Pat’s Point of View

Well what a second day! If I worried that the quality of the first day couldn’t be maintained, I needn’t have. Even the one complaint I had from yesterday (the temperature: in the big room it was freezing, in the little rooms it was warm) had been rectified.

And I thought there was a great line-up of speakers today, possibly better than yesterday. We started with Scott Berkun talking about innovation, or indeed talking about not talking about innovation. This was a great topic considering the myriad of start-ups, mash-ups and ‘new’ ideas that dominate the web industry, and Scott is an excellent speaker.

I followed this with George Oates and her presentation that focussed on Flickr and its history and underlying concepts. Very cool, made me want to have my own start-up and just begin experimenting.

During lunch I spoke to the guys at Gekko Images about Expression Media, and I have to admit I’m pretty sold on it. I’ve tried it in the past and I think it has the right combination of simplicity and functionality to suit the work I do.

After lunch, Lisa Herrod and Stephen Cox gave us two whole user-centred sessions. I particularly liked Stephen’s talk about using ethnographic research methods within a commercial organisation such as News Digital Media. He is the master :)

To finish off the day, and the conference, was Mark Pesce’s presentation on…well, on lots of things but most importantly the destruction of the ‘hierarchy’ by the ‘network’. This was more than just a keynote, this was a real reality check. Eye-opening, inspiring and scary in equal parts. I’m sure many people in that auditorium will do just as he suggested, and question why they are doing the jobs they are on Tuesday.

All in all, lost of things to think about over this long weekend (yay!)

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