In Paris we were overwhelmed by the hospitality of our friend Manon, who lent us her top-floor attic apartment within a few blocks of the actual geographic center of the city, La Bourse – wine, bread, and a detailed map set out upon our arrival.

In Budapest I was returned to family and began some things anew, had visions that mixed the eyes of a child with that of an adult, witnessed change and took notes.

Along with the few notes below, I’ve posted some snapshots that help me remember the Old Worlds.

Paris

The Tastes
The warmest of baguettes, falafel at once crispy and melting, lunches in the parks with people who live life slowly, the cafes every 10 steps with strong espresso, snails drenched in pesto whose juice one sips from the shell, the spices of the Middle East and of North Africa, the cheapest great wines every night, the meat that swims in its own blood, midnight dinners followed by the smoke of shisha and fragrant mint teas, the complexity of the art of eating.

The Visions
Winding and shifting of directions, alleys, passages, tree-lined boulevards, schizophrenic light spectacles, preservation of histories, marginalization of some and clashes with others, making one’s own traffic lanes, circumventing tourist pitfalls, the sharpest of sharp dressed, the hunt for street art, canals lowering and raising the water levels, outdoor markets of all types, bookstores filled to the ceilings and spilling to the streets, intelligent transportation options, condensing and minimizing space and living better for it, mesmerizing galleries, one of the greatest metropolises is your living room.

Budapest

The Tastes
The delirium of the richest of cakes, the taste of childhood, the only real paprika, homemade 100 proof Palinka with floating herbs and fruits, being too full to walk, fresh cut spiced salami, the wonders of my grandmother’s spread, vodka on the rocks in dives, international fusions, the history of cultural confluences.

The Visions
Crumbling memories of forced glories of other countries, the constant tide of destroyed and rebuilt, fixing just the tourist-facing side of things, the magnificence of bridges, the handmade details on even the most trivial of things, the stretching inhuman housing blocks, the magnificent spires stretching, the lushness of the island, a city split by the wide Danube, haphazard alley pubs, ruins of even older worlds, pedestrian zones, a desire leaning towards the West, twists and turns and blurs, and a home.

Here are 3 online areas where you can easily rev up  your brand presence.

1. Email Signature

It’s estimated that around 210 billion emails were sent daily in 2008. Emails are well integrated into our daily activity and are a great place to start reinforcing your brand with an email signature. Not only will an email signature look professional, it will also be much appreciated by your clients when they need to access your contact information on the go or in a hurry.

Firstly, if you don’t have a signature, create one. You’ll want to include the basics such as:

• Name
• Position and company name
• Phone numbers
• Company’s website address

Additionally, consider if there are online environments that you use in a professional context such as Twitter, Facebook or LinkedIn.  If so, add them below the basics.

Next, make a few adjustments to help your signature reflect your brand design.  Use one or two of your company’s brand colors as your font colors.  Make sure they’re legible and be sure to avoid light colors such as yellow.  If your company regularly uses a font in their branded materials, select a web font that’s similar to the company’s non-web font.

Lastly, a logo can be a nice addition but integrating them is rather tricky. Several email applications allow you to insert an image into your signature, but this image sometimes appears as an attachment only, which defeats the purpose. Another route is embedding the logo but you risk landing in a spam folder.  Until there’s a better way to do this, we suggest that you not worry about adding your logo.

2. Avatar

An avatar is an online users representation of him or herself.  You’ll find these used in instant messaging, LinkedIn, Twitter, blogs and many more places.  Just as a company uses their logo for all print and online branding materials, so should you. Use a professional picture for all your personal social media accounts.

Gravatar, which is a globally recognized avatar, makes this easy by offering a free, streamlined avatar service.  When you register and upload an image, it generates an avatar and will automatically retrieve your avatar to be included in your online posts or comments. There’s no need to attach your avatar every single time; Gravatar does it for you.

