Webgrrls Wisdom » Design | Facebook new business page layouts…what you need to know

Facebook new business page layouts…what you need to know

Nelly Yusupova — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 23:08:30 +0000

Wow, I guess technology literally changes every day! Two weeks ago I taught a workshop for NYC Webgrrls on the benefits of building Facebook Landing pages, bringing them the latest and greatest techniques of Social Media marketing. “Visitors who visit your page and land on a custom Welcome page are 47% more likely to Like your page”. Starting March 30, creating a landing page on Facebook will no longer be possible!

Facebook announced, last week, that starting March 30, they are forcing all Facebook Business Page owners to convert to the new timeline format, which will completely eliminate the custom landing page option. In fact, a call to action on a Facebook business page will now be against Facebook’s terms and conditions! (see more details below) (Note: you can still use your custom tabs in your Facebook Page).

New Facebook Page Layout:

(click to enlarge)

Cover Image

The cover image is the new representation of your brand on the Facebook page. The image dimensions are 850px x 315px. Unlike in the previous versions of Facebook page designs, this time around, Facebook has very strict guidelines against adding any marketing tactics and language on the cover image. Facebook’s policies state that cover photos cannot include:

Price or purchase information, such as “40% off” or “Download it at our website.”
Contact information such as a website address, email, mailing address, or information that should go in your Page’s “About” section.
References to Facebook features or actions, such as “Like” or “Share” or an arrow pointing from the cover photo to any of these features.
Calls-to-action, such as “Get it now” or “Tell your friends.”
Covers must not be false, deceptive or misleading, and must not infringe on third parties’ intellectual property.

Since this is the only visual representation of your brand on the business page, the design of this image is pretty important. To get your creativity juices flowing, check out these Facebook Timeline designs examples from SocialFresh & InspirationFeed. You can also check out the Webgrrls Facebook page

Profile Picture

This is the image that gets shown next to each of your updates. You can use a logo or any image that is representative of your brand. We, at Webgrrls decided to highlight our business members in that area.

Choose an image that fits 180 x 180 pixels and also looks good when scaled down to a thumbnail size of 32 x 32 pixels.

Larger Page Tab Icons

The Page Tabs are now located toward the top of the page instead of the sidebar. This, along with the increase of the tab icon size (111px x 74 px), allows you to highlight & showcase your tabs where users can’t miss them. Use this space to showcase your calls to actions and create a clear graphic that shows what’s behind the tab. For the Webgrrls page, we have created 3 graphics with text describing the tabs and these tabs now serve as our ‘navigation’.

Follow these steps to assign an image icon to a tab,

You can also set the order of your tabs by dragging them into the location that you want. (Note: the Photos tab location can’t be changed).

Larger, wider page tabs.

Previously, page tabs were 520px wide, but with the new layout you have 810px of content area to use. You should now go back to all of the previously created page tabs and ensure that they work with the wider width.

Stories – Star, Hide, or Pin

Stories also got revamped. By hovering over individual stories, you can make them wider, hide them from your timeline (pencil icon), highlight them as important (star icon), or delete them. A great new feature is the ability to pin/anchor a specific story to the top of your timeline for up to 7 days. This means you can highlight specific posts with remarkable content, calls-to-action for your marketing offers, or events you want to feature. Pinning it to the top of your page will prevent the content from getting buried by more recent updates.

Messages

This is a brand new feature which allows you to send and receive private message to your page visitors allowing you to can handle your customer service issues directly on Facebook.

By default, the messages will be turned on. To turn off messaging capability, go to Admin Panel, and choose ’Manage’ -> ‘Edit Page’ -> ‘Manage Permissions’ and uncheck the ‘Messages’ box.

Milestones

This is another new feature that allows page owners to tell a story….your business’ biggest accomplishments, awards, product releases, etc. You can create a milestone through your status update box. In addition to title, location, date, and story, you can upload a 843 x 403 pixels image

Admin Panel

This is a new interface that offers page admins an overview of what’s going on with a page. Charts, new notifications and “likes”, check-ins, and more. Everything involved with managing your page and creating ads can be done straight from the panel.

