(THIS JUST IN: The folks @ Peachpit wanted to give us some extra savings on the books.. if you go to www.peachpit.com/store and buy a book.. enter in code VTMLAYERS at checkout, and they take 30% off!!! Thanks guys)

Welcome back everyone. Things are jumping here at the second day of the Voices That Matter Conference in San Francisco, and let me tell you.. there has been some intense presentations given on the subject of User Experience, Web Design, and Content Strategy. Above there are a couple of snapshots I’ve been able to take of the speakers in the conference.

2 Cool Tutorials
Before we go into what’s been buzzing here, let me turn you guys onto the daily dose of tutorials for you to see:

Editing images in Dreamweaver Templates by (one of my fav’s) Janine Warner
Product Photography Using a Digital Box – by Jean Francois Okane

Now, lets get back to the Voices That Matter Conference…

More From @VTM_WD
Considering the huge amount of things that are out here to take in, i’ll tell you of a couple of little moments here at the conference. Now keep in mind.. most of this stuff is a little bit of paraphrasing, so not really exact here.. Trying to get it to you fast has some drawbacks. I’m including links at the bottom of each section for the books they speak of.

Kristina Halvorson - (one of the country’s leading Web content strategists)
“We are dealing with Business Leaders that are looking at the web as just a different channel. Content is more than Copywriting”

“Make sure you have a plan to take care of the property that you are designing for User Generated Content ” – IE: Just dont make a group, and think that it will come.

“Take a section of a website, and highlight all of the mistakes, errors, and outdated information, and your laptop. Then go talk to the superiors. Of Particular interest is to bring content to them that exposes them to any legal problems.. ”

“Build less on the web so that you can take care of it well.. rather than building something really large and not being able to adequately feed it.”

Check out her book Content Strategy for The Web here or visit her website – Brain Traffic

Robert Hoekman, Jr. – (Founder of Miskeeto, a product development and web design consultancy focused on socially-conscious projects that improve the world.)
Robert’s presentation was very cool, simple, and pretty far reaching. Think of it this way. If you go onto a page that has multiple pages in a result , you are going to be presented with a section with a previous/next button, and a series of numbers that outline the amount of pages that you have. This process is repeatable in many different websites- and can be commonly known as a design pattern. Rather than looking at all of these little design patterns as small components to use in design, these things can be grouped into a group of patters – called Frameworks to implement into design. The message I got here – leveraging solid Frameworks make for solid designs.. which can give solid outcomes.. you get the picture..

Click here to check out his book Designing the Obvious

Richard Harrington – CEO of Rhed Pixel
Richard did a great presentation showing great evidence on how video is exploding on the Internet. Once the crowd was into video as a proposition, Richard did a bang up job on giving people important, actual, and practical information that will get them on the road to making video a compelling addition to their projects, as well as making video a cost effective solution. Here’s an interesting idea – Did you know that when a video team needs to move their camera equipment, it generally takes about 90 minutes before you start acquiring footage of value. When planning a video, why not focus on getting to a location where your cameras can pan to another area in the shoot, and make the video look different – without having to move the production. Small steps.. big results!

Check out Rich’s newest book After Effects For Flash | Flash For After Effects

Ok.. i’m going to go process some more images and get some more notes taken.. as soon as I have some more stuff for you guys.. i’ll be happy to post it here!