13Jan
Although I’ve been to FOWD for the past three years the 2011 ticket prices just didn’t appear to be value for money with what seemed an aggressive price increase. Although for those three years I’ve been lucky enough for work to pay for me to attend the conference I thought I would maybe try out something different this year.
The reason FOWD seems to not be such value for money is that there are more reasonably priced conferences being launched that still appear to retain the same if not higher standards. The likes of DIBI and New Adventures in Web Design stand out. With such conferences costing much less than FOWD I thought it may be more beneficial to try a few smaller ones and see a wider range of speakers with different areas of expertise.
So this morning, after checking work would foot the cost, I signed up for DIBI 2011. The fact it is pretty local is what initially attracted me but with a decent level of speakers and the addition of Jeffery Zeldman as keynote speaker it appeared this would be the year to give this and possibly other conferences a go. Hopefully I won’t be disappointed and following the reaction last year’s conference received it should be good fun.
6Sep
This Saturday rather than enjoying the rest the weekend had to offer I jumped in the back of a car and headed to Leeds for Think Visibility (or ThinkVis for short).
ThinkVis follows pretty much the normal conference mould in that it gets experts to speak in front of an audience about stuff that earns them money, in the case of ThinkVis this centres primarily on the world of search marketing.
Continue reading “ThinkVis 4: A Review”
25Jul
After writing about Conferences yesterday it reminded me of a post I came across the other day. Paul’s post talks about design conferences being too safe, many of them going with the same old faces, speaking frequently about the same old things. I have to agree to a certain extent with what he says but I also agree that it’s difficult to strike a balance as well as to get people to pay to see complete unknowns, no matter how fantastic they may be.
But it’s not just the faces that should change it’s also the content. Too often you go to a design conference and learn about HTML and CSS, maybe something about design theory or how to survive as a freelancer. But all too often our jobs require more of us, Paul Boag’s session at FOWD this year highlighted this simple truth. For myself working at Bronco I feel means I’ve had to develop further than if I was at any other company. Not only do I have to know about the bread and butter of design and development but I also have to have an understanding of SEO, being that this is what Bronco is best known for. Yet at design conferences this is hardly raised, the concept frequently seen as evil and anti-user.
Continue reading “Conferences Again!”
24Jul
I’ve not exactly been in the business that long, only 4 years, which is depressing when you discover more talented web geeks that have both more experience and happen to be younger than me.
Any way I digress.
In these four years it’s been pretty apparent that although there is some excellent work coming out of web design studios around the country that the main hubs of web types seems to be in the south, namely London, Brighton and Bath for whatever reason. And because these cities are where the web design ‘scene’ is at these cities are where most upcoming designers flock to, either working for the high profile agencies in the area or simply there to try and make connections with other web types.
Continue reading “Thankfully Conferences are coming up norf”