June 9th, 2008
Speaking at 2008 d.Construct
by Joshua Porter | 
8 Comments
In September, I’ll be speaking at the dConstruct Conference in Brighton, England. The conference is billed as the affordable one day conference for people designing and building the latest generation of social web applications.
Last year, dConstruct sold out in 6 hours!
Several reasons why I’m excited:
- The topic is social. For Bokardoans, you’ll know that this is right up my alley. An entire event focused on social design. Woohoo!
- Awesome lineup. This is the lineup I would want to see at a conference, so I’m very humbled to be a part of it. It includes Daniel Burka, whom I spoke with on a panel at SXSW this year as well as the folks from Satisfaction and Dopplr, two social sites that really push the social design envelope. There’s Aleks Krotoski talking about gaming, as well as Jeremy Keith, Tantek, and Steven Johnson being their usual brilliant selves.
- I haven’t been to England before: This will be my first trip. I’m going to stay a few days and see some sites…so if you have any great recommendations about things I must do or see, please leave a comment!
- I’m a huge fan of the folks at Clearleft. I even cut my web design teeth on Richard Rutter’s classic site Sizzling HTML Jalfrezi back in the 1990s. Does anybody remember Jalfrezi? I’ve also followed Andy Budd and Jeremy Keith for many years, so being invited to speak at their event is an amazing honor.
As for what I’m doing: I’ll be giving a short talk in the conference proper about leveraging cognitive bias in social design. I’m really excited about this topic…as it really brings home some clear reasons why some interface elements work and some don’t.
I’m also going to be giving a full-day workshop on September 4th. The workshop (I’m still polishing the description) will cover a lot of what’s in my book Designing for the Social Web, but I’ll also be doing exercises that involve everyone deeply in the discussion/design. Warning: if you attend the workshop, you will have to draw an interface. 
And, as I mentioned, last year d.Construct sold out in 6 hours. So get your tickets early. Registration begins June 24.
ABOUT
Bokardo is the blog of Joshua Porter, a web designer/developer, researcher, and writer. I live in Newburyport, MA, USA.
Designing for the Social Web
Building a social web site or application? I wrote a book just for you!
Find out more or order from Peachpit or Amazon
Greatest Hits
- Five Principles to Design By
- The Del.icio.us Lesson
- Designing for the Social Web: The Usage Lifecycle
- Facebook's Brilliant but Evil Design
- Digg's Design Dilemma (Part II)
- 7 Reasons Why Web Apps Fail
- 7 More Reasons Why Web Apps Fail
- Which Movie to Watch? An Overview of Recommendation Systems
- Ugliness, Social Design, and the MySpace Lesson
Upcoming Speaking Events
- Voices that Matter Conference
Nashville, TN / Jun 10-13, 2008 - North Shore Web Geeks Meetup
Newburyport, MA / June 19, 2008 - d.Construct
Brighton Dome, UK / Sep 4-5, 2008 - Web 2.0 Expo
New York, NY / Sep 16-19, 2008
LATEST POSTS
- Passionates
- Tripit Employee Pretending to be Disgruntled Dopplr User?
- Can Interfaces be Evil?
- Interface Design Principle: Let people learn more
- North Shore Web Geek Meetup this week, now with talks!
- Social design: from customer service to innovation
- Co-evolving
- Bill Gates upset with Windows Usability
- Social Design Patterns for Reputation Systems: An Interview with Yahoo’s Bryce Glass (Part II)
- Social Design Patterns for Reputation Systems: An Interview with Yahoo’s Bryce Glass (Part I)
Comments ( 8 Responses so far )
1. Richard Rutter on June 10th, 2008 (Comment) #
Wow, great to hear you were a Jalfrezi reader. It’s somewhat sad and neglected these days - I’ve always meant to bring it up to date with fresh content and a new design, but now I quite like that it’s a snapshot in time, frozen in the Netscape 4 era.
Looking forward to introducing you at dConstruct - we’re really pleased to have you as part of the (rather brilliant) line-up.
2. Josh on June 10th, 2008 (Comment) #
Hey Richard…yeah Jalfrezi was classic. I agree with you…it’s perfect as a snapshot in time.
Looking forward to the show…I’m excited to attend as well as speak.
3. gregory on June 13th, 2008 (Comment) #
london, my god, you better spend a few days there … go to the national gallery, learn why art is what it is, go to the saatchi gallery, tate, gagosian, white cube …. meet some startups in soho …. go to this guy’s wednesday meetings, http://www.bubblegeneration.com … basically, don’t come home for a couple of weeks, if you have never been there before, it will totally mature your work, globalize your understanding, increse your value to yourself as a human being…. buy time out magazine, get an all-day tube ticket, GO!
now, about this startup idea i have, i need a designer who can see what all this social stuff is leading to …
enjoy, gregory
4. Dan Donald on July 6th, 2008 (Comment) #
Hi Josh,
I think seeing you were on the bill for dConstruct made it a no brainer-to go. I’ve been reading your stuff for ages, so I’m looking forward to hearing your talk. Brighton’s a pretty cool place to spend some time too!
Cheers,
Dan
5. Josh on July 9th, 2008 (Comment) #
@Dan Thanks for your kind words. I’m looking forward to meeting you at dConstruct!
6. Dan Donald on July 12th, 2008 (Comment) #
@Josh - I’ll be sure to buy you a pint if I see you around
7. Josh on July 14th, 2008 (Comment) #
@Dan - I know this makes me sound a bit alcoholic, but I’m looking forward to having a pint in a small English pub when I’m over there.
8. Dan Donald on July 14th, 2008 (Comment) #
@Josh - There’s nothing wrong with supping a proper pint, especially when you’re in another country. It can help you become immersed in local culture!
Drop me a line and maybe we can meet up at some point.