This month I had the opportunity to travel to Nottingham to speak at the tenth DXN event (Design Exchange Nottingham) organised by Jamie Huskisson of JH. It’s “a monthly meetup about web design. Featuring inspiring talks from renowned speakers and local voices that will enrich and excite“.

Pretty accurate I feel, as I was sharing the bill with Chris Compston.

I was first up and presented my “Welcome UFO People” deck, which seeks to use Tim Robbin’s quote from his novel Even Cowgirls Get The Blues “Be your own flying saucer”, to inspire people to take charge of their own career paths. The gist is “Too often Tech is seen as a barrier to Creativity, during this session we’ll look at examples of ‘codeless’ development, so everyone can get their hands dirty. It’s about changing your career through Open Source, collaboration and Physical Computing. It’s about doing it for yourself and not being reliant on your boss and that 9-5. There’ll be real world case studies to go along with more whimsical projects for pitches and personal work that’s just a bad punchline.”

Almost an hour later is was over to Chris, who sought to explain why “UX Design is Dead!” Chris is an Experience Design Consultant with ThoughtWorks, he’s currently working in the financial sector with Ireland’s largest bank in Dublin.

It was a great night, and I had the opportunity to meet some lovely people and wax lyrical about micro controllers vs micro computers and VR vs AR, over a few post-event drinks.

Thanks again to the organisers for having me!