Since I joined Freshview I have been fortunate enough to be asked to speak at a couple of web conferences. I'm no expert, but I have learned some lessons as to the best way for me to get ready.
Keep reading to see a slidecast of my Web Directions talk and some of the advice I have found useful in delivering a talk.
I've worked as web designer for a fair while now - so long in fact that I used to be called a webmaster, a title that now lives on in government departments like blacksmith and cobblers in those little re-creation villages. Ye olde web town!
A fair chunk of my time was spent as a web designer inside decidedly non-web companies, including Count Wealth Accountants and Australian Stock Exchange. There is very little web glamour to be had in such companies. You are often working on internal projects, or sites that are on topics so specialised that people fall asleep when you try to explain them.
That's why a while back I started Designers Inhouse, a mailing list for internal web designers everywhere.
Daniel Pink's "A Whole New Mind" makes the claim that we are leaving the Information Age and entering an era where 'right-brainers' will dominate the workplaces.
How do web designers fit into this new world? When the html and CSS can be done for a miniscule price in the Philippines, India or China, what will web designers be doing?
In 1998, and through the first web boom and bust, just being able to create decent HTML (and then CSS) was enough to ensure profitable employment. In 2008, when there is literally dozens of options for outsourcing the production of HTML and CSS to much lower cost locations, what does a modern, employable web designer need to look like?
According to the Google, "it all comes down to".....
It all comes down to this.
During the production of the Email Standards Project video, I needed to find a hosting service to serve the video.
We were anticipating quite a few views (over 1600 so far), so the bandwidth costs would be significant. Our main priority in selecting a service was quality, which meant no tiny and heavily compressed Youtube. We'd seen Vimeo used before and decided to check it out. Good choice, as it turned out.
Envy my job! I spent a few hours putting together the above video for the Email Standards Project, a community effort to improve the way HTML and CSS is rendered in major email clients. Gmail in particular has made some odd decisions as far as stripping out all CSS except the inline styles.
On May 16th I will be speaking at the Web Directions South event in Melbourne, subtitled “User Experience”. It’s a two day event with workshops on the 15th and the conference proper on the 16th. The Web Directions team has always produced great events in the past; I particularly enjoyed the Sydney conference last year where Freshview had a booth and gave away an iMac.
The user experience theme promises some interesting talks, and there are people coming who will definitely be worth hearing. I’m particularly looking forward to Oliver Wiedlich on the mobile web. My presentation is titled “Delivering user experience to the inbox: designing for email”, our area of expertise at Freshview.
Email is definitely not the new hotness for web designers, and HTML email has (in some cases deservedly) a bad reputation. In fact, when I spoke at the Future of Web Design in NY last year, fully half the audience put up their hands when I asked “Who hates HTML email?”. So I’ve got my work cut out for me.
So if you can make it to Melbourne in May, I’d love to see you at Web Directions South: User Experience.
© 2007 Mathew Patterson — 
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