3. Favicon

Short for favorite icon, this little graphic is also known as a website icon, URL icon, shortcut icon and bookmark icon.

It’s likely you paid good money for your logo, so why not put it to good use? It takes little effort to add it into your website, and it will definitely make a difference with brand awareness and recognition. Most browsers are now using the tab feature and having a favicon helps those with mutiple tabs easily to identify your page.

Favicons can be found in these places but it varies slightly from browser to browser: next to the page name in the tab, in the address bar or to the left of the address bar.

Be sure to follow these three simples steps and you’ll have a digital presence in no time!

Your Name(s) and Title(s):

Ann Gass, Director of Contracts

How many people does your company employ?

80

What does your company do?

We are Contract Administrators for the US Dept. of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). We ensure the property owners compliance with contracts to provide affordable housing throughout Texas and Arkansas.

Who are your clients/customers?

HUD as well as the owners, operators and resident of the properties we oversee.

What has been your greatest success?

Being recognized by HUD as one of the top-performing Contract Administrators.

Where do you find inspiration?

In my two boys and being outdoors

Why did you choose Creative Suitcase?

We were impressed by their vision, experience and superior customer service.

How did you hear about us?

Internet search

What results have you experienced with us?

CS updated our logo and website and created outstanding marketing materials. As we expand into consulting work, this new look helps us look more polished, professional and ready to help the customer.

Top 5 items in your suitcase (your favorites)

Travel destination: First Home Monterey County, CA

Take home souvenir: Fresh artichokes from Castroville The Artichoke Capital of the World

Website: Ours! www.shccnet.org

Logo/campaign/tagline: The old Oscar Mayer song

Austin original: KUT 90.5. Cant live without my public radio!

We stayed at The Peninsula first and then The Mandarin Oriental, both considered to be the go-to five-star hotels in Bangkok and primarily booked with Westerners. They glare at each other from across the Chao Phraya River for the Five Star Face-off.

While you can’t go wrong with either hotel, there are certainly some key aspects where one outshines the other. Below, I’ve outlined a few things they both do very well and then a few areas where one beat up on the other.

These things are expected of all five-star hotels and are areas where they both shined:

• The service was exceptional. They had a large staff-to-guest ratio and there was always someone eager to help. Respectful staff escorted us to our rooms, pointed out key features and had our luggage promptly delivered.
• Both had spacious rooms with plush, comfy beds. There was ample room for spreading out luggage, full baths with hand-held shower heads (as well as separate stand-up showers) and full room controls next to each side of the bed.
• They had nice big pools with large amounts of shade. There was pool-side service as well as salas for a comfy, shaded lounge-fest.
• As mentioned, both hotels sit on the Chao Phraya River so they both had river views and provided river shuttles to key location points.
• Perhaps most importantly, the hotels provided a quiet haven from the bustle of Bangkok. Outside their lush landscaping your feet ache, you’re sweating from the heat and chaos that comes with navigating Bangkok and people are constantly trying to sell you something. Inside, the world is a breeze and you just float right along with it.

Our room at The Peninsula.

Breakfast, including honey dripping from the comb, at The Peninsula.

The Peninsula beat up The Mandarin Oriental via:

• Price: we booked a junior suite with a balcony for the same price as a king room at The Oriental. The room at The Peninsula was more spacious and included a separate area for luggage and changing.
• Food: we had the breakfast buffet at both and The Peninsula’s was far better for about the same price. The Peninsula offered a wider selection of food but more than that, the food just tasted better. As a testament to this, included in the breakfast buffet was honey dripping from the actual hive. We also had a Thai lunch and dinner at both hotels and those meals were also much better at The Peninsula.
• Guests: The Peninsula felt less “snooty” than The Oriental. The Oriental has a “no shorts after 7:00pm” rule in the lobby. Keep in mind that it is still 85 degrees with 95% humidity after 7:00pm in Bangkok. In my mind, this calls for shorts. Nice shorts, mind you, but shorts nonetheless. How very American of me.
• Internet: it came free with the room.
• Helipad: It had one, if you need that sort of thing.
• Quiet: The Peninsula was less noisy than The Oriental, both in terms of the guests and the hotel itself.
• View: The Peninsula towered over The Oriental. We had an amazing view of the river and the city resulting in a better overall view of Bangkok.
• The little extras: Our Peninsula room included a TV in the bathroom, next to the huge tub.

