Consulting, Publishing, Engineering

Category Archives: Presentations

Big D 2015

I’ve often said this event is the best value in our industry, and this year was no exception. And apparently it’s no secret anymore either – there were over 1,000 attendees.

From a personal point of view, I was delighted to give my updated talk “Digging Deep: Leadership Lessons from Eleanor Roosevelt“.  I think it went over really well, even though I forgot to bring the props I had (a giant copy of the Declaration of Human Rights and some postage stamps).  I am also really grateful to Adam Polansky who spent an hour reviewing the talk with me – and to the BigD team for setting up this kind of mentor session opportunity.  I really hope I get to continue with this topic and this talk next year!

Of course, as always, the entire program was a powerhouse of great topics and great speakers. We started the event with Ann Rockley talking about… wait for it… Intelligent Content!  She’s always engaging and entertaining. There was a terrific talk from Brian Sullivan – this year he presented Dante’s 7 deadly sins as a framework for leadership advice in his talk “Leadership Lessons from Design Hell“.  And Karen Bachmann talked about listening skills and awareness – something we can ALL work on.

But the big news from this event was international – they’re going to start up Big Design Latin America!  The first conference should be sometime in 2016 in Quito, Ecuador.  Keep an eye on the Big Design Latin America site for details.

Speaking with the STC-Phoenix chapter meeting

Last night I drove up to Tempe to give my presentation “Contract or Captive: Which is right for you?” to the STC-Phoenix chapter meeting. This time around, I updated the slides based on what I learned in Carmen Simon’s workshop called “Using Neuroscience to Create Memorable Presentations”.  *I* think they looked great, and the audience… Continue Reading

Calls for proposals

I’m very disappointed that I missed the deadlines to submit proposals to three conferences next year – UPA (Germany), IA Summit (Phoenix) and SIGCHI (Atlanta). I did manage to get something into the STC Summit (Dallas) and South by Southwest (Austin), and have applied to moderate at the Phoenix Comic-con in May. I wish I… Continue Reading

STC Atlanta (At Last)

As I’m mentioned before, I had the privilege of working on the program committee for the STC Summit this year in Atlanta (I was track manager for “Designing and Assessing the User Experience”). As always, the event was jam-packed with valuable sessions, interesting people, and loads of networking opportunities. As track manager, I was delighted… Continue Reading