#uxcamplondon or the best event ever.

OK, that title may be a bit hyperbolic. But it was still really great.

A barcamp with great people and very interesting session, all perfectly organised.
Oh, and free drinks in the sun next tot he river.

Barcamp?

To those unfamiliar with the concept of barcamps, it’s really simple.

The idea stems from the fact that in many more formal conferences, the most interesting parts are the coffe breaks, where lots of informal discussion organically come to life in every corner, and where you really get to exchange ideas. This full events like a coffe break.

So it is some sort of conference, but in this one, there are no speakers and no listeners: everyone is expected to present at some point. This simple idea set the frame of the full event: were are all on the same boat.

There are many sessions taking place at the same time, and for each time slot, you have to pick the one you’ll attend. The unfortunate side is that you’ll miss many sessions you would have love to attend. The good side is that it ensures that only people who really care about the topic are present, that the groups are small enough to allow discussion, and that a lot of different topics are covered.

Of course, the interest and succes of such event relies heavily on the people who attend it… luckily the UX community is second to none.

Community

The UX community is really amazing. This crowd is highly passionate, full of creative ideas and very friendly. It is very interesting mix of people.

This community is made of people who have a lot in common: obviously we all work (or study) in the broad field of User Experience, we care deeply about what we do, and we are always thinking about how we could do it better, even the ones among us that have been working in that field for years. We are similar enough that to have much commun understanding and passion.

However at the same time, we are also quite different: we come from all over the world (UK of course, Australia, Germany, USA, Korea, Italy, Spain, Malaysia, Czech republic, Poland, France… ), we have different backgrounds (graphic design, programming, psychology…), and we have different level of experience in the UX field.

This difference is absolutely key to an interesting event: it ensures each of us bring something unique to the discussion.

And nobody take “their” own way for the one and only way. Just the opposite in fact: everybody and everything is open for discussion, in the still quite fresh and changing field of UX.

Sessions

They were really really varied, including the classic presentation + talk, simple discussion, and games. I really like all of the one I attended, and they all presented interesting ideas that are still getting me thinking at the moment.

I attended one on mobile web accessibility, the research for a device to assit people on hikes, the diary of a madman about a developer’s move into UX, How to think about the box – a design game, one about the evolution of the users hired for our tests, google wave, UX and personalization, and one attempting to help us explain what is it that we do, and how we call ourselves. Oh and I gave my own on iPhone Apps UI.

I will try to write up about those in latter posts, to continue the discussion.

Hopefully, most of us will put our slides on slideshare, so we can have an idea of what we’ve missed. I’ll upload mine once I’ve edited them to include all the importants bits I’ve showed on screen or talked about.

Organisation

We humble participants felt like everything happend very smoothly, with very little effort. eBay /gumtree offices are great, the security team welcomes each of us in, every equipment is working everywhere, our tweets appear on a wall, sessions runs smoothly, tons of various food on the table just when we want it, cider appears in the fridge, and the local pub has an irresistible urge to give us free drinks.

Of course, that was only because the organisers did a great job: those sponsors and freebies didn’t fall from the sky, and lots of things actually went wrong and had to be handled (see Boon’s Indian food issues , but I’m sure there were more).

So tons of thanks are in order to Cennydd, Boon, Darci, Allison, Johanna and Desigan (finally I understand the meaning of those two words on our badges…), and all of those I forget.

Outcomes

I had an amazing time! It was a very welcome break from the burden of my MSc dissertation, and reminded me why I’m in this field in the first place.

I’ve had the opportunity to meet tons of friendly new people, thanks to the even being longer than you typical UPA event. And of course, I wouldn’t mind if all this networking somehow helped me in my job hunt.