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? I’m generally quite interested the UX event scene. But curiously, it’s been too good to be true. How does it all happen? What can we learn from this?
- I’ve gotten involved in many UX events in the last 3 years. I’ve gotten so much out of the UX community, I can’t help but to give back. Some say I don’t have a life, but I do enjoy being in this industry.
- Despite the huge growth, UX events are fairly intimate. I actually think that’s 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 they’re not all free too!
- As you can see from this list, there’s 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. There’s a lot more variety now.
- Here, we see a few more events dedicated to discussions and socials. Plus, there are a number of “big” events like UX London and UX People, with big speakers flying in from all over the world.
- So here’s the first inspiring thing about the London UX event scene – variety.
- If you take a look at what UX is made of, your head will start to turn in big circles. There’s a lot of stuff in there that can’t be covered in a lifetime. Yet, we’re expected to do a lot of this stuff on a daily basis. NO WONDER WE NEED EVENTS.
- Here’s a another lovely chart from the guys at Information Architects.jp You can see a lot of different domains involved here – business, technology, design. So, the need is clearly there.
- Here’s a quote from Martin Belam, who does a lot of work on behalf of the London IA group. His one advice is to “not complain, but do”. 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 it’s 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 it’s 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 there’s too much to learn.
- So now that you’ve got variety and balance, the next thing to do is to keep the ball rolling. And again, there’s been a strong momentum of UX events each month, it’s getting really hard to keep up.
- This model is quite common: Aim for a comfortable sized group – you want quality discussions, not a mob. Release tickets fair and square, the fastest one wins. There’s 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 you’ll have too many voices in the room. And it’ll be much easier to manage – 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 – it’s inspiring to see people taking the initiative towards these interests. And that in turn attracts a lot of support from all sorts of places.
- Let’s 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 – there’s just a lack of people willing to step up. But as soon as they do, then things start to stick. And others follow suit.
- It’s also beneficial that there isn’t an institution or organisation to fall back on for help. It creates this sort of “self-help” environment where the community vote by their feet. And everything is kept fairly basic – only the essentials remain. That’s what keeps it truly organic.
- So, to sum it all up – 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 “inspiration points” rather than learning points. Because what’s missing the most, I feel, is motivation – or part of you that’s thinking, “you know, it would be cool if a bunch of people got together and did something like X, Y, Z”