Month: September 2018

Today I’m writing about yet another reason that we love Fluxible here at Zeitspace.

Earlier this year, Zeitspace sponsored the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound, for reasons that I wrote about when announcing our sponsorship. In short, it’s a great music festival that does innovative programming.

On Wednesday this week, Fluxible is presenting a concert at Open Sesame in downtown Kitchener. The preformers are Ben Grossman (hurdy gurdy) and Matt Brubeck (cello) in a duet performance, as well as JoJo Worthington (ukulele/voice/electronics). Ben and Matt both played at Fluxible Conference in 2016. In fact, Ben is also doing a presentation at this year’s Fluxible Conference on the user experience of playing instruments. JoJo is new to Fluxible, and its great that she’s playing this concert.

Now here’s the connection back to my earlier mention of Zeitspace sponsoring Open Ears.

Fluxible is presenting the concert as a fundraiser for the Open Ears Festival of Music and Sound. All proceeds from ticket sales (except for Eventbrite fees and HST) will go to Open Ears. And the concert is a “pay what you can” model, as Fluxible didn’t want ability to pay to exclude anyone from hearing this wonderful music.

So check it out, maybe even buy a ticket, and come here some great music at a cool venue.

This post originally appeared on the Zeitspace blog.

The whole Zeitspace team is excited about Fluxible starting this week. Many of us will be attending some combination of Fluxible Meetups, Fluxible Workshops, and Fluxible Conference. But that’s not the only reason that we’re excited. The Zeitspace team has created a Fluxible Schedule web app and we’re launching it today!

It’s a classic product launch origin: there wasn’t an easy-to-scan overview available showing all the events and sessions being presented during the weeklong Fluxible festivities. My Fluxible co-chair Bob Barlow-Busch and I had long seen that need. My Zeitspace partner Jeff Fedor and I were keen to help Fluxible meet that need. It seemed like a natural fit, so the Zeitspace team jumped right in and built Fluxible Schedule.

Fluxible Schedule is an MVP (minimal viable product) that does one simple thing: it keeps attendees informed about what’s happening each day.

It doesn’t support buying tickets to Fluxible Workshops or Fluxible Conference, as that can be done elsewhere (and you should go do it if you haven’t). It doesn’t provide any historical view of Fluxible events in years past, as that’s avaiable on the current Fluxible website. It doesn’t support conversations, or tweet streams, or other two-way engagement. Those are all things that we might (or might not) build down the road, but this MVP release is a great start.

In the near future the rest of the Zeitspace team will be writing more about our experience building this, and get into the details of the tech stack, how we approached the project, and future possibilities. Until then, do check out Fluxible Schedule if you’re at Fluxible (or even if you’re not). And consider attending Fluxible if you haven’t already. It’s a great experience!

This post originally appeared on the Zeitspace blog.

As I wrote yesterday, Zeitspace is sponsoring Fluxible, Canada’s UX Festival. UX is an important part of our work and our point of view at Zeitspace, and Fluxible is such a wonderful mix of UX events and activities that it’s a natural fit for us. The Fluxible Workshops that I mentioned yesterday are only a small part of this amazing festival, though.

The main attraction this year, as it is every year, is the event that started it all back in 2012. Fluxible Conference remains the highlight of the week, wrapping things up with two days of presentations, food, music, and more. The program this year features a diverse range of topics and speakers and promises a few surprises as well. I’m excited by all of it— as I’m Fluxible co-chair, that shouldn’t be a surprise. But I’m particularly looking forward to hearing from Stephen Fitzgerald on designing a bicycling experience, Ben Grossman on the UX of musical technology, and Farai Madzima on bias in multicultural teams.

But really, all the talks will be fantastic. Plus there will be plenty of opportunites to talk with fellow attendees and speakers, and dig into the topics raised over the weekend.

Oh, and the amazing food! And the awesome beer from TWB! And the superior coffee from Matter of Taste!

Fluxible Conference really is a grand experience an shouldn’t be missed by anyone with an interest in UX.

This post originally appeared on the Zeitspace blog.