Tag: Community

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UX Group of Waterloo Region kicks off new season

A new season of UX Group of Waterloo Region fun starts this Thursday, September 17 at 5:30pm at the Accelerator Centre. This first event, inspired by Scott Berkun, will be a design interactionary, an evening of hands on design fun in which teams take solving on design challenges in a ridiculously short amount of time. It promises to be good fun, and it’s a great opportunity to get to know other designers in our community and get to work with them.

Check out the details, and note the RRSP. Sadly, I’ll have to miss this great event myself due to immovable commitments elsewhere.

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IDEA09 is practically here!

Boy, sometimes stuff just sneaks up on me!

I’ll be going to the IDEA2009 conference in Toronto next week. I’ve been registered for a while, and it was always on my radar, but it just felt like it was off over the horizon. Now it’s here and IDEA2009 should be a great event. My friend and Primal Fusion colleague Bob Barlow-Busch will be driving up together and and we’re looking forward to a stimulating couple of days of conversations, presentations, and general interaction design goodness.

Kudos to the organizers for putting together such an interesting program.

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Next BarCampWaterloo is this Saturday

The next edition of BarCampWaterloo is coming up on Saturday September 12 at the Accelerator Centre in Waterloo. It runs from 11:00am to 5:00pm. There aren’t a lot of details available online right now, but have a look at what there is, and then sign up here. Demos are always interesting, and the conversations ought to be as well; there may well be food and drink as well.

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Video of Scott Berkun speaking in Waterloo

I was inspired to start this blog after seeing Scott Berkun give a talk in Waterloo at the RIM Enterprise Theater last Feb 25 and having an opportunity to meet him afterward. Henry Chen has made a video of the talk available online and it’s worth spending a little time with it. About 28 minutes minutes in you’ll hear Berkun talk about the movie The Great Escape, which led directly to the first real post in this blog. As well, about an hour in Scott responds to my comment on the role of the critique in the design process. Of course, there’s much else of interest as well.

Thanks to Henry for making the video available.

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Welcome to Wozerloo

Steve Wozniak speaking at Communitech event in Waterloo

Well, today’s Communitech breakfast with Steve Wozniak and David Flynn was a great success by just about any measure. Woz was an engaging raconteur who was speaking to a crowd that was in large measure there to see the legend in person. His passion for users of technology products seems genuine. Flynn was a smooth and articulate speaker who walked us through their company’s product offering in some detail and with a great deal of clarity. 700+ people attended, apparently the largest attendance for a Communitech event by far.

Communitech’s president Iain Klugman wrote, in a tweet, after the event:

Spoke to the Woz afterwards #communitech — he was blown away — was expecting 50-100 people — not over 700. says he’s coming back

All in all, a fine day in Wozerloo.

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Woz speaking in town next week

Steve Wozniak, probably best known as co-founder of Apple, is coming to Waterloo Region. He’ll be speaking at a Communitech breakfast on August 17. He’s currently Chief Scientist at Fusion-io, and will be joined at the breakfast by David Flynn, the company’s CTO. It really feels superfluous for me to write much more about this, other than to say the event has generated a lot of buzz in town and that a large number of people are looking forward to hearing ‘Woz’ speak. I’m definitely one of them.

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Six demos and a BBQ

People watching a software product demo at VeloCity

I went to an end-of-term Demo Night at the University of Waterloo’s VeloCity Residence last night. The evening started with a nice barbecue and an opportunity to mingle and talk with students and other visitors. There was then a program of six presentations by student teams that included two complete and functioning products as well as some product concept presentations, and even a great overview on the subtleties of creating applications for the iPhone. The discussions after each presentation were engaging and instructive. At the end of the night the crowd favourites were the guys from giftah.com, who I had previously seen at StartupCampWaterloo, and who seem to have found a winning proposition in their business.

The folks who run VeloCity are building something special here.

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How fast can VeloCity students demo?

I’ve written previously about a presentation that I made at the University of Waterloo’s VeloCity Residence (which, by the way, led to my Ten Thoughts series of posts). VeloCity is a great idea that seems to be thriving.

For the end of their third term VeloCity is holding a Demo Night on Monday July 27. Here’s what they have planned:

As the end of our third term approaches, we’ve decided to try something a little different to showcase the projects that our VeloCity students have been working on.

We would like to invite you to join us for Demo Night at the VeloCity Residence. Drop by to listen to pitches from 6 of our teams, view demos of their projects, and interact with and provide feedback to the students. Afterwards, join us for refreshments and a BBQ to celebrate the end of the Spring term at VeloCity.

We hope that you’re able to join us in this casual celebration of the accomplishments of our Spring-term students.

Have a look here for all the details.

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DemoCampGuelph on Wednesday July 15

DemoCampGuelph10 is happening on Wednesday July 15 from 6:30pm–9:00pm. I demonstrated Primal Fusion’s thought networking service at the last edition of GuelphDemoCamp, and enjoyed the great questions and feedback. I’m looking forward to this edition and the opportunity to just enjoy what others are showing without thinking about my own demo. As with the last edition, the venue is eBar at 41 Quebec Street.