Having been indulged in 2019 with nearly £14,000 spent on my career development and training in 2019 – I know I think or two about UX conferences! So having been a regular on the circuit from UX Live to UX Brighton and all the other product design and CX conferences in between!
I now face the reality of being grounded due to the global coronavirus pandemic. Sure there are more important things to be grounded for and OF COURSE conferences are a luxury and I should not be complaining of my UX-conference withdrawal symptoms.
Its not surprising that UX and design conferences have been some of the first to move their operations over to a digital medium. After all we all work in digital product design, marketing and communication! We are all familiar and experienced with working collaboratively using innovative agile tools.
So naturally I have embraced the new UX conference medium…. of course I was disappointed that my role leading a UX workshop at UX camp 2020 was cancelled and now looks to be proceeding now possibly via digital conferencing rather than in a physical environment.
So what are they like? And how do they compare to physical conferences?
Of course we go along to these industry events to get up close and personal to some of our design heros. People from Facebook and Google and all the other leading digital produce development companies across the world. Who are the people behind these great successes and what makes them tick. What gems can they help me unearth and how can I go back to my own workplace and bring some of that ‘next-level’ into my own workplace and product teams.
Its also nice to get away from the office. To go to nice conference venues. To meet new people. To eat yummy food and get loads of freebies to take back to the office. Last year I took home more stickers and laptop wipes and water bottles than you could possibly imagine one person owning.
-So enter this months conferences…
- Bunnyfoot -Webinar: : Remote research, testing, evaluations & workshops – led by Jon Dodd.
- Usertesting.com Webinar – Natalia Suarez, Digital Product Designer at Freeletics.
- Inviqa and Acquia (the folks behind Drupal) for an accessibility webinar
- Adobe Experience Manager webinar
- Tech Circus – Leadership Lunch
- Invision – How to Speak the Language of Business
- Mountain Goat – Optimise Agile
- UserZoom – Learn how to make the jump to remote UX research
So for next month as well as logging in to zoom and getting my learning kick ill be tuning in to some more webinars as well as tuning in to this years BAD conference (Tech Circus) . I previously had a ticket which costs around £500 – but now that the conference has gone digital – a ticket costs only £99! Its on 4th of June. Get your tickets here: https://thebadconference.com/
So am I practicing what I preach in the digital product design world? And advocating the focus on digital over physical conferencing. No! For me nothing can replace the experience of a live physical event. So as with many things – im looking forward to the world returning to normality and my conferencing to recommence in the physical world!