Past Events

Dec 06 2024

[Virtual event] Improving customer experiences through content

Customer complaints are piling up. Customers are frustrated. Even the White House has taken notice with its “Time is Money" initiative, "a government wide effort to crack down on corporations wasting customers’ time and money."

Content decisions often play a key role in customer experiences going wrong or right. Join Lisa D. Dance for an insightful, hands-on workshop where you will help identify and resolve content problems based on a real-life story from her book Today Is the Perfect Day to Improve Customer Experiences!

About Lisa D. Dance

Lisa is a UX research consultant and the founder of ServiceEase, where she helps businesses and non-profit organizations create online and offline experiences that don’t frustrate or harm people. Lisa’s background includes working with enterprises like Indeed and Genworth, where the website won 17 national and international awards and ranked high on customer satisfaction. Lisa contributes articles to CMSWire and conducts the UX Census (RVA) Survey, an annual survey of the UX Community in the Richmond, VA area. In her free time, she enjoys reading, colored pencil drawing, and enjoying a good laugh.

Nov 12 2024

[Virtual event] Before you can begin again: making the most of your time in the unknown

Life is a cycle of beginnings and endings—which means a low moment will inevitably kickstart your next climb. In this session, Jen Dionisio will guide you through your stint in “the neutral zone,” the space we all inhabit when something has clearly ended but the new thing hasn’t yet taken shape. You’ll learn how to turn what can be a lonely, confusing time into a creative and generative one. Whether you’re between jobs, rethinking your career direction, or entering a new life phase, Jen will share ways to move forward when you feel totally lost—and how to prepare yourself for the journey ahead.

About Jen Dionisio, Director of Coaching Programs at Active Voice

Jen is a leadership coach for people in tech and design. Her work draws on her long career as a content strategist, where she helped herself and her colleagues battle people-pleasing behaviors, burnout, and self-doubt. At Active Voice, Jen helps people navigate career and life transitions through 1:1 coaching, workshops, and group programs.

Sep 13 2024

[Virtual event] UX artifacts for content strategists: Behavioral archetypes and journey maps

Elevate your content strategy by incorporating two fundamental UX tools: behavioral archetypes and customer journey maps. In this session, Matt Herron will demystify these powerful techniques, guiding you through their creation and demonstrating their impact through real-world examples. Whether you're looking to enhance user engagement or streamline customer communications, this session will equip you with the knowledge and confidence to integrate these tools into your practice. Plus, Matt will be on hand to answer all your questions and help you apply these insights to your own work!

About Matt Herron, Principal Strategist at Storytelling.Systems

Matt is a content strategy and UX design leader with over 15 years leading content teams and building digital experiences for brands like Atlassian, Survey Monkey, Athleta, and Yamaha. At Storytelling Systems, he trains the next generation of UX content strategists and consults with agencies, tech startups and other organizations. He also writes sci-fi novels under the pen name, M.G. Herron.

Oct 08 2024

[Virtual event]: Think like a content designer

Content designers use tried-and-true techniques to make content digestible, conversational, and on-brand. Ready for a content design toolbox of your own? If you're a designer or product manager accountable for content, or are a content person looking to strengthen your craft, this workshop is for you.

About Megan Biggs

Megan is a Minneapolis-based content designer on Capital One's in-person experiences team. She helps people discover the many ways they can get their banking done IRL and digitally. Megan geeks out on strategic communication, baking, and Google Maps (the best invention since AC).

About Tatiana Ceballos

Tatiana is a Colombian native residing in San Francisco, using her communication powers to help people move their money with ease and confidence. She works in the payments team as part of the Experience Design team at Capital One. Tatiana is also a ceramics artist, a ham and cheese croissant connoisseur, and an avid bookworm.

Jul 30 2024

[Virtual event] Design from the inside out: Core models, content models, and OOUX

For years, UX and content strategy have been at odds over creating (and designing) the container before we nail down what goes in it. In this talk, Cynthia Gelper will share three methodologies for creating and designing content-first, i.e. substance before form. While the core content model, content modeling, and object-oriented UX (OOUX) all offer a way to think through what content should be the foundation of a given project, they differ in approaches and who on the team uses them (“UX” should give you a hint). Yet they’re all valuable and can enhance any content strategist’s practice.

About Cynthia Gelper

Cynthia Gelper is a Chicago-based content strategist who has made always expanding her skillset a core part of her own career strategy. Her latest discovery is how perfectly object-oriented UX aligns with other content-first methodologies. Cynthia has collaborated on teams in industries that range from education and healthcare to finance, B2B, automotive and nonprofit. She has also been a committed evangelist for content strategy and a mentor.

