SPEAKERS (a-z, except Keynote)
Christina Wodtke
Keynote: The Mechanics of Magic: 7 Game Design Insights
Christina Wodtke is an itinerant instigator and maker of things to happen. She is currently on sabbatical, advising start-ups and gardening. Most recently she led new product development and reinvention as a general manager of Zynga.com at Zynga, was general manager of Social at Myspace, principal product manager at Linkedin, and senior director of design at Yahoo! back when Yahoo! was pretty neat.
As well, she likes founding things: She founded a startup where she developed the collaborative blogging tool PublicSquare; founded Boxes and Arrows, an on-line magazine of design; and co-founded the Information Architecture Institute. She may found again.
Along the way she wrote the bestselling Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web, and has spoken on the topic of the human experience in information spaces at conferences worldwide. She writes still at Eleganthack.
Jess McMullin
Workshop: Hands-On Citizen Experience Design
Jess is the founder of the Centre for Citizen Experience, a startup “do tank” dedicated to advancing design innovation in the public sector.
Jess works with public sector clients to design services, systems and policies that make a difference in the daily lives of citizens. He also offers training, coaching, and speaking to improve design capability, change organizational culture and promote design innovation as a key for reinventing service delivery and public policy.
Jess is an active community organizer in the user experience, design and innovation communities having co-founded the IA Institute, the Overlap innovation retreat, Canux, the Canadian User Experience Workshop and serving as co-chair for the IA Summit (twice!). He recently contributed a chapter on design for policymaking in Usability in Government Systems: UX Design for Citizens and Public Servants, published in 2012. You can find out more about Jess and his work at citizenexperience.com or twitter.com/jessmcmullin.
Tim Schneider
Speaker: Predicting the future and improving UX based on the past
Tim Schneider is the Digital Analytics Manager at the University of Alberta where he’s created a measurement program that’s guiding the university’s digital strategy. Tim leads a small team of analysts that examine the performance of the U of A’s websites and recommends content and design improvements. Tim has previously been called on to discuss the evolution of the U of A’s analytics program, share some of his success stories, and talk about how they’re using analytics tools to make better decisions about their online efforts.
Gene Smith
Closing Speaker: The Experience Gap
Gene is the president and owner of nForm, one of Canada’s leading user experience strategy and design firms. Gene works with nForm’s public and private sector clients to create successful digital strategies and deliver high-impact websites, applications and intranets.
Trevor van Gorp
Speaker: Why Design for Emotion?
Trevor van Gorp is the founder of Affective Design Inc., a user experience consultancy with a focus on emotional design. He is a trusted inter-disciplinary designer, with degrees in graphic and industrial design, and over 18 years of experience in design and UX practice.
Trevor designed and co-authored “Design for Emotion”, a book on designing emotional experiences published by Morgan Kaufmann/Elsevier. He has given presentations on emotional design at conferences in Canada, the U.S. and Sweden. Trevor has conducted user research, created information architecture, and performed interaction design for the Government of Alberta, Comcast, Edmonton Transit System, City of Edmonton, Ancestry.com and DDB Canada. His commentaries and design deliverables have been featured in the books “Deconstructing Product Design” and “Universal Methods of Design”.
Prior to founding Affective Design, Trevor helped build nForm User Experience into one of Canada’s leading user experience firms as its first employee.
PANELISTS (a-z)
Jeff Archibald
@paper_leaf | http://paper-leaf.com/
Jeff Archibald is a passionate graphic & web designer who spends too much time on the internet. He’s also co-founder of Paper Leaf Design, a small but mighty Edmonton-based design firm that specializes in creating outstanding visual identity systems and websites for small and medium-sized businesses. If he’s not learning, creating, speaking or herding cats, he’s partaking in one of his many other loves: coffee, typography, whisky and the mountains.
Meghan Armstrong
@shedio | http://www.linkedin.com/in/meghanarmstrong
Meghan works at Habanero Consulting where she has the opportunity to collaborate with inspiring teams of Habs and clients to create engaging and elegant solutions for end users. Her design approach involves a vast number of sticky notes, cut and paste webparts, scissors, tape and wall full of sketches.
Prior to working at Habanero she worked at a large telecommunications company designing an internal collaboration tool and software product to unify multiple applications, manage customer data, company equipment, and billing systems. She has also worked with software start-ups, and as a sessional instructor at the University of Calgary. She has taught in the University’s Faculty of Fine Arts and at the Schulich School of Engineering. Meghan plays an active role on the Calgary User Experience (CalUX) group’s planning committee.
Meghan holds a Bachelor’s Degree in Fine Arts and Master’s Degree in Environmental Design (Industrial Design) where she was the faculty’s Gold Medal recipient. Outside of work, Meghan produces limited edition intaglio prints. She has an affinity for less mainstream sports such as curling, and field-hockey.
Paul Bellows
@paulbellows | http://www.yellowpencil.com/
Paul Bellows is one of two founders and directors of Yellow Pencil, an Edmonton-based web design and development agency with offices in Vancouver and soon in Toronto, Ottawa and Montreal. In the 16 years he’s been running Yellow Pencil, Paul has been creative director or team lead for customers across Canada and the US, including Pizza 73, Alberta Health Services, Government of Alberta, City of Edmonton, Investors Group, Fiserv, and the Wharton School. Paul has been invited to speak at conferences including Future of Web Design and Open Text Enterprise World. Paul’s greatest success is his genius team who do amazing work for clients across North America, and who are regularly invited to speak or keynote at conferences like Future of Web Design, ConFab, SXSW, How, Webvisions, Open Text Enterprise World and DrupalCon.
Blaine Bertsch
@dryrunpp | http://dryrun.com/
Blaine holds both Bachelor of Design and Master of Design degrees from the University of Alberta. With over 16 years in the creative industry and 14 years as an entrepreneur and business owner, Blaine has experience in the strategy, planning and development of digital products. He directed the design and development of over a dozen mobile apps, reaching the top 40 paid apps in Canada, top 100 paid apps in the USA and the apps have led sales in various categories.
Blaine will be introducing LEVR’s first new product, Dryrun, in 2013. Dryrun is a web-app that compares scenarios and forecasts your cash helping you visualize the future of your business and track your bottom line. Find out more at dryrun.com