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Please take advantage of the 25 days that you have to carefully plan and design your new Facebook Page so that when March 30th comes around, you are all ready to go.

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Some of the Best LISTS of 2011

Maria Botta — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:17:52 +0000

In that weird time between Christmas and the start of the next year, I love reviewing the year. My 2011 has been quite remarkable, I accomplished many goals and ticked off a few things on my bucket list, including graduating from Thunderbird in Europe, attending Sundance, visiting India and Germany – and overall, just had a wonderful time of travel, friends, and family throughout.

Now it’s time to read the Top and Best of lists for the year, and as 2011 winds to an end, and we start to get a peek at 2012, it’s time to review what 2011 brought us…. and some of the lists it has spawned.

Here is a list of some of the Best Of lists of 2011 that I have found… I would LOVE to hear some of yours!

So the Myan calendar ends in 2012. So what? My calendar ends in December. I just buy a new one. ~ Mr. Youngblood Geography teacher

And in 2012, pending that the world won’t end, here are some interesting lists of things to look forward to.

Now as I am thinking ahead to 2012, making my resolutions, planning, strategizing and imagining what the year ahead may bring… I wish you all an amazing 2012.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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THINK, MAKE, CHECK…Step by Step Lean User Experience

Nelly Yusupova — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 05:36:03 +0000

THINK, MAKE, CHECK…it is that simple and it is profoundly effective…great user experience can be achieved at start-up speed!

I recently attended a LUXi, the Lean User Experience Intensive facilitated by Lane Halley & Josh Seiden of LUXr. The 2-day, hands-on, workshop is designed to teach entrepreneurs how they can achieve “predictable, high-quality, high-velocity user experience outcomes” using Lean UX Principals and I am really excited to share what I learned.

The traditional user experience process is normally long and expensive and that makes it challenging for startups to get products to market fast, and can be the difference between success (great user adoption) and failure.

The Event

The event was extremely well run and the attendees were divided into teams of 3. We were then walked through and practiced a series of activities, each one building on the previous one, that supported one complete Lean UX Cycle: THINK, MAKE, CHECK (click on image to enlarge).

Step by step process of the Lean UX Cycle

THINK

Step 1 – Write down the problem (this exercise helps with establishing focus)
I had the privilege of working with Keka Marzagão & Billy Tobon on a hypothetical “new start-up” in the health food industry. Each of us was directed to write down the “problems” as we perceive them…one problem per sticky note. Then, as a team, we reviewed everyone’s sticky notes and decided what problems are worth solving.

Our first goal was to determine the problem our company will solve. We each brainstormed for 5 minutes identifying different problems in the health food industry and then collectively reviewed everyone’s ideas and settled on the following: “the reason a lot of people don’t eat healthy is because they don’t have time to cook”.

What I learned: I discovered that this method of brainstorming was extremely effective. It ensures that everyone’s individual thoughts will get seen and heard. I find that, in group brainstorming sessions, oftentimes the people who are less outgoing never get a chance to present their ideas.
Step 2 – Create a Hypothesis

Once you decide on a problem you are going to solve, the next step is to create a Hypothesis by framing it into the following sentence structure:

Person type X has problem Y that can be solved by solution Z and measured by metric Q

This was the hypothesis we came up with: “We believe that busy people have the desire/need to eat healthy prepared home cooked meals but they can’t have the time to patience to do it”
Step 3 – Create a Persona
A persona is a narrative that describes the person your product will be used by. A good persona will include information like: behavior patterns, goals, needs, attitudes, beliefs, workflow, skills, and environment. You can use this amazing persona cheat sheet prepared by LUXr.

What I learned: Creating a persona forced us to really think about who our customer is and later, when we went to interview people, it was easier to visually identify them because we knew exactly what we were looking for.

