New York, New York – An Event Apart, the conference for people who make websites, announces that Tara Hunt, author of The Whuffie Factor, has been added to the all-star speaker lineup for Seattle’s May 4-5, 2009 conference. Hunt, who will present “Whuffie-Rich Design” to An Event Apart Seattle attendees, focuses her presentation on using social capital and creating amazing customer experiences that raise “Whuffie” – a reputation-based currency, providing a motivation for people to do useful and creative things. By raising Whuffie through design, attendees can learn to help their clients or employers create deeper connections and loyalty with customers. Hunt will demonstrate how to build strong bonds with customers using case studies of companies which have implemented Whuffie-rich design.
In Hunt’s presentation, she will look at the most-loved online brands – those that people not only talk about, but step forward and defend to others – and review the key elements used in design, and how those elements help support the approach to and connection with customers. Hunt interviewed those best-loved brands to determine whether the decisions made were conscious or happy accidents, and how those same companies view those decisions now.
Hunt describes herself as both an online marketing professional and a consumer. As a result, she thinks about consumers as people – living, breathing, thinking, feeling beings – who are looking for the best way to spend their hard-earned money. Her belief that people are individuals, not targets, is expressed by what they buy: hope, stories, memories, and necessities.
“I started my book thinking that Whuffie-rich design would be, by-and-large, driven by beautiful (aka aesthetically pleasing) design, but that isn’t always the case,” said Tara Hunt, co-founder of Citizen Agency. “Some sites that people love, like Craigslist, are not visually pleasing. However, there are subtle ways that the design of Craigslist allows the site to connect people and engender a healthy community.”
Hunt, who has spent her career developing and building communities for the web, co-founded Citizen Agency to teach clients to work more effectively with the communities they serve, while embracing and adjusting to changes in both business and culture. Named a Digital Utopian by The San Francisco Chronicle and one of the Most Influential Women in Tech by Fast Company, Hunt has a reputation for bringing cost-effective, relationship-building marketing and product development to a wide roster of clients. She has launched, written about, and provided clients with strategic maps and specific tactics for launching companies using the power of online communities.
“As we’ve seen time and again, just having great products or services, or even a well designed and developed website, is no assurance of success,” said Eric Meyer, co-founder of An Event Apart. “Sometimes, the key to success is simply a great relationship with a site’s users. Of course, that’s not a simple thing at all, but with Tara’s expert eye and insights, attendees will have a strong start on adding a powerful tool to their toolboxes.”
Join Eric Meyer, Jeffrey Zeldman and special guests, like Tara Hunt, at An Event Apart, where you will gain a deeper understanding of web standards and best practices and be inspired by fresh ideas and creative new directions. An Event Apart delivers two days with the greatest minds and hottest talents in web design today. Speakers cover creating the right content and features for your audience, designing pages that are a pleasure to read and use, and beating browsers and web gadgets into submission. Both An Event Apart and its presenters are gung-ho about web design and development. Each speaker has made genuine contributions to this industry and each is a star. An Event Apart kicks off in Seattle on May 45, 2009, followed by Boston, June 2223, Chicago, October 1213, and finishing the year in San Francisco, December 78, 2009. These two-day events all take place in one room, one track, for a shared and concentrated learning experience multi-track events cannot deliver. To register for the conference, visit the website.
An Event Apart
Seattle Conference
From the makers of A List Apart, An Event Apart is an intensely educational two-day conference for passionate practitioners of standards-based web design. If you care about code as well as content, usability as well as design, An Event Apart is the conference you’ve been waiting for. Founded by web visionaries Eric Meyer and Jeffrey Zeldman, and dedicated to the proposition that the creators of great web experiences deserve a great learning experience, An Event Apart brings together twelve of the leading minds in web design for two days of non-stop inspiration and enlightenment. An Event Apart receives support from A List Apart and Happy Cog.
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