Conference Going

There's an ad playing on TV for some sort of nacho chip (Doritos, maybe): a group of travelers are stuck in the airport waiting for a delayed flight and describing the events that they're not sorry to be late for (MAN: I'm going to see my wife... and her lawyer).

The problem with the ad is that one of the sad crew is expressing his mock disappointment about missing his "podiatrists' conference". I've never met a professional, in any field, that was anything but genuinely excited at the idea of spending time in a huge meeting hall listening to other people talk about the biggest hot thing in their field, whether that field was computer programming, teaching, running a MacDonalds franchise, or librarianship.

I just got back from Access, and I'm totally excited about chatbots, diacriticals, and the 2-click web. The biggest challenge about getting back to the office after a fantastic conference is trying to make the conference buzz last long enough that you get through the accumulated email before cynicism sets in.

So, for the past week, I've been talking about what we need to do to make MPOW's website better and reading about information architecture and thinking about usability testing, focus groups, and making something for the users, and wondering how much I'll be able to pull off.

Wish me luck.