David Herrold

BarCampHouston3 recap

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Development, Marketing, Mobile, Networking, Social Networking, Software, Technology

Justine and I attended BarCamp Houston at the Houston Technology Center yesterday and had a great time. A big thanks to all the organizers (Marc Nathan, Kelsey Ruger, Josh Tabin, Scott Stolz). You guys made the event a smashing success for everyone. And thanks to all the sponsors for helping to make BarCamp Houston possible.

For those who don’t know what BarCamp is, here is a brief explanation:

BarCamp is an international network of user generated conferences — open, participatory workshop-events, whose content is provided by participants — often focusing on early-stage web applications, and related open source technologies, social protocols, and open data formats. – Wikipedia

This can be simplified to “day camp for nerds.”

I watched some great presentations and participated in some interesting discussions throughout the day. BarCamps are only as great as their participants, and we had some great participants this year.

Ed Schipul’s presentation on PR and social media was sharp. His creative use of a green laser pointer kept the crowd in line (as much as possible) as he explained how to “put the relations back in public relations” using social media. It’s a pleasure to watch a pro on stage engage the audience as well as Ed does.

Josh Tabin spoke about how start-up funding works. I found his discussion about the ins and outs of financing to be pretty enlightening. I left the discussion knowing a lot more about how start-ups make that initial leap into businesses.

Tracy and Imelda whipped up an impromptu discussion on digital photography and social media. I’m pretty sure there should have been a cover charge for the room and IDs checked at the door. Tracy had the room in stitches for a solid 30 minutes, while feeding them great advice for managing their photos in Flickr.

Katherine Druckman also jumped into the mix with an impromptu presentation about Drupal, the open source content management system. The crowd had lots of questions and she fielded them like a pro.

Wynn Netherland and Jim Mulholland from Squeejee.com gave a great presentation on virtual collaboration tools. I’ve gotten used to keeping much of my work “in the cloud” and Wynn and Jim did a nice job of rounding up the most useful tools for working with teams spread across the globe (they even did their presentation live on Google Docs. Cool.)

Here’s a photo of the schedule board in the lobby. A little something for everyone.

My own presentation about mobile web design & SMS went pretty well (at least I think so…it’s hard to gauge while standing behind a podium). I used a live SMS poll to determine how the crowd used their phones the most (talking, email, text messaging or mobile internet). Email and WAP came out on top, which isn’t surprising given the technologically savvy crowd at BarCampHouston. (Screenshot of the BarCampHouston3 mobile poll results.) I also posted some photos on Flickr yesterday.

(Update: I just found out my presentation deck was featured on the homepage of Slideshare today! Woot! Here’s the screenshot.)

Have a great Sunday, everyone!

P.S. – Bill Shirley posted a nice BarCampHouston update, too. Check it out.

P.P.S – Steve Evatt also recapped BarCamp Houston and took some cool photos as well.

Tags: barcamp, barcamphouston3, conference, houston, Technology

Google opens Website Optimizer

Posted by Dave | Filed under Business, Design, Development, Google, Marketing, Usability, Web design

Google released their Website Optimizer platform last week for general use. It has only been available to sites using Google AdWords in the past, but now can be used by anyone to enhance site performance. This is great news for web analytic junkies, usability testers, developers and designers alike.

In a nutshell, Google’s Website Optimizer allows you to test multiple versions of content (ie. marketing messages, logos, icons, copy, etc) in a live environment to determine which combination of content yields the best results.

Based upon what you are testing, this “result” could mean higher click-throughs, increased product sales, increased product downloads, increased ad revenue, higher traffic to internal pages, etc.

This eliminates the guesswork of testing ad placement, site designs, product purchase flows, etc. You can simply release multiple versions of your content and look at the analytics to determine which one is yielding the best results.

There are certainly other tools to do the same job; but not many are free or this simple. We could certainly do the same thing at the Chronicle, however we would have to use several systems to make it happen. This simplicity of using one system appeals to me.

Here are some links to get you started with Google’s Website Optimizer:

Google Website Optimizer
Google Website Optimizer blog
Website Optimizer press release

(via Web Worker Daily)

Tags: analytics, Google, Marketing, Usability, website optimizer

Headed to BarCampNOLA

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Development, Marketing, Networking, Technology, Web design

Looks like I’m headed to New Orleans for BarCampNOLA in a couple of weeks. I missed BarCampHouston & BarCampTexas recently due to scheduling conflicts and my general chaotic schedule at work.

Since NOLA is a fun place in general, I’ve convinced the missus to join me. I have a feeling she will be doing more shopping than BarCamping, but I’m just glad she’s coming along regardless.

It looks like the campers will be helping a local business with the power of technology. I assume this will involve legions of man-servant robots and rocket-powered jetpacks. More likely it will involve a handful of programmers and a few laptops. I suspect Twitter will be involved somehow too.

The most popular Steve I know will also be attending (I think).

Looking forward to some beignets and a cup of chicory coffee…and finding a room in the French Quarter for under $250 a night. Yikes.

- Dave

Tags: barcamp, barcampnola, french quarter, Networking, social media, Technology, Web design

Startup weekend 2008

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Development, Marketing, Software, Technology, Web design

What is Startup weekend you might ask? Well according to the website Startup weekend is:

“an intense 54 hour event bringing together brilliant tech minds (developers, designers, marketers, ect.) together to create a company from concept to launch!”

