The Blog of Brandon Milford - Marketing, Entrepreneurship, and Design

I just got back from South by Southwest this afternoon. The last five days have been great and my brain is full.

The best panels/speeches that I attended included:

“A Decade of Style” – with Doug Bowman (stopdesign.com), Molly Holzschlag (molly.com), Eric Meyer (meyerweb.com), and Chris Wilson (Microsoft).

“After the Brief: A Field Guide to Design Inspiration” – with Jason Santa Maria (jasonsantamaria.com and HappyCog.com), and Rob Weychert (robweychert.com and HappyCog.com).

“Grids are Good, and How to Design with Them” – with Mark Boulton (markboulton.co.uk) and Khoi Vinh (NY Times).

“Building an Online Fanbase” – joint Film and Interactive session with Scilla Andreen (IndieFlix), Scott Kirsner (Variety), Jim Miller (Brave New Foundation), Ian Schafer (DeepFocus), David Straus (Without a Box Inc), Joe Swanberg (Hannah take the Stairs), and Lance Weiler (Workbook Project).

“Creating a Campaign in an Hour” – with Pablo Marques (pablomarques.com), Todd Purgason (juxtinteractive.com), Jason Zada (EVB), Rick Webb (barbariangroup.com).

“Design Patterns: Defining and Sharing Web Interface Design Languages” – with Luke Wroblewski (lukew.com).

“Scaling Your Community” – with Matt Mullenweg (wordpress.com)

“How to Create a Kick-Ass In-House Design Team” – with Lisa C. Anderson (Intuit), Irene Au (Google), Tjeerd Hoek (Microsoft), and Jon Wiley (jonwiley.com).

I attended a lot of panels, however these were at the top of my list. Matt Mullenweg did an excellent job with the “Scaling Your Community” speech. Great job Matt!

The panel on creating a kick-ass in-house design team was amazing. Afterwards we went for drinks at Cedar Door with the panel and had an opportunity to talk with them for about 45 minutes or so. That’s one of things that stood out for me about SXSW was how accessible everyone is and how they love sharing their knowledge with you. It was refreshing.

This was my first year at South by Southwest and I was very impressed. I’m already excited about next year!

The team at 37Signals have asked the question: "What do you want to know?" Out of this has come some great questions and very interesting answers. I couldn’t agree more with this response:

What I am most interested in is how you (Jason) sought out the talent/team that is 37signals…

"We look for great people. I’m not talking about talent (yet), I’m talking about character. Everyone that works at 37signals is a great person. Trustworthy, considerate, curious, passionate, motivated, smart, good teachers, good listeners, responsible, mature, kind.

I would never hire someone I didn’t like as a person. I don’t care if he/she is a rockstar designer or programmer or whatever—if I don’t like them as a person they won’t be working here.

You must trust the people you work with. You must be able to learn from the people you work with.

As far as talent goes, you just have to know what to look for. It’s not really possible to explain that in words. It’s more of a feeling. And it also has a lot to do with the culture. The talent has to fit the culture. Programmers who only care about programming aren’t welcome at 37signals. Same with designers who only care about design. The talent needs to respect the other talent.

Most of all, I think it’s about seeing the potential in people. We all have a lot to learn, so it’s not always fair to hire someone based only on what they can do today. You need to be able to figure out where they can go. What they can get better at. And what they want to get better at."

Great answer Jason!

In a recent post to Inside Adwords, Google shares their numbers for fraudulent clicks and their three part system for detection. You can also read more about how they detect fraudulent clicks.

• If you’re wanting to submit click fraud requests to Google you can use their online form to do so.
• If you’re looking for an extra barrier to protect against click fraud, monitoring tools such as KeywordMax and Click Forensics are quite handy.