Bamboo Juice 2009 – Web Design Conference

Hi All,

Firstly lets start by saying that sorry I haven’t written in a couple of weeks, its been really hectic here, but that’s no excuse! To make it up to you though I bring you the review of the highly anticipated ‘Bamboo Juice’ conference primarily for web designers & developers.

Now this is my first conference admittedly, so I don’t know how these things usually roll – I usually here mixed reviews about conferences, people often tell me that whats being told is obvious, and some times even repeated a every conference. That aside, I’ll start with what went wrong.

Bamboo Juice, The Bad Stuff…

Now this was mostly my fault. I bought my ticket three weeks before when I heard about it, and I used my paypal account – great I thought. I realised literally just after purchase that I was using an old paypal account, and that the tickets for the conference may be sent by mail. My paypal account had old postal address, and obviously I didn’t want it going there.

So anyway, I emailed them, Richard Quick, the organiser asking him to amend his details and send to the correct address. I got an impressive prompt reply saying that tickets where going to be sent by email. Great I thought, saves lots of hassle. Well 1 week before going to the conference I got an email saying that I had a Royal Mail delivery tracking number. Then it sunk in, it was posted! Now I know the original error was by me, but it was annoying that it was posted. Very lucky I knew the people who owned the shop under where I used to live, who intercepted them for me. So that was that nightmare avoided. They also only arrived 1 day prior to the event.

Call me fatty, where’s the food?

There was the promise of food which everyone was looking forward to, but unfortunately we didn’t get this until the evening, some 8 hours after the start of the event. Unless I missed other food opportunities, but that’s the first I knew of it. I tell you, by the time the food came I was starving.

Delayed Start, C’mon, C’mon

The conference was meant to start at 10am, but got delayed to about 11.30 i believe because someone forgot to pickup the speakers.

Technical Problems

Some of the background fell down, it was a technical problem with the sellotape. What was funny was the amount of people simultaneously posting to twitter. Also they had problems with the mac, which delayed one of the speakers.

The Bamboo Juice Speakers 2009

1. Jeremy Keith – Idealist!

Jeremy was fantastic, although what he spoke about wasn’t to directly relating to web designers & developers, it was certainly inspiring. This guy is a definite idealist, and a firm support of open source & creative commons licenses. I agree with all his points on how old out-of-date copyrighting principles should not be applied to the Internet. We also had a fantastic chat at the after party. Cheers Jeremy.

2. Relly Annett-Baker – Copywriter

Relly was also fantastic. Her talk on copywritting, and how to write copy was simply brilliant. I guess it applied a lot to me because the position she described herself in (her husband becoming a freelance web designer, and lacking in copy for the websites), is a pretty similar situation to me. The advice Relly gave on how to write for different audiences also applied a lot to PPC ad writing and more. We also had a great chat at the after party which she kindly gave me loads more advice. Thanks Relly!

3. Dom ‘The Hodge’ – Self Acclaimed SEO ‘Guru’

When you see someone up on stage with a beer in his hand, you know it’s going to be a good talk. Well usually that would be the case, but Dom, otherwise known as ‘The Hodge’ spent however long it was talking out of his arse. 50% of what he said I think he just thought up on the way down to the conference, and the other 50% was just basic SEO knowledge that you could get off the Google guidelines. I think what I found the most scary there was that a lot of people will be taking away and using what he told them, none the wiser.

Dom suggested that heading tags (H1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6) tags should be used the number of times on page in respect the heading name. I.e h1, use once, h2 use twice, etc. Someone nicely suggested in the questions what about if there are 10 headings? Dom replied that he should use a <h10> tag. You know, that magic tag that anyone can use… what a load of bollox.

4. Gareth Rushgrove

I didn’t really enjoy Gareth’s talk to be honest, I took a few things away from it, but I’m not sure if it was just me, but it seemed like a really really big advert that said that if you want to be in the web industry you needed to go to university. Perhaps I miss-interpreted it. But thats how it seemed to me. I got bored and switched off.

5. Richard Quick

After the little problem with my tickets, I wasn’t sure what to expect from Rich Quick. But I was pleasantly surprised. His presentation was funny, witty, and VERY VERY useful. He spoke about the outdated relationship with clients, and that he waited over 1 year for a clients copy, and also had a client who made 76 changes to a template. This lead him to realise the relationship was wrong, and needed to be changed. I took a lot away from this talk, it was also my favourite talk of the day.

6. Paul Boag

Paul Boag was obviously the headline talker for the conference, being a somewhat celebrity in the industry – and he didn’t disappoint either, I thoroughly enjoyed his talk. I look forward to seeing Paul again at other conferences. His talk was on how to win clients in a sales role, and as small web design agency this applied to me a lot, it gave me new sales techniques which work. Thanks Paul, we also had a great chat about .NET programming and PHP at the after party.

The After Party

Unfortunately I couldn’t stay for as long as I liked due to me dropping my phone and breaking it – I hate the phone anyway. So I would like to say a big sorry to those I walked out on mid-conversation as I was trying to quickly find out how I was going to contact my lift – I did get home safely and a big thank you to the security guards at the Eden Project.

I’ll be back to Bamboo Juice next year!

I admittedly forgot to take pictures, so I only got a couple.