Management & Strategy Track

Talk Amongst Yourselves: How Blogs, Wikis and Social Media are Transforming Business

DL Byron - Principal, Textura Designs

Blogging on the public Internet is mainstream. Now comes the next revolution: blogging within an organization. A growing number of corporations and institutions—including Boeing, Intel, and NASA—are using blogs and social media to foster internal collaboration and improved knowledge management.

Learn the unique uses of internal blogging, see how standards and blog technologies have made intranet user experiences richer, and discover the potential for RSS workflow. We'll conclude with a discussion of blogging strategies aimed at helping you to start the blogging conversation at your company or organization.

Make AJAX Work for Your Site and Your Users: A Case Study on Improving Product Selection

Steve Mulder - Director, Emerging Interactions Molecular
Riccardo La Rosa - Director of Emerging Interactions, Molecular

AJAX changes the way the Web works, bringing exciting new possibilities to Web interfaces. But how do we use AJAX to give users a richer, more powerful interface without sacrificing ease of use? A common way to answer this challenge is to improve product selection for Web users.

Web sites can better help users select products, services, or content by implementing a variety of tools. These tools help users to find exactly the right item for their needs—quickly and easily. Faceted navigation has long been an effective tool to accomplish this challenge, helping users winnow down options.
Come see how we applied AJAX to Script.aculo.us in order to create a rich interface on top of faceted navigation—making product selection easier (and more fun). You'll learn that building applications like this requires more than just leveraging JavaScript effects, and how to tackle that issue. We will describe the technical architecture and review all the different libraries we used in building our rich navigation. Also, we'll share what we learned from usability testing that can make any AJAX interface work better. Throughout this case study you not only learn how we accomplished creating a richer navigation, but gain insider tips and nuggets on how you can do it too!

As part of their presentation, the speakers will share a demonstration of RIA, named the Molecular Wine Demo Site, which is an RIA application build by Riccardo and Steve. You can use and test the power of this RIA application yourself by visiting http://wine.molecular.com/. Please use Mozilla Firefox 1.5 or Internet Explorer 7 browsers use the application.

Attendees will learn:

• Why now is the time to incorporate RIA into your site,
• Examples of this popular Web innovation,
• Lessons learned and user feedback,
• The differences between RIA, AJAX, Web 2.0,
• How to get started,
• Frameworks: what they are, why to use them and which one is right for you,
• How to exchange data in AJAX, and
• Case study demonstration: a winnowing tool using Microsoft Atlas and Script.aculo.us.

PR in a Web 2.0 World: Getting Found in All the Right Places

Jamie O'Donnell - Co-Founder, SEO-PR

According to the Pew Internet & American Life Project, 50 million people get news online on a typical day. Yahoo! News and Google News are in the top 10 US news and media Web sites. Millions view videos or listen to podcasts daily. According to Pew Internet & American Life Project more than half (55%) of all online American youths ages 12-17 use online social networking sites. Technorati reports that 100,000 new blogs are created daily, and 65,000 new videos are uploaded daily to YouTube. Astute marketers and public relations professionals combine these media in their media relations and marketing efforts. They are getting more attention for their news and creating additional traffic-driving sources for their websites. Are you leveraging the value of your digital assets across all of these opportunities? If you are not, you may be missing potential traffic.

Agency 2.0: Managing Successful Web Development Projects

Kayden Kelly - President & Managing Director, Blast Advanced Media

Managing Web development projects is harder than it looks. No matter how great your design and technology is it must be supported by great people, systems and processes, all backed up with solid documentation and communication to make it successful.

Join us to hear developer Kayden Kelly tell the story behind Blast Advanced Media, which has grown from one guy in a garage 8 years ago to a successful Web design and development agency today. Kayden will relate the mistakes made and lessons learned in his years of managing Web development projects.

In this session we'll discuss successful approaches to a variety of management issues as they relate to Web development projects, including: staffing, leading, how to build and foster a company culture, making technology decisions, utilizing proper systems & processes, managing projects, documentation, measuring success, managing clients, and managing partnerships. You don't have to work in an agency to get something out of this session. Many of the concepts that will be covered can be applied to help you achieve individual and team greatness, and have fun doing it.

Join us if you want to gain insight into how a successful agency operates and avoid some of the common mistakes managers make in the Web development world.

