I arrived back from SEED friday evening, Chicago was cold, thank god I have a thick layer of fat to keep me warm. Per SEED's website, SEED is "a One-Day Conference on Design, Entrepreneurship & Inspiration, by 37signals, Segura Inc. & Coudal Partners". When I signed up I didn't quite know what to expect, I knew Jason Fried, founder of 37signals, would talk about simplicity and keeping things easy. The other two speakers (Carlos Segura and Jim Coudal) I knew little about.

I knew no one attending, but I have been tracking the word SEED on twitter. Most tweets using the word SEED were useless but I found several people going to conference and made my introductions through twitter (my wife said I am a loser, I don't deny it). I found this to be a great way to initially get to know a few people. However everyone there was geeky/interesting and not just because the room was 90% iphones.

Carlos started the day off by showing how great his company's work is. They have huge clients with huge budgets that allow them to do really nice design work. I found this very irrelevant and pretty boring. How many people in the room have clients with those type budgets? He talked/bragged about how they use special inks and expensive papers. Great Carlos, good for you. I found his Q&A time to be much more interesting, he spoke about client relationships, elevating your client levels and mindset of a business owner. I'll go into his answers and such in a later post. He probably had the best Q&A out of the group.

Jason Fried was next. To me, and many others, his presentation was boring as well, just read "Getting Real". I did find him using the word "shit" quite funny (I am still 8 years old). It was pretty evident that everyone would have rather just asked Jason question instead of listening to his presentation. Because the questions were flying, after his time was up there were plenty of unanswered questions. Jason spoke about their apps, which was funny considering they were down most of the morning.

Lunch was next, followed by an extremely boring talk about architecture. Dear Lord this was boring. I will not put you thru the pain I endured.

Jim Coudal was next, he, out of the bunch seemed the most genuine and just really laid back and just fun to be around. I would drink a beer with this guy. Jim spoke about his many business ventures, ideas, starting businesses, how its okay to fail and pitfalls in startups. I really enjoyed him, his presentation was the only one that struck a cord with me. However his Q&A while funny wasn't really impressive.

The last portion of the conference was a panel Q&A, this was the best part about the conference. Most of the questions were aimed at Jason and Jim. I really don't know which speaker I liked the most they all had some really great quotes and interesting points.

Overall thoughts...
It was pretty evident some people attended because they were looking for work or needing people to help. I wish they would have been able to leverage the talent in the room. Maybe a bulletin board or something. I think the presentation were too long and the Q&A needed to be longer. I think the speakers said some great things, the people there were really cool and the weather sucked bad.

Recently while enjoying an overcooked under-seasoned steak at Outback, I noticed the drink coaster. When copywriting is so horrible/unfunny it makes you sad, thats just plain bad copywriting.

I also dually noted that Steve likes it, however Steve has bad taste.

Burger King has a tv commercial where they tell real Burger King customers the Whopper (a hamburger) is no longer available. The commercials show their customers getting mad, being totally distraught and flabbergasted. I've seen this tv commercial several times, they didn't strike me as outstanding. At the end of their tv spot they display an url, last night I went to it. There I found the full length video of the "setups" its so much better than the actual tv commercial.

So why is the commercial not-so-great and the full length video is funny?
Is it a case of bad editing?
Over-editing? I think the concept of the marketing is brilliant, but perhaps its a case of bad execution.



whopperfreakout.com

I also love Beer TV Commercials because they use humor, what's your favorite marketing campaign?

If you think your boss is stupid, remember: you wouldn't have a job if he was any smarter.
John Gotti

In the business world, the rearview mirror is always clearer than the windshield.
Warren Buffett

Far and away the best prize that life offers is the chance to work hard at work worth doing.
Theodore Roosevelt

Even if you're on the right track, you'll get run over if you just sit there.
Will Rogers

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys.
James Goldsmith

Besides Twitter's concept, why is Twitter successful?
Simply put, the barrier to entry and reentry is painless. Initially I can setup my account, import my email contacts and start twittering in a minute or two. Each time I twitter the thought process is quick, its not a blog post, its not an essay, its a twitter. It’s a quick thought. The barrier to entry, the steps to completion, are fast and simple. Having the ability to twitter via instant messenger is just icing on the cake. With IM I don’t need to log into twitter.com and navigate to the correct page. I just type my message into the Twitter IM Buddy and move on.

What sucks about signing up for a gym membership? The two-hour signup process! What’s awesome about Burger King? The food, ha no, the quick drive-thru.