 

Event time

12 pm ET (Richmond, Virginia, US)

10 am MT (Denver, Colorado, US)

9 am PT (San Francisco, California, US)

11 am CT (Chicago, Illinois, US)

5 pm BST (London, UK)

6 pm CEST (Stockholm, Sweden)

4 am AEST on Thursday, February 29 (Sydney, Australia)

Apr 10 2024

[Virtual event] Make it awkward: Why saying hard things matters at work (and how to actually do it)

We’ll be joined by a panel of leaders working in design and product who’ve all taken the plunge into having hard conversations—and found that life really is better on the other side. They’ll share:

  • When and how they realized they needed to form better relationships at work

  • The mindset shifts they needed to make to break through habits of avoidance

  • Techniques for starting difficult conversations about expectations, boundaries, feedback, and conflict

  • How they’ve learned to move through fear, get past the awkward part, and just say it

We’ll close with sharing a tool for starting hard conversations, and facilitating a self-reflective activity designed to help you transform what you heard into practical next steps for yourself.

Our panel

  • Jane Davis, user research leader

  • Shannon Leahy, senior content design manager, Adobe

  • Clara Kuo, principal UX researcher, Vivian Health

  • Shawna Hein, VP of experience, Code for America

Mar 15 2024

[Virtual event] Content design office hours

Got questions about UX content? Ask away! In this ask-me-anything (AMA) style event, Susa Agababyan, Mario Ferrer, Shannon Leahy, Kiran Mascarenhas, Joel Solomon, and Andrew Stein will take audience questions live for a candid community conversation.

This is a free, virtual event. To RSVP, use the LinkedIn event link. That link also gives you the video conferencing details we'll use day of.

🚀 Event date

Friday, March 15, 2024

🕒 Time:

10:00 am to 11:00 am ET

7:00 am to 8:00 am PT

8:00 am to 9:00 am MT

9:00 am to 10:00 am CT

3:00 pm to 4:00 pm GMT

4:00 pm to 5:00 pm CET

9:00 pm to 10:00 pm IST

2:00 am to 3:00 am AEDT Saturday

Feb 28 2024

[Virtual event] Seeing tigers everywhere: Why the trauma-informed lens matters for all of your design work

Hard experiences are everywhere. And trauma, the specific effect of types of hard experiences, is more common than you think. What does the prevalence of trauma mean for the public? For our customers? What does it mean for our designs? How does it affect the efficacy of the good work we're trying to do?

In a talk that is itself trauma-informed (no jump scares or over-explicit language), Jessica Smith, an inclusive and accessible design specialist, will talk about the basics of trauma science, its implications for experience design, and where you can integrate this into your work.

About Jessica:

Jessica's a UX leader and longtime content strategist. For the last 7 years, she's specialized in UX content. When she's not evangelizing Object-Oriented UX (OOUX) or doing trauma-informed design trainings, you can find her in her working on a novel, watching stand up clips, or delighting in the mountains of Colorado. You can find her online on LinkedIn.

Dec 19 2023

[Virtual event] Tacos and Tiaras

You did it. You made it through 2023 (even if it’s by a whisker). You deserve to celebrate that—it’s a big deal!— and all the little stuff that got you through this whopper of a year.

Join Shannon Leahy and Jane Ruffino for Tacos and Tiaras to get hyped about each other’s unsung victories. Did you nail a project—sort of? Give your first workshop? Get promoted? Take your job and shove it? Push your desk into a sunnier spot? Get a pet (can we meet it?)? Have you simply survived?

There’s no win too small or too weird. There’s no cheer too loud. Everyone’s a winner, and everyone gets a crown. Well, a Zoom-filter crown at least.

If you’ve never been to one of our “un-meetups” before, just come as you are. Bring a taco or two, or other snack of your choice. No prep necessary, other than being ready with your best victory dance.

Event time:

1 pm ET (Richmond, Virginia, US)

1 0 am PT (San Francisco, California, US)

1 2 pm CT (Chicago, Illinois, US)

6 pm BST (London, UK)

7 pm CEST (Stockholm, Sweden)

5 am AEST on Wednesday, December 20 (Sydney, Australia)

Sep 07 2023

[Virtual event] Cake and confessions

For our next informal meetup, the theme is cake and confessions. It’s an impostor syndrome catharsis, with cream cheese frosting!

Don't know how to use layers in Figma? Still looking up the spellings for common words? Can’t follow the “product versus UX” discourse? Stumbling through life with a tattered survival manual of “righty tight-y, lefty loose-y” hacks?

We're all Googling under the table; it's the human condition. The problem is that we're looking around, thinking everyone else has it all figured out.

This is a chance for us to spill it all and go back into the world, knowing we're all flying by the seat of our pants. In fact, we’re gonna celebrate just how far we’ve all come without learning some of the most basic things imaginable. Way to go, us! We do not got this!

As usual, we'll have a short welcome from Shannon and Jane, who will introduce the theme, and then we'll let loose. There will be laughter. There might be tears (of validation). And there will definitely be cake (or a snack of your choice). If you want to share anonymously, you can fill out this form. But you’re welcome to share publicly, too.

 

Content is King.