UXRussia 2011 Moscow Report - An Inside View (Part 2)

    About the conference




    The autumn usability conference series continues, and it's time for the annual User Experience Russia 2011 conference to predict usability development. The fifth anniversary year experts in the field of design, usability and user experience came together to share experience, expertise and knowledge in this field. This time the conference was held on October 6-8 in the first Russian private Digital October park in Moscow.



    Approaching Day “X” “UX”

    Time was approaching the beginning of the conference, and every day there was increased attention to the usability itself, I’m not afraid of the word, a significant conference in the CIS countries. Each year, the User Experience Russia community surprised us with its scope, the number of famous experts from around the world, the quality of reports and organization.



    But the main difference between this conference and all the others, I think, is precisely the presence of interesting participants who come to the conference from different countries to communicate with each other. If you work as a usability specialist or somehow relate to this area, then it is considered bad form not to visit UXRussia. It sounded more and more often that let's meet at UXRussia and talk, discuss some issue, and no one asked if you would go there. The answer was too obvious. Listing the names of famous speakers is not an easy task, and listing who was present among well-known usability and UX experts as participants there becomes generally impossible. Now, offhand, I can’t recall a well-known specialist who did not attend this event.



    A little bit about Belarus

    Of course, if not all, then a significant part of the usability.by community met on UXRussia. Belarusian "stars" - Pavel Konoplitsky, Yura Vetrov, Maxim Gulevich, as well as other specialists, including not from the usability.by community. There was an impression that there were not much less specialists from Belarus than from Russia, especially at the after after party at Rolling Stone :). But more about that later, and now ...

    Conference Road

    On Wednesday (05.10), tickets were bought, the hotel was booked, all organizational issues were resolved (thanks to ARTOX media for the opportunity), and it only remained to collect things and wait for the train from Minsk to Moscow. At 21.30, I met with Denis Buko (Director of ARTOX media), and we went to the conference. The road was fast, and already at 8.05 we were in Moscow. Another hour on the road to Moscow, and we are near the building depicted in the photo as the venue of UXRussia 2011. A small quest to find the entrance, since the UXRussia plate itself can be seen only near the door, but you still need to get to it. Well, okay, not so much time was spent in order to be distracted by this.
    Then everything went much easier and more interesting. The room is perfectly matched, spacious with attractive surroundings. Friendly staff and good service immediately placed confidence - everything will be at a high level. The only thing that significantly spoiled the mood is the news that went around everyone at one point: Steve Jobs died. This big loss for the whole world and for interaction designers in particular. With this sad note, Dmitry Satin opened the conference. Subsequently, many speakers repeated more than once what a great loss occurred for all people and for them personally. Literally with these words the last report at the conference from Maxim Tkachuk ended.



    The beginning is the first day


    The first report, “Search Patterns - Design for Discoveries,” in the main hall, was started by Peter Morville. For those who are not familiar with English, receivers with simultaneous translation were issued. In general, the technical equipment was at its best, monitors were placed throughout the room, where the main hall was broadcast with the translation, you could drink coffee without interruption from the reports. Further, interesting reports from foreign speakers went one after another, and Russian-speaking experts also spoke in parallel. I will not evaluate which report was more informative, as everyone came with their own stock of knowledge, and everyone learned something new. Although hardly anyone can argue that the second day of the conference turned out to be more interesting.



    Dinner

    During lunch, the participants and speakers had at their disposal the “Progrees bar”, where we were well fed and watered (so far only soft drinks :)). Food was served directly in the halls. Delicious coffee and dessert were available throughout the conference. In general, no one was left hungry. Communication flowed throughout the conference, people got to know each other, met friends, discussed sensitive topics and simply joked. A funny robot constantly got in the way, which amused conference visitors. For some reason, it seemed to me that this "evil bastard" all the time trying to sneak up behind :).



    Continuation

    I would like to highlight Eric Rice's “Innovation versus Best Practices - Conflict or New Opportunities”, which simply blew up the brain with its energy and activity. More such "live" reports. After the recent reports, people began to disperse wherever. Many continued the conference in an informal setting for a bottle of beer or something stronger.

    Second day


    The second day of the conference began slowly. The roofing felts didn’t get enough sleep, the roofing felts were too long the continuation of the first day for a bottle or two of vodka beer (the second is more like the truth :)), but the first reports of the audience were less than yesterday. But the reports didn’t get any worse from this, and Sanjar Kettebekov gave a very informative presentation with the theme “The new face of the person. Behavior analytics for design. ” After the report, the audience tightly surrounded him and until the next report he was not allowed to leave the stage, for which the speaker received a warning from the organizers. At the next report of Andrei Sebrant, there were already significantly more people, apparently everyone had woken up.



    I really wanted to listen to many reports, but they went in parallel, and, apparently, you will have to watch them in the recording. Around 3 p.m., the discussion “UX as a continuous process in organization” began, in which not only the speakers themselves participated, but also the audience to a large extent. The discussion turned out to be interesting and could have lasted for hours if time had not run out. With a naked eye, it is clear that UX is not only concerned with the specialists themselves, but also with organizations that want to improve their products, and which are becoming more and more. The last report that ended the conference was from Maxim Tkachuk's “Hard Rock Design”. Maxim, as always, got the audience and, in my opinion, made the surest reduction of the cascade model of the development of waterfall, which speaks for itself - WTF. On this positive note, the reports ended, but not the conference.



    After party

    There was still a lot of champagne and communication. Not without a spoon of tar in a barrel of honey, which was added by Olga Gorenko. She missed almost the whole day because of some business and was very dissatisfied with this. But you should not blame her for this, as I would be terribly angry if I missed at least part of this interesting event :).
    Only when the champagne was drunk did everyone slowly begin to disperse. The continuation was in a closer circle already for a beer at the Rolling Stone club. Even there, we continued to get to know each other and found out that it turns out that many of those present were from Minsk or lived there once. Met guys from the community analyst.by. We talked, laughed, recognized, shared wisdom and just drank beer.



    Thus ended the conference UXRussia 2011, which will be discussed for exactly a year, since then they will remember UXRussia 2012.

    the end

    For some, the conference lasted another day. On October 8, master classes were held by Peter Morville, Eric Rice, Konstantin Kichinsky, Sanjar Kettebekov, but I didn’t get there already, so I can’t talk about it, but I have no doubt that it was no worse there.

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