MAKE

Step 1 – Start to think about solutions
Using the hypothesis and the persona, we started exploring the ideas with visual thinking and developing a shared understanding, which helped us move from the abstract to the specific solutions.
We each drew 6 ideas on a piece of paper and, during the group discussion, we were encouraged to provide feedback in the following language:

When Explaining an idea: “this idea solves the following problem for the following person in the following way”

When providing critique: “I don’t see how this solves the problem X”

Step 2 – Establish a census on the best solution to pursue and create an artifact that you can show to users.
We decided that a web application would be the most effective first step and since, in our minds, trust might be the biggest problem in adoption, we decided to create very colorful design that showcases our chef’s photos, ratings, and testimonials. Also important was to showcase the photos of the foods and the ingredients that were used.
Below is my team’s finished prototype designed by Keka:

CHECK

The final step of the process is to validate your ideas by getting out of the building and talking, in person if possible, with living, breathing customers to determine the validity of your assumptions.

We were shown techniques for interviewing people and asking open ended questions. Our team then went out into Union Square to interview potential customers.

What I learned: Through the interview process, I discovered that effective user interviewing is a skill that needs to be mastered and practiced ahead of time. I found it difficult to extract information from the user without leading them. I suggest that you read Lane’s slideshare presentation, I’m out of the building now what, where she covers how & where you can find users to talk to, offering tips for effective user interviews, and much more!

Learning from Others

Another great aspect of the event was the Show & Tell, where all of the teams shared their work and experiences. It was enlightening and empowering to see the different approaches and issues that people came up with and learn from one another. It was amazing to see the Lean UX process at work and see how quickly ideas can be validated

Tips for using these techniques in your own work

Here are some words of wisdom from Lane:

In your own work, you will use these techniques in a way that is appropriate for you. You may choose do these activities for longer periods, or with gaps of hours or days in between. You may choose different collaborators from your team for different activities. You may skip some of these activities or add some of your own. The important thing is that your entire team establishes a SHARED PROBLEM STATEMENT (what is our hypothesis? What result are we trying to accomplish? For whom?), and that you then work towards the MOST LIGHTWEIGHT thing you can make to validate that hypothesis. ~ Lane Halley

My Takeaway

I will not ever build a feature or a product without going through this process first! Thank you Lane & Josh!

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Mentors & Motivators – Meet Nina Walia

Nelly Yusupova — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 14:55:31 +0000

Mentors & Motivators is a series of blog posts interviewing some women who are accomplishing some amazing things with the hope that their stories will encourage, inspire, and motivate you in your career, business, or personal life.

Meet Nina Walia. Nina is a Creative Strategist and Producer of Engaging Cross-Platform Experiences. She has overseen interaction design and content development of websites and games for the Webby-award winning pbskids.org since 2004.

Never let someone else tell you that you don’t belong at the table – most of all yourself. Remember how crucial your unique perspective is to how we use and design technology and in shaping the freedoms of systems of the future.
~Nina Walia

1. What is your background and how did you get into the interaction design field?

As a daughter of an Electrical Engineer father, I was always the tinkering with technology. I studied Computer Science at Georgia Tech but the lack of diversity in the CS student population lead to a lack of diversity in teaching approaches so I left to pursue more creative uses of technology. I transferred to University of Georgia and received a degree in Journalism, focusing on film, audio and new media production – but I couldn’t shake the knowledge I had gained from Computer Science. I had learned how to make systems and interactive components work so I applied interaction to all my media projects. For example, I helped build a webcasting studio and produce events for it, I built and operated an interactive component to a theater production and built websites for orgs on a freelance basis.

Without skipping a beat, I knew I wanted to pursue interactive design further and went straight to grad school. I returned to Georgia Tech, where they had begun a Masters program called Information Design and Technology. IDT was a new multidisciplinary program crossing computer science with art, design, & communication. It was a fantastic program where, amongst many things, I sound designed tangible environments, learned usability and human computer interaction concepts, created educational technology applications, and experimented with designing new kinds of interfaces for experiences of the future.

2. What is it about interaction design that you most enjoy, or find most rewarding?

Finding new ways for people to connect with content and each other.

Companies must set aside time and budget to conduct user testing, even if it’s just informal user testing. It shouldn’t be one of the first items on the budget chopping block when it’s so fundamental to a company’s success.