What steps can you remove from your registration process/user interactivity to make the barrier to (re)entry less painful for your potential users?

(Twitter Name = LessAllan)

I hate emails notifications from sites like this.

New message from someone on Grooveshark! You must log in to check it out:
http://beta.grooveshark.com/messaging.php?view=inbox

I understand you want me to click around your site but show me the message or at least who its from!

I dislike sites that take themselves too seriously and their copywriting is lame and boring because of it. A warm/friendly or funny tone can make your readers feel like they know you. Some sites can't have a fun tone (example: hospitals), but if you have the chance to be casual, do it. Standout, be different, make an impression on someone.

Some of my favorite casual copywriting links

"So far there have been 406275 clicks. The energy it took to click 406275 times raised the earth's temperature by .0000000000000000059358360 degrees, contributing to the melting of the polar ice caps. Way to go, asshole."
commandshift3.com

"If you'd like to work with Tim, the chances are very good that he'd like to work with you, too."
timlahan.com

"Don't love me already? No problem, check out my CV above for more info!"
pixeldub.com

"Mubashar Iqbal, but you can call me Mubs everyone else does."
mubashariqbal.com

Sorry, we're horrible at golf and we have no sporting event tickets to give away. And if you think the larger the firm the better, we're the worst design company you will ever consider.
SpeedyMediaGroup.com (my old company)

I visit a site called FreelanceSwitch.com a couple times a week. Its a multi-author blog about business and promotions. They also have a job board with a unique twist. Most job boards make the job poster/employer pay for the job listing. On their site its the other way around. Creating job postings is free, but to apply its $7 per month. Yes, you read that correctly, its $7 per month to apply to the jobs on their site. Thats a different approach to a job board. However if you are looking for work do you really want to fork out money to apply to get a job? I do however applaud their creativity.

What’s happened so far:

1. Yesterday, a member of the open source project MooTools, Olmo Maldonado, posted an inflamatory video criticizing jQuery and Prototype, on the MooTools blog.
2. Soon after, John Resig, the creator of jQuery, posted a response (response contains the video).
3. People on the interweb (including me) have been fueling the flame war all day long.
4. The creator of MooTools, Valerio Proietti, just took down Olmo’s post and blogged a very nice apology that will hopefully put the fire out.

Here is the really good part:

(Quotes from Valerio’s post):

“Olmo’s lack of maturity, even for his age, always was notable…”

“Olmo is no longer a part of the Mootools development team. We wish him well, but frankly we can’t tolerate his immaturity any longer.”

Olmo was fired from an open source project!!

Now I don’t mean to hurt the guy, I feel for anyone who has been fired. But just think about this: Letting you commit now costs the project more than your contribution is worth. Even though your contribution didn’t cost anything. I’ve known people who are “negative productivity.” They not only produce nothing, but the also take up other people’s time in the efforts to produce, but I’ve never heard of this.

I don’t blame Valerio, I’m sure he did what he thought was right and just, and I am in no position to say he did the wrong thing. I don’t know all parts of this story and can’t see into his heart, so I mean no malice or judgment towards him.

As a resident loud-mouth/instigator/f-bomb advocate I am just shocked and surprised….

I won't name names but if you...
run an app
host a conference
own a business or
manage clients....
...return emails quickly. Even if you don't know the answer to the question asked, return the email with "I will have your answer shortly". Its a simple gesture that makes the receipent feel wanted, loved and appreciated.

The First Internet Marketing Conference, San Francisco, 1994

I love simple clean design that is memorable to the user. I often do critiques for other designers, sometimes when I am in a bad mood I think of myself as the Simon Cowell of design.

Here is a recent help session.
Here is the design he sent


What I said....

• Less text, if you can explain the concept in 2 sentences its not written well or the concept is too confusing.
• Less data, don't waste the user's time by showing irrelevant data (why show the user "other locations", I don't care about people in NYC can order).
• Less confusion, can your Mom navigate the site?
• Less visual elements, you want people to go into ordering their meal, not read text and get distracted.
• This isn't a social network, so why have newest users?
• Less blah, don't be bland, don't call bland, simple. They are very different.

Here is the design we came up with in 10 minutes of talking, its rough but its a better start.


Think about the process of what you are trying to accomplish. What does the user need to do next? On this app the user needs to select a city first to be able to see the available menus in their area. Why show them anything else besides "pick your city"?

If you need an outside opinion on your design hit me up. I love to chat about design issues and help push someone towards a solution.