On the bright side, I’ll get to see the kids — though I have much enjoyed the extra sleep I’ve gotten the last four nights — and my fiancé is in town. I don’t talk about him much around here for two reasons: 1. He doesn’t live here yet. It’s been a MONTH since I’ve seen him. Ridiculous. and 2. I can’t decide what to call him here. So I don’t.

See my Flickr photos from Austin, TX, SXSW and every restaurant we ate in
Then be sure to view Summer’s, Cole’s and Rex’s photos.

Summer has also blogged some of the restaurants where we ate, and Rex has blogged several sessions I didn’t attend, and some I did.

Finally, NYC sister’s fiance’s coworker saw all these restaurant reports here on Fixin’ Supper, and he passed along these recommendations for the next time I’m in town:

Z Tejas is highly recommended, especially the apple cobbler, and you’ll probably need reservations. East Side Cafe apparently has a greenhouse attached to the restaurant, so at least some of the food is grown right there. And he concurs with your conclusions about The Salt Lick and Guero’s.

Bill Leake, Apogee Search
Kelly Meacham, Expero

Leake: Have a website that gets you traffic and lets your traffic do what you want. The way SEO is often done is often antithetical to usability.

Local search is very easy to optimize.

Good SEM will drive the right users to your website. Traffic for traffic’s sake is worthless.

Once they’re there, you have to keep them engaged, satisfy their goals, pay it forward.

90% of sites are initially found through search engines. Most visitors hit the site and bounce right off. One of the big myths of SEO is that it’s all about what you say on your pages. It’s how the rest of the web is voting for you, how they’re linking to you, how they’re talking about you. The SEO industry is caught up with horrible ideas like keyword density. Don’t get suckered in by "we’ll write new copy for you."

How true. I have seen some really AWFUL copy written by supposed SEO experts, that would definitely make it harder for regulars to use the site, no matter who it drove in the front door.

Put your keyword in your title tags, put them in your meta keywords file. Write for your users. Have a keyword density greater than 0.

The 4% keyword density ratio is worthless. Google is 80% off-page. 20% blowing your own trumpet. I’m leaving out stuff like age of domain, etc. About 40% of your 20% is your title tags. About 30% is your other tags and using your keyword in your copy.

My industry spends 90% of their time on 6%….using the keyword in copy.

Meacham: Writing for the web. By writing content to be read by people, not by spiders. Write in an inverted pyramid.

Leake: Organic search means people come in from anywhere.

Meacham: Forms must have benefit statements. It increases your conversion rate.

Leake: Better Business Bureau privacy policy tests very well.

New topic:

Leake: Google Checkout is really great. No merchant fees. From conversion, usability credibility really increases your conversion. Put it in your AdWords. But, Google Checkout requires a Gmail account, so know your audience.

On a big content site, your internal links matter as well. So link to yourself as much as possible.

What follows are my notes, thoughts, paraphrases, and here and there an actual quote.

Strama: A lot of people say, Howard Dean figured this out. My contention is, not really. The Internet found Howard Dean, not vice versa. Was that your experience?

Johnson: I get these phone calls a lot. Someone says, "You guys raised $25 million for Howard Dean, and I, too, would like $25 million." Big laugh. I think the Internet found Dean and made him the Internet candidate. One thing we learned fr the Republicans in 2004: Never let anyone own the relationship between you and your supporters. [Meetup had as many supporter emails as the Dean campaign did.]

Strama: What’s an email address worth?

Ruffini: It could cost pennies to several dollars.

SooHoo: It depends on where you’re getting the lists from.

Johnson: How much would a campaign pay for an email address? We tell our clients, Don’t buy email addresses. In terms of what an email address is worth to a campaign, a good baseline is $1 per email address, is what you expect to raise from it.

SooHoo: Realistically not every candidate is able to [go without buying lists].

Ruffini: It’s rental and acquistion. One of the untold stories of Dean is the MoveOn primary, when Dean really exploded on the scene. He won with 40% of the vote, and everyone was encouraged to go sign up for the list of the person they supported.

