The June meeting of the UX Group of Waterloo Region is happening at 5:00pm on Thursday June 25 at the Accelerator Centre. This month it’s a presentation by Qixing Zheng called From Concept to Production: Prototyping with Expression Blend 3. The event is hosted by the Infusion Angels Innovation Centre and registration is required.
The solace of a Quantum To Cosmos festival
I’ve written before about lectures that the Perimeter Institute puts on here in Waterloo. Their public outreach program is a wonderful part of life in Waterloo. Science, fun, and accessible? PI has it covered. They’ve recently announced Quantum To Cosmos: Ideas for the Future, an amazing 10-day festival to be held next October. The mix of science and the arts is quite inspiring to see, and I’m excited about this even though it’s four months away.
I’m particularly lucky as PI is walking distance from my home — not everyone has that luxury. Everyone in Waterloo region does have access to PI and this festival, though, and living and working in here is strikingly enhanced as a result. Thanks, PI!
Popcorn, balloons, and heavy equipment
Every year, the City of Waterloo Public Works Service Centre has an open house. This year’s event was today, and my boys and I made the short trip to the centre this morning. It’s an amazing event at which kids can ride in a swing shovel or front-end loader and dig gravel, take a trip in a dump truck, go up high in the bucket of a hydro truck from Waterloo North Hydro, or explore a fire truck. There’s much more too. Add a few hot dogs for lunch and our morning was perfect.
From what I understand, the staff all volunteer their time to be there, and everyone seems to have fun. I’ve been taking my kids for years and I enjoy it immensely. Thanks to all of you who make this event happen — your effort and commitment makes living and working in Waterloo that much more fun.
Thought Networking presentation at StartupCampWaterloo
I attended my first StartupCampWaterloo last night. It was great – well-organized (without feeling regimented), engaging, lots of energy. I managed to arrive late, having come directly from work and a late meeting, which meant that I didn’t get to pitch my Primal Fusion presentation, but I did get to demo our Thought Networking product anyway. There were some good questions from the crowd and I had some interesting conversations afterward. Overall it felt like a positive response.
The other presentations were quite enjoyable to watch, and there were some interesting products on display. Waterloo is really a great place to work, with so much going on and so many people beavering away on their own thing.
Another month, another fine meeting of the UX Group of Waterloo
This month’s meeting of the User Experience Group of Waterloo looks like fun. It’s an opportunity to talk about the state of UX in Waterloo Region. Even cooler is the venue, the wonderful Whole-Lotta-Gelata in Waterloo. UX chatter, gelato, paninis — how can you beat that? It’s on Thursday May 21 at 5:30pm.
DemoCampGuelph demonstration of Primal Fusion
Last Wednesday I demonstrated Primal Fusion at the ninth edition of DemoCampGuelph. I had previously presented at the same event early last year and enjoyed it. This time I was essentially doing a demonstration very similar to the one given by Peter Sweeney and Bob Barlow-Busch at the DEMO conference in March.
I have to confess, though, that I was much less polished than those two! To ensure that everyone realized that it wasn’t a canned presentation, I decided to demo our product based on Toronto transit commission, a topic drawn from a presentation made earlier that evening by Jay Goldman. That worked out well.
The event was great fun, and the other demos were enjoyable to watch. One challenge that I had, though, was that because I arrived late I watched the other demos from the back of the crowded bar. It was hard to see and hear everything clearly back there!
A visit to VeloCity
Today I had the opportunity to make a presentation to students at the VeloCity residence at the University of Waterloo. If you don’t know about VeloCity, it’s worth checking out. In their words:
VeloCity is no ordinary student residence.
It’s a place where some of UW’s most talented, entrepreneurial, creative and technologically savvy students will be united under one roof to work on the future of mobile communications, web and new media.
It’s a place where students, faculty and corporate partners will be active collaborators and beneficiaries of the talent, ideas and innovations that evolve.
It’s a place where the ‘next big thing’ could happen.
My presentation was a pretty simple one – Ten Thoughts on what matters at a startup. It certainly wasn’t meant to be definitive, but it did cover the kinds of things that, in my experience, matter on a daily basis. Some of it was informed by my recent experiences at Primal Fusion. Anyway, it seemed to go over well, and I had some good conversations with a few of the students after I finished.
In the near future I’ll start a little series of posts inspired by that presentation.
Two nights on the town: UX and QA/Agile peer-to-peer groups
I’m lucky to have access to some great resources in town for career-related learning. Communitech, the Waterloo Region Technology Association, host many peer-to-peer groups focused on a variety of areas of interest to people working with technology. I’ve mentioned the UX Group of Waterloo Region in previous posts. This month’s meeting was an entertaining night of UX-related videos (and accompanying popcorn)
This week, in addition the movie night, I also attended the Waterloo Agile Lean peer-to-peer meeting on Testing in Agile – a QA’s journey. Guelph-based Innosphere shared their experiences with QA and Agile over the last 2+ years. The thing that I enjoyed most was hearing how similar many of their experiences are to what we’ve found with integrating QA and Scrum at Primal Fusion. It’s reassuring to hear that others are on the same path and have arrived at similar solutions to the various challenges.
Lights! Camera! Interaction!
The User Experience Group of Waterloo Region is having a movie night on Wednesday April 22, starting at 5:30pm. There’s the promise of “a variety of movies about our relationship with the tools and technologies that surround us” as well as munchies! As my second post for this blog floated my theory that The Dam Busters is a great metaphor for a start up, I’m looking forward seeing to what folks have to bring to the cinematic UX mélange.
If you haven’t been to one of the UX Group meetings before, come on out. It’s a great opportunity to meet with like-minded folks.
Field research: How do UX folks behave in a pub?
Speaking of events that well worth attending, the next monthly meeting of User Experience Group of Waterloo Region happens this coming Thursday March 19. The great thing about this group is that the meetings are mix of engaging speakers (like last month’s Scott Berkun event) and more low key design discussions. This month’s Books and Brewskies event is definitely in the low key design discussion category, with the added bonus of a relaxed pub environment.
Do you have a question about how to do guerrilla testing? Are you wondering how to do UX in an agile environment? Are you trying to cope with a strategy for rolling out UX in your company? Do you long to become a UX designer? Do you have a movie metaphor you want to share?
Do come out and connect with your fellow UX folks and help build a thriving UX community in Waterloo region.