We are always looking for ways to support the UK web design and development communities and when we heard about a brand new web design conference being organised we immediately become a sponsor to provide financial support. The founder and organiser Simon Collison has been kind enough to put some time aside in his hectic schedule to answer some questions…

Could you provide a bit of information about yourself?

I’m a freelance designer with over a decade of experience working on projects for bands, record companies, explorers, magazines, the government and so on. I’m back in Nottingham after stints in London, Reykjavik and other places, but find myself working all over the place. I co-founded Erskine Design, but left a year ago in search of fresh challenges. I’ve written a few books about design and web standards, and I speak about the design process at conferences. Before all that I went to art school, became a visual artist, had some shows, and ran an arts organisation. My web career started when I got a job making websites for a company called Agenzia back in 2001.

Starting a conference from scratch is incredibly ambitious, what motivated you to even try?

A decade ago when visual art was my primary concern, I organised two city-wide art festivals in Nottingham, so I have some idea of the workload involved. Regarding web events, I’m fortunate to speak at and attend many, so I see how things are done, what it takes, and also often think “I’d do that differently”. Ultimately, I value the potential of these events, and think that with great speakers, topics and attendees, it’s possible to work together to find real outcomes and truly inspire. I’m in a fortunate position where I can reach out to a lot of people to make something like this happen. I’ve basically been Bob Geldof circa 1985 for the last six months.

What has been the most rewarding aspect of this journey so far?

Generosity. The world is full of good, selfless professional people who will support an idea if it’s good, whether there is any financial return or not. From the speakers to the volunteers, from graphic and print folks to sponsors and beyond, I’ve been stunned by how willing people are to help and offer their services or products. This level of generosity is essential if something this ambitious can truly work.

If you could start again, what would you do differently second time around?

Not a lot really. I’ve had so long to think about this and see others do it, plus I’ve had great support from other conference teams. Whilst making money is not a motivation, I’d maybe have charged a little more for tickets to allow us to add a few more thrills, as we’re just about gonna break even.

How have you juggled your design work and organising the conference?

Since leaving my own company (Erskine Design) in February 2010 I have afforded myself more time to work on projects like this. So, I pretty much finished all my client work by Autumn and refused any more until after the conference. It may have been possible to do more client work, but ultimately I’m sure it would cause me to lose focus, and an event like this needs constant love.

You are a very prominent speaker at events, what advice would you give to budding speakers regarding planning a talk and overcoming nerves?

You have to really care about your topics, or have a line of inquiry that fascinates you. With that in place, you end up at occasional points where it helps to collate all the thinking and ideas and present this to your peers. For me, that’s the great thing about speaking; it helps me validate my ideas. I’d warn against public speaking of any kind if you don’t know what to talk about, or you’re just not that passionate about a topic.  Some people seek out speaking opportunities to further their career, get noticed, or travel. That’s fine, but an audience can tell when you don’t really have anything interesting or new to impart, and equally you’ll probably end up frightened to death or receive a negative response. Certainly, avoid the old cliche of imagining the audience naked, as they’ll usually be a few hundred sweaty geeks, and that ain’t pretty.

What are the big web design trends you are expecting to see in 2011?

I’m always wary of trying to identify trends. The lazy answer is “more HTML5 and even more crazy CSS3”, but that’s true of the last few years if you look hard enough. Thinking broader, I’m excited (as are a number of others) about a greater urge to expand our web design vocabulary in the coming years, working towards a more eloquent way of describing the interactions and design patterns that are uniquely ours as web designers. I hope we’ll also get smarter about how to design content, using everything we have available to provide a better visual context to tell stories and share information.

Where do go for inspiration and what software do you use for your design work?

You can find out more about Simon on his personal website https://colly.com and follow him on Twitter here https://twitter.com/colly. The conference’s website with details about the event (which is all sold out now!) is here https://newadventuresconf.com