How I Spent My Vacation

Last week, I met up with a college friend to attend South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. In addition to enjoying good food, great conversation, and a trip to the LBJ Presidential Library to see animatronic LBJ, I attended sessions on teamwork in web design, designing user-focused sites, and whether video games have a place in higher education.


Three observations:

• Great web development comes from teamwork--even "famous" web designers are surrounded by colleagues they respect and rely on.


• All web developers, no matter their location or who they work for, struggle to get content from their clients.


• All website owners struggle to understand who is visiting their site and why.

Although these may not seem like earth-shattering revelations, it was comforting to realize that corporate web professionals experience the same general conditions as those of us in universities and non-profits.