Our room at The Mandarin Oriental.

The Mandarin Oriental beat up The Peninsula via:

• Convenience: Going to the most famous Wats in Thailand? The public water taxi conveniently picked up tourists right outside of the Oriental. There was no need to cross the river, as we had to do from the Peninsula via their free river shuttle.
• Service: It was a bit better at the Oriental. We never had to wait in line if we needed something, three people were there immediately to help us. They delivered fresh-squeezed orange juice to our room just after check-in and arranged a better (and cheaper) taxi service upon our departure. The hotel’s staff also had really cute Thai uniforms. Not a must, but a little visual perk indeed.
• Going beyond: Our flight to Japan didn’t leave until 11:00pm. The Oriental gave us a free late check-out and also held our luggage in storage while we went out for a few hours of last-minute Thai haggling. I mean shopping.
• Food options: While the food wasn’t as good as The Peninsula, there were more options in terms of restaurants. They had a high-end Thai restaurant serving mainly seafood, a traditional Thai restaurant and an Italian bistro.
• Television: I hate to even mention this as it belies how Justin and I spent much of our last day in Thailand. We were exhausted and resting up for Tokyo in front of the TV in The Oriental. They had a better variety of channels than the Peninsula. This point really doesn’t hold much water unless Bangkok leaves you exhausted like it did us.
• The little extras: The Oriental had better toiletries (dental kits, razor kit, talc, detergent, four bottles of water a day vs. The Peninsula’s two). They also gave us a plate full of bread at breakfast to feed the big fish swimming in the river next to us.

So which hotel wins the Five Star Face-off?
The Peninsula is the best choice if you prefer better food and value over slightly better service. It would be my pick for another stay.

Final Conclusion
We’ve ruined ourselves for all future travel. Now that we’ve been spoiled by huge comfy beds, robes and slippers and someone always at our beck and call, I’m not sure how we’ll adjust back to lowly Hyatts and Hiltons.

With the recent change, modern browsers will now correctly render nearly any font that a designer wishes to use. Great news, right? We’ve taken a giant leap forward in terms of controlling a user’s interactive experience. But there’s one major hang-up.

In order for a user to view a non-traditional font on a web page, that font must be downloaded off the web server. In turn, this leaves the font exposed and anyone with the slightest bit of computer know-how can personally download it. As you guessed, that’s illegal. The hours and hours that a type designer has poured into the creation of that font goes right down the crapper when someone illegally downloads it.

Luckily, it doesn’t end there. A few solutions popped up in response to the legality issue, one being Typekit, a subscription-based service that allows you to legally use unique fonts in your site. Typekit has teamed up with type designers and foundries to create a large library of fonts, and Typekit personally hosts these fonts in order to protect them. In turn, a customer simply pays an annual fee and everyone wins.

An example of Typekit in action The New York Times Skimmer using Cheltenham and Franklin

There are other solutions out there, such as individual foundries creating web-specific font licenses Typotheque in The Netherlands for example and I’m sure we’ll be seeing many more solutions pop up over time.

So keep your eyes open, and you’ll see web typography develop more and more. Just be sure to shield them when you come across a site set in Curlz because as we know, both good and bad design will come from this.