Johnson: The MoveOn primary was definitely big, and it got a lot of media attention.

Strama: We’ve found organically grown lists, we’ve gotten from knocking on doors in my district and asking people, we’ve found are worth $10/address in fundraising.

Strama: Which candidates have the most leverage with online fundraising, and what about them gives them that advantage?

Ruffini: I think the landscape is changing a little bit. In late 90s, 2000, it was an early adopter crowd. I do think there’s a model out there if you’re a frontrunner, because they do inherently have a lot of support. If they can make their big events offline their big events online, and collect a lot of email addresses, they’re going to raise a lot of money off that list.

Johnson: I’d agree. I think your Internet rock stars are going to be your offline rock stars, and 2008 is going to be the year of the boring Internet. In the progressive left world, it’s still 1999. We’re saying, This is what HTML is. I look at 2001, 2002 as when the Internet got boring. Of course Hillary Clinton is going to do well online because she’s going to do well offline. Says, Clinton, Edwards, Obama will all have raised more money at this quarter than Dean had at same point.

Strama wants to know, don’t you think Internet better benefits outsider candidates, like Barack Obama.

Johnson disputes, all frontrunners will do well this time around online.

SooHoo: "Outsider" candidates have a core message that resonates with people. That’s why the Internet is good for them.

Ruffini: It’s critical that your online and offline messages are one and the same. The key is being authentic. We haven’t touched on video yet, but we got off television and onto the Internet, and all people want to do on the Internet is watch television.

Strama: And YouTube may have been the deciding factor in the George Allen/Jim Web campaign.

SooHoo: The biggest "shouldn’t do" is to not be authentic. You can’t just go out and buy an online presence. The online community is looking for a real window into the campaign. "Straight Talk" for lack of a better term. [He's the McCain consultant.]

Johnson: For us, we’d try anything on the Dean campaign. Someone would say, "We should sell peanuts online to raise money," and we’d say "Great idea!" and go do it. Big laugh.

What not to do is anything that keeps people on their computers, not talking to people. Gives an example where Dean campaign made this mistake.

Strama: Biggest thing not to do is Second Life.

Ruffini: There was a Mark Warner Second Life event last fall, and there were 20 people there, half of them political reporters in white t-shirts who couldn’t figure out how to sit down.

Strama: Let’s talk about blogging. Blogging has become something you have to do, but there’s a big risk of it being inauthentic.

Johnson: Edwards didn’t have a blogging problem, he had a people problem. Had Amanda been hired to be a finance director, it would have been the same problem.

SooHoo: We’re encouraging people to get out there into the blogosphere, do it organically, but we will have a campaign blog at some point. Infinitely more valuable than a campaign blog is supporters who are actively engaged and informed. Politics at is core is social networking, going back to ancient Greece. Now we just have new tools.

Ruffini: Campaigns need to focus on their core competency. We’re not political commentators. If a campaign tries to adopt the ethos and mannerisms of blogging, it’s not going to work because you need some form of message discipline. Use the tools to your best advantage — whether sharing information, using video, whatever your candidate is good at.

Strama: Campaign used MySpace as equivalent of "knocking on doors" and "yard signs."

Johnson: The thing that scares the crap out of me are the camera phone and YouTube. They are going to be the death of a candidate.

SooHoo: We don’t know yet what will be the big thing in 2008. It’s much more efficient to be able to walk inside on a 100-degree day.

Audience question: How will you protect identity online?

Johnson: Even when working with a network of volunteers, you have to educate people so they’ll know what they’re doing.

Audience question: The Warner campaign didn’t present an opportunity for conversation at the Second Life event. That’s why it failed.

Johnson: The problem with Second Life is until you can get as many people in a virtual room as you can in a real room, it’s kind of pointless. I think the Warner thing was a success, because he got press and a media hit out of it.

Audience question: Current information is critical to a powerful web presence. Too many emails–Where does the line get drawn? People tune out after too many requests.

