On the Road, Close to Home

Mar 12, 2009

I’m only doing a few conferences this spring and summer, as I’m focusing most of my attention on building the new master’s program. But starting tomorrow morning, I’ll be heading to the SXSW Interactive Festival, the not-to-be-missed get-together, where I’ll be attending for the fourth time.

Designers and Developers: Why Can’t We All Just Get Along?, Tuesday, March 17, SXSW, Austin, TX

Often times designers and developers’ relationships are contentious. Designers want features that would require two Googles to run and developers want features that nobody but the nerdiest of the nerds would care about. This panel will showcase some of the top designers and developers who have worked through their differences and feel they’re making better products as a result. Sometimes designers know users’ needs best and sometimes developers can enhance a feature with their innate understanding of the system. Knowing this, why can’t we all just get along?

I had the opportunity to do this same panel with these folks at FOWD in New York in 2008, and we’re being joined by a few others this year in Austin. Looking forward to the honor of mitigating the designer-developer waters again on stage with:

The AIGA Y Design Conference, Saturday, March 28, San Diego, CA

Joined by speakers such as Lorraine Wil, Yolanda Santosa, Mark Randall, and Shel Perkins. Debbie Millman is moderating this event.

The most important natural resource the world needs right now is creative energy; the force that develops ideas, discovers solutions and pushes business forward. During times of dramatic change, creative thinkers have always seized the opportunity to design the future; and now it’s your moment to shine.

Dot Dot Dot Lecture Series, Second Wednesday each month, New York, NY

While it’s not outside New York proper where I live, each month, I organize, curate, and run the Dot Dot Dot Lecture Series. In advance of the MFA Interaction Design program I’m building for fall 2009, these events are meant for broad explorations of interaction design, business, and aesthetic inspiration. Practitioners and thought leaders give short talks (10 minutes each!) in an informal setting (a bar). Wisdom is revealed and methods are shared in a environment intended to satisfy both social and scholarly pursuits.

We’ve been honored to be joined by the following 20 speakers over the past five months. If I’ve been a less frequent speaker at conferences and conference attendee, it’s because I feel like I’ve been organizing mini-conferences each month at the White Rabbit in the Lower East Side. And best of all: they’re free.

I may sneak up on the train to CHI ’09 for a day, and am disappointed to be missing the 10th anniversary of the Information Architecture Summit (but that’s what Twitter is for…).

I hope to meet some of you at one of these other events before too long!