Writing

How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love SXSW

I've been coming to SXSW for 7 years and I've seen it change from a small and intimate event to the tech sector's equivalent of Glastonbury. Back then bloggers were king and CSS2.1 was the hot technology of the day. Today the conference has gone from 2,500 people to an astonishing 25,000. Blogging is considered old hat, and the new tech superstars are the start-up founders, the professional publishers and the best selling authors. Think Gowalla, Mashable and Shirky rather than Zeldman, Bowman and Veen.

10 tips for public speaking

If you're going to be speaking at a conference soon, here are my top 10 tips to make your session a sucess.

Stop the press! Design costs money?

The most recent guardian technology podcast opened with these headlines!

"On this week's podcast, we're looking closely at why a 32x32 pixel digital icon designed for the UK Government's Information Commissioner's Office cost £585 of public funds!"

Is there a right way to use Twitter?

There are a handful of people who follow me on Twitter who continually moan about the way I use the service. Some complain when I tweet about what I've eaten, who I've met or what I've done that day. Others complain when I use Gowalla or Foursquare to announce my location or post a stream of consciousness on a topic that is currently bugging me.

Lies, dammed lies and web analytics

At Clearleft we're an incredibly business focussed agency. So we work closely with our stakeholders to understand their business needs, and then turn these into Key Performance Indicators to track. In the vast majority of cases, our clients KPIs increase after working with us. However on the rare occasion that things go in the other direction, we take it as a matter of professional pride to rectify the matter.

How much does a start-up really cost?

In 1884 Thomas Marks opened his first market stall in Leeds. Over the next few years he opened 20 other stalls around the UK. In 1894, Thomas Spencer invested in the business and retail chain Marks & Spencer was born. From it's humble beginnings M&S�as it was colloquially called�became one of the UK's biggest success stories and was the first retailer to make a pre-tax profit of over �1 billion. Companies like WH Smith, Woolworth's and AMSTRAD all started the same way, so it would seem that in order to make it big, you should start small. Can the same thing be said of the Web?