Fluxible – Page 3 – Connolly Design

December 22, 2015October 31, 2020

Cooking up a career bigos

I had a recent conversation with a friend about working in UX. As we all do, he’s aiming to find a balance of work that is rewarding, provides room for growth, and pays the bills. He has a range of important creative activities that he’s engaged in and he wants to ensure that none of them are being neglected.

Our conversation resonated with my own thinking about my career. Metaphorically, I have a soup of ingredients that are all important to my UX work and that I aim to have aligned with each other. Boltmade is the major ingredient, while Fluxible and uxWaterloo are two other obvious ingredients in that soup. Other ingredients like attending other events, having conversations with various folks in the community, and ongoing readings all go into the mix as well. I’m delighted that these all complement each other as well as they do.

As I talked about this with my friend, he got it right away and declared it to be more of a stew. What immediately popped into my mind was a wonderful kind of stew called bigos.

My mom taught me how to make bigos, and it’s a dish that my whole family loves. One of the great things about it is how it improves on subsequent days as it cooks. Moreover, adding new ingredients on those day renews it and extends it over more meals.

My UX career bigos evolves, and the ingredients that I add over time ensure that it keeps getting better.

November 30, 2015November 1, 2020

Designing Fluxible

In the aftermath of Fluxible 2015 in September, the Fluxible team has been reflecting on how things went and thinking about next year’s edition. It’s an ongoing activity, really, as we look for ways to refine what we do to create a great conference experience.

With many of us being user experience professionals, it’s inevitable that we bring our UX tools to bear on the task of improving Fluxible. Recently, we’ve engaged in several story mapping sessions to help us better articulate the experience of our attendees. It’s productive, as well as good fun, to think about the Fluxible experience this way.

(User story mapping progress…)

Bob Barlow-Busch observed that the thinking and activities that go into designing a conference might be of wider interest, and suggested that we share some of what we go through. That does seem like a great idea and is something that we’re planning to do in the months leading up to Fluxible next year.

October 26, 2015November 1, 2020

Looking back at Fluxible 2015

Well, Fluxible 2015 wrapped up one month ago today, and I’ve realized that I hadn’t done any kind of a wrap-up post here. It’s surprisingly challenging to do so, as the message every year is generally the same. That is, it was another terrific event with smart speakers and plenty of engaging conversations to be had all around, along with plenty of fun musical interludes.

Happily, I’ve got a couple of special artifacts to point at that document the conference so that I don’t have to!

First up is a great video created by one of our friends at Communitech. Phil Froklage captured many defining moments, large and small, at this year’s event. Check it out to get a small flavour of what happened.

More recently, our friends Amandah Wood and Matt Quinn documented their Fluxible 2015 experience over at Ways We Work. Moreover, as they were explicitly interested in how an event like this goes together, Bob Barlow-Busch and I chatted with them extensively, and they had plenty of behind-the-scenes access to see how it all happened. The result is a lovely essay in words and pictures. Have a look right now!

Meanwhile plans are already well underway for the 2016 edition of Fluxible.

September 2, 2015November 1, 2020

September kicks off a new season for uxWaterloo

After July and August sessions that featured relaxed conversations over drinks on summer patios, we’re kicking off a fresh new season of uxWaterloo events on Tuesday September 22 with a visit to Christie in Kitchener.

Their design team will be taking us deep into the process of creating a new remote control for their projectors. It’s always a great learning experience to see and hear how a design to team has approached and solved a problem, and the folks at Christie promise to share plenty of insights. It will be a terrific session. I’d usually encourage folks to register at this point, but the event is already full! Be sure to watch for announcements for more great uxWaterloo sessions for the fall.

There’s something special about the September session, though. It’s part of a full week of UX events in Waterloo Region that our Fluxible team has pulled together around this year’s edition of the UX conference disguised as a party.

In addition to the Tuesday uxWaterloo event, there’s a Boltmade Session on learning Sketch (Monday September 21); a UX Book Club meetup with Fluxible speaker Abby Covert (Wednesday September 23); and a Girl Geek Dinners Waterloo Region event with Fluxible speaker Christina Wodtke (Thursday September 24).

Of course, there’s a day filled with Fluxible pre-conference workshops on Friday September 25, and the week culminates in the main Fluxible program on Saturday September 26 and Sunday September 27!

Great stuff, right?

August 24, 2015November 1, 2020

Fluxible 2015 sold out!

Well, that happened fast. Faster, in fact, than in each the last three years!

This past Friday we sold out the main program for Fluxible 2015. Obviously Bob Barlow-Busch and I, along with the rest of the Fluxible team, think that we’re presenting a great program at this year’s event, but we’re delighted that others agree and have registered to attend.

If you missed out, we have good news. Registration has not yet closed for two of our three Friday workshops. (Our Friday morning workshop with Christina Wodtke sold out earlier.)

Join Stephen Anderson on Friday morning for a terrific deep dive into Design for Understanding.

And on Friday afternoon you can join Jeff Gothelf and Jim Kalbach for Jazz Performance as a Model for Team Collaboration.

Sound interesting? Register now before it’s too late!

August 17, 2015October 31, 2020

The calm before the storm…

While I’ve been quiet here on the blogging front, there’s plenty going on behind the scenes in anticipation of what promises to be a busy autumn.

Preparations are in the final stages for Fluxible. It’s going to be another terrific event, and there’s still more that’s yet to be announced. Relatedly, uxWaterloo will start the new season with a terrific, soon-to-be-announced event. There’s plenty more UX goodness in the pipeline, so stay tuned! September is going to be filled with exciting news.

June 24, 2015November 1, 2020

Hey, look! Fluxible 2015 early bird registration is open!

Fluxible 2015 Early Bird registration is open now. That means that there’s some pretty great pricing available for not just our main program, but for some wonderful Friday workshops as well. As I mentioned previously, we’ve made a few changes to our programming this year, and it feels like we’ve found a fine balance that makes Fluxible available to more folks.

Check out the program, and then get yourself registered before we sell out! And feel free to ask me any questions Fluxible — try Twitter if you don’t have my email.

June 8, 2015November 1, 2020

Fluxible 2015 program is now online

We’ve announced our Fluxible 2015 program and it’s going to be a terrific three days in September!

This year we’ve expanded things a little with the intent of making Fluxible available to more people. Read all about our changes for 2015, and then check out the details of the program. It’s another great lineup filled with insightful presentations from smart and generous speakers, along with fine food and more than a little music!

Early Bird registration opens next Monday, June 15, at noon EST. Now’s the time to start sorting out your budget and preparing to register. Hope to see you at Fluxible!

April 8, 2015

Video highlights from Fluxible 2014

We’re roughly mid-way between Fluxible 2014 and Fluxible 2015. The Fluxible team is currently focused on our 2015 event, with speakers being announced and plenty of behind-the-scenes details being attended to. There’s some great stuff coming, and I’m sure that folks will be excited about this year’s program.

Right now, though, let’s take a moment to look back at Fluxible 2014. My conference co-chair Bob Barlow-Busch has put together this highlights video, which is a delightful celebration of the 2014 experience. Enjoy!

February 17, 2015October 31, 2020

A visit to San Francisco for Interaction 15

(Christina, Maria, and Jesse. Julie is behind the column!)

Last week Bob Barlow-Busch and I travelled to San Francisco for Interaction 15, this year’s edition of the annual conference of the IxDA. I had previously attended the 2013 edition in Toronto.

The conference is large, with 800+ people attending from around the world. The main venue was the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, a terrific facility right downtown.

The program was a multi-track mix of topics, presented as talks, workshops, and panel discussions. Bob and I were pleased to see that there were several Fluxible alumni on the program, delivering new talks or material that they had previously done at Fluxible.

There were a few definite highlights for me.

“So, You Want To Run a Design Agency…” was a panel discussion with Christina Wodtke, Jesse James Garrett, Maria Giudice, and Julie Stanford. They were insightful and shared much from their years of experience running agencies. The fact that they all took shots of bourbon when one of them said the word “process” was a hilarious bonus.

“Jumping to the End: Practical Design Fiction at Google Creative Lab & BERG” had Matt Jones sharing some of the work that he’s done at those companies, and featured several fun looking projects.

Elizabeth Goodman’s “Beyond Handwaving: The Role of Performance in Interaction Design” did a good job of making explicit many of the things that I do intuitively when presenting a design to stakeholders.

The absolute highlight on the program for me was “The Modern UX Organization”, in which Fluxible alumnus Leah Buley presented the results from a study that looked at how top-performing design organizations work. It was data-driven and filled with astute observations.

For me, though, the most value at a conference like this comes from the conversations with friends old and new. The IxDA community is a friendly one, and there was plenty of opportunity to engage and learn. Whether through networking events, studio tours, meals, or just hanging around, the conversations were a huge part of the experience.

Finally, it was a treat to enjoy warmer temperatures in San Francisco. When we left for home at the end of the conference it was 16ºC there, and when we arrived in Waterloo Region it was -20ºC. Yup, still winter.