I mean, he had really important stuff to do, like meeting with people from banks and a summit or two to present at, but, you know, it would be nice to just kind of hang out.
This pretty much describes Dave. Insightful, artistic, clever and thoughtful, but more than anything, just a great guy to hang out with. So when Dave announced he was coming over to London, I thought there was probably a way we could facilitate some kind of meetup, whereby we could invite a few folks over for a bit of a chat.
After assuring Dave that yes, more than three people would turn up, I quickly set about the logistics of getting the thing set up and in a few hours, everything was in place.
Fireside chat
The first thing you notice about Dave is that not only is he larger than life, he’s larger in life. I’m pretty tall. Dave is taller. The second thing you notice is that he’s just so enthusiastic about everything.
We chatted about his time in London, we chatted about the venue, we took a few photos, we chatted about lenses, we looked out the window, we chatted about architecture and it’s place in modelling communities and behaviours. We chatted about lots of things. In fact, we just chatted until attendees started arriving, and then they joined the chat. And then more joined. And we had beer. And chatted some more.
And that really set the tone for the evening. I’d set myself up as some kind of compere, but really, it just turned into something of a fireside chat, with 30 friends. Dave and I sat at the front of the room and I occasionally acted the debate host and fielded questions, but for the next hour or so, it was really just about Dave meeting new faces and just, you know, hanging out.
Of course, we did cover a wide range of topics, including gamification, connected companies, UX strategy, best and worst experiences, most trusted methods, and some great tales of corporate workshops. I’ll go into more detail on those in later posts, so look out for messages about those.
We finished pretty much as we started – just chatting together in the loft as the cleaners tried to clean around us. As people said their goodbyes, it was extremely gratifying to hear how much they had enjoyed the evening, particularly the informal, open format. I had similar conversations at the UK UXPA careers event the week before. It’s so nice to come to event like this and just, you know, hang out.
Who wants to hang out?
A huge thank you to Dave for being so engaging and entertaining, and to Raj at Sense Worldwide for helping us out with the excellent Sense Loft. If I had to sum the evening up, I don’t think I could do it any better than the photo of Dave within this post. A great time was had by all.
Notwithstanding the fact that any address that ends in ‘Canary Wharf’ seems to disappear into the Bemuser Triangle the closer I get to it and that on this occasion I wasn’t alone in trying to locate an enormous shiny building that was right in front of me, I made it along to the UK UXPA careers event yesterday at the Thomson Reuters building somewhere in, well, Canary Wharf, along with a number of extraordinary colleagues from Foolproofwho I can only describe as infinitely more approachable than myself. And Matt.
I had initially registered as an attendee, just because I was interested in the event anyway, but somehow become part of the official delegation, which mostly meant I had to carry Karen’s popup banner from Goswell Road to Canary Wharf. Either way, I’d really come to attend the panel discussion with Leslie Fountain, Andy Budd, and the most charming man in the world™, Giles Colborne, who were going to have a stab at discussing the vagaries of UX in the boardroom and what that means to business, businesses, management, aspiring management, new hires, prospective new hires, clients, projects, practice, vision, values, mission, goals, and how things smell.
At the same time as the panel, there was to be several rounds of speed-dating for prospective employers/recruiters and candidates/people of interest, which, as it turns out, would consist of some rather loud whistling, CVs, portfolios, elevator pitches, business cards, raised eyebrows, knowing glances, ticks in boxes and, by the end of the evening, more or less passing out on the corporate carpet. Taking part in one of these events requires a strong constitution and boundless enthusiasm. I wasn’t part of it.
And if that wasn’t enough, there was also some splendid UX booth kinda action in the main foyer, where I noticed Jason Mesut was delivering the kind of folio advice that can leave unsuspecting hopefuls in that curious state of super encouraged and mostly terrified about their future. That man knows what he’s talking about, children.
