#ConvergeSouth2012
Attending the Converge South conference, I brought a number of inquiries and perceptions that I wanted to have addressed. As I entered through Elon’s law school building and trekked up the spiral staircase, I pondered what digital media shortcuts and insights I would learn throughout the day. The first conference that I decided to attend was “Making A Living from Blogging” with Gaspare Maturano as the presenter. At first glance, my impression of Gaspare was flattered with funny and approachable personality. Even more intriguing than that was Gaspare’s seemingly keen eye for personal branding, and niche marketing in the digital era. In his opening, he allured that only 14% of bloggers make a salary of $24,000 a year. One of the primary points that Gaspare outlined in his speech was the need to promote a online presence by “building credibility, increasing visibility, communicating with clients, branding your personality and lastly positioning yourself uniquely”. The presentation relayed the terms and conditions of content mastery in blogging, which placed high emphasis on utilizing social media, participating in audience forums and optimized SEO results. However, these principles apply not just to blogging but to the digital business world in general, where serving as a web/graphic designer entails delivering work which is consistently of high quality, reliable, relatable and of uncommon stature. Other intellectual take-aways included highlighting targeting influencers and cultivating creativity.
Although I attended the Five n’ Dine conference midday, I was disappointed that a majority of the speakers cover subject matters that I had already mastered prior to attending Elon. The next enlightening conference that I attended was “Responsive Grid Design” geared more toward the technical aspects of web functionality. The conference didn’t start around 3p.m. Yet, while listening to the moderator I was more than elated to observe and take notes. The moderator emphasized a need for both web designers and graphic designers alike to create websites and graphic effects that were “fluid”. These fluid designs as Erik Fadiman described needed to translate well across desktop and mobile devices in today’s economy including smartphones and tablets. The presentation on grid design incorporated a more three core principles for responsive design. These included creating valuable web content and making it creative. The second key was possessing an ability to recognize responsive patterns in design, (what works and what doesn’t)-a strategy referred to as “progressive enhancement”. And the third principle was effectively differentiating the roles of presentation and content in web design. Aside from HTML and CSS codes, Fadiman also discussed employing responsive work-flow into designs, which involved determining client needs, and creating content for client approval. Overall the presentation helped to outline some other principles critical to design-related success. Not just of the criticality of creating clean websites but of also producing products that are adaptable to the demands of customers and sustainable to the technological advancements in the digital marketplace.
After attending several of the conferences and gaining valuable take-aways from each, I learned that succeeding in the digi-marketplace entailed a detailed thought-process and implementation that required extensive knowledge of not only digital web tools but also of the consumer environment. While creating projects that are visually appealing, web functional and content-robust, it is necessary to be mindful of who our audience is and how we can exercise the use of our web tools to motivate them.