Ruffini: I think the biggest challenge for our industry is to find a killer app that’s not fundraising. Fundraising is the most quantifiable thing you can do virtually.

Strama: I think it’s the most difficult strategic question. Zack Exley, strategy for John Kerry….says, How do you say to the campaign manager, Let’s not do a solicitation today when every one so far has brought in $1 million?

Johnson: You track open rates….when they become increasingly unreliable…then it’s time to give the list a break.

SooHoo: It’s hard to say, you put $xx into your online team and we’re going to move XX points. You can do that with TV.

We went to the Salt Lick Sunday night. If you aren’t a vegetarian, you must make this fabulous restaurant in Driftwood, Texas, a definite stop on your tour of Austin.

The brisket is great, the dill pickles crunchy and pucker-inducing and the ribs are very flavorful.

My complaint remains from my first visit to the Salt Lick: With all the other great home cooking here, why are they serving us store-bought bread? There’s some on my plate here but I ate little of it. It offends the palate compared with the other authentic Texas barbecue fare.

More photos in my Flickr account.

Sigh.

B. I’m here in the first session of the a.m. Should we let users have a voice? Well, duh, but at any rate they’re arguing the merits and details here.

Julie Davidson, 30Boxes
Will Smith, MaximumPC
Scott Rafer, mashery.com
Dave Snider, Comicvine
Evan Williams, Twitter
Mike Taturn, CNet, moderator

Snider has managed to start talking into the microphone. 5 min ago the whole audience was shouting, we can’t here you!

He says, editorial is necessary to model for users creating content. Good point. But he says Comicvine finds user content essential. "It’s better to have bad information on a page than no information."

Smith: People want data spoonfed to them.

Snider: That may be, but the main thing people want to do is get things done their way.

Rafer: You’re stereotyping, right? Everyone has one area [they're an expert in] but they want to be spoonfed the other 99%.

Smith: I always wonder when I’m reading on Wikipedia, is this completely accurate?

Taturn: With user-generated ocntent, you’re programming to yourself, and there’s no fact-checking etc that makes those of us with traditional media nervous.

Snider: We find that the editors on our site are glorified users. [Users are fact-checking, fixing grammar, etc.] The top three users will post guidelines for other users….they are the experts, they just didn’t have the technical know-how to build the site.

The secret sauce is Monopoly money: You’re dealing with people who spend hours and hours on your site every day, and unless you give them some special perk they will go away.

Taturn: What about ownership?

Snider predicts there will be a lawsuit when some user-generated site sells….users will demand compensation.

Davidson: It seems like your fear is that they’ll demand to become paid editorial people.

Snider: I have some people I would love to pay. It’s a great way to find employees.

There’s this whole conversation going on about the upsides and downsides of users. I think everyone up there except for Snider and maybe Rafer has a love-hate relationship with users.

Snider: We’re creating a resource, and we have to moderate it. It’s to make sure they’re not trying to harm the site in any way. You generate lots of traffic and lots of submissions w/ UGC.

Smith: With comics you have really passionate users. Does that work with everything?

snider: Sure, pets, there’s dogster.com, gardening.

Guy Ted Rheingold* fr Dogster is invited to the mic to explain how they deal with passionate disagreements…he says, you definitely moderate and can step in to say, This topic has been discussed, or the community will say, this information is not right….

Also talks about bringing advertisers and marketers into the community in an appropriate way to help them gain a trusted status in the community, help advertisers develop useful content….

Smith and Taturn cite difficulties with bringing advertorial content — no matter how good — in a form that readers appreciate.

Snider asks a question no one wants to answer: Have you guys ever faked users? Smith finally says, I used to do it but it was hard to maintain. snider is wondering about its usefulness in tracking and controlling rogue users.

Smith: If you’re making them angry, you’re engaging them.

Taturn: I want to hear about your business models, I like them.

Williams: You know we don’t make money, right?

[Additional conversation....]

