DL Byron and D. Keith Robinson.
Design with blogs is different because there is a greater emphasis on the content. It's not just the look, but the way the site is designed in terms of the appearance of links, navigation bars, entries, static pages, navigation, etc.
Writing style is part of the design- content needs design too. Writing proper titles, subheads, margins, line lengths.
The BBS05 blog has 26 sub blogs and 4 authors. "Perfect is the enemy of the good". Byron is going through the backend and design of the BBS site.
Products they are demoing:
Everything Basecamp - Place for product updates, throw features out for people to comments on. The blog is built with Movable Type. It's a living, breathing thing. They get a lot of feedback in the comments and use it to learn.
A few problems with Movable type:
Error Messages
Email Notifications
Comment Registration
Fastlane. A blog from General Motors and is actually written by Bob Lutz, GM Vice Chairman. A good example of a business related blog, good design, real voice, nice looks.
Business Logs: Traditional design, two columns. The thread in comments can sometimes be hard to manage. They do a good job of handling the comments.
Simple Bits Good personal branding. Not that different, but he has put a lot of work into the details and the small things. It changes often and have a lot of personality.
Created stye guide and blog (at a hospital) where people can ask questions and get support.
reFeed - A way to gather feeds from a number of blogs and put them in the same blog.
Relay
del.icio.us
(yikes, the wi-fi just went down- it doesn't keep me from writing, but it keeps the presenters from showing sites. Unfortunate)
If you're sacrificing the content for the design- its not a good idea. Support your business goals and mesh into the overall site if its not astandalone blog.
There is no perfect design- its about balance.
Technorati Tags: BBS05, seattle, leelefever, commoncraft, blogbusinesssummit