Jay Goldman

A quick note that I’ll be delivering a slightly less quick talk at this evening’s World Usability Day, hosted by the Toronto Region Human Computer Interaction (ToRCHI) subgroup of the ACM. Everyone is welcome to attend, and the event is free for ToRCHI members and students and $5 for everyone else. My talk is about experience design as it pertains to organizing events like Toronto TransitCamp:

Toronto TransitCamp was built on everything we had learned over the course of 3 BarCamps and 12 DemoCamps, and carefully designed to use the techniques that had worked so well in the technology field to solve a very-non technology problem. We issued an announcement for the event in mid-January and held it less than three weeks later, an intense period in which we found twelve sponsors (at a $300 sponsorship cap to keep a level playing field), located a venue, crafted the TransitCamp pledge, carefully sorted through applications for the 100 participant spots, and worked with the TTC to secure their participation. The event was held at the Gladstone Hotel on February 4th, 2007, a freezing cold (-15° C!) Superbowl Sunday, in a collection of rooms with deficient heating and an average temperature of 13° C, and brought together designers, transit geeks, bloggers, visual artists, tech geeks and cultural creators. This talk will cover some of the careful experience design elements that went into making the event successful and will leave plenty of time for questions about how you can apply the lessons to your own projects.

The event kicks off at 6:30pm in the University of Toronto’s Bahen Centre, Room 1130. I’ll be joined by Dr. Alison Smiley who will be speaking about To Err is Human, to Forgive Design, and Glenn R. Miller who will address From Lifestyle to Lifecycle: What’s Next for Ontario’s Seniors?.

See you there!