Webmaster Jam Session 2007

After attending this conference last year, there was no way I was going to miss the opportunity this year. So when the team from CoffeeCup, who really know how to put on a conference, asked if I’d be interested in returning, I had just the idea. With speakers like Molly Holzschlag, Jared Spool, Derek Featherstone, Dan Rubin, Stephen Anderson, Ethan Marcotte, Rob Weychert, Nick Finck, Jeff Croft, Keith Robinson, and more, this conference is an absolute steal. If you’re in or near Dallas, you really don’t have an excuse, but even if you’re not, this conference is a great reason to come visit.

Behind the Curtain

Along with all of those rock stars of the web, I’ll be presenting again this year as well, and I have incredibly high hopes for the presentation. The session is about application interface design and for once, I’ll have free reign to use real examples from a real project. It’s always frustrated me that most of the work we do ends up being hidden behind non-disclosure agreements and a bevy of other legal roadblocks but not this time. This time we’ll exposing every bit of relevant information from the development process of a real application.

You’re probably wondering what the real application is now. You’re not? Oh. Well, I’ll go ahead and discuss it for the sake of having a background story for the presentation. I have been, and will continue to be, investing all of my free time in a long-neglected open-source personal project of mine. Since it’s my project, there’s nothing to stop me from sharing all of the information about the process and decisions. I’ll be sharing my bad ideas as well as my good ones, and we’ll see precisely how they evolved from concept to execution.

We’ll look at sketches, comps, working screens, and even a little code. We’ll talk about workflow, fears, challenges, issues, and everything else that goes along with building a web application. With every decision, we’ll explore and discuss the implications of coding, designing, labeling, copy-writing, and more and see how they all affect and inform the final application interface. More importantly, you’ll be free at any time to just yell out, “Why on earth did you do that?” and get an answer right then and there.

Summary

Webmaster Jam Session is coming up, and it’s definitely worth attending. Similarly, if you’re the type that gets excited about getting an unrestricted view of someone else’s workflow, thought process, and finished product, and are looking to maybe learn a little bit more about application interface design at the same time, then I’ve got a presentation designed just for you. I hope to see you there.