Although we arrived in Ostrava about
50 minutes late, we were greeted with open arms by the bitter cold and
the area around the bus stop was completely dug up, yet before we knew it we found ourselves
in the entrance hall of the University of Mining
and registered for the conference. Right at the entrance, we were given the programme for the entire
conference and were able to start taking in the information. There were a
total of 21 lectures,
divided into three themed halls:
- Design & Development Hall
- Business Hall / Web
- Business Hall / Business
The opening of the conference and the welcome to all
speakers and attendees kicked off the event shortly after half past nine in the lecture
hall labelled Business Hall / web, and this hall also became our
refuge for almost the entire day.
Jakub Křenek – Head Chef of the Corporate Website
The first to take the stage was Jakub
Křenek
(@cenzanni
) with a talk entitled “Head Chef of the Vodafone
Corporate Website”.
The talk was not based on a PowerPoint presentation, but
directly on Vodafone’s recently launched website. Jakub explained what is and isn’t on the website and
why, and, among other things, gave an interesting demonstration of the use of
responsive
web content
. If we know a visitor is our customer, why tempt them to
switch from a competitor when we can offer them a better tariff and the effectiveness of the message
will be many times greater? Another interesting and useful tip was the introduction of direct routing
from the internal
search function. People find what they want on the website more quickly. Or, conversely, they aren’t
sure what they’re looking for, and we can give them what we want them to find. However, this is
a much riskier approach and there is a greater chance that the (potential) customer will leave.
Jindřich Fáborský – It’s all over, dear marketers / cc. @facebook
I was personally
really looking forward to the next talk, as it was given by my good friend Jindra Fáborský (@faborsky). During the 45 minutes allotted
to each speaker, Jindra outlined the key changes to Facebook over the last
year and, under the somewhat depressing title “It’s game over, dear marketers / cc.
@facebook”, he shared some interesting insights.
He started by poking a bit of fun at his graphic design
skills, proved he was right on the very second slide, and then moved on to Facebook
. It’s certainly worth noting
that once you log in, you see up to 60% adverts
on the home screen and only one or two of your friends’ status updates. Like
any business, Facebook needs to make a profit, and following its IPO and the subsequent sharp drop in
share prices, Facebook introduced new
advertising formats
. Not only businesses but also users themselves can promote their posts, which
are then displayed on the news feed alongside others. A few months later, the
reach of posts also fell by several tens of per cent. Facebook explained this by saying that there are
increasingly more posts and it is trying to show people only the most relevant ones. In conclusion,
Jindra discussed changes to Facebook’s rules and pointed out that all content
we upload to
both personal and business profiles becomes the property of the social network, and if it decides
to change the rules of the game, our company cannot do much about it and must adapt.
Unfortunately, Jindra’s talk overlapped
with Petr Svoboda’s
(@petrsvob
) talk entitled “The world belongs to extroverts,
introverts, let’s make the most of it!”
, which was very well received by the audience.
If you’re interested in the discussions among all participants throughout the conference, you’ll find plenty of interesting insights on Twitter under the hashtag #barcampcz
.
Michal Janík – SEO!!!
The final speaker in the morning block
of talks was Michal Janík (@michaljanik); the programme
listed the title of his presentation simply and succinctly as “SEO!!!”. Already
that morning on the train, Filip told me that Michal’s talk would be good and that we mustn’t miss it. And so it was; Michal’s talk was one of the most practical and,
I might add in the same breath, one of the most interesting. Michal spoke about how
to stand out in search results, how to distinguish oneself amongst the ten results on the page that appear
uniform at first glance. Microdata, microformats
and other supplementary information accompanying search results will help us achieve this. For a better understanding,
I’ve included a link explaining what microdata are.
Thanks to them, our page will be
more prominent in search results at first
glance and will also provide users with important information about what they’ll find on the page.
We can use stars to show them the average user rating for a given
product, how much the item they’re interested in costs in our e-shop, or how long it
takes to prepare a dish. All these details will also indirectly help
improve our search ranking by increasing the click-through rate (CTR) to our
website.
Equally interesting information
included tips on how to write page descriptions and how to use thumbnail
images in search results.
