Tag: Community

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What I’ve learned on my current vacation

The week before last I wrote about my interest in opening up the thinking process around next steps in my career. I felt like I needed to keep an open mind following my departure from Primal Fusion and, more importantly, get as much input as possible during this discovery phase of my new adventure. Since then I’ve enjoyed a number of conversations with friends and colleagues, old and new, who have been generous in sharing their thoughts and listening to mine. There are, of course, various moves that would make sense and my job is to sort out the right next step.

I have to confess that, at the moment, the most interesting possibility that has emerged is creating a new startup company with a couple of like-minded friends. We’ve had some great conversations already and have even managed to get our creative juices flowing with some initial product work. Fun stuff guys!

I’m still talking with people and maintaining my open mind, though this week I’m more focused on home life as my sons are off school for March break. It continues to be a fascinating journey of discovery for me, and I’m looking forward to more conversations and learning. My thanks go out to everyone who has taken the time to talk and to listen.

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Ignite Waterloo 2 was a mid-week treat

A bin full of varied and colourful Lego pieces

Ignite Waterloo hosted another great evening of talks last night. It was the second local event, but this time it was part of the much larger Global Ignite Week. The Waterloo speakers presented talks on a diverse range of topics, and the large audience was engaged, and engaging, throughout the night. It’s great fun to help organize this event.

Highlights for me included Alex Matan’s accordion workout, Erica Waugh’s directions on how to drive in a roundabout, Jeff Henry’s practical advice on working with politicians, and Sunshine Chen’s storytelling story. My favourite, though, as Brendan Lowther’s talk on Geocaching. It wasn’t so much for the topic, but for his passion and for the aplomb that he showed when confronted with slides that didn’t seem to be displaying all his pictures. He made it into a fun thing and demonstrated that, in the end, a successful talk is about the speaker, not the technology.

Finally, the Lego building competition was also a fine succes, though I missed much of it as I was working the door while the competition was on. At the end of the night, though, while helping to clean up I was able to take the accompanying picture of one of the contest entries after it had been returned to the large bin of Lego pieces. Pretty cool entry!

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After the split, what’s next?

Having left Primal Fusion, I’ve been giving some thought to what’s next. At the moment, I’m really in discovery mode — thinking about possibilities, talking to friends and colleagues, and generally trying to keep an open mind. It’s a liberating state to be in, as is the beginning of any new adventure, though it’s obviously not without its moments of uncertainty.

Having said that, I’m still pretty committed to living and working in the Waterloo area. There’s a great technology and startup community here with a lot of thoughtful, engaged, and passionate people who share their knowledge and experience through a variety of activities. And, Waterloo is also a fine place to live — as I’ve written previously, there are many reasons why my family and I enjoy living here.

Which brings me to what feels like quite an odd request.

I’d like to hear from anyone who would like to share any ideas on how I might think about what’s next. Let’s get together for coffee, or talk at a community event, or exchange email or tweets, whatever. I’m always impressed by the depth of knowledge, the wisdom, and the generosity of spirit that I’ve encountered in people in our community, and I want to find out whether its possible to tap into that at this stage in my adventure. It’s not quite crowd-sourcing a next career move; it’s more like seeing what I might learn by opening up the thinking process. For that matter, I’m also happy to share my own thoughts with anyone who has their own career questions and would like to chat.

For context, I hope that it’s clear from my various posts on this blog what my interests, skills, and experiences are (user experience, software products, startups, etc.).

Beyond this blog, I write in much shorter bursts on Twitter as @uxMark; reading my tweets there may or may provide more clarity! Connect with me there, or send me an email. My email address is my first name [at] connollydesign [dot] com.

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March roars in like a lion with Ignite Waterloo 2

Last week’s TEDxWaterloo event will be a hard act to follow, as it was a resounding success enjoyed by all.

Nevertheless, this week sees the second Ignite Waterloo event happening on Wednesday at the Children’s Museum. The first event was held last November and a fine time was had by all. The upcoming second event promises to be every bit as engaging and thought-provoking. I’m looking forward to the talks and the conversations.

Prior to Ignite Waterloo, the March edition of StartupDrinksWaterloo in happening on Tuesday night at McMullan’s in Waterloo. I’ve managed to attend every edition except the inaugural one, and have enjoyed them all. I’m once again looking forward to the beer and conversations!