And if that that wasn’t enough wasn’t enough, there was more pork product than I think I’ve ever seen in one place and buckets of cold Prosecco, which would later be the cause of my Downfall-like self-castigation wandering rather too close to very deep water whilst frantically searching for the underground station that would take me to the train back to Norwich via Stratford, the official travel centre of the London 2012 Olympic park in association with A SHOP or something. For UX events at Canary Wharf are not your UX events in Shoreditch. I mean, I like hot lofts and crisps and everything, but corporations do hospitality as a core practice and they mostly do it very well. Thompson Reuters didn’t buck that trend.
But back to the panel. Leslie opened proceedings with some discussion points about what it means to provide leadership in UX businesses and, specifically, used the example of how this is manifest at Foolproof. Core to her proposition is that vision and values are critical in describing what your business is all about and enables internal stakeholders and staff to deliver toward that and understand why they do what they do in context of what that means to the company. Crucially, it also describes to the outside world – clients, customers, partners, candidates, friends – what the culture of the company is, what their aims are, and how they intend to pursue their goals, so that it becomes a shared imperative at the point where relationships are formed and ongoing engagements are managed. In other words, it enables you to say “this is who we are and this is where we’re going. If you like the look of that, lets have a conversation”.
I like Leslie. I like hearing her talk. I like her style. We’re going to do a double act.
What followed Leslie’s opener was a nicely animated discussion, which, in a nice touch, had Andy, Leslie and the most charming man in the world™;, Giles, perched on stools, like some awesome UX Westlife. There was even a spare stool next to Andy and I was sorely tempted to join them for an impromptu cover of a Jared Spool ballad or something, but resigned myself to kicking things off with the first question, which went something like “yeah, you say vision and values but really, people just ignore that stuff, innit?” Needless to say, it was pointed out that yes, that might often be true, but what we try and do is…
I only trailed off there because I can’t remember the answer correctly. But over the next 40 minutes or so, an awful lot of sense was spoken. I was particularly drawn to the passion and sincerity in Andy’s descriptions of how he makes his business decisions, runs his company and decides what to do and why. He was very honest about the learnings made from his mistakes and how he used those to make better decisions and, in particular, learn how to say no, which was a bit of recurrent theme. As ever, Giles was thoroughly entertaining, but because of the most charming man in the world™ thing, every time he spoke, I just kind a gawped at him like a headlit rabbit as the words came out and consequently missed a lot of what he actually said. He does tell a good story though.
And then I was done. I did get to speak to a number of people during the course of the evening who commented, as I felt, that this wasn’t like a normal UX event, because you get to speak to each other throughout, rather than at the end, which was all very convivial. I hope those bright-faced young prospectives got as much out of it as the gurn-faced old miseries (that’s me, by the way, just to be clear) did. Curiously, I also had a couple of people make the comment at the beginning of this post. That was about Andy. I’ve no idea how they might have thought otherwise.
Thanks to the UK UXPA for organising. Canary Wharf is sometimes a bit wrong, but last night there was a little place in the middle where everything was right.
“Here’s my platform. I’m stood on my platform, waiting for the train. But the harder I wait the less the train comes. It’s a paradox. The train will never come if I wait for it, however hard I wait.
So I go to my park. Here’s my park. It’s got grass and trees and things. There’s places I can go and just not worry about trains. So I stand on a pole and start not to worry too much about trains. Soon I’m not worrying about trains at all.
And then my feet leave my pole and I ‘m lifted to the sky. I’m flying. I look down at my park and there are other people in my park. They’re not worried about trains. They’re just doing whatever it is they do.
Before I know it, I’m way, way up in the sky. I’m so far from worrying about trains that I’m playing with the planes. The planes are orange and Easy. Not like the trains.
Oh, the trains. I need to get a train. I’ll never get a train up here. I need to get a train. We all need to get a train. Where are the trains?
So I’m back at my platform. I’m stood on my platform, waiting for the train. But the harder I wait the less the train comes. I know there are trains. I’ve been on trains before. They took me right where I wanted to go. But there’s no train here. Maybe I’m waiting too hard.
