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SXSWi Panel: Get Unstuck: Moving Your Company from Web 1.0 to 2.0

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Panel:

Danzico: What does unstuck mean? How can we take risks and make changes, convince clients to do the same, break old processes that we rely on? Avoid the same thing over and over.

(Traffic slide: New Yorker: Looks like good traffic. Pennsylvanian: Looks like a traffic jam.)

Unstuck: The act or process of doing good work, being productive, feeling fulfilled on a team.

Q: Let’s hear about your personal processes…

Messina: Finds that areas he gets stuck are where he keeps his ideas to himself.

Zeldman: Management through conversation. Talk quite a bit, build trust and comfort, before showing prototypes, etc. No process or rules, just tries to listen.

Wroblewski: Ongoing client feedback loop. Always try to be engaged with information flowing in. Staying on top of trends online and putting that out to the customer.

Bengtsson: Be fearless and have fun. “It’s better to be a flamboyant failure than a mediocre success.” – Sex pistols singer.

Wroblewski: Look into book the “Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable.” Absence of trust is at the base of it.

Zeldman: Remember we live in a soundbyte culture. If you can think of a soundbyte, use it over and over again, you can convince people.

Bengtsson: Thousands of ideas in your head. Write them down, sketch them down, you’ll realize that most suck. One or two may still seem good enough to work with, and you can throw those out to people to see what they think.

Q: Is design a tool to get you unstuck?

Bengtsson: Design is both the process and the goal. There shouldn’t be a gap between design and development. Start on agreement on the design throughout an organization.

Wroblewski: Don’t say you need to get the design team involved. You’ve already set up a wall by separating groups.

Messina: Building software is a political process, so you need to understand everyone’s needs and interests and mesh that into your overall process. Don’t have three wikis–one for design, development and sales–have one huge wiki everyone can see and contribute to. Don’t wikify in little pieces. Let communication flow everywhere. One team, not multiple teams.

Zeldman: Subdivide into small teams if possible. Make sure contributors who don’t know all the terms or technical issues still feel loved and listened to. Get buy in and trust before making prototypes.

Wroblewski: Small teams and big teams don’t necessarily have different dynamics. What’s true for small teams is true for big teams. You just need more love and openess.

Lightning Round!

Q: Stuck with own software and hosting — constantly have slap on new coats of paint, etc. How do we move forward?

Zeldman: Quit.

Q: Clients focus on what they want whether than their clients need. How to refocus them?

Zeldman: Say no to bad jobs until you get the right one.

Messina: Get users to use tool in front of client and show client they don’t know what they’re talking about it.

Wroblewski: Make two columns, user goals, business needs. Clients need to acknowledge user needs… hopefully.

Q: How do I get others to embrace standards?

Wroblewski: Show them how it will benefit them, what it means for them.

Zeldman: Wrote his designing with web standards book for your boss, not for developers.

Messina: Come to a story that can be repeated back to you.

Zeldman: In other session yesterday, blind person w/ lukemia trying to get info from medical websites… and unable to read it because poor use of standards and lack of accessibility.

Q: Multi-million project that most agree is doomed to failure, management won’t kill it because of amount of money spent. How to get people to kill it?

Zeldman: Use it as a demo of what doesn’t work.

Wroblewski: If you’ve spent that much money there has to be something good in it. Can you find a way to save the project?

Messina: Fail quickly and reassess often.

Q: Everyone on a team wants to make decisions. How do you get a decision to stick.

Zeldman: What does the boss say? He may need to step up and make the decision.

Wroblewski: Have open conflicts. Don’t let people be quiet. Quiet people won’t buy in or be accountable.

Posted in SXSW, SXSW Panels at 11:01 am

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