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I realise I’m hideously behind with blogging about lots of geeky stuff, but here goes. Apologies if you were expecting this sooner!

This year’s dConstruct was a lot larger than I was expecting: the last time I went in 2006 there was a comfortable number of folks there, and it felt really friendly. I didn’t go in 2007 as it clashed with the Rugby World Cup opening game in Paris. But this year there were about 500 attendees who gathered at the Dome in Brighton for the event. I found it a little difficult to find people, even though I knew they were there, as there were so many folks milling about during the breaks.

Here are a few photos I took during the event:

[Above] Aleks Krotoski on Playing the Web: how gaming makes the internet (and the world) a better place. Listen to the audio (mp3).

[Left] Joshua Porter talks about Leveraging Cognitive Bias in Social Design. Listen to the audio (mp3).

Daniel Burka [below] talked about Designing For Interaction. Listen to the audio (mp3).

Next up was Tantek Çelik, talking at length about Social Network Portability and how Microformats can help you to take your friends with you to a new network. Listen to the audio (mp3).

The two Matts, Biddulph and Jones, [below] did a two-handed presentation called Designing For The Coral Reef. They talked about “delighters” - little things which are present in design which can really make the difference to the user experience. Listen to the audio (mp3).

Clearlefter Jeremy Keith wrapped up the event with a thought-provoking session entitled The System Of The World. There doesn’t seem to be an adio transcript of that available.

I’ve been in a dilemma for the past few days. Ever since finding out that d.Construct2007 and BarCampBrighton are scheduled for 7th, 8th & 9th of September, it’s posed me a problem. Which is that it’s the exact same dates that the Rugby World Cup starts in France, and the opening games with France vs Argentina and then England vs USA are the ones I want to go to.

So, there’s been some weighing up of pro’s and con’s, and I’ve just booked the rugby trip! I figured that, even though I had a great time at last year’s d.Construct, since it’s an annual event, there’s always 2008 - whereas World Cups only come round once every four years - and the next one is in New Zealand - hardly a convenient hop across the channel!

The worse-case scenario would have been me prevaricating for so long that tickets to both events had sold out. So I thought it best to jump now and forever hold my peace

Otherwise known as the dConstruct Party…

But first, I’d like to say what a great time I had at the conference. Some really informed and informative speakers; nice venue (apart from the pokey seats) and plenty of subjects to get the braincells working. And of courese, plently of opportunity to meet like-minded geeks for beer, chat and crazy golf!

Here’s some of my pictures taken around the after-party.

[Sunset over the wreckage of the West Pier]

[Bright On Neon. OK, bad pun]

[Ross and his Paps on the crazy golf circuit]

[Who ate all the pies? A conference-goer wishes to remain anonymous]

You can see all my d.Construct/Brighton images at Flickr.

I met some great people, amongst whom were:

• Ian Forrester
• Jeffrey Veen
• Jeremy Keith
• Olly Hodgson
• Robert Lee-Cann
• Ross Bruniges
• Sheila Farrell

The other great thing about the conference was the excellent backnetwork site - no problems if you forgot to get someone’s card; just look them up later, or read their aggregated blog posts and view their Flickr pictures, all in one place. Every con’ should have one!

Lastly, here’s a cheeky little desktop which I spotted during the first session of the day - great to stop the Over The Shoulder Snoopers?

[Stop Looking At My Screen!]

A presentation by Jeffrey Veen

[Jeffrey Veen gets excited talking about his old job at wired.com]

Jeff Veen’s presentation where to start? He’s a very charismatic and engaging speaker, and this was no exception. You can download his presentation slides from his website. But here are a few bulletpoints.

Three criteria you should think about before producing a site:

• Viability - business case and reasons for building a site
• Feasability - can it be done?
• Desirability - do people want it?

[The best products are the most desirable]

Your site’s architecture and structure should always be extensible. Even if you start small, plan for expansion! Otherwise…

[What could happen to Amazon by the year 2050...]

Design faces global challenges, but even at a local level, terminology can vary widly. In the US, a survey was conducted to see what people asked for when ordering a fizzy drink. The results were pretty mind-boggling!

[I'd like a can of coke/soda/pop/other (delete as appropriate)]

Terminology can be important when labelling application functions. What happens when internal jargon creeps in - or is it megalomania taking over?

[Create New Country?!?!!]

Understanding Your Visitors is a crucial step in putting together a useful, usable website. Using simple stickie notes to group together functions vs what users are trying to achieve (card sorting) can show up gaps in both directions:

[Mind The Gap mapping]

Top half maps user tasks and bottom half maps website features - the trick is not to have gaps either way. No point wasting resources engineering something that nobody wants, but completely ignoring a facet of the site that is not currently available but users are crying out for.

Finally, Jeff pointed out that it’s much more expensive to change your mind (add new features) the closer you get to launch. Proper user research means you are not wasting time, money and resources by going up the wrong garden path.

A presentation by Thomas Vander Wal

• Folksonomy is the result of personal, free tagging of pages and objects for one’s own retrieval.
• Tagging is done in a social environment (it’s shared and open to others)
• The act of tagging is done by the person consuming the information

These tags are important because people will use their own vocabulary to tag, which is meaningful to them. Tags can add perspective or context, and can make up for missing meta data.

The interesting things happen when you see tags in relation to the

Dual Folksonomy Triad:

[Thomas explained The Dual Folksonomy Triad]

People tag something within their own sphere of interest, but can then use that tag (in the form of a tag cloud search) to pivot and find material which other people have tagged in a similar fashion. Bonds and communities can form around these social groupings. Try following a tag trail in Flickr - you might be surprised where you end up!

There is always a tension between Consumer/Folksonomy vs Businees/Taxonomy. A business might wish to call their latest widget by the model name, MyFantasticWidget. But real consumers out there often refer to it quite differently, with emergent vocabulary. They might want to call it “DeadCoolWidget” instead. Business ignore such folksonomy at their peril.

I hope Thomas will post his slides to his blog in due course.