Tag: Fluxible

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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!

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The Fluxible offseason is a busy one

Compared with the excitement around last September’s event, the Fluxible offseason may seem quiet. Behind the scenes, though, there’s plenty of activity as we plan for our September 2015 edition. We have dates and venues pretty much nailed down, if not announced, but there’s still much to do.

The main focus of activity for Bob Barlow-Busch and me right now is on finding speakers to bring to town. This is one of the most rewarding and fun parts of putting on our UX conference. We get to meet and talk with smart people who are passionate about UX, and who want to share their knowledge and experience. Recruiting continues, but we’ve already got some fantastic speakers lined up, with some terrific topics that they’ll be bringing to the event. There’ll also be a few surprising topics that are sure to delight attendees!

We’re pretty excited about how it’s shaping up. While it’s still a little early to be making any announcements, we’ll start doing that soon.

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Fluxible 2014 was another great success

Giles Colborne presenting at Fluxible

Fluxible 2014 has come and gone, and it feels good to look back on what was yet another successful event. The program of talks and workshops was wonderful, with ample support from the Festival of Interstitial Music. The feedback that we’ve received has been overwhelmingly positive, which is a gratifying thing to see.

The Fluxible team was amazing, attending to all the details that make Fluxible such a special experience for everyone. Whether it was the delicious food, the customized water bottles, the Saturday party, or even, inexplicably, the live goats, there was someone making sure that it all came together.

I’m particularly pleased that Fluxible 2014 was at the heart of 5 Days of UX, and that each of the other events was also successful.

My friend Darin White created a terrific photo essay of his experience at Fluxible, and you should check it out to see what you missed, or what you enjoyed, as the case may be.

Bob and I are delighted with the outcome, and are already planning for next year’s event. I hope you’re thinking about joining us in 2015!

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The Festival of Interstitial Music, 2014 edition

Silvia Dee and the Boyfriend, accordianist and guitarist, performing at Fluxible

This past weekend was the 2014 edition of Fluxible. I’ll write more about that shortly.

As any Fluxible attendee knows, music is a big part of the Fluxible experience. And we don’t announce anything about the music ahead of time. We do love our little surprises! We also want everyone to be able to experience the music free of any context and expectations.

But eventually we do reveal all!

This year’s Festival of Interstitial Music was an eclectic one, ranging from baritone saxophone improvisations, to a rousing tour of fiddle styles, to a looping extravaganza on multiple instruments, to a sultry and solo-format-defying duet. I’m grateful to all the musicians who play at Fluxible for sharing their music with us. That they make the Region (or nearby) home is a wonderful thing. Do get out and hear them play some time!

This post first appeared in a slightly different form at the Fluxible site.

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It’s another edition of the UX party disguised as a conference

Logo: Fluxible - A User Experience Event

This coming weekend is the third edition of Fluxible, the UX party disguised as a conference that I co-chair with Bob Barlow-Busch.

Even after having staged this thing twice before, the 2014 edition of Fluxible has enough twists and novelties to keep it interesting. There’s a lot of work that goes into putting on an event like this, but it’s spread out over a whole calendar year, and we have a great team who each take on challenges and make them seem easy.

As always, we have a superb lineup of speakers who generously share their time and expertise and experience to help build a global UX community. Bob and I invite speakers who we want to meet and learn from, and we’re happy that so many others want to learn from them as well.

It’s gratifying to see it all come together again. Be sure to find me and say hello if you’re there.

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Tune in to 570 on the AM dial

Logo: 570 News: All News Radio

This week I had a fun experience promoting Fluxible on the radio (and, yes, I’ll write more about Fluxible soon). Bob Barlow-Busch and I were on 570 News, joining Eric Drozd for the Tuesday #TechHour and a lunchtime discussion about UX in general and our experiences with Fluxible.

We were initially connected with the show by Chris Plunkett of Communitech, and we were thrilled at the opportunity to talk about user experience for an hour in the middle of the day on AM radio. Where else but Waterloo Region could that happen? Of course, Bob and I quickly realized that the two of us talking for a whole hour would wear a little thin. We recruited Fluxible 2013 speaker Steve Portigal, Fluxible 2014 speaker Brent Bisaillion, and UW Stratford faculty member Karin Schmidlin to join in as well. That made for a much more interesting range of voices!

