What to See at Big (D)
If you’ve purchased your ticket and taken a look at the conference schedule, you’re probably already overwhelmed by all the choices presented at this year’s Big (D)esign Conference. To keep it simple, there are four categories including career development, design, development, and strategy on Friday, and another four, including content, mobile, multimedia/design, and usability on Saturday. Over the course of each day, you’ll have to pick and choose your way through the labyrinth of sessions, and no, Hoggle won’t help you through this one either.
To be helpful, I’ve picked through each session in order to present you with a list of some of the most widely applicable and interesting lectures. These sessions have clearly laid out goals and learning objectives, and can be useful across multiple industries. I've also included a few wildcards for those of you who want to break away from standard sessions and enjoy topics that are outside the box. Here are the sessions I’ve chosen as the most useful, the most interesting, and the wildcards for the 2012 Big (D)esign conference:
Friday
Most Useful Sessions:
10:00am -- Lessons from DELL’s Design Library: Getting 7 Million Pages on the Same Page
11:00am -- Create Happiness as an In-House Designer
3:00pm -- Designing for Real-Time Marketing
These three sessions have a lot to offer, from building design libraries, to designing for better marketing.
Most Interesting Sessions:
11:00am -- Design Thinking in World War II
2:00pm -- Myth of Paying Attention
If you’re interested in the psychology and history of design choices, both physical and virtual, these two will pique your interest.
The Wildcard:
10:00am -- UX Principles of Jim Henson
I debated whether it would be a wildcard or one of the most interesting sessions in the world. We don’t always explain the user experience principles of Jim Henson, but when we do, we do it with Muppets.
Saturday
Most Useful Sessions:
11:00am – Top Usability Mistakes: Lessons Learned from 100,000 Usability Tests
1:00pm -- SEO Best Practices for HTML 5
These two practical sessions are based on two topics that are easily taken for granted: mistakes we should learn from and the changing face of search engine optimization.
Most Interesting Sessions:
2:00pm -- Content Design in Physical Spaces
3:00pm – Social Media: The Indy Musician & Filmmaker’s Game Changer
Each of these sessions discuss how physical spaces, arts and activities coexist with virtual spaces.
The Wildcards:
10:00am -- Beyond Your Agent: Social Media for Radio, Film, & TV
4:00 pm – Life of a Visual FX Shot: From Script to Screen
Our last two sessions, the wildcards, feature the film niche present at Big (D)esign this year that combines the topics of marketing , filmography, and even a little bit about special effects.
Which Big (D)esign sessions are you looking forward to? We want to hear from you in the comments, on Twitter, or on Facebook. Also, don't forget to visit LevelTen at our booth on Friday and Saturday to pick up free swag!
