idea

Last year I had the pleasure of attending my first Idea conference in Chicago. The experience was nothing short of remarkable!

Learning from the Interaction Designers, Information Architects, and User Experience Designers from around the world I found inspiration and ideas that have helped me assist clients on many projects.

This year I’m pleased to announce that the conference is coming to Toronto and will be held at the MaRS convention center where I’ll be podcasting the event for Boxes and Arrows, IDEA and the Information Architecture Institute

IDEA2009 brings together the world’s foremost thinkers and practitioners: sharing the big ideas that inspire, along with practical solutions for the ways people’s lives and systems are converging to affect society.

To kick off the event, Nathan Curtis from Eight Shapes is running a pre-conference, full-day workshop entitled Modular User Experience Design & Deliverables.

User experience design teams suffer from a decentralized, blank canvas approach to creating and documenting a design solution for each new project. In this workshop participants will learn about modular user experience design techniques, where they can improve consistency, accelerate production, and raise the credibility and influence of your work.

Idea 2009 Pre-Conference Workshop with Eight Shapes' Nathan Curtis

Then on September 15th the conference begins with an incredible range of speakers sharing their experiences in a variety of disciplines, including:

  • Lisa Galarneau -Digital Lifestyle Scholar
  • Mari Luangrath – Owner & President Foiled Inc
  • Jeff Dachis – CEO, Dachis Group
  • Christina Wodtke – Owner Boxes and Arrows
  • Mary Newsom – Associate Editor, Charlotte Observer
  • Michael Fassnacht – Executive Vice President, Worldwide Chief Strategy Officer, Draftfcb
  • Christian Crumlish Curator, Yahoo! Design Pattern Library
  • Luke Wroblewski Director, Product Ideation & Design, Yahoo! Inc. (Luke is also the author of Rosenfeld Media’s Web Form Design)
  • Maya Kalman – Founder & CEO, Swank Productions
  • Stephen P. Anderson – Product Strategy and Design Consultant
  • Nathan Curtis – Founder & Principal, EightShapes, LLC and lead for Idea’s pre-conference workshop
  • Leisa Reichelt – Design Researcher & User Experience Designer (Lisa is also working with the Drupal open source community on the D7UX project)
  • Thomas Malaby – Associate Professor, Department of Anthropology, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
  • Erin Malone – Principal, Tangible ux

    • idea09-speakers

    With all of this experience and insight in a single event, what makes the Idea conference even more incredible is the price point for registering.

    Kudos to Russ Unger, Mario Bourque and all of the organizers and volunteers for providing people with an opportunity to learn from not only the speakers, but other subject matter experts attending the event, without draining the coffers of training budgets.

    I look forward to meeting everyone in Toronto for Idea ‘09.