Tag: Community

Posted on

Announcing the Fluxible Benefit Concert for Open Ears and NUMUS

Fluxible Benefit Concert for Open Ears and NUMUS

We’ve already revealed Fluxible TV to the world. It’s streaming to screens everywhere on June 4.

Today we have a related streaming event to announce. 

The Fluxible Benefit Concert for Open Ears + NUMUS is also happening on June 4 at the end of the Fluxible TV broadcast. That is, anyone watching Fluxible TV will be able to watch these awesome performances from exceptional musicians, all in support of Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, and NUMUS Concerts. Many musicians affiliated with these organizations have performed at Fluxible over the years, and we’re lucky to have them in our community.

But not every music fan cares about Fluxible and UX. We do understand that! 

So we’re making the Fluxible Benefit Concert for Open Ears + NUMUS  available separately. And we’re doing it using pay-what-you-can pricing, to make it as accessible possible.The intent is to raise money for these two wonderful organizations that have been sharing innovative and inspiring sounds and music in Waterloo Region for decades. If you can pay more, that’s great for Open Ears and NUMUS. If you can pay less, that’s OK too. Both organizations want to reach as many people as possible with their music.

And there’s one more thing. Fluxible will match every dollar raised through ticket sales for the benefit concert. So the benefit gets even better because every dollar you spend goes twice as far!

Get your tickets now and enjoy some great music. See you next week.

This post originally appeared on the Fluxible website.

Posted on

Let’s all meet at Fluxible!

A person standing in front of a screen, presenting to a group seated in chairs

As I wrote previously, Zeitspace is sponsoring Fluxible, Canada’s UX Festival. UX is an important part of our work and our point of view at Zeitspace!

While the Fluxible Conference and Fluxible Workshops are major parts of the week, there’s more. Fluxible Meetups are happening from Monday through Friday, and feature a variety of topics and a variety of formats. And they’re all free!

Each day at noon there’s a UX Brown Bag Lunch session happening at the Communitech Hub. Topics include behavioural economics, ethical design, and UI design refactoring. There are also several site visits. Oracle NetSuite, D2L, and Shopify Plus are each opening their doors to a Fluxible Meetup on an interesting topic. What a great opportunity to meet folks at those places and see what they’re up to.

A perennial topic of interest for many UX folks in Waterloo Region is hiring (or getting hired!). Check out the panel discussion Perspectives on portfolios from the pros to sharpen up the way you think about portfolios.

And a cool old tradition returns as Fluxible teams up with uxWaterloo for a presentation by Google’s Meagan Timney at their Kitchener office. Though based in California, Meagan is originally from London Ontario, so having her back in Southern Ontario is pretty great.

There’s more, so be sure to check out all the Fluxible Meetups for details. There ought to be something for just about eveyone.

This post originally appeared on the Fluxible website.

Posted on

Make the Leap of Faith for Fluxible Conference 2018

A crowd of people leaving an auditorium

It’s been quiet here at Fluxible headquarters over the last few months — almost too quiet — with little in the way of announcements. But that doesn’t mean we’ve been inactive, and now it’s time for us to share!

For our first public disclosure of 2018, we’ve decided to be just like your favourite cool band and drop a new album with absolutely no notice. Well, not literally a new album, of course, though it’s certainly within the realm of possibility that we’ll do that one day.

No, what we’re doing instead is announcing that Leap of Faith tickets are now on sale for Fluxible Conference 2018. What, exactly, does that mean? It means that you can register at the lowest possible price, but you’ll need to do so without us having released any information about our 2018 program.

We’re able to provide a little context, though. Fluxible 2018 is happening from Monday, September 17 through Sunday, September 23. As with last year’s exhilarating presentation of Canada’s UX Festival, there’s plenty going on.

For our seventh edition in 2018 we’re presenting a week-long user experience festival, this time made up of four parts. There’s the Fluxible Conference, which is the core of the festival, happening the weekend of September 22 & 23. There’s a day of Fluxible Workshops on Friday September 21. There are Fluxible Meetups happening from Monday September 17 through Friday September 21. And finally, there’s the Fluxible Education Summit, happening in partnership with Wilfrid Laurier University on Friday September 21.

And now you have a little context in order to make that Leap of Faith.

And, in case you didn’t have enough incentive to buy early, this offer is at our lowest rate, but it’s only for a limited time. Sales close on February 14 — Valentine’s Day — so why wait another minute? Get your Leap of Faith Ticket right now. And if you don’t do it for yourself, do it for someone you love! You’ll thank us later for having made your Valentine’s Day such a great success.

This post originally appeared on the Fluxible website.

Posted on

Take a leap of faith and love Fluxible

A person on a stage in front of a sceen showing a presentation

Fluxible now has five past editions that we can look back on with pride and fond memories. From a two-day conference in 2012 to a week-long festival in 2016, the Fluxible experience has grown richer and deeper each year, with a large community of attendees having joined us along the way.

This year, we’re again presenting Fluxible as Canada’s UX Festival, with another full week of events in three streams. We’ll present a program of Fluxible Meetups (September 18–22), a day of Fluxible Workshops (September 22), and the crowning two-day Fluxible Conference (September 23 & 24). We’re back at the CIGI Auditorium for the weekend conference, and the Communitech Hub for workshops and many meetups. In addition to all the terrific food, presentations, conversations, workshops, music, and more that you’ve come to expect, we have a few fun surprises cooking that we’re sure you’ll love.

And we’re trying something different this year for registration.

We know that many of you start budgeting for conferences and events earlier in the year than we, in the past, have announced details of our program and tickets sales. That has made for some uncertainty in planning your year. For 2017, we have a new approach that we hope addresses that.

We’re introducing Leap of Faith ticket sales for Fluxible Conference.

Why Leap of Faith? Because we’re opening up ticket sales without having announced a single speaker! How could we possibly expect anyone to register for Fluxible Conference without knowing the details? Well, with five years of Fluxible Conferences to look back on, we think we’ve established a solid record of delivering great programming married to a great experience. We believe that in making the Leap of Faith and registering now you’ll be rewarded with another terrific conference. Plus, you’ll have done so at the best price, as we’re offering our lowest cost tickets for Leap of Faith tickets. But it’s for a short time only, as we close Leap of Faith ticket sales on March 17.

So show your love for UX in general and Fluxible in particular by making the leap of faith and buying your Fluxible Conference tickets now!

This post originally appeared on the Fluxible website.

Posted on

State of the City of Kitchener

State Of The City presentation by the Mayor

A crowd of people listens to Mayor Berry Vrbanovic present

I had the honour of attending the City of Kitchener’s annual State of the City event on Wednesday, representing Fluxible along with friend, colleague, and long-time collaborator Bob Barlow-Busch.

The event was held in the magnificent industrial space at 41 Ardelt Place, and featured Mayor Berry Vrbanovic delivering a State of the City address to a large crowd.

Make It Kitchener was the theme, and it was fun to hear the details. There are six opportunities identified in the strategy:

  • Make it Spark
  • Make it Start
  • Make it Grow
  • Make it Urban
  • Make it Vibrant
  • Make it Connect

It’s exciting to see “Support professional development in user experience” identified as one of the ways to get “Make It Spark” to happen. I’m delighted to help drive that through Fluxible!

Posted on

Cooking up a career bigos

Bigos in a pot

Bigos, a lovely stew

I had a recent conversation with a friend about working in UX. As we all do, he’s aiming to find a balance of work that is rewarding, provides room for growth, and pays the bills. He has a range of important creative activities that he’s engaged in and he wants to ensure that none of them are being neglected.

Our conversation resonated with my own thinking about my career. Metaphorically, I have a soup of ingredients that are all important to my UX work and that I aim to have aligned with each other. Boltmade is the major ingredient, while Fluxible and uxWaterloo are two other obvious ingredients in that soup. Other ingredients like attending other events, having conversations with various folks in the community, and ongoing readings all go into the mix as well. I’m delighted that these all complement each other as well as they do.

As I talked about this with my friend, he got it right away and declared it to be more of a stew. What immediately popped into my mind was a wonderful kind of stew called bigos.

My mom taught me how to make bigos, and it’s a dish that my whole family loves. One of the great things about it is how it improves on subsequent days as it cooks. Moreover, adding new ingredients on those day renews it and extends it over more meals.

My UX career bigos evolves, and the ingredients that I add over time ensure that it keeps getting better.

Posted on

Fluxible dates announced!

Giles Colborne presenting at Fluxible

And, just like that, we’ve announced the dates for Fluxible 2015! Our next edition of the UX party disguised as a conference is happening on September 26 & 27, 2015. As we revealed over there:

Like last year, Fluxible will take place in the Communitech Hub and Tannery Event Centre, in the heart of downtown Kitchener. Some exciting events will happen during the preceding week as well, so stay tuned for details. Further announcements will begin shortly, and we hope you’ll be as excited as we are!

As usual, we have some delightful surprises in store, so stay tuned! And what better way to stay tuned than to join our mailing list? You’ll get all the best news before anyone else!

Posted on

UX Camp Ottawa

Abby Covert presenting onstage

Having presented three editions of Fluxible, our UX conference, Bob Barlow-Busch and I know how much work goes into creating such an event. And while we love doing it, we’re always working while Fluxible is on, always paying attention to various details.

This past weekend Bob and I travelled to Ottawa to attend the fifth edition of UX Camp Ottawa, giving us an opportunity to enjoy a UX conference without needing to ensure that it’s running smoothly.

It was a fine experience, with a different vibe, and a larger crowd, than we’re used to with Fluxible. We enjoyed the program of speakers. We also had some great conversations and reconnected with old friends (Cornelius! Lou!) and made a few new ones (Abby! Kim!). We were delighted to see Konrad Sauer deliver a talk that he had debuted at Fluxible 2013. All this is what what conferences are for, right?

UX Ottawa co-chairs Cornelius Rachieru, Tanya Snook, Barbara Spanton and their team have created a great event. For Bob and I it’s gratifying to be a part of the larger UX community that UX Camp Ottawa and Fluxible are supporting here in Ontario.

Posted on

Sharing at Boltmade

Logo: Boltmade

One of the things I love about Boltmade is the way that we engage with the community and share our knowledge as well as our wonderful space in the Bauer complex.

Boltmade has been host for the venerable DevHouse monthly meetups for quite some time, and has recently hosted sessions for uxWaterloo (which I run with Bob Barlow-Busch), KW Ruby Developers, and People x Products, among others. All were enthusiastically attended.

Beyond playing host, though, we also develop our own workshops to give folks hands-on experience with various aspects of software product development. For example, last week two of our designers, Brian and Blake, presented an introduction to Sketch, a cool UI prototyping and design tool that we’ve been using and enjoying on our projects at Boltmade. Back in September Chris and Stephen presented an introduction to functional programming.

Beyond our cozy office, Shan will be taking her prototyping workshop on the road to present it at a REAP lunch session at Felt Lab.

It’s all great stuff.

Interested in meeting interesting people and learning something new? Check out our events and join us at a future session.

Posted on

Open Ears event: If volcanoes could sing

I’ve mentioned previously that I’m on the board of Open Ears. It’s a great organization that presents some pretty amazing musical events in Waterloo Region. Our next event is If Volcanoes Could Sing on Wednesday, November 12, 2014 at the original Princess Cinema.

Things get started with a screening of the documentary film Intangible Asset Number 82, and is capped off with a live performance by Bae Il-Dong and Kim Dong-Won. It’s an evening of traditional Korean music that promises to be powerful and inventive.

“If volcanoes could sing, then they would sound like Bae Il-Dong. The Korean’s voice has such breath that it not only fills physical space like a lava flow, but seems to stretch back across time.” — John Shand, ABC Jazz

Should be a wonderful experience. Hope to see you there!