Spring of Web 2009 Post-Event Summary
Apr
22
Now that the dust has settled on our Spring of Web 2009 event, I wanted to summarize the event and surveys handed out to attendees.
Dave Stanton, a professor from the College of Journalism, was the first to present and he focused on how his 3-year-old daughter interacts with different interfaces and how it helps him understand how to design usable and intuitive interfaces.
Prentiss Ladkani from the College of Education followed with a presentation on search engine optimization at UF, cleverly disguised by her title “Why doesn’t my site show up on UF Google Search?” Prentiss did a fantastic job of teaching the group how search engines work and how building better web pages using appropriate HTML coding produces better search results.
Web Admin’s Joe Spooner taught us about site analytics and how to interpret (or how not to misinterpret) the information from server logs and tools such as Google Analytics.
Finally, Carl Smith from nGen Works dazzled us with his top 10 list of usability mistakes that web managers can’t afford to make. Carl did the heavy lifting of going through the exhaustive Usability.gov “Research-Based Web Design & Usability Guidelines” and focused on the most strongly supported ones.
Throughout the presentations, we had great questions from attendees in person and on the web, thanks in part to our Twitter backchannel conversation.
Overall, attendees seemed to agree the event was a success. Not only did we get high marks for overall satisfaction, but everyone felt the conference helped make you better at your job.
The entire conference is available on the Spring of Web site, if anyone is interested in reviewing either the terrific content or my horrible cowlick.
May 12th, 2009 at 3:40 am
wish I was there
btw get some hair gel!