Stephen Nold

Computer Programming for Non-Computer Programmers
December 15, 2007

A couple of weeks back I mentioned how my team and I built a new website, StephenNold.com, from scratch.  The purpose of the site is to provide speaker information and create a repository for articles and presentations.  We really did not build it from scratch - we used a content management system like WordPress and Exponent.  But, the key idea is that users with little to no computer programming experience were able to build a professional looking website quickly and easily.

To quickly recap, WordPress and Exponent are content management systems.  WordPress allows users to set up their own blogs, allowing customization such as color palettes and design themes.  A blog is just a blog, and there are only so many ways in which you can customize it, but WordPress gives you all the options currently available to make your blog your own.  Exponent, on the other hand, allows users to set up their own websites.  The interface through which you construct your website is amazingly intuitive with just a small learning curve.  Basically, you are presented with a window (your website), and you drag and drop from a toolbar (features and add-ons for your website) to build a website to your specifications.  In a sense, these companies are giving you the building blocks, formed by small programs, to piece together something larger.

Recently, companies have taken this idea of building/customizing a blog or a website from pre-existing smaller components and applied it to actual software development.  New companies like DataWeb and Coghead now give users the opportunity to build their own programs.  Coghead, for example, allows users to create their own program by dragging and dropping different features to build a program to their specification – no experience needed.  Price plans for these services are reasonably cheap, especially when you consider what it would cost to hire developers to create a similar program.  Essentially, you’re cutting out the overhead.

This new trend in building personalized computer programs could have a huge impact on the Meetings industry.  For example, smaller tradeshows and conferences that could not afford the cost of buying their own online registration systems could now build their own for a fraction of the price.  Further, if people can easily build programs which rival those of the vendors, then the vendors will have to rise to the challenge and make their own programs worth the price by offering services that users could not easily construct.

These new companies provide an alternative to costly software developers, which will inevitably create competition.  And, as we all know, competition breeds innovation, which will only give us better options when planning our tradeshows and conferences in the future.  It’s an exciting time to be in the Meetings industry, and I would not have it any other way.

Posted by Stephen Nold on December 15, 2007 | Comments (0)