Uxplosion! Inspirations from the thriving London UX events scene
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This is a collection of thoughts from my own experience with UX events in London, with some inspiration from blog posts from Martin Belam and Matthew Solle who run events out of London IA.
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Uxplosion! Inspirations from the thriving London UX events scene
Editor's Notes
- How did I decide on this topic? Iโm generally quite interested the UX event scene. But curiously, itโs been too good to be true. How does it all happen? What can we learn from this?
- Iโve gotten involved in many UX events in the last 3 years. Iโve gotten so much out of the UX community, I canโt help but to give back. Some say I donโt have a life, but I do enjoy being in this industry.
- Despite the huge growth, UX events are fairly intimate. I actually think thatโs a good thing. Also, the majority of these great events only take place in London. And increasingly, there are more events other than the big ones organized by the UK UPA and London IA. And theyโre not all free too!
- As you can see from this list, thereโs a whole list of different events related to UX. They all take place in London, and many of them get oversubscribed and sell out quickly. Interestingly, the standard presentation-based events are not the only type of events out there. Thereโs a lot more variety now.
- Here, we see a few more events dedicated to discussions and socials. Plus, there are a number of โbigโ events like UX London and UX People, with big speakers flying in from all over the world.
- So hereโs the first inspiring thing about the London UX event scene โ variety.
- If you take a look at what UX is made of, your head will start to turn in big circles. Thereโs a lot of stuff in there that canโt be covered in a lifetime. Yet, weโre expected to do a lot of this stuff on a daily basis. NO WONDER WE NEED EVENTS.
- Hereโs a another lovely chart from the guys at Information Architects.jp You can see a lot of different domains involved here โ business, technology, design. So, the need is clearly there.
- Hereโs a quote from Martin Belam, who does a lot of work on behalf of the London IA group. His one advice is to โnot complain, but doโ. The audience has grown and the interest is there. The UX community needs variety and we can give it to them.
- Which brings me to my second point. What keeps these events so healthy? I actually think itโs about getting the right balance.
- One of the key things, from my experience, that many of these events seem to have a quality for is itโs low signal to noise ratio. People who come are people who are interested. What you typically find is a strong, committed core of people who show up fairly regularly at events (people like me). And then you have occasional attendees who are really interested to discuss and learn about a certain topic or activity. People are naturally drawn to these events because of their needs. UX is a fairly new field and it seems that thereโs too much to learn.
- So now that youโve got variety and balance, the next thing to do is to keep the ball rolling. And again, thereโs been a strong momentum of UX events each month, itโs getting really hard to keep up.
- This model is quite common: Aim for a comfortable sized group โ you want quality discussions, not a mob. Release tickets fair and square, the fastest one wins. Thereโs always a next event coming around the corner. If not, you can always run your own event and you can easily find support for that. And the cycle continues. This has worked fairly well for a majority of events.
- The trick, it seems, is to leverage on the many small but conducive venues that are perfect for a 2 hour discussion or series of talks. About 30 people in one room is about the right size, for something like a book club. Beyond that and youโll have too many voices in the room. And itโll be much easier to manage โ so you can look forward to doing it again next month!
- So, how do you get started? And why do individuals take time off to organise events when they could be at home watching reruns of Star Trek or Dr. Who? So, inspiration no. 4 is all about autonomy โ itโs inspiring to see people taking the initiative towards these interests. And that in turn attracts a lot of support from all sorts of places.
- Letโs say you were interested to set up a UX event. There would be no shortage of people who are willing to offer advice on how to roll your own event. The need is ubiquitously acknowledged โ thereโs just a lack of people willing to step up. But as soon as they do, then things start to stick. And others follow suit.
- Itโs also beneficial that there isnโt an institution or organisation to fall back on for help. It creates this sort of โself-helpโ environment where the community vote by their feet. And everything is kept fairly basic โ only the essentials remain. Thatโs what keeps it truly organic.
- So, to sum it all up โ the events then start to define the community. And the events become a staple of the UX community here in London. And the cycle repeats itself.
- So as a closing thought, I think I really wanted to treat these five things as โinspiration pointsโ rather than learning points. Because whatโs missing the most, I feel, is motivation โ or part of you thatโs thinking, โyou know, it would be cool if a bunch of people got together and did something like X, Y, Zโ