Getting Ready for the Next Jewish Bloggers Convention

Okay, we've had one convention, international.

Someone needs to start of the preparations for the next one, so, let this be a contribution.

1. Sponsor

I vote for the people over at the New Israel Fund. They have the money and the sympathy for new technology. I'm even willing to accept a numerus clausus of one right-winger for every 2.5 left-wingers.

If that doesn't work, the WZO. That way, no one will claim a pro-aliyah group is taking over the program. And while ultra-orthodox non-Zionists might have problems, free flights and accommodations should solve that.

Of course, if Nefesh B'Nefesh is willing, I'm all for their sponsorship but it needs to be expanded physically (more rooms).

I am serious about this.


2. Needed preparation

We have to know what's out there. I found these suggestions of ways of gauging web sites which can be adapted to blogs:

Usability reviews
Usability experts have seen dozens or even hundreds of poor designs, and have learned to extract subtle commonalities. They quickly can focus on potential problems without even conducting a landing page test.

Focus groups
Via a moderated group discussion from your target audience, insights can be gleaned about user needs, expectations and attitudes. These findings can be compared to the proposed solution to determine if key elements are missing or are incorrect.

Eye-tracking studies
Eye-tracking is particularly useful in detecting problems in the earlier stages of visitors' decision processes, awareness and interest levels. If most test subjects do not look at the desired part of the page, they are not even aware that the conversion action is possible.

Customer service reps
Customer service reps deal with your site visitors' problems all day long. Feedback can be collected in three ways: direct interviews or surveys of your reps, or a review of actual visitor interactions. Chat and phone call logs can be used to classify problems into categories.

Surveys
A number of easy, Web-based or telephone surveying methods are available. Surveys among your target population can be a useful source for discovering additional problems with your site.

3. Agenda

As voiced previously, we need more time, more workshops for technical and other matter as well as time for like-minded niche blogs to get together.

4. Technology

On-line real-time video chatting and hookups so dozens abroad can participate or at least ask questions and make short comments.

5. International

We need to add Hebrew, Spanish and French.


Can all this be done? On time?

We can only try.


P. S. Can NBN add a page at their conference site to permit comments to be collected there?