October 10th, 2008 will be the first time that local Interaction Designers gather and connect here in St. Louis. Working with my colleague Nathan Verrill, we hope to start the first ever Local Chapter of IxDA in the St. Louis area. We both were involved in the now deceased local SIG-CHI group, Gateway CHI, and feel we can take the knowledge and experience we gained leading that group and turn this professional meet up into a huge success.
St. Louis has a rich and senior user experience and design community, many are settled in their careers and already have an established network. So, a challenge we face is getting them out and motivate them to contribute to the younger community. Our answer to this challenge is to provide an environment where people can easily share their ideas, and help others refine their own. We decided then, to structure our meetings in the O’Reilly Ignite Presentation format. Ignite groups are starting to pop up all over the country and they provide a great avenue for people to express their ideas to a group of peers and start a discussion in order to better refine them. An Ignite presentation lasts for 5 minutes and presenters are limited to only 20 slides. Presenters are then forced to articulate and defend their idea in a very short amount of time with a small amount of materials. Ignite can be described as the Americanized version of Pecha Kucha, an event in Japan where designers meet to share and express their ideas.
Our first meeting will be at Schlafly Bottleworks, one of St. Louis’ most successful micro-breweries, located at 1 Schlafly Plz St. Louis MO 63143. Here is the email that was sent out to local professionals and the IxDA Discussion Board.
The first IxDA St. Louis local meeting is happening next Friday!
When: October 10th 5PM
Where: Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood
Whom: All Are Welcome
What: Informal Meet / Get-To-Know Session ? Open Agenda!
If you’re in STL then come meet us at Schlafly Bottleworks on Friday,
October 10th at 5PM. Our first meeting is to see who is out there - so
all you (closet and not-so-closet) interaction designers, user
researchers, visual designers, ui developers, students, job hunters -
you name it - if you’re interested in designing interactions, be they
web, service, social, physical objects, etc, then this is a great
opportunity to see who else is out there. Forward this to anyone
and everyone who you think might be interested. The format of the
first meeting is purely conversational & networking, but we’ll be on the
lookout for volunteers in a series of 5-minute Ignite presentations
for future get-togethers, as well as a location for same.
(more info on the Ignite format here: http://ignite.oreilly.com/)
Cheers!
Nathan Verrill
Brad Nunnally
If you are interested in attending or if you have any questions please email me. Also, please pass this on to any friends or colleagues you may know that would be interested. Hope to see you this Friday.
Thanks!
