Voices That Matter: Web Design Conference

On Tuesday, October 23 - to open the conference, our publisher, Nancy Ruenzel will engage Steve Krug in conversation.

Is there really one ideal way to do Web pages—a definitive “best practice”? And if there is, does that mean that all pages should basically look alike? What about creativity and innovative design?

For the first time, Steve Krug, author of Don’t Make Me Think, will explain why he’s become convinced that there actually is a short list of design conventions that make some Web pages inherently better than others—things that very few sites get right, even though they’re not all that hard to do.

Besides spelling out his vision of the perfect Web page, Steve will also present his brand new Site Navigation Identification Chart: a handy tool that classifies the different ways to do navigation and helps you choose the best one for your site.

Barbara Gavin and I have been working together with our publisher, Nancy Ruenzel and editor Wendy Sharp to focus the content our presenters will be sharing with our attendees. We’ve kept a few things in mind:

Our audience is the designer and all the sessions are designed to appeal to the visual thinker.

Design is about more than making sites look pretty. That's why you'll find sessions like Sandra Niehaus’ Web Design for ROI or Designing Authentic Media: Leveraging the Wisdom of Communities from Derek Powazek.

Oh, and then there's an exclusive evening event at the nearby Apple Store called Desktop to Device: Designing for the iPhone, presented by Kelly Goto. Or Nathan Shedroff’s session, Make It So: Interface Design Lessons from Science Fiction.

What an embarrassment of design riches!

it's an expensive event

It is a bit bizarre that the website for an web conference is so poorly coded with web standards thrown out the window. No alt attributes? Tabled design? 8pt font? (though, to be fair, some is relative with "small"). inline styles? Inline JavaScript? deprecated attributes? Cringe!

"Web designer" is the most inane term ever.