3. What’s your favorite milestone in your career or business?

There’s still so much to accomplish! But one of the achievements I’m most proud of is becoming the “go to” for creating concepts for cross-platform experiences at PBS KIDS. I’ve produced successful games kids participate with on TV, online, and soon on mobile devices.

4. What major obstacle/barrier/conflict have you faced and how did you overcome it?

Working at a nonprofit you are often asked to produce big things with small resources, so I’ve found many ways to overcome budget and resource barriers in order to produce successful gigs. Some tricks include reusing art or audio assets from TV programs for the web and having an arsenal of external developers you are familiar with who are extremely flexible. By delivering products that shine and get the attention of company decision makers, our interactive team has been allocated more resources in subsequent projects. We’ve proven ourselves time and time again, taking us from being a second thought to innovation leaders all departments of the company turn to.

Always think about how you can extend an experience across devices and platforms from the beginning to gain efficiencies and a unified user experience. At the concept or kick-off phase, have representatives from every platform team at the table to brainstorm the big picture and how it all ties together.

5. What are the common mistakes made by companies when it comes to interaction design?

A common mistake is using company employees as the only source of user testing. All too often I’ve seen the approval of senior executives be the only point in the development process where someone outside the project interacts with the interface. Companies must set aside time and budget to conduct user testing, even if it’s just informal user testing. It shouldn’t be one of the first items on the budget chopping block when it’s so fundamental to a company’s success.

Another mistake is not having a diverse pool of interaction designers. Different backgrounds bring different perspectives and approaches to a project. Without diversity you are operating with a blind side.

6. Which websites do you admire from an interaction design perspective?

I’ve been working on quite a bit of augmented reality lately so I’ve come across some interesting new kinds of interaction models. It’s exciting because these models allow children to bypass the challenge of using a mouse. Enhanced interaction can be placed on tangible objects children are used to, like blocks. For example, using wIzQubes™, kids can manipulate familiar fairy tales by arranging blocks next to each other in different combinations.

7. You specialize in building Engaging Cross-Platform Experiences. Can you give advice to other companies who are trying to design their applications for different platforms?

Two key points of advice:

Plan the experience as a cross platform experience from day one! Always think about how you can extend an experience across devices and platforms from the beginning to gain efficiencies and a unified user experience. At the concept or kick-off phase, have representatives from every platform team at the table to brainstorm the big picture and how it all ties together.
Take advantage of each medium’s affordances. The experience should not be exactly the same across platforms. For example, there are ways you can engage with characters or content on mobile devices that TV or desktop computer don’t allow you to.

The greatest “technology” I’ve adopted is this new personal time prioritization system.

8. You have designed very successful curriculum-based games for kids. What are some challenges that you’ve faced in designing things for kids? Any advice to someone who is trying to build an application for this demographic?

What you think you know about this age is probably wrong J. User testing is key. Testing with your own children or neighbor’s children is probably not enough of a sample to reflect the general population (interaction designers’ children are generally more savvy than most).

Another thing that has helped is taking days where we’ll volunteer at a school for that age group. Immersing ourselves in what its like to be a kid that age is a great reality check on the abilities of that age group.

I highly recommend consulting the PBS Parents Child Development Tracker: http://www.pbs.org/parents/childdevelopmenttracker/. We worked with child development experts to gain insight into learning and development milestones for children ages 1-9 years. The guide covers: approaches to learning, creative arts, language, literacy, math, science, physical health, and social & emotional growth.

9. What is the latest, greatest technology that helped you make a quantum leap in your work?

Outside of my day job I am involved in many organizations and side projects that are demanding of my time. I’ve finally learned that although I want to be involved in everything, I only end up feeling guilty about how I don’t have enough time or energy to give my best to each and every project. I now focus only on a couple of projects that elicit the most personal happiness when I’m engaging with them, and I allow myself the flexibility of being involved only for certain time frames. I’m spread much less thin and am much more productive. So the greatest “technology” I’ve adopted is this new personal time prioritization system.

10. What are the qualities & characteristics that a professional woman needs to succeed in today’s fast paced world of technology? What sage words of advice (words of wisdom) can you offer to other professional women to help them achieve their own success?