Eric was a wonderfully engaged, and engaging, host. He made it easy to talk about the role of UX in creating meaningful products, and the hour flew by. And, as an aside, it was a far different environment than in my days in university radio, where the studios were filled with vinyl, carts, and reel-to-reel tapes!

If you missed it, you can listen to a recording of the show here.

Big thanks to Chris, Eric, and producer Neil Adams for making this happen!

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You’ve heard about Fluxible, right?

Logo: Fluxible - A User Experience Event

Once again, it’s been a long while between posts here. Oddly enough, though, I’d created several drafts on topics that, in some cases, no longer seem timely. I’ll see about getting to some of the others.

Meanwhile, one activity that has been a focus of my attention is ongoing preparations for Fluxible, this year’s edition of the user experience conference that I co-chair with Bob Barlow-Busch. Last year’s event was a wonderful success, as hinted at in the video that we released this past March, and this year’s version promises to be at least as engaging, enlightening, and energizing.

Have a look at the line-up of wonderful speakers who will be sharing their wisdom and experience through our program of talks and workshops. Of course, the chance to meet and talk with UX folks from a variety of settings remains an important part of Fluxible. Great stuff!

And, as was the case last year, the Festival of Interstitial Music will be happening concurrently in time and space with Fluxible. It’s pretty certain that we’ll have some fun surprises in store as well.

Registration remains a bargain, with Early Bird pricing available until August 9. Go register now to ensure that you’ll be able to attend what Bob and like to call the UX party conference.

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Video highlights from Fluxible 2012

Some of you may recall that Fluxible is a user experience design conference that I co-chair with Bob Barlow-Busch. We ran the inaugural edition of it last September, and and currently planning the next edition for September 14 & 15 this year.

Here’s a video that we put together showing a few highlights from the first event, set to the toe-tapping tune “The Fluxible Song (More Than Users)”. Enjoy!

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Silent, but keeping busy

It’s been quite a long while since my last post here. It was an unintentional break, caused by inattention and a focus on other activities.

uxWaterloo continues to be a monthly priority for me, and for the other folks who join in on our regular meetings. January featured a visit to Beertown on Waterloo to learn about designing a restaurant experience. We have another good one this month, with Daniel Iaboni talking about designing for augmented reality.

Also in January was Interaction 13, the annual conference of the Interaction Design Association. This year’s version was held in Toronto, and I spent the whole week there enjoying some terrific talks, and meeting some amazing people. There was much to learn and think about!

There was an Ignite Waterloo event to attend back in the fall, with another coming up this week. While I’m no longer directly involved in organizing the events, I’m looking forward to extending my attendance streak to a perfect 11 events.

I also made it out to the first meetings of the KW Ruby on Rails Developers meetup. We use Ruby on Rails at Karos Health, and it’s good to hear from others about their experiences and approaches.

Speaking of Karos, fall was very busy with preparations for our annual visit to Chicago for the RSNA conference. It was a rewarding experience, as always.

The biggest holder of my attention, of course, was Fluxible, which came and went last September and provided a great experience for everyone involved. We’re in planning mode for the 2013 edition of Fluxible, and should have news to announce soon. Needless to say, we’re excited about doing it again!

2013 is off to a great start, and I’ll be making a more conscious effort to keep this blog updated.

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Fluxible is almost here and you should register if you haven’t

Logo: Fluxible - A User Experience Event

The last few months have been busy on a number of fronts, but the one I that want to mention now is Fluxible. Fluxible, as I have written previously, is a user experience conference that I started with Bob Barlow-Busch and that he and I have been organizing along with a team of dedicated and enthusiastic volunteers.

The work is all coming together as we enter the last few days of preparation in anticipation of our morning start on Saturday September 22 at the Conrad Centre in downtown Kitchener. The program that we ended up with is far more ambitious than we had initially envisioned, in part because so many amazing speakers were willing to join us, and in part because we lined of some very supportive sponsors. This is going to be a great event, with talks, workshops, and the chance to meet and learn from all kinds of amazing people. And we still have a few more surprises in store for everyone, which is saying something when you consider that we unveiled a theme song last month!

If you haven’t registered yet, there’s still time to do so. If you register now using the uxWaterloo promotional code, you’ll receive a $200 discount over the regular rate. It’s a fantastic deal for a weekend that looks like it will be an exceptional experience.