We Houstonians have the opportunity to bring Startup Weekend to Texas by voting on the Startup weekend website. Austin and Dallas are both listed as potential cities for the next event (I voted for Austin because I think it might be a little more fun than Dallas).

Vote here | Read more about Startup Weekend | Subscribe to Startup weekend RSS

Tags: Design, Software, start up weekend, startup weekend, technology conferences, Web design, web development

SXSW 2008

Posted by Dave | Filed under Design, Marketing, Technology, Usability, Web design

I’m officially registered along with Steve and Lina at the Chronicle.  I’m looking forward to meeting some great people and exchanging some great ideas at the conference.

Drop me a line if you plan on attending.  I think it’ll be a blast.

Tags: conference, interactive, SXSW, Technology, Usability, Web design

SXSW Interactive 2008 panels

Posted by Dave | Filed under Communication, Design, Marketing, Software, Technology, Usability, Web design

I was browsing the 2008 South by Southwest (SXSW) Interactive panels for some topics that sound interesting and I ran into a little problem.  It’s not the 3 hour drive to Austin.  It’s not the $400+ entry fee.  It’s not the dizzying array of ironic hipster t-shirts that I will likely encounter.

I found so many interesting panels that I will surely need to clone myself through some unearthly Lovecraftian manner to see everything I want to see.

I’m OK with that, as long as my clones wear pants (I’m not going through THAT embarrassment again).  Anyhow, it would be quite convenient if one of me could make a Taco Cabana run while the other me is listening to an interesting panel on building an audience for your social networking application.

Regardless of my cloned status, here are the panels I thought sounded interesting this year:

1. Business
10 Tips for Managing a Creative Environment (Bryan Mason)
Unconventional Collaboration: Tips for Local and Remote Teams (Jason Fried)

2. Content
Accessible Rich Media (Sharron Rush)
Behind the Scenes at the Onion News Network (Sean Mills)
Roll Over Gutenberg, Tell McLuhan The News (George Kelly)

3. Design
A General Theory of Creative Relativity (Jim Coudal)
Blood, Sweat, and Fear: Great Design Hurts (Michael Lopp)
Design Control in a Digital World: Getting It and Losing It (Khoi Vinh)
Design Eye 2008 (Keith Robinson)
God (and Design) is in the Detail (Naz Hamid)
Logos: Why They’re Irrelevant and Can Actually Hurt Your Business (Bryan Zmijewski)
Magic and Mental Models: Using Illusion to Simplify Designs (Jared M. Spool)
Make It So: Learning From SciFi Interfaces (Nathan Shedroff)
Meet The Architects (Molly Wright Steenson)
Social Design Strategies (Emily Chang)
Tools for Enchantment: 20 Ways to Woo Users (Kathy Sierra)
Wireframing in a Web 2.0 World (Richard Rutter)

4. Marketing
Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing (Brian Oberkirch)
Totally Wired Teens: How Teens are Using Your Applications (Anastasia Goodstein)

5. Mobile / Wireless
Getting Unstuck II: From Desktop to Device (Liz Danzico)
How Many Clicks to the Center of…? (Conleth O’Connell)
Life after the i-Phone (Kate Ryan)
Mobile Phones: International Devices of Mystery (Michael Sharon)
Using Entertainment to Create Effective Mobile Advertising (Abam Zbar)

6. Next Generation
The Art of Speed (Tim Ferriss)
Hardware Mashups: Introducing the Long Tail of Gadgets (Peter Semmelhack)
Online Identity Crisis (Jason Levitt)
The Science of Designing Interactions (Andreas Weigend)

7. Programming
Catching up with Accessibility: The Basics Quickly (Shawn Henry)
Content Management System Roundup (George DeMet)
Creating Findable Rich Media Content (Jennifer Taylor)
Creative Collaboration: Building Web Apps Together (Paul Hammond)
Everything I Know about Accessibility I Learned From Star Wars (Derek Featherstone) Filching Design (Lindsey Simon)
Getting There Faster By Using Open Code (Jack Moffitt)
Make Your Client-Side Code Ready for Internationalization (Jon Wiley)
Scalability Boot Camp (Jakob Heuser)
Secrets of JavaScript Libraries (John Resig)
Web Service APIs Your Mom Will Love (Ben Vinegar)

7. Social
Building Portable Social Networks (Jeremy Keith)
Social Network Coups: The Users are Revolting! (Annalee Newitz)
Social Networking and Your Brand (Jina Bolton)
The Supercollider: A Hero of the Social Network (Souris Hong-Porretta)
The Suxorz: The Worst Ten Social Media Ad Campaigns of 2007 (Henry Copeland)
Taking Over the World: the Flickr Way (Simon Batistoni)
True Stories from Social Media Sites (Rashmi Sinha)

Let me know if you’re planning on going to SXSW this year and maybe we can hang out with Lou Reed, the original rock-n-roll animal.  He’s this year’s keynote speaker for the music festival.

SXSW Interactive 2008
SXSW Interactive panels
SXSW main site

Tags: 2008, south by southwest interactive, SXSW