SXSW 2008 – Day 2 Summary -

The day started with a glimpse into accessibility. The class was really basic and there were only 1 or 2 things that I picked up overall. I think what we wanted to here more about was guidelines and instead we found out more about the people and the issues they face. THere is nothing wrong with this except for the fact we really wanted to hear more about the guidelines. It was helpfull though to hear the screen reader in process and that is where the most information was gained. I left half way through this one as it wasn’t really hitting on the things I was hoping to hear. Panels are great but they can only answer some questions. At some point you have to just move on into the next one to get as much information as possible.

Next it was on to the Day Cafe for some more book readings. I think these are mislabeled. What these really are are book discussions about the authors books. They have been the best thing so far at the conference. If you want to suck up a lot of information in the quickest way possible this is exactly what you need. The first session was about the book Stylin With CSS A few chapters of the book look interesting and I may end up purchasing it. It’s nice to have a bunch of new morning reading material.

Up next was High Performance Web Sites: There was an extreme amount of invaluable information in this discussion. I learned a lot about the UI and how you can make some small changes to various lines of code and scripts to provide for a faster load experience. The YSlow application can really help to identify these breaking points and help you isolate where some of your UI problems may reside.

The items I noted of most interest include: Javscript at the bottom of the page because of the way the http request model works. Instead of putting the JS first put it last. I do still have concerns about this regarding pages that load slow and pages are heavily ajaxed.

Next on to the Keynote – I wasn’t thrilled about the keynote and the only one thing that I noted was the comment “People in “pink” collar jobs teachers, nurses etc, that have high level of intellegience and skills but are underutilized. IN fact they must pursue outside activities to express these other levels of competency.” This comment hit home
It is very much how I feel everyday…

Next I ran my ass back to the day cafe. By this time I was pretty beat down. The Ballroom A where many of the “good panels” have been taken place is on the way other far far end of the conference center. So I’ve made about 2 miles of trips back and forth by now. The funniest thing to note was on the far end of this side of conference there is a DEFIBRILLATOR. Hmm wonder if that tells us about usability. Anyways I finally made it back to the day cafe…..

Dennis Shiffman was the next author to speak. Who book was entitled Engage it’s directed a lot more towards marketing. THere were many good points. In fact so many I’m not going to list them all here. I think the most important concept was to narrow down your product to one thing you do and one thing you do extremely well. Apple was used as an example. I think if you are in marketing you shoud get the book. I browsed it quick and it has a lot information.

Next it was on to Ballroom A so after a 10 minute trek back the room was full and so I couldn’t get into the panel I really wanted to see the end result was a went to the basecamp panel which wasn’t interesting at all. A lot of people want these panels to be less about the company and the “look what I can do / did factor” and more about pracitcal solutions and stories and examples that they can modify and use. I didn’t gain a lot of great information here so that was dissapointing!

Last it was to the “Worst Web Site Ideas Ever” This panel took ideas that were outlandish and presented them in a mock format to a venture capitalist. The interesting thing to note about this one was that no matter how crazy the idea was thier could still be some merit drawn off the idea and I started to see other potential ideas and directions forming that could actually be legitimate. That was the new thing about the whole thing.

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