Tag: Community

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December UX Group event

The next UX Group meeting, on Tuesday December 15, aims for equal parts socializing and design discussion. It’s the second annual December Product Potluck. Don’t bring food, but do bring a product or products whose design you find worthy of discussion. Anything is fair game, as the goal is lively discussion about design. Last year’s version was lightly attended due to winter weather, but let’s not be deterred by that! Moreover, we had a great discussion during the November meeting and it would be wonderful to continue the conversation this month.

Note that for this month we’re holding the event at McMullan’s on King, a fine pub in Uptown Waterloo. I know from StartupDrinksWaterloo that the venue is well-suited to an event like this. We have a fine UX community here in Waterloo Region, and it’s worth the effort to get out and meet. I hope to see you there.

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VeloCity, Ignite, and StartupDrinks

A crowd of people enjoy an event at VeloCity

Yesterday was pretty busy for me outside the office. I started with a visit to the Student Life Centre at the University of Waterloo with my Primal Fusion colleague Tom Levesque, where we checked out VeloCity Start Up Day. There was quite a crowd perusing the project displays and talking with the students about their projects. I was only able to speak with a couple of students myself, as there were many others trying to do the same, but I was impressed with the turnout and interest by both the participants and the visitors.

Next up was a lunch meeting over sushi with a few of the folks who put together Ignite Wateroo. We talked about what went right (a great deal) and wrong (very little) with our first event last week. It looks like we’ll do the next event in March of next year, and we’re already looking for speaker suggestions. We don’t anticipate changing much in what turned out to be a successful approach to the event. Having said that, though, we’re curious about what others think. Let us know.

Finally, I attended the third edition of StartupDrinksWaterloo. There had to be 30 people in attendance, and the conversations were a real treat. I met a few new people as well as seeing familiar faces, and I continue to marvel at the engaged and interested people who come out to events like this. I feel like a pretty committed attendee at this point, and I’m looking forward to the next edition in January. Congratulations and thanks to Dan Silivestru for initiating the Waterloo version of this event.

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StartupDrinksWaterloo

StartupDrinksWaterloo is a fine initiative aimed at, and enabled by, the sociable tech community here in Waterloo. Basically, it’s an opportunity to meet people in the greater startup/tech community and engage in conversation over drinks. It’s part of a loose federation of similar events in other cities. I managed to get out the the second edition last month, and I enjoyed the low-key conversation (and even the beer). Happily, it’s on ongoing event, happening on the first Tuesday of every month, and tomorrow night is the third Waterloo edition. It’s at 6:00pm at McMullen’s in Waterloo. Come on out and relax, talk with like-minded folks, and enjoy the connections.

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5 minutes, 20 slides, and a stage

A presenter at the first Ignite Waterloo event

Ignite Waterloo now has its first event in the rear-view mirror. I’m happy to have been able to give a talk — Metaphor in product design: Are you sure that’s an album? — and even happier that it went reasonably well. Ignite is a challenging format, and I wasn’t at all certain that I’d pull it off. I think I did, despite what feels in retrospect like an inadequate amount of rehearsal on my part. I can’t stop editing and revising the talk my head though!

The other speakers were all terrific, and the range of topics and experiences presented was inspiring. I have to confess that I especially enjoyed the talk given by my wife, Jayne Thompson, on climate change at a local level and flooding on the Maitland River.

The cupcake decorating contest was a success too, though I didn’t get a close look at all the entries — I spent the early part of the evening on door duty, which turned out to be a fine way to meet folks.

It’s less than 24 hours later and I’m already looking forward to the next event sometime next year.

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Waterloo Region Tech Startups

I occasionally post items in this blog about technology- and startup-related events in Waterloo Region that I attend or plan to attend. A terrific new resource has recently appeared that makes it easy to keep on top of these events, as well as much more. Waterloo Region Tech Startups includes a calendar, links to blogs and other resources, and a stream of related tweets. It’s the brainchild of Jesse Rodgers and Joseph Fung both of whom are active and visible in the community through various other initiatives. Great work, guys!

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Primal Fusion gets out of the house

This week was active on the Primal Fusion front, with two milestones of a sort.