Designing with Web Analytics in Mind

Alan K'Necht

Since the beginning of the Web, Internet marketing teams have sought for ways to measure the performance and success of their sites. To answer this call, numerous Web analytics tools have been developed. However, as the coding of Web sites becomes increasingly complex, the task of measurement becomes more difficult. Web marketers want detailed metrics; web developers want rich sites that require complex code—two seemingly contrary goals. Or are they? This session will build a bridge between these two opposing forces by detailing how the needs of Web analytics can be addressed during the Web site development process, resulting in a richly designed site with detailed metrics. Examples of good and bad Web development techniques (from the perspective of Web analytics) will be shared, along with strategies to address the difficulties in measuring mash-ups and other Web 2.0 elements.

Online Advertising Update: Google Takes Over

Lance Loveday - CEO, Closed Loop Marketing

The online advertising landscape has shifted dramatically over the past few years as Search has grown to be the dominant ad platform. Google has been the driving force behind the mainstreaming of Search, but with its recent moves it is clear that Google's vision is much broader. In this session we'll review the reasons behind the major shift in ad dollars toward the Internet, analyze the current state of online advertising and discuss the trends and players that are promising to reshape the advertising world as we know it. We'll do a live demonstration of the Google AdWords platform and explain its role in catapulting Google to the top. And we'll end by showing why Google is poised to turn the whole advertising industry (not just online) on its head.

Pleasing Users and Search Engines Alike: Balancing Design, Usability, and SEO

Lance Loveday - CEO, Closed Loop Marketing

Traditionally, Web designers were taught to focus on aesthetics. More recently, their scope has expanded to include usability and search engine optimization (SEO). Conventional wisdom says focusing on one detracts from the others. So designers often feel like they compromise—and end up with a mediocre design.
But do you really have to choose? What if you could do it all?

In this session, you will:

• Gain an understanding of why showing up in search results is getting increasingly important,
• Go under the hood of live sites that have achieved that rare combination of beauty and usability while attaining top rankings in the major search engines, and
• Get actionable tips on how to structure, design and code sites in ways that please both users and search engines.

Web Design for ROI: Turning Browsers into Buyers

Sandra Niehaus - User Experience Architect, Closed Loop Marketing

Few organizations have a bottomless Web design budget. That means few designers have the luxury of leisurely experimenting with Web page design variations—they're tasked with producing a winning solution ASAP. If this sounds like you or your organization, this session is for you.

Learn how to prioritize your design efforts by identifying the elements with the greatest impact on Web page effectiveness. In a practical, how-to approach to design, we'll discuss the most important concepts and elements to address for effective landing pages, home pages, category pages, product pages, forms, shopping carts, and checkout processes. We'll share guidelines, show case studies, and look at current examples to illustrate what works—and why. When it's your job to make your site beautiful and profitable, you'll want to start here.

Harnessing the Power of RSS

Amy Greer - Director, Search & New Media, Closed Loop Marketing
Roger Gilliam - Director of Development & Special Projects,
Closed Loop Marketing

RSS. You've heard about it, read about it, and probably even use it. But how do you harness its power for your company? In a world where 120,000 blogs are created every day and hundreds of millions of videos are posted on the Web, people are inundated with choices. How do they sift through those choices? They subscribe to RSS feeds. How do you make sure they subscribe to your feeds? You come to this session.

In this informative and educational presentation, you'll learn the difference between "nice to have" and "must have" feed elements—and the impact those elements have on people finding your feeds. You'll see good and bad examples of how feeds render in various feed readers and learn what you can do about it. We'll even provide a checklist of RSS best practices to take with you. Packed with specific examples, screen shots and actionable intelligence, this session will give you the information you need to harness the power of RSS for your organization.

Using Social Networks to Connect to Customers

Yuval Zukerman - Consultant/Technical Architect/Engineering, Molecular, Inc.

Social networks allow users to not only talk with each other but to also relate with each other based on shared interests and connections. These relationships can foster entire networks with thousands of participants. While you may think this is just a modern day "chat room" with no implications for your business, you couldn't be further from the truth. In today's world of the dominant customer voice, you need to understand and engage with your customers on their turf—and their turf means places like social networks.

During this presentation, Web 2.0 expert Yuval Zukerman will provide a comprehensive lesson on social networks. He'll delve into the types, categories, and characteristics of social networks, giving a wealth of examples. You'll learn who's using this next generation form of online get-togethers, along with research demographics and user/usage statistics. You'll get an inside look at what features users are clamoring for, as well as what issues, such as privacy and safety, are playing a role in the future of social networks. Once Yuval has transformed you into a social networking guru, he'll also provide tips on how you can utilize this new Web 2.0 connectivity phenomenon as a marketing means, with real-world examples of who's doing it and how.

You will also learn:

• How to leverage social networks to build brand recognition and drive marketing success,
• The different types of social networks and their specializations,
• The role of social networking in the international market, and
• What's ahead for social networks.