Last month I spoke at Interactive Strategies ‘09, an annual event held by the Houston Interactive Marketing Association. Having gone the previous year, I was struck by how incredibly lopsided the panel line-up was: all anyone wanted to talk about was social media. Don’t get me wrong, I’m a huge proponent of social media and tweet and facebook with the best of ‘em, but it really seemed to me that very few of these people really had anything interesting to say. Everybody seemed very enamored of the idea of social media, but most of them just didn’t get it at all (even some of the speakers). The other thing that perturbed me was the dearth of panels for creatives or user experience professionals. In fact, the one thing that I came out of last year’s conference with was a strong motivation to rectify the situation myself. Heh.
Fast forward to this year’s conference and my presentation: How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love My Audience- An Intro to UX.
As speaking gigs go, well, let’s just say I’m glad I got my first one over with. How did I fare in staving off the droves who just wanted to talk about talking? I’m thinking my impact was minimal, but watching my colleague David Saxe burst that particular bubble during his session made me feel a little better.
