Insights&Inspiration

Tag Cloud from my event notes, created using Wordle.net

I had the honor of attending the first ever AppNation conference at Moscone Center in San Francisco this past Monday and Tuesday, September 13th and 14th, and wow!  This is the first industry conference that I went into not having a great deal of specialized knowledge on the topic and boy did I learn a lot!

My only disappointment was the large percentage of attendees that were developers and investors versus agency folk, but I suppose in hindsight, when an industry is still so fledgling it makes sense for an event like this to also serve as a matchmaking opportunity for investors and developers to find one another to help spark further innovation.  Just would have been nice for there to be a little more of an agency perspective represented.  But overall a great conference, and I expect that it will be one that grows significantly more each year.

After reviewing my 30 pages of notes in an attempt to extract the most poignant information, here is the quick summary I came up with.

Where are the Real Opportunities in the App World? (more…)

This video is both a brilliant insight into the basics of user experience, as well as a lesson on what our children will grow up expecting from technology.  Its equally adorable as well.

The original post that this video was a part of can be found here; it is also a great article, expanding on the specific user experience lessons that can be taken away from this simple first interaction between a young child and a brand new iPad.