Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute.
Earlier this week, WOW participated in the Web Builder 2.0 Conference, Las Vegas. I had the pleasure to spend some quality time with a wide variety of incredibly bright and practicing Web pros from around the U.S. My interviews and the sessions that I sat in on ranged from those that practice and teach at the university level in the areas of Web Design, Web Development and Web Business.
For today?’s podcast, I sat down with Lance Loveday, author of the best seller, Web Design for ROI. Lance is a ten year Web veteran, notable speaker and the CEO of Closed Loop Marketing, a Search Optimization consulting company based in Granite Bay, CA.
Lance?’s keynote entitled, “8 Things Every Web Team Should Know: Lessons from a Grumpy Web Consultant” hit the mark on many levels in my opinion. For example, Lance expanded upon his “in the trenches experiences” that has led him uncover that, “anyone who has worked in the online space for long realizes that many of the obstacles web teams face have little to do with technology, and everything to do with the humans”.
Lance also addressed such tough issues such as, “Why are web projects so easy for some organizations to get right but so excruciatingly difficult for most? Here’s his top eight:
8 Things Every Web Team Should Know
* Kick ass or suck
-Either pass is OK. But you have to choose
* Don’t hump the shark
* It’s not about you
-Its about Users
* Have a leader
-Design by committee is a disaster
* Opinions are worthless
* Little things matter
-Ask Steve Jobs
* Metrics are your friend
-Use them to your advantage
* Web work is hard
-We deserve some R-E-S-P-E-C-T
Check out today?’s three minute podcast on WOW Technology Minute website.
Today’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Adobe Systems and their series of MAX conferences for 2008/2009
MAX is an experience unlike any other — an opportunity to connect with thousands of designers, developers, partners, executives, and Adobe staff for education, inspiration, and community. MAX 2008/2009 will be held in San Francisco, Milan, and Tokyo. Be sure to mark your calendar for this important global event.
MAX is an experience unlike any other — an opportunity to connect with thousands of designers, developers, partners, executives, and Adobe staff for education, inspiration, and community. MAX 2008/2009 will be held in San Francisco, Milan, and Tokyo. Be sure to mark your calendar for this important global event.
Follow these steps to receive your Adobe MAX North America WOW registration discount:
Step 1: Visit the MAX North America registration listed below
Step 2: Select the button for “Yes, I have a registration code.”
Step 3: Enter registration code [WOW844]
Step 4: Complete the steps for online registration.
Register today on the Adobe Max website!
Transcript of Lance Loveday
BILL CULLIFER: Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute at Web Builder, Las Vegas. I?’m here with Lance Loveday, the author of “Web Design for ROI” and a notable speaker and the president of Closed Loop Marketing in Granite Bay, CA. Lance, your keynote today was on eight things that all web teams should know, correct?
LANCE LOVEDAY: That?’s right.
BILL: Can you summarize that session for us?
LANCE: Sure. First I?’ll start off with why I wanted to talk on that topic. It?’s a session I?’ve wanted to give for a few years. I?’ve been around the block and in the business for about ten years and found that a lot of the problems that plague a lot of web projects and web teams have nothing to do with technology and everything to do with the people involved, and when I say people it?’s not the people themselves it?’s how the projects are managed and how the personal interactions come together that cause things to if not fail, at least under perform relative to their potential.
So today?’s talk focused on the things that we do that cause us to really shoot ourselves in the foot sometimes when managing these projects. I?’ve made some recommendations that I?’ve put into a list of eight things.
BILL: We?’ll post those.
LANCE: Oh, great. That I like to refer to. Some of them might not make too much sense without the context but…I tried to have a little bit of fun with it. I tried to hopefully give people some ideas of how to approach their organizations, their bosses and hopefully enable people ultimately to work in a way that is more meaningful to them, more fulfilling and obviously helpful to the organization too.
BILL: Fair enough. Throughout that was professionalism. As Web professionals we need to think in context of “Is this a serious profession?” And we need to take it seriously, right? If we?’re going to expect it. Can you comment on that?
LANCE: Sure. That?’s something that is near and dear to my heart, is that it?’s taken seriously, and a lot of the design professionals I see, within their own organizations, don?’t command a level of respect that I would like to see them get, even when it seems they would have earned it, by their actions, by performing for the organization. Because it?’s so easy for anyone to have an opinion about Web design specifically, I think there?’s an assumption that anyone can do this and of course we know that that?’s not the case. There are people who have deep skills, experience, talents, dispositions that allow them to do an amazingly effective job at Web design. The difference you can see working from one designer to the next can be just totally night and day depending on whether or not that designer really, truly “gets it” and is able to sympathize on that experience and put together a design that helps to achieve the objective.
One of the ways that we can help people get there I think is definitely the education. I would love to see more in the way of certification out there and to have it mean something in the same way that an attorney has a law degree, passes the bar, and commands a certain amount of respect for having done so. I?’d love to see something come along for the Web design world as well.
BILL: Excellent. Thank you so much for your time today Lance.
LANCE: Thank you.
BILL: Today?’s WOW Technology Minute is sponsored by Adobe Systems Corporation and their series of MAX conferences for 2008/2009. MAX is an experience unlike any other — an opportunity to connect with thousands of designers, developers, partners, executives, and Adobe staff for education, inspiration, and community. MAX 2008/2009 will be held in San Francisco, Milan, and Tokyo. Be sure to mark your calendar for this important global event and check out the great links on the WOWTechnologyMinute.com website