Kathy Sierra: Creating Passionate Users

Posted on June 6th, 2010 in All Videos,Business,Leaders

54 minutes

Kathy Sierra, famous for curating the website Creating Passionate Users, talks at Business of Software 2009. In the past companies have been able to out-spend each other to gain new customers. In today’s social media culture, Kathy is seeking to reveal a more algorithmic approach for gaining product adoption (‘Step 2: magic happens’ isn’t appealing to her). To do so, Kathy says to stop focusing on selling users upgrades and features, but rather focus on making users better in the overarching area your products exist within. Ultimately it is about getting users to say “I’m Awesome”. It is at that point, users will upgrade, and non-users will desire to be like the ‘Awesome Users’ and sell themselves on purchasing the product.


Us Now: The Wisdom of Crowds

Posted on August 26th, 2009 in All Videos,Society

60 minutes

Us Now, a documentary from Banyak Films, takes a look at social media and its effect technology communications have had on democratizing society in every aspect imaginable. Whether it is offering a couch to sleep on to strangers, sharing advice between mothers, managing a soccer club, or any number of other things, social media is changing the world. Us Now takes a look into several virtual communities which are having a very real impact and begs everyone to question what else can benefit from democratization and plain ol’ good will.


Will Evans: Interaction Design of Social Media

Posted on February 15th, 2009 in All Videos,Design,Leaders

61 minutes

Will Evans, Principal User Experience Architect for Semantic Foundry, talks about designing for Social Media Networks. Will talks about using social psychology principals to create interfaces and influence social behavior through rewards and punishments. Two case studies include the failed Kayak.com and the success of Gather.com.