2012 starts as it will end – on a journey to discover what makes a great website in 2012 from every conceivable perspective, and to benefit each stakeholder.

It’s to be a big year. Will mobile rule our hearts as it does, today, our minds?

And how exactly are we to create the kind of stuff that stops our communities in their tracks.

It’s CTMTC. Content To Make Them Come.

Happy New Year.

The last thing I wanted to do in reality was be gratuitously predictable and call this post ‘how to chair a conference’. To tell you the truth that would have been a huge inaccuracy and misleading.

You see, as a virgin conference chairman, I made more mistakes than a blind boy judging a beauty contest. Though I do agree beauty isn’t just skin deep.

1. If a conference organiser hands you a ‘script’, read it through numerous times, disregard the language entirely, and write it in your own hand and voice. What people who ‘organise’ don’t plan for is the speaker’s delivery. In much the same way as when I host web radio shows, I cannot script things out in full. I’d prepped my introduction (fluffed that but turned it round after kicking off with a gag about an SEO expert and starting to call them a ‘social’ engine optimisation expert) but all the ‘housekeeping’ details I read from the sheet rendered me a monotonous drone.
2. Make sure you get a complete lowdown on the presenters’ presentations before they present. Quite an obvious one but being drafted in last minute meant my research was limited. Now I’ve experienced the challenge of mind-reading and finding it not to be one of my core strengths, the next time I do this I’ll get copies of presentations in advance so I can introduce them with the greatest of professionalism, ease and good humour
3. Don’t overestimate your abilities until you’re absolutely versed in the art of chairing a conference. Though I was confident about ad-libbing on demand up until two minutes before the event, I quickly realised my powers of stand-up comedy had evaporated when the bell rang for the audience to enter the hall. I expect Robin Williams does a lot more preparation for receiving an Oscar than a quick look in the mirror to check his side parting.
4. Have some seamless segues up your sleeve. Hosting a conference really is an art form. I only found out who followed who on the panel discussion minutes before it went live. What I wanted, in rattled perfectionist mode, was to have a few notes planned to take the audience effortlessly from one speaker’s presentation to the next.
5. If you offer technology to the audience, have technology on the podium. “Throughout the sessions please do Tweet your questions to #ess2011…” On reflection, a tablet or device to receive said Tweets would have been a logical counterbalance.
6. The little things are big things. Remembering to give the audience full opportunity to applaud speakers, to stick around between sessions, to move from the conference to the exhibition that doesn’t close for another hour… Chairing a conference really is a military operation. And it’s the little things that people remember, that get you another bite of the cherry.
7. It’s not easy. There’s a lot to think about. I went in with the mindset that I’d performed in so many theatrical productions in the past and it would be a relative walk in the park. It isn’t. You need the mind of a genius and the will of a hostage negotiator. And a beautiful woman to kiss you well done when you’re through. Thankfully, I have one of three…

So now you really can do as I say, not do as I do. What a thrill, but it’s only now the homework really begins!

Resources on chairing conferences

• http://www.heanet.ie/conferences/2003/guidelineschairs.htm
• http://www.alia.org.au/groups/topend/chairing.html
• http://www-users.cs.york.ac.uk/~alistair/research/conferences/chairing.html

It’s never been more important to get your website looking super-nice and easy to navigate. And while designers are great for going down the groovy route, you know your customers best.

And if you’re anything like me, working with designers is a little like playing Chinese whispers. I tell them one thing, they produce another. It’s nothing bad on the designer’s part – it’s just we speak different languages, and neither of us have bought into the communal dictionary.

That’s why I’m one of the world’s biggest fans of Headway Themes. I find a site I like, I go into the Visual Editor, and I produce something that looks pretty similar but with my own special flourishes.

Headway Themes is powered by WordPress, a content management system that makes creating content for your site easy.

The only weak spot in the game at this point is finding the images to customise.

My pal Ileane (who supports Thesis, another great WordPress theme – but in my opinion all the sites you create on that framework look samey and unless you have advanced/ninja coding skills, you’re pretty much tied into that look) has a solution to your image, icon and graphics woes – right here.

Why am I telling you this stuff now?

The second most exciting thing to happen on the web in 2011 happens on Friday. The first was the launch of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus phone, and that was a monstruous disappointment. I feel bad relegating what I’m about to tell you to second place now, but the hype about the new Sammy smartphone was so great that I bought into it and ultimately got burned. Back to the Samsung Galaxy S2 – what I believe is the best phone in the world.

No, the second – and now first – most exciting thing to happen on the web is the launch of Headway 3. The Griffiths family and their team have been wracking their grossly-oversized minds to figure out a way of making web design even easier, and they’ve come up with some totally out-of-this-world grid technology.

Take a look at the video.

So it’s super-easy to use, but the customisation and control you get is unparalleled. You could use a free tool like Gliffy to draw up how you want your site to look, based on other websites you admire, and all you have to do is plonk the respective content containers where you want them and boom – your best-ever site is ready to be populated with all that incredible stuff you write and create.

And I’ll be building Talknology.tv on it – my most important project yet. That’s how confident I am that this is going to sing like a bird of paradise.

And it’s coming out Friday – November 25.

So why not tell me then?

Simples. The cunning Headway Themes team want to give loyal customers the very best deal. And so anyone who’s bought Headway Themes by the end of the day on November 24 gets unlimited support and lifetime upgrades.

Brand new customers dazzled by the allure of Headway 3, who buy in after the fact, will pay a yearly subscription for support and upgrades.

Here’s an Einstein-level equation to put that all into context:

If U = Logical, Buy It Now!