Adactio: Journal—Wrapping up The Future of Web Design

Wrapping up The Future of Web Design

The Future of Web Design is all over bar the workshops. All in all, it was a good day with a well-planned schedule (apart from the yucky product pitches).

I think I did a pretty good job of liveblogging. I neglected to blog two of the presentations; sorry chaps. To recap in chronological order:

Finding Inspiration for Design by Patrick McNeil.
User Experience vs. Brand Experience by Andy Clarke and Steve Pearce.
The User Experience Curve by Andy Budd.
Demo hell courtesy of Microsoft.
Getting Your Designs Approved by Larissa Meek.
Photoshop Battle pitting Jina Bolton and Hannah Donovan against Jon Hicks and Elliot Jay Stocks, umpired by Andy Clarke.
Print is the New Web by Elliot Jay Stocks.
From Design to Deployment by Jon Hicks.
Slightly less hellish demo courtesy of Adobe.
Unconventional Ways to Promote Your Site by Paul Farnell.
Iteration and You by Daniel Burka.

When all the talks were done, a group of my fellow geeks gathered together for dinner. Over a bowl of noodles, I enjoyed a great chat about community management tactics with Denise, Hannah and Daniel. Now that would be a great talk for a conference.

Suitably nourished, we moved on to the official after-party. It was good while the free booze lasted. But the glamour wore off once we were paying £5 for a small bottle of beer and the music got incrementally louder, making it harder and harder to socialise.

Alun led the escape committee in charge of making a break for Pub Standards. Together with Paul, Larissa and Daniel, we hopped in a taxi and sought asylum at The Bricklayer’s Arms. We refugees were greeted with open arms by the geeks gathered there.

Why has it taken me this long to make it to a Pub Standards? It was entirely filled with WIN!

Oh wait. I remember. It’s because of the tortuous journey required to get back to Brighton. In this case it involved an unforeseen change of tube, a sprint through the train station to make it onto the last fast train to Brighton only to be kicked off at East Croyden (something about a “door failure”) where I had to wait for half an hour for the next train to Brighton; a slow one.

That was quite a day. Despite the protracted travel at the end of it, I thoroughly enjoyed myself.

Friday, April 18th, 2008 1:43am

Tagged with fowd fowdlondon08 conference london