SND made a brilliant move bringing Matt Thompson and Robin Sloan in to kick off the conference. Some of the info may have been over the head of the print crowd but Thompson and Sloan did an exceptional job bringing it all home to with real world examples.

The gist of their presentation (for those who didn’t attend) was on how the media is changing from mass media of few to a multi-mass media of many choices. They broke it down into 10 key points (in two categories), with really great examples illustrating each:

Moments of rediscovery:
1- Audience as a co-author
2- Design a story to grow over time
3- Design a story to be understood in seconds
4- Your story as a spreadsheet.
5- Design a story to be used in different ways by different people

Not so familiar moments:
6- Just don’t design a story, design a tool
7- Make a story you can play
8- Embrace complexity
9- Embrace ugly
10- Realize the power of links

P.S. Matt and Robin get extra props from me for going through their presentation without missing a beat when a photo-happy SNDer walked up to the stage multiple times to take multiple pictures just feet away from them. I would have flipped out, but they were totally unfazed. ...And I guess I gotta give that guy props for having having the cajones to walk up multiple times during their presentation.

Check out the picture of the awesomeness going down: