On Friday I went to ‘How to Make Great Products’ , a day of people sharing their adventures in making social-web-mobile-gaming-products.

Here are the headlines I took away from the day:

1. “Pretty is the enemy of the prototype”
Don’t be afraid to share that ugly looking thing. Low-fi prototypes help users focus on your product experience, which gets you the important feedback you need early on.

2. Believe in Secret Alpha Beta Violet
Add the beloved Beta badge, it helps to lower user expectations. As a result you’ll have a better chance of impressing people with your efforts, which will hopefully lead to user satisfaction, next stop product advocacy. Bingo.

3. Publishers need to learn from the Games Industry
Execute an experience fitting to the device i.e don’t just squeeze your website into an iPad. Also, always consider the influence of the environments in which people will use the device.

4. Collaborate with your community
Gawker aka. gossip club is considering introducing a community editorial layer to posts, allowing people in the know to develop the stories.

5. Fans need entertainment not chatter 
Knicks Now is the entertainment platform that is taking fans on a journey this season. Now, how about consolidating ‘Knicks Now’ with the sister commerce site?

6. Simple human curation
Introducing Subjot, an interest based social network. ‘Social networks can be overwhelming. Subjot delivers only the things you want to see.’

7. Recycling data
With a bit of luck we’ll be receiving weekend explore itineraries from Foursquare in the near future.

Props to @kkearney , @heyitsnoah, @chriscarella , @kenbot, @plunkett and @dens for the nuggets of wisdom.

The next event is in September, keep an eye open for it if you like learning product stuff and eating delicious sandwiches at lunchtime.