Wait, here comes a train! I think that’s a train I can use. Let…Oh. It’s gone. Still, there’ll probably be another one. You know, wait hard enough for one train and they all come at once.
<pause>
No. No more trains.
But wait. It’s not just me. There’s other people here waiting for a train. Other people trying too hard to wait for a train. I wonder if they have a garden? Or a pole? I wonder if they fly? I wonder what kind of trains they’ve been on? So we talk. We talk about gardens. We talk about poles. We talk about flying. And we talk about trains. It turns out we’re all waiting too hard for our trains and those trains just never seem to come. Maybe we should stop waiting so hard.
And you know, as we’re talking…a train arrives. We’re not sure where it’s going, but its there, all the same.
And then another arrives. We’re not really sure where that’s going either, but it looks kind of interesting.
And more and more trains arrive. Until there’s so many trains that we just don’t know which ones to ride on. But it’s alright. Because we’ll just try a few and see where they go. We don’t have to go all the way, but it might be interesting so see what happens. How about we just take a train each? We could meet back here and tell each other how it was. If we really like one, let’s take it all the way together.
Here’s my platform. I’m waiting for the train. But I’m not waiting too hard. Seems to me, the harder you wait the less the train comes. Anyway, my friends will be here soon. We’ll not wait too hard and just see what happens.”
A couple of years ago I’d not spoken out loud to a room of professionals that I didn’t actually work with notwithstanding the fact that I have worked some places where there was about 75,000 people on a WebEx patiently waiting for you to load up those slides about the global web platform that your boss said was going to completely change the business but which you seem to have mislaid or simply written over with an amusing powerpoint checklist for what colleagues should do when they’re stuck in the corridor between the buildings on campus when security have gone home and your only recourse is the fire alarm.
In the last couple of years, however, I’ve been throwing stuff up all over whatever UX calls for submissions are available just to try and get my face in front of a room of professionals and talk about thinking time in experience design or designing mobile wallets or my face or my bike or how to design for a room full of stakeholders keenly anticipating a shift in their business model based on a globalisation proposal you’ve just lost.
Some of what I throw up sticks, some doesn’t. Well, a lot doesn’t actually, but when it does it’s pretty exciting. And then I just have to say stuff and be interesting and actionable and have a joke or two and preferably a drink or two as well and if somebody comes up to me afterwards and tells me they liked it and it was interesting and that actually it was really relevant to what they are doing and could we talk some more about it, then that is what it’s all about. And that’s why I do it.
I’ve been around a while and I’ve done some interesting stuff and maybe if you’ve made the effort to come and see what I’m talking about and I’ve made the effort to come and talk to you then we’ve already got something in common and it could be the start of a beautiful relationship where we can think about changing the world through design one conversation at a time. Or you’ll think I’m a bit of an arse. Either way, I’m not going to pretend to you that I’ve redefined user experience or discovered how to bend the UX time continuum with my new method or practice[tm]. To be honest, I don’t know what I’m talking about half the time. If you’ve seen me facilitate a workshop, you’ll know what I mean. But I do at least know what I’ve done and I can tell you about that. You might have done it too. You might not have. But while I’m up here and I’m telling you about it through the haze of a slide transition and a stumbling near-dad-dance in front of a projector disco light, if I see you curling a smile and nodding your head slightly or even inexplicably writing something down, then, you’re welcome. It was a pleasure.
I don’t believe there’s anyone out there who has put two words together that have been published on a web site since 1993 that hasn’t at some point sat at their desk and typed into a strategy document ‘write once, publish everywhere’ or ‘centralised writing, distributed reading’ or ‘write once, publish many’ or ‘global content, local readers’ or ‘one repository, many devices’ or ‘my CMS brings all the boys to the yard and damn right it’s content framework means it’s deployed on multiple platforms and viewports with coherency and efficiency and is better than yours by which I mean maximises ROI and provides the ideal user experience about which I could teach you but I’d have to charge’ or something like that.
