JR8
TEDC14: What do you want to see?
We've had an amazing time putting together The Email Design Conference - but with TEDC13 wrapping up in Boston, it's time to start looking at planning next year.
We would love to hear from all of you about what you want to see with TEDC14. Is there anything we can do better? Are there any topics you want to see covered more thoroughly? Let us know here so we can make TEDC14 the best conference around.
I'm really eager to add a workshop day to the agenda, to give attendees more hands-on knowledge!
I don't think this posted the first time so trying again! (Sorry if it posts twice)
I'd love to see Workshops. I'd also like to see more than one on at once, so people could pick and choose what they'd like to learn about. I'd also love the opportunity to host one of them!
Agreed. I think we should have Kevin lead a workshop on advanced techniques in HTML email.
I'd love a workshop day, would also love to be hosting one of them.
Agreed. I think a hands-on workshop would really pull all of the conference discussions together nicely.
I think the workshops idea is fantastic! That way we could learn more targeted information.
A "Digital Pass" would be cool. Could be sold at a cheaper rate and allow people that can't travel to the event to live stream the sessions.
Would be good to have people representing the email clients. I'd particularly I'd like to talk to gmail and outlook to understand more about their reasoning behind what they do.
Perhaps put them behind some protective glass.
We tried to get someone from Google/Gmail for TEDC13 but mostly reached dead ends. Let us know if you have any contacts there, or "know a friend"...
I have a couple of mates in Microsoft, none directly in Outlook but I'm leaning on them to put me in touch with someone.
Mark I would be slightly concerned about your "leaning" techniques, considering the vibe of your original post.
Jokes aside, that would be amazing to have. I don't think anyone's paid enough at Microsoft/Outlook to stand in front of a few hundred email marketers.
Even more powerful than a workshop, I think one-on-one consultation times could be useful. I've already seen people using the #TEDC13 hashtag to crowdsource solutions to coding problems or get feedback on designs on Twitter.
...Essentially, let's put Elliot and Ros in a booth for a day and let me people ask them questions.
I like that idea - kind of like live optimization sessions at scale. Being able to pick the brains of intelligent, highly skilled people would be fun to do on a personal level.
Sessions diving deeper into specific areas could be really interesting. There's definitely an opportunity for some useful talks on things like copywriting, strategy, how to analyze analytics, developing customer/user profiles, design tools, and other UX-y things.
I know a lot of conferences have tracks you can focus on. Are you suggesting something similar or more like workshops devoted to each topic?
Wouldn't necessarily have to be separate tracks. Was just generating some ideas for talks that would fit in well with the overall theme and that I thought the attendees that I spoke with would enjoy and benefit from. I think a talk on copywriting for email, for instance (http://www.slideshare.net/ETCommunitiesKC/email-copy-writing-b), would fit in pretty well.
I just realized my original reply to this didn't get posted.
They wouldn't necessarily have to be separate tracks. Was just throwing out some ideas for talks that I thought would fit in well with the overall email design theme of the conference and that I thought the attendees that I spoke to would benefit from. I think a talk on copywriting for email for instance would fit in nicely. Something similar to this: http://www.slideshare.net/ETCommunitiesKC/email-copy-writing-b
I'd love to see myself there; had a blast last year, but finances are slightly different right now.