Minnesota Web Conference, #2

I recently attended the 2nd annual MinneWebCon, a conference at the University of Minnesota dedicated to all things relating to building websites.

Keynote speaker Doc Searls talked about the future of CRM, moving away from the model of capturing and retaining customers and moving towards Vendor Relationship Management or VRM. I think what envisions is a system where customers say what they want, and businesses come to them with their offers. I see this happening a bit now, and it'd be interesting to see how this plays out. Searls is a fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society at Harvard University, and helped develop the Public Radio tuner for the iPhone.

Afternoon speaker Bruce Schneier talked about security and the Internet, and how much data is saved and used these days. Other than the 2 keynote speakers, there were workshops on best practices for building websites, talks on social media, and various tech covered as well, such as jQuery, Ruby on Rails, and iPhone development. All in all, good stuff that I hope will grow and get better. Great to be part of it, 2 years in row now, for one of the only web conferences in Minneapolis.

• Web Design