in the American Social Media sector.

These trips are great for agencies to make contacts in international cities that can benefit the business, either directly though project wins or though learning how other businesses work and grow. Chinwag do a great job of organizing useful events in addition to the conference and it’s great getting to know the other delegates through the extracurricular activities! – Gez Daring

Click here to view the embedded video.

The Speak the Web mission

Speak the Web, co-organised by KMP’s Head of Interactive Richard Clark and freelance designer/developer Dan Donald have arranged four alternative conferences across the North of England that aim to combine the academic aspects of a business conference with the casual feel of a more grass-root meet-up. The events will pair up well known speakers with those who are either novices or who haven’t spoken on the web circuit before and so encouraging new ideas from new voices to be shared amongst the web community.

With events taking place in Sheffield, Leeds, Liverpool and Manchester, Speak the Web is dedicated to promoting what is happening locally to event, but also, by having each speaker move around and express their thoughts outside of their city, Speak the Web hopes to bring together original ideas that will span the North of England.

Embracing new developments in the North

KMP Digitata is always excited to support new innovative thinking and ways to help the development of the digital sector in our region. With these events run by Speak the Web we saw the perfect opportunity for both established experts and new talent in the industry to learn from a wide variety of speakers in an effective and engaging manner.

As a company KMP Digitata are excited to be involved in events such as Speak the Web and helping them get off the ground is satisfying for us.

For more or to book visit Speak the Web.

This was my first @media conference, and I am sorry that I only joined it five years on, in the year that Patrick Griffiths decided to call it a day and hand over to Web Directions to take up the mantle.

Attendees were spoilt from the start with an excellent and somewhat different presentation from Andy Clarke, followed by five engaging talks from Simon Collison, John Hicks, Dan Rubin, Mark Boulton, and Jason Santa Maria.

Ok, I’ll now attempt to summarise day ones thought provoking, and inspiring deliveries.

Slide from Simon Collison – The process toolbox: Traditional techniques with a twist.

Andy Clarke

Titled ‘Walls come tumbling down’ after the 1980’s Style council song, Andy focused on changes in workflow methods for efficient creative output in these changing times for the industry and global economy.

Andy talked about designing in the browser and the benefits of liquid layouts. Design within the browser is a good thing as it means you are testing right from the start. Working with real content from the outset is also important to the process and designing systems not pages is key!

A rousing point made was that sites shouldn’t look the same in all browsers. Some may think this is obvious, others may find it an education for clients.

Andy’s post conference pub talk was equally engaging. We discussed Billy Bragg and the quality of Morrissey’s latest and possibly final release, along with some industry chat of course.

Simon Collison

Talking about ‘The process toolbox’ Simon presented a visually stimulating set of slides.

He talked about the unique quality of projects, bespoke jobs which require a personal approach. However, the case in point is, how can you work this way without losing time and money? That’s ‘The process toolbox’. It’s a selection of approaches which help create a clear roadmap through a job and also ensures that every designer or developer who touches it adds value. A couple of the most notable points I took from Simon were:

Have something visual in the workspace to be able to move around and work with

and

Leave out the parts that people skip

Talk with Simon extended to the pub where his passion for design was only interrupted by “rising UK actress” Rebecca Hall walking by.

Jon Hicks

Jon’s specialist subject, ‘Icons of interaction’ saw him talking about the importance of icons on the web. They’re not merely decoration, they’re for interaction too.

Jon also talked about using conventions to make things familiar. A glaring example of familiarity is the now renowned RSS icon. Why try and change it? We all understand it. Icons overcome language barriers and should be used to summarise text.

A couple of points to take away from Jon’s expertise in icon design are, avoid too much detail and noise, and very importantly choose the right metaphor.

Dan Rubin

Titled ‘Designing virtual realism’, Dan’s delivery was particularly poignant and somewhat of an eye opener in the understanding of using real elements over digital interpretation.

Design is all about ‘look and feel’ and web designers should work on the assumption that people know how to interact with something based on its appearance.

IF AN INTERFACE NEEDS INSTRUCTION – REDESIGN IT.

He also talked of context and creating illusion, ie: gradients and drop shadows as perfectly depicted in real life. A rich quote from Donald Norman (Author of The Design of Everyday Things) was a case in point to the delivery:

ATTRACTIVE THINGS WORK BETTER

In summary, the message is use real art/life as it makes the work feel like the real thing. Showing the real thing is always going to create more texture and feeling than a digital interpretation. A real call to arms for us designer to get our cameras and scanners out!

