Conference Links

• HighEdWeb 2010
• HighEdWeb Ning
• Flickr
• Youtube
• Twitter
• Facebook

Post-conference Links

• What I learned from the #heweb10 backchannel (Patrick Powers)
• Goodbye Cincinnati and #heweb10 (Robin Smail)
• Social Media is People Not Institutions (Jeff Swain)
• HighEdWeb Conference 2010 Takeaways #heweb10 (Ben Rapin)
• top 5 takeaways from #heweb10 (Tim Nekritz)
• My top takeaways from #heweb10 (Karlyn Morissette)
• HighEdWeb 2010 Recap Part 1: The Big Picture (Georgy Cohen)
• heweb10 – Thoughts (Billy Adams)
• A Complete And Killer Review Of HighEdWeb 2010 (Seth Odell)
• eduStyle
• .eduGuru
• higheredexperts
• (Lougan’s) New Nephew
• Squirrel ringtone

Last year I wrapped up HighEdWeb 2009 with this thought:

We have something to think about for next year. In this age of transparency you must “know thyself” and be an expert in your area – experience and ignorance shine equally through the window of our minds. We are people in higher education with limited budgets that come together to live, laugh, learn, and we express ourselves using the technology we help to create – the web.

Sea of Hands at HighEdWeb 2010 Opening Session

So, did we learn our lessons? Did we know ourselves? Did we become experts? The simple answer is “yes.”

There was only one keynote this year, by Steve Krug, author of “Don’t Make Me Think.” While I think the keynote wasn’t a failure, I expected more. I expected Steve to be a more engaging speaker. I’m glad he was the keynote. He did what he said he does in the book: he gave a quick accessibility test using a member of the audience.

I think the biggest difference this year was the comfort level. Being around so many people with the same job as me was comfortable. I think that was due in part because I was returning to many of the same people, but also because we had shared our lives on Twitter throughout the past year. I felt like I knew them.

Worldle of this blog for HighEdWeb

What did I learn?

HTML5 and CSS3 were topics I wanted to learn about. I learned some of the the pros and cons of HTML5, and I got a lot of links to good resources. I got enough CSS3 before the conference and after the conference to keep me occupied for the next year. Bonus, those of us in attendance at the CSS…In 3D! workshop got a free copy of Christopher Schmitt’s book, CSS Cookbook.

But, aside from these few technical topics, I felt 2010 was a little disappointing. Last year I had a similar feeling; however, last year was my first time going and I was a little overwhelmed.

Tweetups, After Darks and more

I met a lot more new folks and followed them on Twitter. We had a lot of shared experiences at this year’s conference as well. Starting the night I arrived, through the night before I left, my circle of friends expanded.

Saturday night was dinner with the guys from A&M at O’Maley’s in the Alley, followed by a tweetup at Madonna’s Bar & Grill.

Sunday night was the “Welcome Reception” at the Contemporary Arts Center, followed by “Party Like It’s 10-10-10″ back at the Hilton, followed by the Hilton bar.

Monday night was sushi at Benihana (sponsored in part by nuCloud) with about 30 people. That was followed by the HighEdWeb After Dark mini pub crawl with stops at Madonna’s, Nicholson’s Gastropub, Bartini’s, and the Cadillac Ranch.

"I can not wait to ride the #karaokeplane tonight." @mikepetroff

Tuesday night we started at the Newport Aquarium with hot hors d’oeuvres with the fishes. That was followed by the Hofbräuhaus for dunkelbier (dark beer), bratwursts, pretzels, fried sauerkraut and fried pickles. Of course there was lots of accordion-playing and yodeling and prosting (toasting). I have to say it was almost as good as the one in Munich, but it felt American-ized.

Since Newport, Kentucky is on the other side of the Ohio River from Cincinnati, we were bussed over there. After Hofbräuhaus we took the bus back to the Hilton, but we didn’t stop there. We topped off the night with a ride on the “Karaoke Plane” – straight to Hamburger Mary’s. Mary’s a mixed gay-straight bar and they probably had the best night of there lives because we showed up by the bus-load. I’d say at least 100 people were there drinking, singing, dancing, and of course playing pool.

Wednesday night we took it easy with the guys from A&M and dinner at Rock Bottom Restaurant and Brewery.

Next year

What are the lessons for next year? High Ed Web 2011 will be in Austin, Texas. We should be able to send two people next year. I’ll go out on a limb and predict the hot topics next year. Semantic content (Web 3.0) for mobile, desktop, vehicles, televisions, toasters, etc. (We can make content inter-operable; maybe using a CMS.) Location-based (geo-loco) applications with a side of augmented reality or geo-fencing. (Facebook Places exploded this year. Foursquare has the most users, for now. Gowalla is based in Austin.) HTML5 and CSS3 are growing, even if at a slow pace. (The W3C made an announcement about holding off deploying HTML5.)

UPDATE:

I found this article by Bruce Lawson (@brucel) on the Opera Developers site titled Mobile-friendly: The mobile web optimization guide.

Everything You Know About Web Design Is Wrong

Dan Willis
www.dswillis.com/sxsw/everything.pdf
www.uxcrank.com/

See HarryPotter.com – is a dead tree
See washingtonpost.com – another dead tree
“Print in disquise”
These two and so many are stuck in the print model of information sharing.
What we need is a web grammar.

D. W. Griffith – Birth of a Nation – did nothing different, but he invented a film grammar and made a load of money.
“1 + 1 = 3″

What is the (possible) web grammar:

• Random voyeurism
• Self aware (but uncontrollable) content
• User-created context
• Ambient awareness
• Experiential content

Tips for Transcendent Web Design:

• Organize cross teams
• Embrase your ignorance
• Don’t be distracted by business models that don’t start and end with users

(Tips are incomplete)

Oooh, That’s Clever! (Unnatural Experiments in Web Design)

Paul Annett
clearleft.com

User’s enjoy discovering things (e.g. arrow in FedEx logo). This is kinda like random voyeurism (see above). Hiding things in plain sight. It plays with user-created context (see above).
Paralax with backgrounds (e.g. http://silverbackapp.com/)
Peripherial vision effects are fun too.