ux strategy, architecture & design

Most of you will probably know that I was involved in the organization of UX Australia, which ran from 26-28 August at Hotel Realm in Canberra. This post isn’t to talk about UX Australia (although I’m really proud with the event we put on), but to catch up on a bunch of other conference action that’s going on in UX around the world.

IDEA’09

Firstly, the IA Institute is running its 4th IDEA conference – in Toronto from September 14th – and promises to be another awesome affair. Registrations are still open for what has become established as a must-attend conference. Although I can’t be there. Which sucks. But I’ll be ‘participating’ via twitter using the #noidea09 hashtag – along with those other poor souls holding the fort at home

CanUX

CanUX – the Canadia User Experience workshop – has extended the deadline for their Fly Me to Canux contest thru Sept 4.  The competition is open for two more days and is an excellent opportunity to attend the workshop – in Banff – for free! Or you can just register and attend normally – I’m sure they won’t mind either way

Interaction ‘10

Interaction ‘10 is a conference close to my heart – for many reasons – not least of which is that this will be the first time I’ve actually been able to attend. More so, the interaction design community is such a vibrant group of people that I can’t help but be excited at the prospect of joining them for a few days in beautiful Savannah, Georgia.

The conference itself isn’t until February (4-7th), but that’s starting to seem really close. If you’d like to join me there, you’ve also still got time to submit a presentation proposal. The deadline for submissions is September 15th. Details on the submission process can be found at http://bit.ly/64H2o

(At last count, the conference is offering 11 different types of awesome – for me anyway – so I’m sure there’s at least a few types of awesome on offer for you including – the people, the program, Savannah itself, community, social events, inspiration, sharing… you get the idea

EuroIA

In three weeks’ time Copenhagen (another beautiful city, especially at this time of year) will host the fifth European IA Summit. The program has shaped up into something special, including an appearance from fellow Johnny Holland authors, Joe Lamantia and Leisa Reichelt.

Web Directions South

Closer to home, our good friends – Maxine and John – at Web Directions will be holding the 2009 edition of what has become a landmark Web conference for Australasia. Web Directions South is on in early October – 7-9th – in Sydney. The program looks awesome, and is sprinkled liberally with a friends (who are also kick-ass at what they do) like Donna Spencer, Lachlan Hardy, Suze Ingram, Cheryl & Scott Gledhill, Christian Crumlish (all the way from USA) and Jeremy Yuille.

I haven’t registered for Web Directions yet – my twin girls are due soon but if they hold off making their grand entrance until November (as planned) then I’ll attend. You can still register and receive $100 off the conference ticket (middle-bird pricing!) at https://secure.webdirections.org/wds09/register/billing

And then, as if the program wasn’t cool enough, Web Directions are giving away a trip to Web Directions East in Tokyo in November. Just by attending the conference in Sydney.

Other Cool Stuff

The organizers of OzCHI (another good UX conference coming up in Melbourne, Australia in December) are running a student design challenge as part of the conference program. You can find details at http://www.ozchi.org/24/

They have this to say about it:

The OZCHI conference student design challenge is a great opportunity for students from around the world to win a travel scholarship to Melbourne, Australia, and attend an international conference about interaction design to meet peers, academics, and professionals from the field.

I’m sure there are more, but these are the ones I’m excited to see taking place, and I’m bummed I can’t attend every one of them.

PS: A few people – yes, you in the comments – have indicated a desire for a more comprehensive list. Rather than go through the effort of making one – since that really isn’t what I was trying to do here – I’ll just link you to this one that somebody else prepared earlier.