Pavel Ungr – Google will take over the world
We extended our lunch break a little,
treated ourselves to a coffee and arrived just in time for Pavel Ungr (@necodymiconer) and his talk “Google
will rule the world”. As Pavel himself announced right at the start, the presentation was mainly
designed to make us reflect on what Google gives us and what it takes away. The list of popular
Google apps is truly
extensive; YouTube, Google Docs, Gmail and many others are worth mentioning. Before the presentation, Pavel
conducted a survey on what people do and do not like about Google.
It’s easy to guess that we all like its apps; what’s far more interesting
is what bothers people. People don’t like
that Google has too much information about them; it knows what they’re searching for and obtains very
valuable data for free. Another set of complaints centred on service disruptions, the hiding of access points in
Google Analytics and changes to the search interface, specifically the relocation of the left-hand menu. For
the most part, rather than a lecture, it was a discussion led by Pavel, which
was very insightful and thought-provoking. And to conclude, an interesting question was posed: what
would you do if, suddenly, Google and all its services were gone tomorrow?
Filip Dřímalka – Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century
For the next lecture, we had to
make a single trip to the Business Hall, but the journey was
made more pleasant by the canapés that appeared in the lobby, so the move was welcome.
Filip Dřímalka (@drimalka) was already waiting in the lecture hall dedicated to
entrepreneurship with his presentation “Entrepreneurship in the 21st Century
(www.21s.cz)”. For me personally, along with Michal Janík’s talk, this was
probably the most inspiring thing I had the chance to see and hear all day.
In his introduction, Filip spoke about the importance
of having a quality product and, using
jams as an example, also highlighted the benefits of simplicity. When customers were given the chance to taste six
types of jam, 40% tasted them and 30% bought some; when the selection grew to
24 jams, 60% tasted them, but far fewer people bought any – just 3%. Further
recommendations focused on giving people something extra, added value, a reason why they
will remember us. Even a small gesture pleases the customer and they will remember it. A very interesting
approach was to handling complaints, where it is in your interest to resolve complaints in the customer’s favour, whether they are right
or not. It will please them and secure their loyalty for the long term. This is also linked to the deliberate
creation of errors, such as ‘accidentally’ sending the customer the wrong size
of shoes. When resolving the situation, you also give them something extra – a gift, a discount, whatever
comes to mind – and they’ll appreciate it, thinking that mistakes happen, and your customer-focused approach will
encourage them to buy from you again. Filip then turned his attention to sales practices,
how to rank among the best sellers, and gradually moved on to customer psychology. Get closer to them, introduce yourself properly, tell them
our story, think about why they want a particular product or service, and respond to that.
Martin Bobek – How to give a good presentation and not be afraid of your audience
To round off the programme, Martin
Bobek
(www.martinhorsky.cz
) came to demonstrate ‘How
to give a good presentation and not be afraid of your audience’
. Right at the start, Martin showed exactly
how a presentation should not look, and then began to familiarise the audience with the rules and recommendations
that are
good to follow during a presentation. The fly in the ointment was that he himself
did not strictly adhere to them; for example, he advised us not to apologise to the audience, only to
apologise himself on the next slide for his voice being weakened by a cold. This was not the only thing
Martin preached but subsequently failed to follow himself, which unnecessarily undermined his
presentation. For most of the audience, the presentation was most marred by the PowerPoint
slides. They were uninspiring; on the contrary, there was far too much text and they drew
too much attention to themselves. That was a shame, because Martin really did know how to
lecture properly. Minor mistakes didn’t change that, but when added to the weaker
presentation materials, the final result was somewhat mixed.
This talk, too, was widely commented on
during the event on Twitter under the aforementioned hashtag #barcampcz
. I recommend reading the tweets even to those
who didn’t attend the conference. You’ll mostly find the main messages of the individual
talks there, and you’ll have a laugh at the same time.
The best for last
Unfortunately, ‘the best
for last’ doesn’t apply in this case; Filip and I decided to head
back to Prague after the conference ended, so we missed the after-party. According to feedback
from those who attended, it was a very interesting after-party. 🙂
If I were to assess my first BarCamp,
it would be nothing but positives. The organisation was top-notch, the speakers
proved they more than deserved their slot, and the audience complemented them
excellently with insightful questions. I don’t think I even expected to enjoy myself so much
all day and to draw so much inspiration from the talks. I’d certainly love to come along to
one of the upcoming BarCamps; the next one is taking place in January in Vsetín.
Interesting links
- http://www.barcampostrava.cz/ (official website)
- bit.ly/BarcampOstrava2012 (photos)