Mark Boulton

Mark presented on font embedding and typography. Mark discussed the movement towards font embedding in the browser, and the hurdles related to this, such as font foundries and licensing. He asked the question, Should we even make this move?

He looked at the elements of the user experience, being: Layout, Colour, Content, Hierarchy, Rhythm, Language, Type Setting, Grid, and Font.

Limitations have nurtured good typographic structure, and the overriding message of Mark’s presentation was

With type, you can’t not communicate!

Jason Santa Maria

Jason’s talk was titled ‘Thinking small’, to expand on this – small decisions can have a big impact. When creating the big picture it’s important to remember that it was made up of countless important tiny decisions. To lift a few points from Jason’s talk:

Sketch books are not about being a good artist, they’re about being a good thinker. Sketching helps you get acquainted with a job.

Also, be sure there’s enough contrast in font pairs. Smiles were raised in the auditorium when he revealed a slide which said:

I love deadlines. I like the wooshing sound they make as they go by.

Last impressions

@media 2009 was a great conference and the deliveries and openness to chat after the event by the speakers only made it a better experience. Andy Clarke did say to me at the after-show party that the audience was particularly quiet. This was no reflection on the speakers. I left with thoughts on getting smart with processes, always add value – if it doesn’t leave it out; and getting some realism/texture in my design. People know how to interact with things. Let’s work with this.

The hot topics panel from @media 2009. Left to Right - Jason Santa Maria, Jon Hicks, Jeremy Keith, Douglas Crockford and Chris Wilson

The sessions

Day two was aimed towards developers primarily, however there was some very useful info for everyone in attendance to make sure that no-one got too bored. With six sessions, and some suffering slightly from the @media party the night before there was a lot to get through, so let’s crack on.

Douglas Crockford

Doug’s talk was entitled ‘Quality’ and possibly not as the name suggests he spoke about coding quality and how to maintain code throughout a site or applications lifetime. He used the metaphor of Winchester House and software being the same with their constant evolution and hinted at how many sites are superceeded before they come out of beta. Overall an interesting look at an aspect of development that can often be overlooked.

Chris Wilson

Having recently moved from being the Head of Development on the IE team to being an ‘Open Web Platform Advocate’ at Microsoft. Chris’s talk focused on some of the many issues relating to web development and standards, not least the issue of font embedding on the web, I think we’ll cover some of those issues in another post soon. The beers Chris bought me helped to dull the pain that IE6 has caused for us front end developers over the years too!

Molly Holzschlag

As enthusiastic and energetic as ever Molly lead us through HTML5 using a cowboy analogy. She even brought out Bruce Lawson in a full cowboy outfit much to the attendee’s amusement. The basic gist of Molly’s talk was that you needn’t wait until 2022 (as predicted) to use HTML5 you can use it here and now and different browsers have implemented many aspects of HTML5 already.

Andy Budd

As we know usability is key for any website to be successful. For a user to achieve a set goal they need to be able to quickly and easily find the information they require or complete a set task. Andy compared shops and shopping centres with websites and how a user has to navigate around a site. He then moved on to how everyone is able to complete quick, easy, regular usability tests in order to receive feedback for designers and developers to work from. It’s definately something that we’ll be implementing in future.

Robin Christopherson

Robin works for AbilityNet, a charity to help disabled people to use the Internet and computers. He’s completely blind so uses a screenreader to navigate around his computer and the Internet. I’d seen Robin present a similar talk at the Future of Web Design earlier this year and was blown away by how he manages to get around some sites. I think Darren was similarly stunned when watching Robin give this presentation. To get an idea of the problems users having navigating sites with a screen reader, I suggest you watch some videos.

Hot Topics Panel

Moderated by Jeremy Keith, I’m told that the Hot Topics panel is an @media tradition, well the major talking point for this panel was when Doug Crockford suggested something along the lines of

“There’s so much wrong with the Internet we should stop and start again.”

He was deadly serious, now I’m not sure that I totally agree. The very organic nature of the industry means that we don’t know what is going to happen from one month to the next. We have to remember that this is a young industry in development that’s still in its infancy.

My takehomes

Overall it was a great conference and one I’d love to attend again. Not only the talks but the conversations we had with speakers, attendees and like minded people was excellent. The major points that I came away with were those of process and how implementing some of the things discussed by Andy Clarke, Simon Collison, Andy Budd and Doug Crockford for example can make us more efficient which with the economy as it stands can only be good for ourselves, our customers and our customers customers.

One final note

On another note, for those of you that hadn’t heard @media will next year continue but under the stewardship of John Alsopp and his team at Web Directions after Patrick decided to call it day.