Mint Digital

Thomas and I popped along to the FOWD conference last week.

3 highlights from the day.

1. Denise Wilton from Moo spoke about how to add character to your web app. She asked the question, “how do you want people to *feel* when using your web app?”. This is a great question. We talk about users a lot. We sometimes forget that they are people, with feelings and emotions. Denise encouraged the audience to think about language and typography. Just look at the Moo sign in page. Chatty language and friendly type makes me feel welcome here.

2. William Rosen works for Leo Burnett, the company behind the Verb Yellowball campaign. The idea: 500,000 yellow balls were dropped across the US in an attempt to get children moving. Each ball gave kids three simple instructions. (1) Play with them. (2) Blog your stories. (3) Pass them on. I loved this idea. No fancy technology required. No fancy UI required. Just a great idea. Only made possible by the connective power of the web.

3. Andy Clarke, Creative Director at Stuff and Nonsense showed everyone his cool wall. He took the piss out of Dropsend and claimed it was uncool. For Mr Clarke, Google and Flickr were the only two sites that deserved to have the tag ’sub-zero’. That’s cooler than cool!

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See FOWD photos on Flickr

Last Saturday, I went to the Gotham Ruby Conference. It was partly sponsored by Google, at their New York offices. They’re beautifully set up to handle these kinds of things, with a nice sound system, open wireless, and four big screens for presentations. Overall it was a great day, with interesting speakers, and ample opportunities to meet our fellow New York (and Boston, and Philly, etc) Rubyists. Here’s my quick summary of what I saw:

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