Defining a content strategy that maximises ROI on publishing for a business isn’t difficult. Once you’ve distilled the distribution components of a publishing system into the dark matter of a CMS then everything else kind of gets sucked into the inevitability vacuum. You just need to draw some concentric circles around it and randomly place some google image swipes of devices and screens and that stock photo of a globe with a URL wrapped around it that says THIS IS WHAT THE INTERNET IS and you’re away. If you like, you can project the cost benefit to the organisation of rolling out said strategy by Q4 and streamlining your processes, synchronizing your publishing and automating your workflows. In the long term the ROI is massive. Like, a huge number.
Trust me, I’ve written that strategy a few times. It’s brilliant.
But it’s also hopeless. Content strategy, however perfectly formed, nearly always necessitates business change in order that is delivers on its promises. And businesses don’t like to change. They like to save money. They like to be efficient. But they rarely actually honestly have the ability to change the way they operate around a strategy that makes their content delivery scaleable, manageable, responsive, adaptive, data-driven, intelligent, profitable, better. Not because they don’t think your strategy isn’t brilliant and that it will indeed bring all those boys to the yard, but because they’re simply unable to overcome the festering delineations within their own business that preclude agility. I mean, if you could just change your strategy to make it work for the product division, because, you know, I think they have data or something, then maybe we could do a pilot, you know, phase one, but we don’t have anything to do with the service division, I mean, they’re a separate part of the business and we don’t even know who they are, although Mike in corporate does know the manager over there and Mike owns all that corporate stuff, like, um, I dunno, press releases and things. Can we do press releases? They already have a CMS. Maybe we can use that, etc…
Defining a content strategy is rarely a problem. Facilitating business change nearly always is. If you’re not talking to the person who can truly bring about that change, you’re quacking into a void.
I was lucky enough to talk at the May London IA event a few days ago. Even better than that, I got to share the stage, well, I say stage, I shared the bit of floor at the front of the loft, with the most charming man in the world, Giles Colborne, and the most charming woman in the world, Johanna Kollmann. Unfortunately for them, they had to share the small walk around in front of the projector area with the most charmless dancing dad Soho misfit in the world, me. I’m prone to a bit of self-depreciation, but really, it was as much as I could do to breathe in for 30 minutes while I was up there before collapsing into a Stella at The Endurance and a subsequent face full of Ginsters on the steps of Centre Point like a lost corporate team-builder from the M4 corridor.
We’d gathered for a redux of the IA Summit, which took place in New Orleans earlier in the year. Johanna and I had presented at the summit at the same time – 8:30 on Sunday morning – and hadn’t seen each other speak, so it was great for us, and Giles had very kindly offered/volunteered/I dunno, been threatened with something to do a recap of a few of the highlights from the conference. It was going to be a good night even if nobody else turned up.
But turn up they did, and based on a quick show of the hands that people showed when asked, it seems that the vast majority of the attendees had never been to a London IA event before, which was very inspiring. Either that or they just didn’t like Martin waving his iPad at them saying “who’s been to one these before? Hmm? Matthew and I organize these you know! THEY’RE FREE!’ Either way, a lot of new faces is, to me, a very encouraging thing. Let’s be honest, you can go to events in London that are the physical manifestation of the echo chamber and although the people are extraordinarily nice and I would like many of them to be real friends that know what the sound of my voice is like, these events are excellent places to learn things you don’t know and see people you may have read say things out loud. Far be it from me to sound like some kind of curious Werthers Original style UX granddad shedding a small tear into my slippers when the young uns look up at the stage that isn’t a stage with those beady eyes of youth, pondering your gibberish like some unbounded grasshoppers, but it’s encouraging to see them sat in that loft, just BEING KEEN. *sniff*
So thank you to Martin and Matthew for organising and inviting me along, and thank you to Giles and Johanna for being charming and fascinating, and thank you to everybody who turned up and was polite and keen and asked lovely questions, and thank you to the weather for hailing on my legs as I cowered under a newsagent awning just before arriving, and thank you for listening, etc.
