UPA 2006 — It’s a Wrap
Right now, my biggest take away from this conference is “don’t fly to Denver”. As I wrote, my flight here was delayed multiple times and now my flight home is also delayed over an hour (so far). I also got security screened which included a lovely pat down. (And, no, I haven’t been away from my wife so long that I enjoyed that at all.)
Let’s forget the immediacy of my current situation.
The conference itself was excellent. Everyone at the conference was approachable and, unlike a conference like CHI, I didn’t worry that I’d strike up a conversation with some stuffy academic operating on another planet. It was a given that everyone was doing the same sort of work and facing the same challenges. I even had a great chat with next year’s conference chair, Alain Robillard-Bastien, on the shuttle to the airport. To Matthew, Matt, Steph, Ashley, Trent, Scott, Suzanne, Larry, Daniel, Josephine, and others I’m forgetting: it was great meeting you all.
This conference’s theme was “story telling”. I sure didn’t attend the conference because of the theme. In fact, you could say I decided to attend despite the theme. However, it turns out that story telling proved to be the most inspiring part of the conference for me. Steve Denning kicked off the conference with a very motivating talk about corporate story telling. His main message was you don’t convince people (even or especially executives) with facts and rational analysis. Instead, you get their attention, elicit their desire, and then reinforce with reasons. Denning does this through story telling. (He also wrote a book about it (The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling: Mastering the Art and Discipline of Business Narrative
There are many reasons, psychological and physiological, stories are effective, but I won’t bore you with that. The basic reasons stories work is because they are human and your audience, even executives, are human too.
Kevin Brooks wrapped up the conference with an entertaining and inspiring talk, still on the story telling theme. He’s a technology storyteller for Motorola. He told his own story about how he became a story teller emphasized that everything we as usability professionals do is rooted in story. We listen to our users tell their stories. We retell those stories to our co-workers and tell new stories about how a product will (or should) work. I think we can all be more effective in our roles if we realize all the opportunities for stories to enter our work and use them explicitly.
Steve Denning also had some excellent advice as to what makes a leader. I’ll write about that and some other interesting sessions later. It looks like my flight’s going to board soon.