I agree wholeheartedly with Cheryl Platz’s answer to this question: “Never let someone else tell you that you don’t belong at the table – most of all yourself.” Remember how crucial your unique perspective is to how we use and design technology and in shaping the freedoms of systems of the future.

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Usability is life and death. Resources for learning more…

Nelly Yusupova — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 22:18:13 +0000

Web 2.0 brought with it the explosion of rich internet applications that work over the web and allow users to not just read content but interact with applications. As users use our web applications, and with so many options out there, I believe that the User Interface of your application is the difference between user adoption….and ultimately success and failure. As a web 2.0 company you are now forced to create simple and elegant solutions that create the shortest paths from start to finish for your application tasks.

Whether you are a designer, developer, writer, marketer, you need to understand usability to be able to create experiences that people would enjoy. Being aware of what is going on, also makes it easier for the team to work with a usability professional and move the project along.

Here are some resources where you can learn more about usability

Interaction Design Association. It is a global network dedicated to the professional practice of Interaction Design. With the help of more than 20,000 members since 2004, the IxDA network provides an online forum for the discussion of interaction design issues and other opportunities and platforms for people who are passionate about interaction design to gather and advance the discipline. Their website has a great list of resources with video talks from past events/conferences.
Interaction Conference – Every year, IxDA gathers the interaction design community to stretch our minds, sharpen our skills, and inspire each other. We are very excited to be a media partner for the interaction ’11 conference in February and will be conducting interviews with some of the presenters and writing about some of our favorite sessions. So stay tuned!
Learn from Other’s Successes – Find other web applications that people are raving about and learn from them. Here is a list of great web app interfaces to get you started.
Read books on the subject: 11 Usability, UX, Interface books you should own

Do you have other suggestions? Please share with us in the comments!

testing blockquote

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Save Time & Money – Leverage the expertise by using Design Patterns

Nelly Yusupova — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 18:06:32 +0000

Web designers & developers are constantly searching to find the best practices for guiding the user through completing a specific action or task on a website. And as more and more complex applications come online, and there is more and more user interaction with those applications, the problem to present information in a meaningful way for the user to interact with in those applications, becomes increasingly difficult.

But designers no longer have to work in a vacuum to figure out the solutions. They can now leverage all of the expertise, user behavior analysis, and best practices of the great user interface design patterns that are available online.

What is a user interface design pattern?

A design pattern is good design that has been vetted and tested for usability by designers, User Interface (UI) experts, and even the design community that have been proven to work well for very specific user situations and user issues. It is a package of proven expertise that informs the designer of the principles behind the design and what is known to work.

Using known and researched principles in your design will save you time and money and make your applications more intuitive for the user and easy to use.

All design patterns answer the following questions:

What is the Problem we are trying to solve?
What is the Solution?
When and why to use the pattern?

Where can I find design patterns?

Yahoo Design Pattern Library
Yahoo! breaks down their design patterns into five categories: Layout, Navigation, Selection, Rich Interaction, and Social. Within each category you will find an array of design patterns that not only answer the standard questions of What, When & Why they also provide real world examples, code examples, related patterns, and similar patterns from non Yahoo! libraries. They also have a community where you can discuss the design patterns with people who are trying to solve the same design problems.
Welie.com
The patterns on this site are grouped in a very meaningful way. The main categories are broken down into:
User needs which include navigating around, searching, shopping, making choices
basic interactions, dealing with data, personalizing, making choices, giving input.
Application needs which include drawing attention, feedback, simplifying interaction.
Context of design which include site types, experiences, page types
UI-Patterns.com
This website provides a good number of design patters but what makes it different is that they offer a lot of examples of actual sites that use good design principles via their screenshot collections and their resources.
Open Source Design Pattern Library
This is a community where designers, developers, and other people interested in patterns can come to reference material, collaborate on patterns and designs, and share their knowledge with everyone.

Do you use other resources that I haven’t mentioned? Let me know if the comments!

