I am going to try my best to get to South By Southwest Interactive this year. It is in Austin Texas, so it isn’t too far of a drive, and attending this conference would be a lot of fun.

South By Southwest is a huge, yearly conference and festival that includes Music, Film, and Interactive categories. It is a major event in all those industries, and a lot of big names come out for it.

Being a web designer, I am mainly interested in attending the Interactive part of the conference. There are going to be a lot of great panels to sit in on, and major individuals like Dave Shea, Molly E. Holzschlag, Jon Hicks, Ryan Carson, Elliot Jay Stocks, and Jeffrey Zeldman just to name a few are going to be there. To say the least, it is a great opportunity to further immerse my self in the industry, and to learn a ton of valuable lessons from more experienced people.

Hopefully I will be able to scrounge up the finances. It wont be cheep and I am hoping that I will be able to get it all together to attend.

I opened the mail box today and instantly my mood went up several notches. My first issue of .net had arrived. I was as excited as a young child with a new toy. Simply ecstatic I tell you. I rushed to open it and vigorously flipped through the different articles and pages. I am still reading through it, but several articles have great promise.

I have wanted a subscription to this wonderful magazine for quite some time now, but only finally broke down last month to place an order, it is a bit pricey to get it in the US. Thirteen brilliant issues promise to have a wealth of information for me in the coming year.

For those of you who are unaware of the web design world, in other words the majority, .net is a UK publication on web design and development. It contains articles and techniques and general information on what is going on in the web design world.

The UK is a big hub in this industry. There are loads of talented people over there. LOADS I tell you! Brilliant designers and developers and general innovators. I hope to be able to get over there in the future to attend some of the many different web centered events that go on, especially Oxford Geek Night.

I will probably have a lot of posts that are inspired by articles from the magazine, so be prepared for it.

There is a very good article on A List Apart entitled “Reviving Anorexic Web Writing”, by Amber Simmons. Her major point is that writing for website content has turned into body copy more then actual content that anyone would actually want to read.

What I really liked about this article was how she opened. She describes an office visit from a potential client who wanted her to build a quick site for him. She replied that she would be happy to look over the content of the site when it was ready and then see if it was indeed something that she would be willing to take on. The prospect was shocked by the idea that the content should have to come before the design, and that it was not something that could be thrown in later.

The reason that I like this point so much is because it is such a common occurrence in our line of work. Clients come to us with hopes of an amazing looking website with all the bells in whistles. They don’t want it to cost them more then a price too low to mention, and they want it in a week. They think that it is a simple process, and as such, content is usually the last thing on their minds. “Oh, it is just something that you will write up and throw in at the end for us wont you?”

Now, I am always happy to get with a client and help them figure out what sort of content is needed for their site, and to even help with the creation of said content. But they have to be willing to work with me. If I don’t have a sites content up front, it almost guarantees a sub-par design.

Content is the heart of web design as Amber so excellently points out. It needs to be well thought out, well written, and it needs to captivate your audience. I may just have all my future clients read this article.