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UX guerrillas in our midst

This month’s meeting of the User Experience Group of Waterloo Region is a workshop presented by my friend and colleague Blair Nonnecke. It’s a Guerrilla Usability Workshop, and it will involve group work and plenty of opportunity to learn and share. If you’ve been out before, you’ll already know that the discussions can be quite rewarding. If you haven’t been out, or haven’t attended in a while, come on out and see what you’ve been missing.

It’s this Thursday February 18 at 5:30pm in the friendly confines of the Accelerator Centre. Please be sure to RSVP if you intend to be there, but even if you don’t get a chance to do so, come on out anyway.

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Ignite Waterloo is coming back on March 3

Time flies. It’s already been over two months since the first Ignite Waterloo event last November 25. The second event is scheduled for March 3, 2010. Like the first event, it will be held at the Children’s Museum in Kitchener, and will feature 16 talks on a wide range of topics. Eight speakers have been announced already, with the rest to be revealed soon.

Registration is open, but tickets appear to be moving fast — 100 gone as I write this — so head over to the registration page if you want to attend.

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That was a fine night in Guelph

Alex Black demos his new product Snapsort onstage

DemoCampGuelph has a great combination of demos, atmosphere, conversations, and just plain fun. The 12th edition this past Wednesday had all that, and made for a warm event on a cold January night. As usual, the event was well-organized and inspiring.

At the start of the evening I spent some time planning the next UX Group meeting over dinner with a friend and colleague who will be leading a workshop on guerrilla usability. Should be a great event — more details to come in the next few days.

DemoCampGuelph proper got off to a great start with a talk by Tara Hunt about the social world. Good stuff. My takeaway? Don’t be an evil robot!

The demos were entertaining for a variety of reasons. Harry Scanlan’s demo-as-standup-comedy (or is it standup-comedy-as-demo?) is just as funny as it was the first time I saw him present/perform. On a more serious side, I particularly enjoyed seeing my former Primal Fusion colleague Alex Black demo his new product Snapsort. That’s him in the accompanying photo, responding to Brydon’s introductory questions.

The only downside of the night for me was that I couldn’t stay longer — family commitments took me home sooner than I would have liked.

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Primal Fusion a hit at EpCon

Peter Sweeney presenting at EpCon

In my earlier post about January events, I forgot to mention EpCon, organized by and for students from the University of Waterloo and which ran this past Friday and Saturday. Primal Fusion was one of the companies that participated, and I was lucky enough to spend some time at the conference.

I started off late Friday afternoon when I joined three of my colleagues at a booth where we evangelized Primal Fusion to interested visitors. And there were a large number of interested visitors. In a room that featured representation from giants like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, it was gratifying to see how many folks were interested in what we’re doing. Many of them were also interested in joining us for a co-op work term.

On Saturday morning, Primal Fusion founder Peter Sweeney gave a talk in a session that was, again, well-attended. The engaged and enthusiastic audience seemed genuinely interested in hearing Peter’s ideas about the industrialization of the Web. At the end, he gave a demonstration of a Website Generator, which is currently in Primal Labs (and which I had shown in an earlier form at StartupCampWaterloo last fall). The demonstration was well-received and, despite having a time slot right before lunch, many folks from the audience wanted to chat with Peter after his talk. It was, by any measure, a fine morning.

EpCon looks like it was a great success. Congratulations to the organizers for a job well done. EpCon was certainly well worth the visit for Primal Fusion.

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A couple of fine January events to look forward to

I’m looking forward to the next editions of a couple of recurring events in the tech community.

First up is the January edition of the UX Group of Waterloo Region meeting, next Monday January 18 at the Accelerator Centre. Kem-Laurin Kramer will lead us through a provocative session entitled “Is user experience becoming a commodity?”, which is sure to lead to a lively discussion and exchange of ideas. Come on out and enjoy the company, the conversations, and the connections.

A little later in the month is DemoCampGuelph12, on January 27 at the eBar in Guelph. As I write this, there are over 100 people registered to attend. At this point, I’ll draw your attention to a pair of useful posts by Brydon Gilliss on securing a demo slot at the event and, far more importantly, on the value of intersections.

Past editions of both events have, for me, made for great learning and meeting experiences. I know that this month will be no different. Here’s hoping that January weather isn’t too stormy on the event days!

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My November IgniteWaterloo talk

Ignite Waterloo has released videos of 16 talks from the November 25 first event on Vimeo. It’s great to be able to watch the talks again, as it really was a wonderful night. I’m somewhat relieved to discover that my talk, entitled Metaphor in product design: Are you sure that’s an album?, turned out okay. Note that it started life as a blog post here, but the video expands on the post a little and is more fun!