Screen image: Halton County Radial Railway, as understood by Primal Fusion

First up, we released an update to the alpha version of our thought networking service. Our initial version was launched last Spring at the DEMO09 conference. We’ve received a lot of feedback since then, and have made improvements that address the biggest issues. You can read all about the details on the Primal Fusion products blog.

A whiteboard with messy notes

Next up, my Primal Fusion colleague Tom Ayre and I demonstrated a brand new Primal Fusion prototype at StartupCampWaterloo. The prototype is an automatic website generator (“Instant web sites! Just add water!”) that’s built on our thought networking platform. While still quite rough, and not yet released in any form, we feel good enough about this prototype to have shared it with the community at this great event and get feedback. There were interesting questions, some great suggestions, and even a little healthy skepticism. It was all appreciated, and we do listen closely to what we hear. We also appreciated all the votes that we received after we made our pitch to demo — great pitch, Tom! We both also enjoyed the rest of the demos and conversations. If you haven’t been to one of these events, it’s well worth a visit.

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November UX Group meeting on Thursday

The November meeting of the UX Group of Waterloo is on Thursday. This session is a group discussion on a big UX topic:

This month we want to explore the factors and issues that will have an impact on user experience design in the near future. As the world goes mobile, what does it mean for users? If everything is accessible, how can it all be managed? What does the move from point-and-click to tap-and-pinch mean? Bring your own issues and questions, and share them in a group discussion with our inquisitive and curious UX community. If you have online videos or other resources to share, let’s have a look at them.

Check out the details and make sure to come out and share your thoughts.

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Entrepreneur Week in Waterloo

Entrepreneur Week is happening November 16–22 in Waterloo, and there’s a great range of sessions to attend and things to learn:

Entrepreneurs! start your engines: Entrepreneur Week, North America’s largest annual innovation festival dedicated to the entrepreneurial spirit, will be held in Waterloo November 16-22 and it promises to be another high-octane event to inspire innovation.

Entrepreneur Week is an invigorating week-long festival of events dedicated to celebrating the significant contributions of our greatest community asset – our entrepreneurs!

Waterloo Region is the best place in the world to do a tech startup. Just ask the 200 tech startups doing their thing here. And Entrepreneur Week is a festival unlike any other on the planet. Entrepreneur Week connects entrepreneurs, financiers, students, youth, mentors and the services that support them to success.

I’m still not sure which of the sessions I’ll be able to attend (work commitments make for a busy week) but I know I’ll be at the next edition of StartupCampWaterloo on Wednesday November 18.

By the way, from one the same instigators, there’s FailCamp Waterloo happening on Monday night. The theme is essentially learning from failure, and it sounds like a fun time. Failure seems to be in the air, as Scott Berkun wrote recently about failure, why it needs more attention, and recent initiatives to give it just that.

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Ignite Waterloo is ready to go with first event

Logo: Ignite Waterloo

There’s a lot of great stuff going on in Waterloo Region. Something that I’ve been working on for some time with a group of like-minded co-consprators is Ignite Waterloo, a local version of a global movement that presents events at which people have five minutes and twenty slides to make a presentation on just about any topic. The results are engaging, funny, enlightening, and help to build connections in local communities and across the world.

Planning and preparations have been going on for many weeks now, and it’s been a great experience to see the group come together. The first Ignite Waterloo Event is on November 25 at the Children’s Museum in Kitchener. There are 16 talks scheduled for this night, as well as a cupcake decorating contest that anyone can participate in. There will be food and drink on hand, and a chance to talk with the presenters and with anyone else who shows up for what promises to me a fun evening. I’m even doing a presentation myself on this first night.

Tickets are available today, and are free. If you’re interested in attending, get your tickets soon, as space is limited.

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Learn about personas at the next UX Group meeting

This month’s UX Group of Waterloo Region meeting is on Thursday October 15 and features a special treat. My Primal Fusion colleague Robert Barlow-Busch will be doing a presentation on personas. Bob will draw upon his own ‘stories from the trenches’ to help you to understand how to get the best from this product design tool. Come on out and enjoy the learning opportunity, and meet other folks in Waterloo Region’s thriving UX community.