An example of Typekit in action The Sew Weekly blog using Coquette and Proxima Nova

Rachel’s Wrap up

1. Battledecks 2010 / Panel
   Um, yeah. I skipped this panel when I found out one of my favorite bloggers (and an expected panelist) didn’t make the trip. So, instead, I bring you:
   QR Codes & 2D Barcodes
   Wrap Up: I admit, I had never heard of QR Codes until SXSW decided to put them on each of our lanyards, but as a full-service marketing firm, I’m especially interested in how they can help us bridge our printed materials to online uses. Basically, a QR code is a 2D barcode and when you take a picture of it with your mobile phone, you are either sent to a url, or given someone’s contact information or given a piece of valuable content (ie. song download, etc) directly on your phone. While access to this technology is limited right now to about 5% of the US population (its closer to 80% in Japan), the mobile phone companies are beginning to include this as part of each new smartphone’s settings, so it should be immersive in about 18 months. QR codes allow retailers to track a product after it’s left a retail location and share on-the-spot coupons with consumers. They can also be used to share contact information and exclusive content (think bonus tracks), sell tickets and join a mailing list. Why use QR codes over just pointing a customer to a url? Not only is it easier for the customer (no typing needed), the retailer can track information much more precisely from a QR code than from a direct visit to a url. For example, a different QR code could be used for each newspaper where the retailer is advertising, telling them which newspaper is reaching their audience more effectively.




2. Universities in the “Free” Era / Glenn Platt & Peg Faimon
   Wrap Up: With all of the disruptors out there in the education space (ex. free online lectures, open courseware, online textbooks and online universities), how is a university meant to survive? Through the experience of a university education. This means every professor must be a project manager, angel investor, curator, resource allocator and life coach all the things a student can’t get from merely watching an online lecture or studying with virtual professors. Not only are professors key, but so is the experience of student interaction in a university setting through student groups and research. This new shift is also causing employers to take a closer look at the graduate’s skills and experience, outside of where they earned their degree. In the end, for any university looking to remain relevant, they must embrace the student experience that can’t be achieved solely through a screen. View presentation slides here.




3. Persuasive Design: Encouraging Your Users To Do What You Want Them To / Andy Budd, Clearleft Ltd
   Wrap up: According to Andy Budd, the session’s presenter, the average person is bombarded with over 5000 branding messages each day. With all of that noise and chaos, how do you guide your audience in the desired direction? Below are just a few insights into what Budd likes to call “Choice Architecture”:

   
   

   • For starters, many people are influenced by the behavior of others social proof. If you were to see a long line outside of a new bar, it’s likely you’d think it’s a cool new spot. Amazon.com is a master of social proof. They’ve employed it beautifully in their ratings and reviews section. Other examples include LinkedIn’s “Connections” and 37signals’s video testimonials from specific audience representatives.
   • Loss aversion is another helpful tactic. We often feel a stronger desire to purchase something when we know there are only a few left. Threadless.com uses this to their advantage by only printing a limited number of each t-shirt design and notifying you when there are only 5 left. The same can be said for Ebay. With their auctioning structure, they create a sense of urgency in the consumer.
   • Lastly, you can’t go wrong with likability and gifting. We buy things from people we like, and we feel a sense of debt to those that gift us. Amazon is all over this tactic as well. Have you ever purchased a second item just to get free shipping? I have.




4. Convergence 2010: Ten Cool Things That Could Happen This Year / Dan Shust
   Wrap Up: The first 15 minutes of this panel were likely the best at SXSW. The panel was broken up into two sessions with 3 speakers per session. After seeing them all, I wish the first speaker had hogged the panel on his own. Dan Shust from Resource Interactive walked us through what is coming this year including:

   
   

   • Location-based technology how your location will enhance your online engagements whether through apps, social or augmented reality, ex. Gowalla.
   • Frontchannel interaction interactions normally regulated to the backchannel will now be more important or engaging than original content, ex. the idea that Twitter will overlay the Superbowl on your TV for a more interactive experience.
   • Digital is the new paper consumer tablet computers (think iPad) will reinvent publishing, ex. interacting with ads to buy products immediately.

   It’s worth taking a look at the full slide deck here.




