My first SXSW Interactive experience was just that, an EXPERIENCE. It’s hard to imagine a five day stretch of time being so utterly consumed from sun up to sun down (and then some) by one fully charged event, but that’s exactly what it was. Five days devoted to learning about the newest trends and philosophies in web strategy, technology, design, marketing and social interactions, and then meeting the many innovators who are making it all happen.

One of the more interesting panel discussions I attended was “Building Strong Online Communities” presented by the leaders and creators of popular and thriving online communities: www.blogher.com, www.fark.com, www.reddit.com and www.arstechnica.com. Each had varying ideas of what led them to success, but a few common themes emerged from their discussions. Here are a few of the key points that all panelists agreed were necessary for success:

• Listen to your audience – users need to feel like they have helped to shape the community if they are going to continue coming back to it.
• Provide an open line of communication between the users and the creators of the community – this can be via email, phone, twitter or instant message, but the users needs to know their voices matter.
• Establish some guidelines for the community and enforce the punishment if users act against them.
  
• Let community members know of any changes that are going to be made well in advance of making them.
• Involve the community in decision making.
• Don’t segment your community too much or you will end up with lots of empty segments instead of fewer, full segments.
• And finally, know that you won’t be able to please everyone all of the time. It’s usually best to stick with majority rule when listening to users.

When the panelists asked the audience “Who here belongs to an online community?” about 99% of the people in the room raised their hands. Next the panelists asked, “Who here is currently developing an online community for at least one of their clients?” I was shocked to see about 75% of hands raised. It became quite clear to me that this is the new trend for brands to connect with their consumer, and I imagine it will continue to grow as more and more communities are developed in association with brand marketing.

The Good News
Cascading style sheets have come a long way in helping both designers and developers make attractive and fast websites. While at SXSW this year, I sat in on a panel discussion between reps from Firefox, Internet Explorer and Opera. Their discussion was based on how their browsers will be implementing CSS3 in the near future, starting with Firefox’s version 3.1 (which is currently in beta). The panelists showed demonstrations of what we will be possible in CSS3. Just a few of the exciting new features are listed below.

• Rounded corners – no longer will we have to use images to create sleek looking action buttons.
• Drop shadow and opacity – hopefully this will be used wisely throughout the web, but this is another way we won’t have to create an image to get these effects.
• Drop shadow to text – an extremely powerful tool to any site, now we can style html text in ways we couldn’t before.
• Multi column layouts – want your website to look like the page of a magazine? With CSS3 you can with ease.
• Font upload/download – perhaps the most exciting change, CSS3 will allow a user to view a page in a font other than the 10 html fonts available to us now.

Many of the features above will go a long way in making the user experience on the web faster because we no longer will have to rely on large images to get the visual representation we need.

The Not So Good News
Implementation of CSS3 is likely going to be very slow. Firefox’s 3.1 will be the first browser to support CSS3 properties. However, Internet Explorer just finished the most comprehensive implementation of CSS2.1 and it sounded like they were a little behind in CSS3 implementation.

This means that developers will likely be using the ‘old’ way of design and implementation until all browsers fully support CSS3. In the meantime, the rollout of CSS3 features (however slow) is extremely exciting.

Whuffie was a definite buzz word among many at SXSW Interactive this year, and I went to Tara Hunt’s session at the conference to learn all about it. What’s whuffie? It’s social capital.

Whuffie is built by one’s reputation, connections, influence and access to resources across the Web. As the online world continues to move in the direction where social networks rule, social capital will be increasingly important for brands. And when whuffie grows, it leads to better word of mouth, more repeat sales and increased customer loyalty.

How can your brand make whuffie and reap the benefits?

1. Turn the bullhorn inwards. One-way marketing messages are impersonal and outdated. Start listening to what your customers are saying about you (search Twitter, Facebook, blogs), and accept their feedback (good or bad).
2. Become part of the community you serve. What problem does your brand solve? Find that community and join it. In this open online world, authenticity and transparency are key.
3. Create amazing customer experiences. Inject fun into the experience and make happiness your business model.
4. Embrace the chaos. Define your own measure of success and have patience.
5. Find your higher purpose. Think customer-centrically and give back to your community. Help them go further by sharing info with them.

How do you measure whuffie?

Hunt suggests measuring the success of your site and your brand with new metrics, outside of typical analytics. Instead of counting the number of minutes a visitor spends on your site, measure the number of referrals sent to your website, the number of influential social network members who add you as a friend, and the number of customers writing about using your products. 

You can check out Hunt’s SXSW presentation here. And learn more about her book at www.thewhuffiefactor.com. 

My high school art teacher Ms. Wood used to say “Everyone can draw to a reasonable likeness. You have to draw what you see, NOT what you think. It’s really only a matter of moving a pencil or brush in a series of lines, shapes and angles.”

At this year’s SXSW Interactive festival, I heard an interesting panel discussion where a similar point was made:

Go to a classroom full of kindergarteners and ask them to raise their hands if they can draw a picture. Usually just about 95% – 100% of the kids will raise their hand. Then ask the kids how many can read and write. The answer is usually only about 10%.

If you tracked these students down 10 – 15 years later, and asked the same two questions, the inverse will be true.

We are built as highly visual beings. From the start, we respond to bright colors, pictures of animals and people, and take crayon in hand to document the shapes and symbols that are important to us. Eventually, we stop practicing that expression in favor of reading and writing about our experiences. But we all continue to respond to pretty pictures, colors and designs: websites with huge colorful photos and artwork garner our attention.

I think we should continue to promote visual ways of thinking about our content and deliver rich media experiences, but not overlook the power of a good photograph, and in some cases, let the picture do the talking.

Ever wonder how the computing world knows the difference between a web browser request and an email send? Although there are quite a few technologies involved, the common way to separate these types of communication is through port numbers.  

For example, when you make a normal web request with your browser and type in “HTTP,” you’re telling the end server two things: 1) what computer address you’d like to connect to, and 2) what port number it should use. By default, HTTP will connect on port 80 (and HTTPS is generally port 443), but your web browser saves you the trouble of having to know this. There are thousands of ports and generally the standard communication ports will be the same wherever you go.

Ports on computers can be imagined as docking bays for delivery trucks. When a delivery truck leaves the shipping dock with a certain type of good, it not only needs to know which building to deliver to, but also which door. Ports are the doors of your computer. When you use your email server to send a message, you normally send through port 25. When you later check your email from your POP3 server, you’ll request your messages through port 110.

When you turn on your computer, you open up channels of communication through possibly hundreds of different ports that could be used to communicate with you. If someone wants to attack your computer, they’ll scan for open ports on your machine and try to use any they find as a way to install software or completely take over your machine.

The best way to make sure you only have the ports of communication open that you want, is to use the internet from behind a firewall (see my previous post), as the firewall does the work of closing all of those dangerous ports for you and keeps you from receiving a delivery you didn’t ask for!