MoSo, or Canada’s Mobile and Social Conference, took place June 12–15 in lovely (and rainy) Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. Hundreds of geeks, creatives, and business-types came out to absorb talks about the web, startups, marketing, mobile, social media and more. Over two days there were four keynote presentations and seven other time-slots with five talks going on concurrently. Here are some highlights from talks I attended, all very paraphrased and pieced together from my messy notes.
Rebuilding Lego
David Robertson, Wharton School
@davidcrob
The history of Lego was used as an example of what can go right and wrong with managing innovation. Too much innovation is like a car with a rocket strapped to it — without controls and direction, innovation almost lead to Lego’s demise in the early 2000’s. So, people need space to be creative and the direction to deliver.
Fireside Chat with Saul Colt
Saul Colt, Kinetic Cafe
@saulcolt
Saul is a creative marketer who has spoken to the tech community of Saskatoon a few times before, so this time he did more of a Q&A session. Through his answers we learned that Saul is not looking at what others are doing, to avoid being influenced by them. Since there is nothing truly original, if you’re reading and watching the same things as everyone else, you’ll have the same ideas. Although Saul seems to do some random, crazy things, there is always an end goal tied to an experiment or business metrics. If you ever get the chance to attend a Saul talk, I recommend it. Always entertaining!
How I was Transformed by a Decade of Online Projects
Julien Smith, Breather
@julien
Julien’s talk was the most inspiring to me. He put into words what I’d been wondering about for some time: how some people just magically seem to “get ahead” and become successful. You have to “find a parade and get in front of it” — this is an old quote but applicable. In Julien’s case, he got into podcasting before it exploded in popularity. Because he was a unique voice in the early stages of a new trend, opportunity seemed to come his way and one thing lead to another. Ideally, this trend forecasting would be more strategic but for some people it looks like luck. You need to embrace emerging ideas, although they might not seem cool. That’s why you should always be working on something that is yours, even if it’s not the big idea yet, you will be building your audience. Your network is everything. Doers are more interesting than those who just talk.
How to Think Like a Millennial in a an Industry of Boomers
Collin Douma, BBDO New York
@collindouma
I guess I fall into the generation called Millennials, so I don’t need someone to tell me how to think like one. Next. Just kidding — Collin gave some good insight into what this generation does and values, and about marketing in general. When marketing, ask what and why you are communicating instead of where and how. What are you trying to get them to do? Instead of standing by being fascinated by change, be a part of that change. How are you going to participate, rather than how do you get them to participate. For example, number of Facebook fans isn’t significant if the platform is not used correctly.
As an example of the gap between Gen X and Millennials, he used the latest two versions of movie Batman, and Bart Simpson versus Harry Potter as role models; the trend towards a strong, silent hero type. Millennials value craftsmanship and care about the planet. They care more about emotional things than career. How-to content on the internet is so popular because Millennials would rather look something up on the internet than be seen as not in-the-know.
Hunting Unicorns — How to Find, Keep and Grow a Design Team
Cap Watkins, lead designer at Etsy
@cap
I chose this talk because Unicorns was in the title and the speaker was from Etsy. Although I’m not personally hiring designers, I thought it would be interesting to learn how things are done at a commendable company like Etsy. In a designer, they look for someone who is UX focused. Dribbble is so visually focused, it’s not always a great place to find designers. The designer should advocate for the user and not be afraid to be wrong and break things. (Etsy designers also do HTML/CSS).
When looking for a designer, know that great people are almost never looking for work. You have to reach out to those whose work you admire, and basically, talk to them like a human being. You keep great employees by understanding that smart people need control, for example: over their environment, schedule, and how they work. And, they need to be challenged — if you are a bit scared of your work that means you have the opportunity to grow, so ask what scares them.
Building Bridges: Simplifying Workflows & Communication between Developers & Designers
Eden Rohatensky, GB Internet Solutions
@edenthecat
Eden has worked as both designer and developer, and makes some good points on how the two often disparate sides of most web projects can better work together:
- Define problems and limitations clearly
- Listen, be open to change
- Usability first, then brand aesthetics
- Don’t devalue design, and don’t work with those who don’t value good code
- Don’t have a hierarchy, i.e. putting either designers or developers above the other; team should be flat
- Trust your designer/developer, and they’ll trust you
- Agree to make things easier for each other, and just be nice.
What the Underdogs Can Teach You About Mobile Design
Francis Beaudet, Macadamian
@surprisedp
I thought there would be more people at this one, given the recent flat versus skeuomorphic debate. Or maybe, people are so sick of that tune that they avoided this, but it was not the topic at all. Anyway, Francis compared the design philosophies of Blackberry 10 and Windows 8 to point out UI trends and traps.
Trends:
- Surface relevant content (examples: Windows “live tiles,” Blackberry’s “peek and flow” which shows tiles of running apps with updates in them as they occur, looks like Apple might be doing something like that with iOS7)
- Emphasize content
- Enable real work
- Explore neat interactions
Another neat idea is “semantic zoom” — where using the zoom gesture on a touch device doesn’t change the physical size of objects on the screen, but their context, e.g. you could start by looking at broad categories, then zoom in to see what is actually in that category, then zoom again for detail on a specific item.
Beware the traps:
- You sacrifice some affordance for flat UI, needs structure
- Branding could suffer when removing elements simply for the flat look
- When developing for any mobile platform, avoid swiping from any edge to reveal UI as that action is being spoken for in the OSs.
And there you have it, a small slice of the mass of information and inspiration that is MoSo Conf. With so much going on, I couldn’t possibly take in all the information as one person. I guess that’s where the social aspect really comes in: chatting in person and checking Twitter and Hackpad for takeaways from missed talks. I had a great time this year and am looking forward to next year’s MoSo.
