I’m doing my web professional thing at the Said Business School today, should be interesting. Looking forward especially to talking about the effect of social media on traditional forms.

I’ll post reactions later.

As part of London Digital Week, the firm I work for (Arup) are hosting a stunning exhibition of digital art and design - Digital Hinterlands.

The rationale is probably intelligible for people who are that way inclined(!), but for me as a web content person it was fun, a lot of really good photography and a couple of videos to work with.

The exhibition is running from 8 September to 2 October at Phase 2, at the Arup ‘Phase 2’ gallery in London.

An interesting article from the folks across the pond at Welchman Pierpoint. Their site is packed with good advice, and the blog really should go on your favourites list.

Migrate less is definitely a piece of advice I would endorse. As I’ve said before on website makeunders, what we take away is just as important as anything we might add. A migration can be a great opportunity to dump the unnecessary content.

Set expectations is also a key point… I’ve always found site and content owners to be very understanding if they are kept in the loop. We’re communicators, let’s not forget to communicate about our own work.

The advice about doing things at lower quality is something I struggle to go along with. I know that, realistically, time and budget mean we can’t always do what we would like to do. But I would say that a migration that doesn’t seek to seriously improve quality is a missed opportunity that may not come again.

If at all possible I would try to factor in QA and editing to the migration plan, and make sure that a great chance to improve website quality is not wasted. After all, a content specialist is not just a copy and paster… and chances to really make a difference can often be few and far-between.

Anyway, take a look at the blog entry and see what you think.

Revisiting some design work I did a while back, when I still used to do that! I really enjoyed coming up with a brand new identity for this intranet relaunch, and experimenting with colours and icons.

I’m happy with the finished result - there were also themed straplines used for promotional posters around the office. I’ll post those soon.

I actually wasn’t surprised about this, it always pays to remember that users just use things, they don’t necessarily know anything about how they work.

Which is the way it should be really, isn’t it?

How many people can you really follow?

We’re still in the early days of Twitter, figuring out whether it is really a social network or more of a one-to-many broadcasting platform. But one thing’s for sure, our ‘following’ list continues to grow.

I guess the trouble with Twitter is on the horizon. Its own success, the more users it attracts and the more followers we acquire, the less likely it is that we will be able to spot the useful tweets and digest them.

I’m a latecomer to Twitter, having only signed up around 6 months ago. My following list has a mere 44 names - don’t judge me! But already I am finding it hard to keep pace with the number of tweets coming my way. I don’t think it would be any use to me to have more than 100 people to follow, maybe not even 50.

Will Twitter eventually be swamped by its own user base and the volume of tweets they generate?

Are users able to filter the useful information from the superfluous, or will they just tire of the effort?

Maybe Twitter themselves need to develop the site to include tools to help filter and categorise tweets, but can they retain its beautiful simplicity while doing so?

An interesting future for the ‘next big thing’, I’m sure.

I’m fascinated by what the future holds for publishers, content producers and newspapers - especially how we continue to produce quality content while consumers become increasingly reluctant to pay for it.

Here are some views from New York Times Freakonomics on the thorny issue of micropayments, and whether they have a snowball in hell’s chance of working!