Back around Thanksgiving I floated the idea (here and elsewhere) of forming a book club in Sydney to meet and discuss books about user experience (broadly speaking). The idea resonated with a lot of other people and very quickly UX Book Clubs were being formed around the world, thanks in no small part to the efforts of people like Andrew Boyd and Will Evans. Having just held our first meeting of the Sydney group, I thought I would take the opportunity to provide an update on the progress of the initiative, and report on some of the experiences people have had in the various meetings around the world.
The UX Book Club site/wiki - uxbookclub.org - currently shows 39 groups in various states of formation, several with over 50 participants and some just with a single individual expressing an interest. Many groups continue to use the wiki as their primary means of coordination, but a growing number have set up Facebook or Google Groups, along with their own twitter accounts, booksharing and miscellaneous other forms of communication. As such, it is difficult to put an accurate figure on the total number of people interested in participating, but those registered through the wiki number over 500. The first meeting was held in Silicon Valley in mid-December (they held there second meeting earlier today), followed by meetings in New York and Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Chicago, Canberra, Sydney & Austin. Over the next few weeks there will be meeting held in Atlanta, Minnesota, Melbourne, Tel Aviv, Brisbane, Toronto, London and Chicago. All of which is nice, but doesn't tell the full tale. The full tale includes a look at what the meetings are actually like, and what the attendees get out of them. The Sydney meeting this past Tuesday seems to have been fairly typical of the experiences across the board - with local variations in terms of weather, location, and numbers. But the stories seem to have a consistent theme: great discussion; lots of energy; a good time had by all. Our meeting in Sydney was held at the offices of the News Digital Media team (usit.com.au) in their "New York Lounge". Their hospitality was greatly appreciated, and the space was perfect for the event. 24 people attended, which was a very good turnout, and we hope to see a similar (or better!) turnout at the next event in April. The event was structured along the same lines as that used by New York City (thanks to Cindy Chastain) and applied successfully in Los Angeles. We opened with a brief welcome and introduction (from me), and then a volunteer from the group gave a 5-minute overview of the book (in our case Bill Buxton's Sketching User Experiences). We then broke into two groups (10 & 13 with me floating) and headed to opposite ends of the Lounge to discuss the book in detail. Cindy's rationale for the smaller groups was that they give everyone a much better opportunity to contribute to the discussion - and this was borne out by the comments I received afterwards. After a good solid hour or so of group discussion we came back together, had a bit of a recap; thanked everyone for attending; thanked our hosts; and relocated to a nearby pub to carry on. The 'official' proceedings kicked off at 6pm and ended just after 8pm. The 'after-hours' discussions wound up a couple of hours after that. The entire event was terribly uncomplicated, and I highly recommend it. Better yet, the discussion highlighted areas of the book I hadn't really considered important on first reading, but has encouraged me to go back and re-read those parts, armed with some real-world anecdotes to help make it more concrete. I'm already looking forward to the next one. -- Steve 'Doc' Baty | Principal | Meld Consulting | P: +61 417 061 292 | E: [email protected] | Twitter: docbaty | LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/stevebaty Blog: http://docholdsfourth.blogspot.com Contributor: UXMatters - www.uxmatters.com UX Australia: 26-28 August, http://uxaustralia.com.au UX Book Club: http://uxbookclub.org/ - Read, discuss, connect. ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
