Phew. Well our iQ Boot Camp has finally wrapped up, at least for 2006. We think the new format — with half day-workshops — and the posh facilities at the Morrison Hotel really made a big difference. And feedback from our attendees makes us confident that this is the format we’ll continue with next year. Another new feature was the iQ Gurus speaker session, which was the last session of the event. I know a lot of people didn’t get a chance to make it to that session, so here’s my highlights of the four talks.

Brendan Hughes, eBusiness Manager, Vhi

Brendan’s talk focused on how Vhi has invested heavily in creating and managing content to dive their brand transformation. They prioritise a depth of engagement for their visitors, and they’ve used just about every content format available to do this, including:

• Podcasts
• Ask the Experts
• Discussion boards
• Web apps (like body mass calculators)
• SMS alerts and reminders
• Customised diet plans
• And more informational content than you can shake a stick at

What was particularly interesting to us was that Brendan described how they relied on 3 “profiles” (which we’d call personas) to drive their design and content development. They constantly rely on these profiles, and rework them (one recently underwent a sex change!). It’s great to hear an Irish organisation that has so thoroughly incorporated personas into their design process.

The bottom line for Brendan was that their major investment in content has resulted in 87% of users saying it improved their perception of the site. Really impressive. And part of that comes from their commitment to not try to cross-sell their services in the info section of the site. Their information section is untainted by marketing (though they do link in to their products shop). Kudos to their management for resisting that temptation.

As for how he got management buyin, Brendan said that once his director got broadband, “that changed everything”. So that’s the new strategy for how to get better funding for your website — convince your manager to get broadband so they get actually begin to understand “this internet thing”.

The other insight Brendan offered was don’t underestimate the resource commitment required for good content. Here here to that.

Dr. Mark Magennis, Director of CFIT at the NCBI

Mark is unquestionably one of the top web accessibility experts in the country. His presentation was noticeably different from everyone else’s (and ours too) because he opted for a very impressive presentation style, that, well, uses lot of words flashing across the screen frequently as he talks. Hard to explain, but very effective. (Check out the famous identity 2.0 talk for what it’s like).

Anyhow, apart from his snazzy style, Mark basically outlined the argument for why we should be adopting inclusive design, which comes down in many respects to audience size. But it’s easy to get bogged down into just how many people in Ireland have disabilities. The CSO reports that number to be 8.3%.

But Mark pointed out that disability is the tip of the iceberg. 25% of Irish adults are functionally illiterate, and a further 20% have just simple reading skills. Further, how many people have a functional impairment (like a broken arm)? Everyone, eventually. Everyone’s abilities vary according to time and situation.

His bottom line was that accessible design is more usable, it’s simpler, and it’s more flexible. “Accessible design is good design.”

And he offered another great insight: “Build accessibility in, don’t bolt it on.” A perfect way to put it.

Shane Diffily, ESB webmaster and author

Shane has recently published the Website Manager’s Handbook, which we reviewed a couple weeks ago. Shane’s talk pulled out some of the insights and frameworks from his book.

Two messages that stood out for me were, first, his thoughts on how you recognise a poorly managed website:

• Confusing homepage
• Poor quality content
• Bleeding edge technology

Shane has also devised how you can measure the scale of your website:

• Effort involved
• Complexity
• Site activity

Another of his insights was that to make your site effective you need to get as much authority as possible for your web manager, otherwise your site will inevitably fall short of what it can do.

Shane has made his presentation available on his blog.

Eamonn Fallon, Managing Direcor of daft.ie

Daft’s story is a riveting one. They’re now the most trafficked site in Ireland (well, apart from Google) with 35 million page views a month. But they started out as just a little side project. Eamonn and his brother sat around on the idea for 6 months, assuming someone else would come along and do it better than they could. Then they stopped waiting and just did it themselves.

I took two key things away from Eamonn’s talk. The first is that “innovation is a competitive advantage” . The new mapping service on Daft, which I blogged about recently, is a prime example of this. What does this emphasis on user experience practically mean for the company?

• R&D is the biggest team in the company
• It’s easy to give feedback on the site
• They respond quickly and reliably to all feedback
• They change their site literally on a daily basis, with regular 3 month plans for major improvements.
• And they user test.

Why does it matter?

Because, as Eamonn put it, “innovative services promote word of mouth”. And that’s the second key lesson I took away from this. They do, and have done, minimal advertising. It’s all been based on word of mouth. “Happy customers are your sales force.”

It really is a great story they have.

What about you?

For those who were there, what did you make of the speakers? We’d love to hear your feedback.