UXCamp Ottawa is a locally grown volunteer-driven event created for people who want to learn and share about user experience, and how our profession contributes to making things work better for everyone. We’ll cover topics like user research, usability, information architecture, interaction design, service design, and just about everything related to the creation of compelling products and experiences.
The first day of UXcamp will consist of structured sessions featuring fantastic speakers from Canada and the US. On Sunday, UXcamp will host a full-day ‘Design Jam’ where the attendees, some of the speakers and volunteers will be split into teams and will work on a specific design problem. After lunch, the teams will present their final designs and our judges will awards prizes to our winners.
Attendees are encouraged to participate in all sessions. Feel free ask questions and share information and experiences of the event via public web channels, including blogs, photo sharing, social bookmarking, twitter (#uxott) and wikis. This encouragement to share turns the physical, face-to-face event into a ‘hybrid event’ which enables remote online engagement with UXCamp Ottawa participants.
UXcamp Ottawa History
The first UXcamp Ottawa event took place on Saturday November 27, 2010, and attracted 175 participants instantly becoming the largest non-profit UX community conference in Canada. Hosted by Jess McMullin (Citizen Experience, Edmonton), UXcamp Ottawa 1 was keynoted by Tedde van Gelderen of Akendi (Toronto) and included talks by Derek Featherstone (SimplyAccessible), Lorraine Chapman (Macadamian) and John A. Brown.
The second UXcamp Ottawa event took place on Saturday November 5th, 2011, and the number of participants increased to 225. The conference was hosted by Rob Woodbridge (Untether.TV, Ottawa), and was keynoted by Dana Chisnell of UsabilityWorks (Boston, MA). Notable speakers included Gabor Vida (Teknision, Ottawa), Andrew Emmons (YouILabs, Ottawa), Amanda Holmstrom (NLC, Ottawa), Tanya Snook and Laura Wesley (UXWG, Ottawa).
Last year’s UXcamp Ottawa 3 expanded to a two day format covering Saturday and Sunday October 13-14, 2012. The 375 people in attendance were treated to keynotes for the ages by Jared Spool (UI, Boston) and Steve Portigal (Portigal Consulting, San Francisco). The conference was once again hosted by Rob Woodbridge (Untether.TV, Ottawa) and the all-star speaker lineup included Nick Finck (Deloitte Digital, Seattle), Jess McMullin (Citizen Experience, Edmonton), Dana Chisnell (UsabilityWorks, Boston), Jessica Ivins (Happy Cog, Philadelphia), Derek Featherstone (SimplyAccessible, Ottawa), Shai Idelson (Sid Lee, Montreal) and Jeff Parks (DIGIA UX, Ottawa).
