14 Sep, 2009
Think Visibility 2009 Review
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I’m now back in work after a great weekend which involved travelling up to Leeds for the Think Visibility conference. It was a great venue (albeit a little tempting being in a casino!), there were some fantastic speakers and it was good to finally meet some people I had spoken to online over the last few months. I just thought I’d do a quick roundup of each of the talks I attended while I was there.
WordPress SEO Strategies (Joost de Valk)
I was eagerly looking forward to this as I am an avid reader of Yoast, and it didn’t disappoint. Joost explained how speed is a major factor in blog optimisation, and how shaving a few milliseconds off the load time can make such a big difference. He ran through how blogs can be used in conjunction with social networking websites effectively, and gave various tips on general blog optimisation.
View the Presentation Slides
Follow Joost on Twitter
Big Site SEO: TheTelegraph.co.uk (Julian Sambles)
Julian’s presentation on the optimisation and marketing of The Telegraph website was really interesting. He talked about the differences between attracting Internet readers as opposed to those of the newspaper, and it was quite insightful to hear how the SEO works at The Telegraph. Some of the results he showed us from Budget 2009 day was really impressive, and it was great to see such a large organisaition embracing social media.
Maximising Universal Search (Judith Lewis)
Judith’s presentation was fantastic, and it was a real eye-opener. With so many different types of media now appearing in Google search results, it was interesting to hear how all bases can be covered to maximise exposure. News, images, video – Judith covered the lot, plus she provided the audience with 2 tins of chocolates = bonus points.
Debunking the “F-Pattern” (Fiona Thompson)
Fiona’s session was the first opportunity to decide between a choice of 3 different talks. Having studied a lot of usability at University, it was an obvious choice that I would want to sit in on Fiona’s. Contradicting Jakob Nielsen seemed like a risky tactic, but the explanation into why there isn’t actually an F-Pattern in search results made a lot of sense. This was probably my favourite talk as there were some great examples of how eye-tracking can be used to evaluate user behaviour on a website, and the usability tips were fantastic.
Have Blogs Gone Wrong? (Tom Smith)
I met Tom in the morning before Think Visibility actually kicked off, and he was great to talk to. The talk Tom did identified a scale of “social” and “selfish”, and he proceeded to review a number of websites while asking for our opinions. While looking at the websites, Tom also asked whether they were “easy” or “hard” to use in terms of general usability. The slides for this talk were easily the most creative, which made it even more entertaining!
View the Presentation Slides
Follow Tom on Twitter
Sickipedia (Rob Manuel)
Rob Manuel’s talk was one I was really looking forward to as I have been a frequent visitor to the b3ta website for many years. Rob talked about the Sickipedia website, and how it is a growing monster that he can’t help but love. Lawyers letters, newspaper articles and his nervousness made it a really enjoyable presentation. This probably wasn’t to everyone’s taste though, as the girl next to me proceeded to walk straight out of the room when Rob started reading some jokes from the Sickipedia joke book!
Overall
Unfortunately I had to leave before the last talk (if somebody has the slides, that’d be great!), but it was well worth the money over all, and I would definitely recommend going to the next one (March 2010 I believe). There was a great range of presentations, and the lunch-time panel was a good way to keep everyone entertained. The only bad point about the whole day was the food – I was at the back of the queue and ended up with some rather horrible egg sandwiches (cookies were nice though).
Did you go to Think Visibility 2009? What were some of the other presentations like?
I will update the links to the presentation slides as I find them.
2 | Kieron Hughes
September 14th, 2009 at 2:13 pm
Personally I’d say Fiona’s presentation was my favourite as I really like learning about usability, but Tom gets a special mention as it was really entertaining.