[New York - February 2010] Designing Social Websites

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Event Summary

This event will cover:

• What is a social website? What makes a site social?
• Why people participate online. Why some social sites work and others don’t. The psychology of online social interaction.
• An overview of interactive design patterns for online social interaction. What works and what doesn’t. “Paving the cowpaths”
• Visual design that complements interactive design.
• Launch of a social site. Bootstrapping a community from zero users. Getting over the “sign-up hurdle”.
• Monitoring, analytics and design iteration for social interaction.

Moderator:

• Corey Maass, Founder, Gelform

Panelists (alphabetic order):

• Bryan Hamilton, Director of User Experience at Razorfish
• Dan Maccarone, Co-Founder, Hard Candy Shell
• Alex Rainert, Principal, Tinker Studio
• Christopher-Ian Reichel, Director, Product Development – Social Media at Viacom/MTVnetwork

Panel Video

Pitch List

Blog Posts About This Event

Ultra Light Startups to Address Social Sites (by NYConvergence)

Panelist and Moderator Bios

Bryan Hamilton
Bryan is Director of User Experience at Razorfish. He has been complaining about the web for over 12 years and during that time used that energy to push better experiences on unsuspecting clients like Johnson & Johnson, Conde Nast, HBO and Billboard Magazine. He has used social strategies to enhance the bottom line for advertising based sites, increase value of subscription sites and spread knowledge farther on intranet projects.

Dan Maccarone (@danmaccarone)
Dan created Hard Candy Shell with Kevin Kearney after the two completed the strategy and design work on Hulu. At HCS, Dan has worked with clients such as the Wall Street Journal, Saturday Night Live, FourSquare, Gilt Group, Gawker and CBS Radio. He has spent over 12 years developing online business strategies and user-centered design solutions for companies such as NBC, Fox, Universal Music, GE Capital, AOL, Sports Illustrated, Discovery, Scholastic and Chivas Regal. He also served as the Senior Producer for the Digital Club Network, the Web’s first virtual concert venue.

Alex Rainert (@arainert)
Alex consults on mobile, social and emerging technologies at Tinker Studio. He is also currently a creative advisor to kgbweb, a startup developing better ways to discover and consume online content. Alex has been working in the interactive industry for 12 years. He has managed the UX and Creative teams at Schematic NY and co-founded dodgeball.com (acquired by Google in 2005). Alex’s agency clients have included Verizon Wireless, Nokia, HBO, IBM, CBS, Core Performance, Freshdirect and Thomson Reuters. He blogs about innovation in design at everydayux.com.

Christopher-Ian Reichel
Christopher-Ian is Director of Product Development and Social Media, for Viacom/MTVnetworks, where his work spans over 70 major network-related websites. His goal for the past decade has been to develop elegant solutions for complex problems. His previous roles have included time as Director of User Experience for Scholastic Books and for Blockbuster. Christopher-Ian’s past work has included major initiatives for LG Electronics, J.Crew, Credit Suisse, and IBM.

Corey Maass (@coreymaass)
Corey is the founder, Gelform, a web application design and development company focused on user experience, prototyping, usability testing and front-end development. Gelform products include DubFiler, a file distribution system for DJ’s. Corey has designed and run interactive online communities with up to 6000 members. Previous to Gelform, Corey was a lead front-end developer at institutions such as Arc90, Weill Cornell Medical College and Penn State