5. Augmented Reality – Gimmicky Trend or Market-Ready Technology? / Richard Lent, AgencyNet
   Augmented reality is just plain cool. You can’t deny that, but setting the hype aside, this panel asked the question “how much of AR is just ‘coolness-factor’, and how much is actually useful and marketable?” There are definitely gimmicky uses out there such as P&G’s female pads campaign, but we’re seeing marketable aspects too as seen in Lego’s new, well-known packaging. The bottom line is that we should remember AR is just another tool; it’s not a starting point.

Jennifer’s Wrap up

1. Interactive Infographics / Casey Caplowe, GOOD
   Wrap up: I walked into this panel with high hopes for digital eye-candy and got exactly that. Interactive infographics is a relatively new medium and among those at the forefront of the pack are GOOD magazine and The New York Times. The panel shared some of their successful and not-so-successful projects and explained the technology barriers they’re currently facing, particularly with Flash. My biggest take-away from this session was to always let the data do the talking. When taking on an infographic project, ask yourself the question, What are we trying to answer? and go from there. The data will say it all. Below are a few of my favorite infographics that they shared:

   
   

   • How Different Groups Spend Their Day The New York Times
   • Girl Power GOOD magazine
   • The Hidden Cost of War GOOD magazine

   
   

2. Designing the First Fifteen Minutes / Rob Goodlatte, Facebook
   So, truth be told, I was lured into a loose sales pitch with free mimosas while on my way to this session. By the time I got there, the room was full. Tsk, tsk. Instead, let’s talk some more about QR codes!

   
   

   Wrap up: Rachel covered the “what” and “why” so I’ll speak to the “how” that was addressed in QR Codes & 2D Barcodes:

   If you’re considering employing QR codes in your marketing campaign, consider a few rules:

   • The URL that the code links to cannot be longer than 25 characters, so consider using url shrinkers if necessary.
   • The code should be no smaller than 1″ and it needs a 4 pixel margin of white space around the edges for legibility.
   • Be sure to test it in various scenarios. Different materials can effect legibility. For example, the sheen from glossy paper can present a problem.
   • Be sure to link to a mobile site since users will be using their phones to access it.

   
   

3. Is Wordpress Killing Web Design? / Dan Oliver, .net Magazine
   Wrap up: I should start by saying that I wholeheartedly love Wordpress. In fact, I love CMSs. What would we do without them? I walked into this session thinking that there was some great evil in CMSs that I didn’t know about, but as it turns out, that great “evil” just pertains to those nicely prepackaged themes that any Joe Shmo can use. From a designer’s perspective, it’s a given that we frown at using themes. As creative professionals, we should be using our talents to create something unique. However, there is definitely a time and place for themes. They’re great for those individuals that need a nice looking site but either can’t design it themselves or can’t afford to hire a designer.




4. Web Accessibility Gone Wild / Jared Smith, WebAIM
   Wrap up: This session provided some helpful do’s and don’ts for basic web accessibility. There isn’t a great deal to elaborate on, but I do have some helpful tips for your future accessibility challenges:

   
   

   • Alt text for images should convey content and function. It’s not necessary to include “image of” when writing this text.
   • It’s helpful to have a “skip to the main content” link in your design. You can position it off screen and have it still be accessible to screen readers.
   • You don’t need to use or on all instances or for well known terms.
   • Screen readers do in fact read javascript and layout tables don’t affect accessibility counter to common belief.

Mackenzie’s Wrap up

1. Get Stoked on Web Typography / Samantha Warren, Phase2 Technology
   Wrap up: I definitely got stoked during this presentation. Samantha did a great job reminding the audience about how much they love fonts and challenging them to explore different fonts. With programs like Cufon, @fontface and typekit, typography beyond the standard web fonts is possible, however, I couldn’t help but wonder why a designer would choose to sacrifice their design for the users that can’t view their non-web safe fonts, when they could just play it safe by using a web font until non-web safe fonts become the norm. Yes, web fonts are getting boring for designers but there’s a good reason Times is a web-safe font. It’s classic, verstile and  safe. What got me stoked even more than the idea of using non-web safe fonts was using web safe fonts better. Check out this amazing layout all created with web fonts by Jon Tan. Now tell me, is that not art? Is that not beautiful? Is that not genius? “It’s not the font you use, it’s how you use it,” Samantha declared. And it was after that exclamation when I got truely stoked!