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Book Clubs for User Experience Professionals

Kristin Vincent — Thu, 11 Jun 2009 18:57:24 +0000

I’m sure quite of few of you are already in book clubs, but I wanted to recommend one you might want to consider. In your current book club, you probably get together with your friends every so often as an excuse to drink wine while chatting about the plot and characters. But what if you had that same experience except you discussed professional books? Check out a new site the organizes book clubs for user experience professionals.

I work in online user experience for Barnes & Noble, so this is right up my alley. Plus, I’m always hesitant to join book clubs with friends because I can be a little particular about which fiction books I read. This is why the idea of a professional book club appeals to me so much. I have an ever growing list of fiction books I want to one day get to, but I wouldn’t mind a little help from my peers in choosing which books on user experience are the most relevant at this very moment. And I’d be thrilled if a group of peers wanted to read it at the same time and then link up to discuss—especially if it’s done leisurely over a glass of wine.

It looks like I’m not the only one excited about this idea. UX Book Clubs have sprouted in Asia, Australia, New Zealand, Europe, the Middle East, and all over North and South America.

Boxes and Arrows, which features articles on information architecture and design, recently had an article profiling UX Book Clubs. In the article, the founder, Steve Baty writes, “In early Nov 2008, I started to talk to a few people about the idea of a book club in Sydney to discuss User Experience (UX) books….And then something surprising happened, people liked the idea so much that they started doing things to make it happen.”

Even if you don’t have one in your area, or if you can’t attend, you can still benefit. Each group gets an individual page on the site to post its mission and the list of books the group has read. Not every group has a robust page up yet, but still the rest of us can get ideas by digging through the various lists. It’s also interesting to see what the hot UX topic is in different parts of the world.

Here’s how the group describes itself on the website:

The UX Book Club seeks to enhance the abilities and knowledge of user experience professionals from information architects and interaction designers to visual designers and usability specialists to augment their understanding for excellence in UX practice, ixd design theory while building a passionate local community. Subjects of interest to this club span design theory, design research and user experience research practices and processes. The books include the strategy and business of design, UX design theory and history, methodology, usability research, and the ethics of UX professionals, while networking and having some fun….

And if you don’t see your city on the list, go to the UX Book Club site to start your own!

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Better Experiences for Online Games

Kristin Vincent — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 19:33:22 +0000

Online gaming is huge. I tried to find out just how huge is huge, but I had a hard time getting up-to-date statistics. According to an article on BNET about online gaming statistics, 200 million people were playing online games in August of 2007. Most of those people were playing action/adventure/roll-playing games, puzzles, and sports.

But with so many companies climbing on board to produce games, many end up with sub-par user experiences. Mark Hurst of Creative Good started a list of games with great user experiences. It’s a lengthy list of games ranging from 2005 to present. He has even taken the time to jot down if the game has a long or quick playtime.

There are of course the classics, like Hearts. But Mark has taken the time to identify his favorite version of online Hearts: Yahoo! Hearts. But Mark has also found odd games like Fishing Girl. As the site describes, in this game you get to “[r]eel in those fish one by one as you attempt to save a boy who’s trapped on the other side of the ocean.” Here’s what Mark says about this game: “Very nicely designed fishing game with a clever payoff.”

For anyone thinking of following the trend, take a look to see what sets some online games apart.

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Experience Last Month’s IA Summit Online

Kristin Vincent — Mon, 20 Apr 2009 12:00:57 +0000

In today’s world, it’s hard to take time out of work and life to attend conferences. And in today’s economy, many of us are opting to save the money needed to attend these conferences. But for anyone who missed the 10th Anniversary IA Summit that was held in Memphis, TN on March 20 through 22, you can still catch some of the sessions online.

Several of the staff at Boxes and Arrows captured many of the main sessions and posted them on their site. As of now, they seem to have posted everything except Days 2 and 3. But they have a message up saying that more sessions should be rolling in over the next two weeks, so hopefully those will get filled in soon. The conference theme was “Expanding Our Horizons”.

Michael Wesch opened the conference with a keynote address about “fresh and ambitious direction for all designers”. I also like how Boxes and Arrows embedded the IA Summit’s music theme at the top of each page. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a conference (at least not a usability conference) with it’s own jingle.

