Tag: Community

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March roars in like a lion with Ignite Waterloo 2

Last week’s TEDxWaterloo event will be a hard act to follow, as it was a resounding success enjoyed by all.

Nevertheless, this week sees the second Ignite Waterloo event happening on Wednesday at the Children’s Museum. The first event was held last November and a fine time was had by all. The upcoming second event promises to be every bit as engaging and thought-provoking. I’m looking forward to the talks and the conversations.

Prior to Ignite Waterloo, the March edition of StartupDrinksWaterloo in happening on Tuesday night at McMullan’s in Waterloo. I’ve managed to attend every edition except the inaugural one, and have enjoyed them all. I’m once again looking forward to the beer and conversations!

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UX guerrillas in our midst

This month’s meeting of the User Experience Group of Waterloo Region is a workshop presented by my friend and colleague Blair Nonnecke. It’s a Guerrilla Usability Workshop, and it will involve group work and plenty of opportunity to learn and share. If you’ve been out before, you’ll already know that the discussions can be quite rewarding. If you haven’t been out, or haven’t attended in a while, come on out and see what you’ve been missing.

It’s this Thursday February 18 at 5:30pm in the friendly confines of the Accelerator Centre. Please be sure to RSVP if you intend to be there, but even if you don’t get a chance to do so, come on out anyway.

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Ignite Waterloo is coming back on March 3

Time flies. It’s already been over two months since the first Ignite Waterloo event last November 25. The second event is scheduled for March 3, 2010. Like the first event, it will be held at the Children’s Museum in Kitchener, and will feature 16 talks on a wide range of topics. Eight speakers have been announced already, with the rest to be revealed soon.

Registration is open, but tickets appear to be moving fast — 100 gone as I write this — so head over to the registration page if you want to attend.

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That was a fine night in Guelph

Alex Black demos his new product Snapsort onstage

DemoCampGuelph has a great combination of demos, atmosphere, conversations, and just plain fun. The 12th edition this past Wednesday had all that, and made for a warm event on a cold January night. As usual, the event was well-organized and inspiring.

At the start of the evening I spent some time planning the next UX Group meeting over dinner with a friend and colleague who will be leading a workshop on guerrilla usability. Should be a great event — more details to come in the next few days.

DemoCampGuelph proper got off to a great start with a talk by Tara Hunt about the social world. Good stuff. My takeaway? Don’t be an evil robot!

The demos were entertaining for a variety of reasons. Harry Scanlan’s demo-as-standup-comedy (or is it standup-comedy-as-demo?) is just as funny as it was the first time I saw him present/perform. On a more serious side, I particularly enjoyed seeing my former Primal Fusion colleague Alex Black demo his new product Snapsort. That’s him in the accompanying photo, responding to Brydon’s introductory questions.

The only downside of the night for me was that I couldn’t stay longer — family commitments took me home sooner than I would have liked.

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Primal Fusion a hit at EpCon

Peter Sweeney presenting at EpCon

In my earlier post about January events, I forgot to mention EpCon, organized by and for students from the University of Waterloo and which ran this past Friday and Saturday. Primal Fusion was one of the companies that participated, and I was lucky enough to spend some time at the conference.

I started off late Friday afternoon when I joined three of my colleagues at a booth where we evangelized Primal Fusion to interested visitors. And there were a large number of interested visitors. In a room that featured representation from giants like Google, Microsoft, and Facebook, it was gratifying to see how many folks were interested in what we’re doing. Many of them were also interested in joining us for a co-op work term.

On Saturday morning, Primal Fusion founder Peter Sweeney gave a talk in a session that was, again, well-attended. The engaged and enthusiastic audience seemed genuinely interested in hearing Peter’s ideas about the industrialization of the Web. At the end, he gave a demonstration of a Website Generator, which is currently in Primal Labs (and which I had shown in an earlier form at StartupCampWaterloo last fall). The demonstration was well-received and, despite having a time slot right before lunch, many folks from the audience wanted to chat with Peter after his talk. It was, by any measure, a fine morning.

EpCon looks like it was a great success. Congratulations to the organizers for a job well done. EpCon was certainly well worth the visit for Primal Fusion.

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A couple of fine January events to look forward to

I’m looking forward to the next editions of a couple of recurring events in the tech community.

First up is the January edition of the UX Group of Waterloo Region meeting, next Monday January 18 at the Accelerator Centre. Kem-Laurin Kramer will lead us through a provocative session entitled “Is user experience becoming a commodity?”, which is sure to lead to a lively discussion and exchange of ideas. Come on out and enjoy the company, the conversations, and the connections.

A little later in the month is DemoCampGuelph12, on January 27 at the eBar in Guelph. As I write this, there are over 100 people registered to attend. At this point, I’ll draw your attention to a pair of useful posts by Brydon Gilliss on securing a demo slot at the event and, far more importantly, on the value of intersections.

Past editions of both events have, for me, made for great learning and meeting experiences. I know that this month will be no different. Here’s hoping that January weather isn’t too stormy on the event days!

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My November IgniteWaterloo talk

Ignite Waterloo has released videos of 16 talks from the November 25 first event on Vimeo. It’s great to be able to watch the talks again, as it really was a wonderful night. I’m somewhat relieved to discover that my talk, entitled Metaphor in product design: Are you sure that’s an album?, turned out okay. Note that it started life as a blog post here, but the video expands on the post a little and is more fun!

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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.