2. Mind Control: Psychology for the Web / Ben Scofield, Viget Labs
   Wrap up: Somehow I missed this one so instead I bring you one of my favorite speakers from SXSW Interactive:
   PredictablyIrrational: Who Put the Monkey in the Driver’s Seat / Dan Ariely
   Wrap up: I loved this topic! Ariely studies human’s irrational behavior and tells us why people don’t always do what we think they’re going to do. Why? Our instinctual behaviors aren’t rational, they’re emotional.

   
   

   Example 1: Something that is default is easy. We would rather go with the default than learn what the default means and weigh our options. He supported this by showing the audience the percentage of people in different European countries that decided to donote their organs. The numbers made no rational sense. Culturally similar countries had varying percentages. Most countries were either in the 90% range or the 10% range. Why? It was how the question was asked. Some countries asked their citizens to OPT OUT of donating their organs while other countries asked their citizens to OPT IN. The majority of the people just didn’t do anything so the default was what was decided for you. And these are your organs people! What we canlearn from this: always make the default option the one you want your audience to do.

   
   

   Example 2: People have very little understanding of their choices. They simply don’t know what they prefer. His reference for this was given these options, which trip would you pick? Trip 1 is to Rome for a week all expenses paid. Trip 2 is to Paris for a week all expenses paid. Given you’re not partial to one location or the other, that’s a really hard decision. Now, consider this. Trip 1 is to Rome for a week all expenses paid. Trip 2 is to Paris for a week all expenses paid, except coffee. Now which one would you pick? Well, you’d think Rome since you can drink all the coffee you want while there. Well guess again, the majority of people pick Paris. Why? Because if the coffee isn’t free they assume it must be pretty darn good and worth the trip. Lesson: help your audience make the decision you want them to make.
   These were just two of many examples that Ariely shared. For more information on irrational behavior, check out Dan Ariely’s book Predictably Irrational.




3. Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon / Jared Spool, User Interface Engineering Wrap up: Jared Spool is a great speaker. Funny, engaging and insightful. And yes, he revealed some fascinating treasures from Amazon.com. My only thought, how can the average website use these treasures? Engage Through Content: People love reviews. Reviews heavily influence your customers buying habits, so integrating reviews into your website makes perfect sense. Right? The caveat, you need 20+ reviews for a user to trust them and when only 1 in 1,300 purchases result in a review, getting these reviews can be highly difficult to do.
   • Don’t Fear New Ideas: Amazon is constantly experimenting with new ideas. Most of which fail but when one works, it’s a keeper. Don’t be afraid to try new things, just know when to pull the plug.
   • Eliminate Tool Time: Don’t waste a users time “buying” by making them go through all the typical purchasing stages. Use your tools to make this process as easy and efficient as possible for your customers. Must be nice to be Amazon.
   • Never Forget the Business: Always refer to your client’s business model.

   Here’s some fun links Jared referenced. Enjoy!

   • The Mountain Three Wolf Moon Short Sleeve Tee: Check out the reviews! Hilarious.
   • Playmobil Security Check Point: Really?
   • Tuscan Whole Milk, 1 Gallon, 128 fl oz: This product isn’t even for sale but the hype is so strong that they can’t pull it. Some amazing reviews to read through. Milk = Poetry.

