Yesterday I had the pleasure of attending Social Web Workshop with Bar Camp co-founder Chris Messina. It’s the first full day conference I’ve been to since getting back in the freelance game in August. It was great to connect and meet other people I’ve not had the opportunity to meet this past summer.
What I really loved about the event was that I felt like I learned something real and that I could use with a few current clients as well as future clients. A good chunk of the day was spend with Chris lecturing and the last two hours had us break into groups and apply what we learned, which I think was really where the learning launched off into outer space for me. A few of the key highlights from the day were:
Trends & Strategy
- The change in the web from being just a place for data into a more people centric web
- Increased in broadband brings new opportunities like 280Slides or Hulu.
- A lot of firms working on the same problems means a great opportunity for standardization
- A lot more future looking firms are building web app vs native apps (think Gmail for mobile phones)
Identity
- Better filter + user agents are helping people navigate the web
- Data is fast becoming your capital online. But not just your photos or video but the comments and relations you’ve build on the networks as well
- This one is a little far reaching but the idea you can have multiple identities within one social network. i.e. If you are on Facebook, you can decide the content your high school friends, business contacts and your post high school friends see by picking different identities. Flickr & Facebook are trying to do this but we are not quite there yet.
Building Blocks
- Having list or To Dos lets people know what they have to do when they sign up for your service. Linked In does a good job with this using the completion bar on your profile
- Avoid duplication of accounts
- Use OpenID, Facebook Connect or Google Connect to have users sign up so they don’t need to create another profile somewhere. Facebook Connect Is A Huge Success — By The Numbers
As I mentioned above. We broke out into groups for the last couple hours and this is what we came up with for Porter Airlines:
After working on this great mini-project yesterday. I kinda want to go in there and pitch Porter Airlines now.
