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

About the conference

The autumn series of usability conferences continues, and the time has come for the annual User Experience Russia 2011 conference dedicated to predicting the development of usability. The fifth anniversary of the specialists 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 park Digital October in Moscow.

The approach of the day "X" "UX"

The time was approaching the beginning of the conference, and every day there was a heightened attention to the most, I’m not afraid of this word, a significant conference in the CIS countries in the field of usability. Every 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 of this conference from all the others, I believe, 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. More and more often it sounded like let's meet at UXRussia and talk, discuss some question, and no one asked if you would go there. The answer was too obvious. It’s not easy to list the names of famous speakers, and it’s impossible to list who was present from well-known usability experts and UX as participants. Now, offhand, I can not remember the famous expert who did not attend this event.

Little about Belarus

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

Road to the conference

On Wednesday (05.10) tickets were bought, a hotel was booked, all organizational issues were resolved (thanks to ARTOX media for the opportunity), and it remains only 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 in Moscow, and we are near the building depicted in the photo as the venue for UXRussia 2011. A small quest to find the entrance, since the UXRussia sign itself can only be seen near the door, but you need to get to it. Well, okay, not so much time was spent to get distracted by it.
Then everything went much easier and more interesting. The room is perfectly matched, spacious with an attractive entourage. Friendly staff and good service immediately possessed confidence - everything will be at a high level. The only thing that significantly spoiled the mood was the news that bypassed everyone at one point: Steve Jobs died. This big loss for the whole world and for designers of interaction in particular. Dmitry Satin opened the conference with this sad note. Subsequently, many speakers repeatedly repeated the great loss that occurred for all people and for them personally. Literally with these words, the last report at the conference from Maxim Tkachuk ended.

Beginning - the first day

The first report “Search patterns - design for discoveries” in the main hall began Peter Morvil. For those who are not familiar with the English language, receivers with simultaneous translation were issued. In general, the technical equipment was at a height, monitors were placed throughout the room, where the main hall with the translation was broadcast, it was possible to drink coffee without interrupting reports. Then, one after another, there were interesting reports from foreign speakers, and also Russian-speaking experts spoke in parallel. I would not evaluate which report was more informative, since everyone came with his own stock of knowledge, and everyone learned something new. Although it is unlikely that anyone can argue that the second day of the conference was more interesting.

Dinner

During lunch, the participants and speakers were at the “Progrees bar”, where we were well fed and watered (so far only soft drinks :)). Food was served directly into the halls. Delicious coffee and dessert were available throughout the conference. In general, no one was left hungry. Communication flowed like a river throughout the conference, people got acquainted, met with friends, discussed urgent issues and just joked. Funny robot constantly interfered under their feet, what amused the conference visitors. For some reason it seemed to me that this "evil reptile" all the time trying to sneak up behind me :).

Continuation

I would like to single out Eric Rice “Innovations versus best practices - conflict or new opportunities”, which simply blew up the brain with its vigor and activity. More such "live" reports. After the last reports, people began to disperse who where. Many continued the conference in an informal setting over a bottle of beer or something stronger.

Second day

The second day of the conference began slowly. All of them didn’t sleep well, they went too long for the continuation of the first day for a bottle or two of vodka (the second is more like the truth :)), but on the first reports the audience was less than yesterday. But this did not make the reports worse, and Sanjar Kettebekov gave a very informative presentation on the topic “The new face of the person. Behavior analytics for design. After the report, the audience surrounded him tightly and until the next report they did not allow him to leave the stage, for which the speaker received a warning from the organizers. On the next report by Andrei Sebrant, there were already much more people, apparently everyone woke up.



I really wanted to hear many reports, but they went in parallel, and, apparently, they would have to watch them in the recordings. Around 3:00 pm, the discussion “UX as a continuous process in the organization” began, in which not only the speakers themselves, but also to a large extent the audience participated. The discussion turned out to be interesting and could last for hours, if not for time. With the naked eye it is clear that UX is concerned not only with the specialists themselves, but also with organizations that want to improve their products, and which are becoming more and more. The last report, which ended the conference, was from Hard Rock Design Maxim Tkachuk. Maxim, as always, led the public and, in my opinion, made the most accurate abbreviation 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 fly in the ointment, which was added by Olga Gorenko. She missed almost all day due to some cases and was very unhappy about it. But you should not blame her for this, since I would also be terribly angry if I missed at least part of this interesting event :).
Only when the champagne was drunk, all slowly began to diverge. Continuation was in a closer circle already over a beer in the club Rolling Stone. Even there we continued to get acquainted and found out that, it turns out, very many of those present were from Minsk or lived there once. We met guys from the analyst.by community. Communicated, laughed, learned, shared wisdom and just drank beer.



Thus ended the conference of UXRussia 2011, which will be talked about for another year, as UXRussia 2012 will be remembered later.

the end

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