Geekend 2009 Recap

This weekend about 600 something geeks engulfed downtown Savannah to participate in the first ever Geekend, an interactive conference to bring together designers, developers, social media gurus, and general all around techies.

[ photo by Thunderbird Inn ]

Keynote  | Aaron Draplin

Friday evening kicked off the event with a cocktail hour full of lights, music, some impressive hula hoopers, and a giant velcro wall in which brave souls could suit up, jump up, and stick upon. Following that was keynote speaker, Aaron Draplin, of Draplin Design Co. His presentation kicked off with a pretty memorable quote (Geekenders, you know which one) and a proclamation via PowerPoint that he was "scared shitless" to be standing before us.

Now I, myself, am not a full fledged designer but I certainly appreciate, value, and recognize the importance of good design. I found his talk to be one of the most entertaining I have ever attended, not to mention very inspiring. Did I mention he was asked to design a logo for President Obama's stimulus package? He had two days notice.

[ Photo by nicole galletta ]

And I gotta respect a man that is loyal to the font, Futura Bold; is best friends with his weiner dog, Gary; and loves to go antiquing to save vintage design - loves it so much he refers to his design rescuing ventures as 'junkin'. He is pretty much a lot of people's new hero, I'm sure. That is, if he wasn't already.

Saturday was filled with awesome presentations, another awesome keynote speaker, and a geeked out block party in downtown Savannah.

Here are the sessions I attended:

The Test-Driven Web | Phil Peterman of Paula Deen Enterprises

In this session, Phil discussed how they use Google Analytics and Google Web Optimizer to gather data and run tests on how visitors to the Paula Deen websites (1, 2, 3) were actually using the sites. He noted that more web traffic = more robust data from Google.

Rich content keeps visitors coming back, an affirmation for me, but was reminded to not be in love with content. Rich content, in Paula Deen's case, brings 1.3 million views a month. Interestingly enough, Phil revealed he had to rethink things when the site received 237,000 more views after an email blast went out.

Rethinking things simply means testing. Test different headlines. Test different content. Test different ways to write copy. Test different styles, sizes, and colors of buttons. Testing can give you an idea of what content visitors want to see. One area he advised not to test too often is the navigation, as this may confuse the loyal visitors. At the end of the day, it's all about functionality.

He also noted that building an audience takes time - even for Paula Deen. The first two years of pauladeen.com were spent specifically to build an audience and that they are just now going to venture into advertising on the site.

Nurturing Creativity | Joey Hasty of Disney

Joey discussed how Disney's creative process is very much modeled after how a child plays. Some examples included how a child explores, build, and role play. Children are always exploring things and if you watch a child play with building blocks, you'll see that they like to build then destroy, then repeat. And they experiment. Role playing during some of Disney's creative process lead to its Google Internet Zone at Epcot.

He offered strategies in which brainstorming sessions could be enhanced to encourage the flow of even more ideas. And how peaceful, comfortable, and playful work environments actually open the door for more creativity and production. The thing that Joey noted that sticks out of my mind the most are the chalkboard walls in the hallways of Disney that are available for spur of the moment ideas.

Some good tips:

• Don’t try to validate an idea - just try it
• Get to something physical as fast as possible
• Not every idea has to solve world hunger to be worthy of exploration
  

Connecting Fans with Bands | Eric Snowden of Atlantic Records

Atlantic Records has 150 artists, which means 150 websites, 150 web apps, 150 mobile apps, etc. In terms of digital/social media strategy, how do you accommodate all 150 of these artists on budget?

Their solution - Fanbase, Atlantic Records' one-stop desktop media app that allows fans to listen to music, chat with friends, and pulls all the latest content from their favorite artist via the mainstream social media sites.

He described how the artist can do as much or as little as they want with these tools - and how Alantic Records matches artists with tools that match them. For example, Rob Thomas loves to text, thus Twitter was a natural fit for him.

Eric reminded us to think through design. Design and develop to fit the technology - respect the device - web design differs from mobile and mobile devices are not all alike.

Digital Trends Among Digital Natives | Sloane Kelley of BFG Communications

At Sloane's session, she explained some of the characteristics that make up a digital native.

• Super connected
• Mobile
• Want to be heard
• Social - involved with community
• Trust unknown peers

And showed some very cool best-in-class examples that brands have used to reach Digital Natives:

• Social media examples include Red Bull's Scavenger Hunt on Facebook and Twiction - fictional Twitter accounts such as Travelocity's Gnome
  
• San Francisco's transportation system, BART, use of Foursquare - a mobile location-based social network 
• iPhone apps - such as Volkswagen's GTI Real Racing GTI   
• Digital/video content such as SCAD's Shake the World  and Volkswagen's Fun Theory
• NFL creating fake social media accounts to get a glimpse at prospect's personal lives
• Augmented reality in a banner ad - Burger King's ad using your web cam
  

The NFL example sparked up an interesting discussion on monitoring employees via social networks.

Geek Metamorphosis: Getting Comfortable with Uncomfortable | Bradley Taylor of Rails Machine 

Bradley reminded us that we do not have to be defined by our jobs. We can be more useful, more interesting, and more confident. By developing interests in subjects and hobbies other than our professional position, we become more fun, gain more opportunities, are more prepared, get more dates (ha ha), and can start and engage in more conversations. Oh, and this gives our moms more area to brag on us.

He provided hilarious accounts (and photos) as examples of some of the ways he has ventured "out of the realm" of his profession.

Keynote | Major Nelson

By Saturday evening, it was time for another keynote speaker with Major Nelson (Larry Hryb), the Director of Programming for Xbox LIVE.

Although I am not a gamer, I found Major Nelson's presentation to be entertaining and insightful. Hey, did you know that every five seconds a brand new Xbox LIVE account is created? Or that there are over 20 million members in 28 countries? And even more surprising 32% are female?

I found it interesting when Major Nelson noted that the only way to build better products is to by using competitors products. He definitely practices what he preaches by being employed by Microsoft but using a Mac! 

Another interesting thing he voiced was that multi-player gaming has surpassed movie going as the way to escape.   

There were apparently a lot of gamers in the room as they had a ton of excellent questions in "game language" I couldn't always follow.  

Geekend Block Party  

Saturday night  - After a day full of awesome geek workshops, it was time for Geekend's block party hosted by SEED Eco Lounge and the Creative Coast Alliance. Montgomery St. in downtown Savannah was blocked off - music, swirling graphics beaming off the side of buildings, Rockband set up in the middle of street, and trailer full of video games.

Geekend Unconference

Sunday was reserved for Geekend Unconference, which I unfortunately was unable to attend. It was a great extension to Saturday's sessions and gave particpants a chance to ask more questions and to break out into more intimate sessions.  I heard it was very imformative - perhaps even more informative than the Saturday sessions.

David Carson (see his TED talk in the post below), was scheduled to present as the opening keynote speaker on Friday night. Due to traveling conflicts he had to be pushed back to Sunday. Aaron Draplin graciously stepped up and committed to Geekend, on very short notice I presume. Due to more traveling conflicts, Carson was unable to even attend on Sunday. Regardless, with or without David Carson, I feel Geekend 2009 was a huge success! I enjoyed every bit of it and from what I see from the #geekend hashtag on Twitter, I am not the only one!

If you attended Geekend, what was your favorite part?

Here are some fabulous photos from Geekend by Ellisia Jesnes!
{There are a few of my photos mixed in, but most of the photos are property of Ellisia.}