Claudia experience, share & review

Attended my first Web Standards Group Singapore Meetup at SMU on Thursday night. Organised by Lucian. There I see some familiar faces namely Coleman, Jon, Nick, Victor, Kelvin, QQ, Clauds, Hisham and some guys from Qais. Also met Lucian for the first time, Jussi and Andy Croll too. All three I’m following in Twitter.

This group of people at WebSG meetup, I really respect and want to stay in regular contacts with. They all have great thoughts and mind for good web designs and want to make the web a better place. As a user, I curse everytime I have to make myself go through an entire website and failed to find the content I want. And the many examples brought up during Andy Croll’s sharing, I totally agree, they have to do something about it. Many are major players in the web and media scene! Shame on them! (Perhaps that’s why I rarely use their sites.)

Personally, my interests and journey with web started when I was in poly. That’s where I started creating my first website on GeoCities (now closed!). I’m the one who did all the projects in my team where website, designs and powerpoint were involved. (Really regretted not taking the design courses instead!) Than later at work, I’m also heavily involved in many design, structure, layout plannings or sort. All learned and tested on my own with no former education nor attended any workshop. Pretty impressed with myself. LOL!

Anyway, if you missed the session, you can find my notes at on etherpad. Love this tool! Thanks to Ming Yeow for sharing it at one of TDM’s brainstorming session.

Some photos I took with my phone…

Key takeaways from the session:

• For a cohesive and user-friendly site, keep the design and developing team in sync. Its not the best choice to throw an intern or newcomer into the deepest ocean to “fix” the corporate website. If you have no one inhouse to do it, there are many good designers out there who can help. With web growing, no brand nor company should take their website for granted. No matter how small or big you are!
• Sites that are built on purpose to look cluttered and messy is so that they can blend their ads and money making banners among their content. Just like how all the fashion magazines do it! The messier the content, the easier for them to “slide” advertorial in. (But do you now consumers are getting very good at screening out advertisements no matter where they are?)
• Web design and construction is an art that not everyone can master.
• There are too many websites out there that need to be revamped. Good designers and developers, where are you??
• Mobile phone apps are in demand. Mobile phone makers and service providers are all getting on board the bandwagon. Mobile developers in huge demand!
• Not to miss any WebSG Meetup!

And finally, more photos of those who were there on Thursday night…