dotconf

 – posted July 26th, 2010 by Cory-Ann Joseph     Comments (3)

dotconf
Last Thursday’s dotconf at the National College of Ireland was packed (and not just because it was free). I was lucky enough to score a last minute ticket - here are some of my highlights:

Wisdom in the Crowd - Mark Little, Storyful

So what is Storyful? Mark didn’t give away all the answers, but instead started with familiar territory: how the quantity, quality and immediacy of news sources has changed with the advent of social media. Where journalists once had to go digging for information, the new challenge is now curation - how to extract the real story from all the layers of information out there. This is the essence of Storyful - making news from noise.

Mark encouraged everyone to stop thinking about gadgets/apps and to start thinking about process as a means for innovation. Traditional journalism was about polishing and refining before release to get the story perfect, but Mark is embracing the mindset of a software developer - launching to get help testing, and then refining. To find out what that means for news and media keep an eye on Storyful - they are opening to the public for testing soon.

OMG TMI!!!!!!!! –  Interacting with large data sets on the web - Martha Rotter, Microsoft

Martha gave a really interesting live demo of Pivot (http://www.getpivot.com) - their new tool for visualising and analysing large sets of raw data and also content - even your browsing history. The interactions are really beautiful - check out Gary Flake’s TED talk below to see it in action.

Business, Experience, Technology - Des Traynor, Contrast

Contrast works almost exclusively with startups and since a portfolio of failures isn’t impressive, they are very selective about who they work with. Des talked about how they make these decisions, using Bill Buxton’s BXT (business, experience technology) framework:

Business: Freemium has serious limitations (eg. Ning - 120M in funding, but just had to cut 40% of staff) - or as Des put it, “When did it become okay to have a business that didn’t make money?!” Think hard about your pricing model - choosing non-traditional revenue streams can be a huge differentiator eg. Ryanair sells flights at cost price, puts huge margins on everything else (luggage, food, etc.). Read Ron Baker’s Pricing on Purpose for more detail.

Experience: UX is not UI design - you can have a product that looks great but if your customer is unhappy after using it, that’s a broken experience. Everything matters from pixel to package - think about all the touchpoints your customer has with your product (purchasing, use, customer service) and then take every opportunity you can to delight them.

Technology: This got skimmed over due to lack of time but I think the underlying principle was to make sure you build right. Technical strength can also be a huge differentiator eg. YouTube - no one else can duplicate the same volume of video uploads and streaming. Also check out Heroku - a great cloud application platform for building and deploying web apps using Ruby.

Usable Language: How content shapes the user experience

iQ’s Randall Snare and Elizabeth McGuane also gave a deep dive on one of our favourite topics of late: content. If you missed it, the slides below will give you some practical (and cheap!) ways to improve your website through language alone.

The best of the rest

  • Gerry Power from Sysco gave a great introduction to everything cloud computing, including the downsides
  • Keith Maycock, NCI discussed future trends such as augmented reality, ubiquitous computing and robotics
  • Iarfhlaith Kelly from Webstrong showed how to build a Twitter app in 10 minutes with @Anywhere

Unfortunately I missed the afternoon talks, but keep an eye on the dotconf page for the videos - especially the inspirational finale from Robin Blandford from Decision for Heroes.

A big thank-you to Deryck and Emma from NCI for inviting us along and congrats on a great conference. If study is your thing, make sure to check out the NCI’s new MSc in Web Technologies - a lot of great Irish tech minds (including our own John Wood) have been involved in advising on the content, and it’s a great blend of both technology and entrepreneurship.

Categories Design, Events, Site reviews, iQ in the news

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