Taturn: So don’t worry about editorial, just build something where they can talk to each other, and it will unfold?

Williams: Yeah.

Conversation: Can or do users want to replace paid editorial? Guy fr CNet is freaked that this will happen. Others don’t seem to be as concerned, see a place for both.

Take away: User content is just as critical as editorial content. Rafer says, difficulties in monetizing UGC will be worked out as the industry matures.

Audience question: How effective are audience filtering, to bring best content to the top?

Rafer: They’re subjective, so some will work for you and some won’t.

Sorry, I didn’t follow the rest. It wasn’t as good as the others I’ve been to so far.

*I figured out this was Ted Rheingold in a roundabout way from MyBlogLog, which is useful for so many things. Ted was a very useful addition to the panel, I must say, and it would have been nice to have him on the panel. Side note: Ted moderated a different panel, which was blogged by my boss.

Two years ago I had the chilaquiles rojas at Las Manitas, after I let the waitress talk me into that over the verdes. Two years later, I’ve determined it’s truly personal preference, because I really loved the verdes.

Funny thing about lunch. We were here in this really old building, at the historic restaurant, and Summer was on her cell phone and Patrick was using his phone and my computer to try to fix the Hammock servers.

  Working lunch

He seems to have been successful because my email is running again.

Jim Coudal, Coudal Partners

Brendan Dawes, magneticNorth

Notes are a combination of quotes, my thoughts and some paraphrasing.

Coudal tells a story about a project he conceived and his firm worked on, that they never implemented. Says creativity for its own sake is valuable. Learned a lot through research, that information is valuable.

Build things just because you can. You may start building A but end up with B. You need to be moving to do anything. It’s much easier to steer a moving ship.

It looks from the outside like at Coudal Partners we’re just screwing around all the time. But his point is that it’s OK to do that and to follow your whims….you will get somewhere.

We tend to be restarters and not revisers. The actual work that comes out of that design process is more signficant to the goal.

Two suggestions for integrating them into work:
Paint all the walls in your bathroom with the paint that turns them into chalkboards. No one can resist colored chalk.

Describes his company’s concept, the book. They write down any ideas they have that they aren’t doing, but it institutionalizes and authenticates this sort of thinking, to follow ideas out to their conclusion, or until there is no conclusion.

Dawes: What are the dividends? Not necessarily just money. Marketing, reputation….

Created a site celebrating work of Saul Bass. Great site, lots of acclaim….let the domain expire 3 times. This guy is really funny. He’s trashing a guy who bought his first domain and has wasted it.

It’s great to have a short attention span but make some stuff, even if it’s half-assed.

Constraints are fantastic. Too much freedom in a creative process is usually very, very bad.

Funny bit about old computers. His was a Sinclair ZX81, 1 K of RAM. The cursor was just blinking at you, baiting you. You had to do something because there was nothing else to do. You had to type in some code.

Dawes shows these fascinating shots fr his experimenting with displaying DVDs in unusual ways….Like, 1 pixel wide per frame. Or one frame per second, displayed side by side, one minute of film per line.

Used Play-Doh to control the speed of a kung-fu movie on his computer. You really had to see it.

Guy came up to him at the How conference where he demoed it and says, what’s the point? He says, "I don’t know." The point is to do it.

www.brendandawes.com/sketches/mcgoogle

They who dream by day are cognizant of many things which escape those who dream only by night….Edgar Allen Poe

Great audience question: How do you develop the skills you need?
Coudal: You can’t build a house if you don’t know how to drive a nail. Gain the skills but keep your short attention span.
Dawes: I’m not a detail person but I know what I want to achieve with the team. [Coudal interjects: You have people who can pick up after you.] Dawes: Learning the skills, it’s how you apply the spare time you’ve got.

Coudal: A model for how we’ve structured our staff is preschool Montessori. There are responsibilities but you screw around. Audience member wants to know, don’t you have to tell people to stop and work? He says no, but it’s our culture. Lots of work gets done.