For anyone who isn’t familiar with the IA Summit, here’s a brief description from the summit’s website:

The Information Architecture Summit is the premier gathering place for information architects and other user experience professionals. It’s grown from a special interest group’s efforts to define an emerging field, to a rich and expanding community of practice shaping and informing multiple disciplines. You don’t have to be an IA or User Experience professional to enjoy the Summit. You simply have to love the art and science of structuring information.

View a full schedule of the 2009 IA Summit.

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SXSWi 2009 – Lots of Sessions, Lots of Networking and Lots of Fun!

Nelly Yusupova — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 20:30:44 +0000

Two weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the SXSW Interactive conference in Austin, TX. My colleagues and past attendees told me it was a “must attend” event and I have to tell you that it was great fun, exciting, inspiring and, of course, productive. Full disclosure – Webgrrls International was a media sponsor for the event

The SXWSi team put together an amazingly well organized and coordinated conference featuring five days of thoughtful and thought provoking sessions, amazing people to meet and really fun parties. According to the SXSW team, “the event celebrates the best minds and the brightest personalities of emerging technology”. Kudos to the entire SXSW team…I though it was great…

As a first-timer, the conference could have been overwhelming had I not attended the How to Rawk SXSW: The Basics, which is a panel geared to first-time attendees, and focuses on how registrants can leverage all the different elements of the event to achieve personal and professional goals…I recommend this panel for all of the first-timers next year.

Lot’s of Sessions….

I attended sessions every day…for five days. Some of the sessions that really stood out to me were:

Journey to the Center of Design led by Jared Spool, founding partner of User Interface Engineering. Jared discussed how user research affects design, the importance of measuring the right things, how to measure brand engagement, and 3 core UX (user experience) attributes for great experience. Watch the highly edited version of the presentation: Part 1 & Part 2
Building Your Brand with Web 2.0 Tools with Saul Colt of Freshbooks, C.C. Chapman of The Advance Guard, Chris Brogan of New Marketing Labs and Loic Le Meur of Seesmic. The expert panel discussed the importance of building your brand and how easy it is to do it now with all of the social media tools accessible to everyone. They also mentioned that not every social media tool is right for every brand and the importance of choosing the right tools for your brand. Check out a the blog post from Kate who live blogged the session.
How to Protect Your Brand Without Being a Jerk! With Twanna A Hines (funkybrownchick.com), Elena Paul Exec Dir , VLA, Oren Bitan Atty, HIQI Media, Eric Steuer Creative Dir, Creative Commons, Danny O’Brien eff.org. The panel discussed ways to protect your brand & content from copycats. Check out this detailed outline for the session.

There were many more session that were great but these are the ones that stood out in my mind. You can also explore all of the archives of the daytime programming for this year’s event by checking out videos and audio podcasts.

Lot’s of Events and Lot’s of People to Meet….

There were so many parties to attend and I did my best to attend the best one’s…and I think that I did.

The TechSet Meets The Rat Pack at SXSWi – this was my kick off party hosted by and brought together Microsoft.
Frog Design – with wine and beer all around, this party was a huge gathering of almost every one at SXSW in attendance (at least it seemed it)…I had a lot of fun and met the most people.
Conversify – with SweetRiot chocolates and MiddleSister Wine to set the tone, the conversify women threw an intimate soirée for a few of their closest friends…
Kirtsy – this was an amazing gathering hosted by the Women of Kirtsy and Guy Kawasaki of Alltop. I reconnected with all of the friends I made at the Mom 2.0 Summit and made some new ones.
Tumblr – Tumblr hosted another huge event that was great fun and I met a lot of people who have become some new great friends

Here are some photos that I have taken of my week in Austin.

I found the most value in meeting the attendees, making new connections and re-connecting with the people that I already knew. I met some great people in the hallways between sessions, in the TechSet Lounge, at the parties, and even on the streets there were people to meet.

I have to say that the SXSW conference is a “must attend” event and I look forward to next year’s event and to seeing you all there….

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