Web design community turns out in surprising numbers for first Design Conference in Dallas on Saturday

by Teresa Gubbins

DALLAS — Nearly 500 techie types turned out for the The Big Design Conference on Saturday, a day-long confab dedicated to capitalizing on how people use the Internet.

Held on the campus of Southern Methodist University, the conference drew 30 speakers from all over who talked about "User Experience" (UX) -- about making Web sites easier to use, easier to find stuff, easier to buy product.

The seminars were good, the experts were expert -- but the cooler thing was that, like the CoHabitat event last month, the conference further coalesced a growing Internet-based braintrust in Dallas.

Up until now, the technical community here has revolved around telecommunications/electronics, but this culture is different. Most of the people attending the conference were in their 20s and 30s, and here's a good sign: One fifth of the boxed lunches were vegetarian.

The conference, a joint venture of the Dallas/Fort Worth Usability Professionals' Association, Refresh Dallas, and the Dallas/Fort Worth Interaction Design Association, was co-chaired by Brian Sullivan and Ryan Plesko, who were pleasantly blown away by the turnout.

"Our goal was just to bring the design community together," Plesko said.

Dr. Susan Weinschenk, a psychologist whose new book is called Neuro Web Design: What Makes Them Click?, talked about ways to make a Web experience more desirable by giving stuff away or by offering less stuff so that people want it more.

"These are things we've known about but this is the first time it's linked to Web site behavior," she said.

At the other lay the guerrilla marketeering of Giovanni Gallucci, who shared quick-and-dirty devices like the time he added fake credentials to his Linked In profile so he could network with people he didn't know, even if it meant eventually getting kicked off of Linked In. He talked a lot about getting your name out there on Google, and confided that he-himself was the top Google result for "social media expert".

Some seminars focused on coding and software. Caleb Jenkins preached about Silverlight 3, a new Microsoft application that makes it easier for Web designers to interact with Web developers. (Jenkins also cited his own Google ranking: "No. 3, and sometimes No. 2," he said.)

Colleyville-based interactive design guru Norm Cox delivered the opening keynote, a bang-up speech in which he warned attendees to avoid jargony titles like "Visual Interface Architect" and instead expand their versatility. His crowd-pleasing presentation was summed up by Twitterer strent: "Norm Cox excellent!"

Here was a funny thing a lot of people did: They winkingly name-dropped companies without actually naming names. Cox talked about a "large pizza company" and showed a graphic identical to the Pizza Hut logo without actually saying the words "Pizza Hut". Gallucci talked about a project he did for "an airline based in America". Is it in bad taste to just come out and say "American Airlines"?

Most attendees gave the conference high marks. Reilly Stroope, 23, and Cecily Beaumont, 22, both of Bedford, liked that they were able to follow different pursuits.

"I'm in marketing research, so I'm here more for the social media information, while Reilly is into the design stuff," Beaumont said.

Harley Jebens, information architect at DDB Tribal, said it was the first conference in Dallas that specifically addressed what he does.

"I only heard about it in the last two weeks, and I was glad to see there are this many people interested in the same thing," he said.