   
   

4. What Coworking Tells Us About the Future of Work / Panel
   Wrap up: Coworking seems to be the way of the future. This panel of four spoke on how coworking, and remote working, currently exists and how they see it growing in the future. With 25% of workers currently working from home one day a week or more, the rise in coworking seems inevitable. Pair that with the fact that companies can save money by not having a body in a seat, employees are happier coworking so retention is high (granted they decide to do so), commuting can be expensive, time consuming and environmentally wasteful and working from home can be more productive for you and your employer, it’s a win-win situation.
   Some things to ponder:

   
   

   • “Work is no longer a place, it’s about communication,” so be sure to use tools to support your time working and have clear communication with your team and manager at all times.
   • With the values of upcoming generations not matching the core values of companies anymore, companies will have to adapt to the growing desire of coworking.
   • “Competiton for your job is no longer limited to location.” If you want to work from home, be sure you are the best candidate for the job. If you can do great work remotely, so can someone else from anywhere in the world.

   What does all of this mean? Hey, if you want to cowork, go for it! It’s definitely doable. Just be sure prepared for the challenges of coworking.

   
   

   This wrap up likely opens a whole can of worms, so if you have questions, just leave us a comment and we’ll get back to you. Did you attend SXSW Interactive? We’d love to hear what you found most intriguing and inspiring.

Blue Escapes offers luxury vacation villas throughout the Caribbean. With that type of business, and the fact that the owner, Hunter Butler, was named one of the Top 50 Villa Rental Specialists by Condé Nast Traveler magazine in 2008, it was time to give Blue Escapes a much needed facelift.

By focusing on font usage, Caribbean colors, awe-inspiring images that make you say “I wanna go there,” and high-end sophistication, Blue Escapes has become the premiere vacation specialist for islands like Anguilla, St. Thomas and Tortola.

Heres a quick glance at the before and after. See details below.

Before:

• The large logo, elementary colors, clip art usage and heavy text advertised the locations on offer as Caribbean “deals” vs high-end luxury getaways.
• The website lacked a strong conversion driver per page. The phone number and email address alone were too passive for immediate action.
• Photography usage didn’t showcase the amazing villas Blue Escapes has to offer. Because the images didn’t include captions, the user couldn’t easily get detailed information about a villa they were interested in.
• Overall, the website didn’t feel special, warm or Caribbean-like.

After:

• The colors and images used represent the ocean and landscape surrounding the Caribbean islands.
• Adjusting the logo size and color presents Blue Escapes as an intimate company and puts more emphasis on the villas.
• Having the email, phone number and contact form on each page increases conversion rates and makes it easy to get in immediate contact with Blue Escapes.
• Using a caption on each villa image creates a direct avenue for prospects to explore the site further.
• Large photos instantly draw the audience into the website.

See more after images.

This year, we’ve decided to share our top picks with the hope that non-attendees can learn a little something from our five days worth of education. Follow up with us after SXSW Interactive to see how our top picks ranked. Be sure to give us a few weeks, we’ll need the recovery time.

Mackenzie, Rachel and Jennifer at SXSW Interactive 2009

Rachel’s Picks

1. Battledecks 2010 / Panel
   Battledecks is a fast-paced, fun, laugh riot where “contestants” have to put together a presentation on the fly as slides are randomly projected for their confusion and the delight of the audience.
2. Universities in the “Free” Era / Glenn Platt & Peg Faimon
   MIT, Yale, Stanford, and others put lectures online. Chris Anderson argues all university lectures should be free. From Academic Earth to TED, it’s free. So what is the value-add of a university education? What models of higher education will survive? How will universities leverage the social web to reinvent themselves?
3. Persuasive Design: Encouraging Your Users To Do What You Want Them To / Andy Budd, Clearleft Ltd
   So you’ve designed a great product, fixed a stack of usability problems and spent a fortune on marketing. The only problem is, people aren’t using it. In this session you will learn how to get your users to do what you want them to through good design, human psychology and a touch of mind control.
4. Convergence 2010: Ten Cool Things That Could Happen This Year / Dan Shust
   In this fast paced, audience driven session, our panel will guide you through an unpredictable romp covering 10 digital predictions that will affect us all in 2010. What’s next for social networks, augmented reality, mobile, digital out of home advertising, gaming and more. We’ll even leave time for questions.
5. Augmented Reality – Gimmicky Trend or Market-Ready Technology? / Richard Lent, AgencyNet
   As of late, marked advancements in mobile phones have rapidly catapulted Augmented Reality to the forefront. AR offers the promise of a breakthrough technology. It possesses the potential to revolutionize cities, education, entertainment, and considerably more. That said, in the early stages of any technological development there’s likely to be overeager adoption of that technology, i.e. technology for technology’s sake. In this panel we’ll explore the promise of AR ‘ where it is today, where it’s going, and how the technology could add real-world value beyond entertainment and marketing.

