as an experienced conference organiser, i’d like to think that i’m in a good position to tell whether an event was good or not… and dConstruct rocked! i always love tech events, who wouldn’t… you’re amongst your own and able to geek out til your heart’s content. therefore the social aspect is never under question… there’s going to be free beer and you’re going to be a little merry.

dConstruct had plenty of social, with the pre-party dinner at Gourmet Burger Kitchen, the pre-event party hosted by Chi.mp at Po Na Na and the post-party at Above Audio. all round awesomeness. one of the highlights for me was talking the hind legs off a donkey to the Chi.mp guys, Tony Haile and Rob Farrow… both really inspirational. if you haven’t already checked out Chi.mp, it’s well worth a look – one personal domain from which you can manage all of your online life.

but this event was different – i learned something from every single presentation that i’m planning to implement to my current project, 4mations.

my favourite presentations would have to be those of Joshua Porter and my good friend Daniel Burka. Joshua went into some depth about heuristics and how features and even copy can have great influence over communities and users.

a prime example that Joshua focussed in on was framing something as a loss as opposed to a potential gain… for example in sign ups…. rather than:-

“sign up here to be kept up to date with the latest news and releases”

a simple text change to:-

“sign up here to avoid missing out on the lastest news and releases”

could have much more of an effect. it’s a simple strategy but it’s quite clear the influence that this should have. another aspect that Joshua looked at and Daniel picked up on was letting your users take ownership to encourage them to sign up and keep them coming back for more. the example that Joshua gave here was enabling users to do basic functions on a site before having to go through the full sign-up process.

Daniel picked up on this point and cited Geni as being a great example of how this can be done…

using Geni as an example, by the time that you’ve entered your first name, last name and email address, you’ve started your family tree! genius! you’re more likely at that stage to go through signup having already made some level of commitment to it.

ownership can also be created through the copy alone… Flickr do this incredibly well with the use of “my photos”, “my sets” etc and are fab with the informal tone that they use.

Daniel also talked about the importance of encouraging users at points when they’re likely to drop out – for example when waiting for a file to upload… by simply popping in some friendly text to help entertain them and let them know you empathise with them will break any tension points that may otherwise have occured.

another feature which Daniel discussed which i will be looking into some more at 4mations, is attaching recent behaviours to personal profiles to encourage positive behaviour. i thought that this was a really interesting points and takes it a step further than purely avoiding anonymity.

presentations and mp3s will be available on the dconstruct site and i would highly recommend checking them out – not only did i have a ball, meet some amazing people and hang out with friends, i learned a whole bunch too – making me one happy geekette!