Website of the week: The Farmer & the Chef

"An event so exciting you can taste it"

The premise is simple, the results, delicious. We pair a local farmer with a top local chef, who team up and use the freshest locally grown and raised produce and food to create a meal that’s out of this world.

The Farmer and The Chef website showcases some of the best use of textures in web design with wood and paper textures, watercolour effects and hand drawn elements.

The content on the website is simple and effective with clear calls to action; get tickets (buy), tell a chef or a farmer (interact) and become a sponsor (support). There is even opportunity to submit a recipe to the event (interaction again).

It is easy to find all the details on the event; chefs (speakers), farmers (exhibitors), venue and even buy tickets online.

The only negative points I can give to this website is that:

1. there does not appear to be an online schedule or list of timings;
   
2. the event is in the past and there is nothing to signify that. I can still click the "Buy a ticket" button.

Once an event is finished I would expect the calls to action to focus on the gallery of video and images from the event, a summarising blog post, a thank you page and the date for next year's event if possible.

Overall though, an excellent example of an event website; lovely design, good content and very easy to use.

Using Microformats for events

As you browse around the web you might have noticed the above icon , if not, from now on I guarantee you will spot it every where you go.

That icon is the sign of a microformat - the convention of marking up your event listing so that your users can download all event details at a click of a button and add it to their own calendar.

If you want to find out if any of the sites you frequent use microformats then I'd recommend using the Microformats bookmarklet which enables you to check any web page for event details (or, to use their technical names, hCalendar) and then download them for yourself.

For example, if I'm interested in attending a concert that is listed on lastfm.com then I just click my bookmarklet and I can download the event listing (hCalendar) and add it to my Google Calendar, iCal or Outlook calendar (whatever I use).

If you don't use the bookmarklet then you can also use the download link that is usually next to the hCalendar. Last.fm use a link that says "Export event" which shows me I can download it and add it to my calendar.

How can you make sure that your event listing uses the right conventions?? Well, the good people at Microformats.org have built a hCalendar generator which will give you the code to make sure that your event is downloadable. If you are interested in learning how to write the code for microformats yourself then try Microformats.org/wiki/hcalendar has lots more details.

Microformats can also be used to create contact details (hCard) and reviews (hReview). For best effect you could create a hCalendar for your event listing and a hCard for your venue or booking agent.

Now, microformats aren't just for your users. They can benefit your site in other ways too. Because you are using a common convention it means that when search engines like Google index your website, they don't just see the event details as letters and numbers, but they can understand that it is a event listing with a title, venue, date and time.

That is known as the semantic web, giving your data meaning. If you want to read more about the semantic web then I recommend that you read Semantic web and Microformats or Microformats and semantic technologies.

The 5 Ws of event management

Stella event design have written an excellent set of articles on the 5 Ws of wedding planning (Why, When, Who, What and Where).

These 5 Ws can apply to any event and offer many reasons for hiring an experienced event manager in order to make your conference / exhibition / festival / wedding / hoopla the best that it can be.

Check out Stella Event Design and their beautifully designed weddings at StellaEventDesign.com