Jennifer’s Picks

1. Interactive Infographics / Casey Caplowe, GOOD
   Insights and examples from the frontier of interactive infographics. The smart, interactive presentation of data is emerging as a new form of media. Still in an early stage, this format shows major promise. We’ll explore what this is all about and where it’s going.
2. Designing the First Fifteen Minutes / Rob Goodlatte, Facebook
   That user who just signed up is about to bail. And a thousand other people just stopped in but didn’t even bother to register. Your product is great, but your users don’t stay long enough to find that out. The first fifteen minutes of your product are the most important. Learn from the successes, mistakes, and insights of designing new user experiences for products.
3. Is Wordpress Killing Web Design? / Dan Oliver, .net Magazine
   Is WordPress killing web design? Leading creatives from the world of web design debate whether CMS tools have made designers lazy, and created a new set of design conventions that designers feel obliged to follow.
4. Web Accessibility Gone Wild / Jared Smith, WebAIM
   This session presents a wide variety of mistakes, blunders, misconceptions, over-indulgences, intricacies, and generally silly aspects of modern web accessibility. Sometimes the most serious errors are made by well-meaning developers who misunderstand the concepts or take their limited accessibility knowledge to an extreme level – thus web accessibility gone wild.

Mackenzie’s Picks

1. Get Stoked on Web Typography / Samantha Warren, Phase2 Technology
   Typography can make or break a design, but there are big differences between what makes jaw-dropping type offline from what makes great type online. In this presentation, Samantha will evaluate interesting offline lettering and discuss how you can translate those principles and leverage CSS3, @font-face, and new font-as-service web apps to create engaging online typographic experiences.
2. Mind Control: Psychology for the Web / Ben Scofield, Viget Labs
   We all know web design tricks to getting people to do what you want – make buttons bigger, use accent colors, etc. There are other strategies, however, that rely on the more proven tools of psychology; this session will explore reciprocity, scarcity, and more, and see how effective they can be.
3. Revealing Design Treasures from the Amazon / Jared Spool, User Interface Engineering
   On its surface, Amazon.com just seems like a large e-commerce site, albeit a successful one. Its design isn’t flashy, nor is it much to write home about. But deep within its pages are hidden secrets — secrets that every designer should know about.
4. What Coworking Tells Us About the Future of Work / Panel
   What happens when people can work anywhere – home offices, coffee shops, libraries, coworking spaces? With mobile computing, telecommunications, and broadband, knowledge workers are choosing new work arrangements and self-organizing in looser, more transient arrangements. We’ll discuss these broad trends and what they mean for work, using coworking as a specific example.
5. Effective Dashboard Design: Why Your Baby Is Ugly / Aaron Hursman, Hitachi Consulting
   Effective dashboard design delivers on the promise of targeted, accessible, and actionable information for organizations looking to maximize their profits. Through good, bad, and very ugly examples, you will learn about practical design techniques and challenges that dashboard designers face today.

If you are interested in a particular panel, let us know and we’ll see if we can squeeze it in. And of course, if you’re attending SXSW Interactive, we’d love to hear what you’re looking forward to.  Off to the technology trenches we go. When we return, nobody knows… or Wednesday.