Upcoming talks in London, Manchester, Warsaw, Denver and Atlanta

I’ve been sitting on the news for several weeks now about some upcoming talks and appearances at conferences that I’ve got planned, but since they all seem to have finally been publicly announced I can reveal my jet-setting plans for the next few months.

In April I’ll be heading to Denver to appear in a panel session at the IA Summit. Alongside Mathew Solle, one of my co-organisers of London IA, we’ll be talking about getting a UX community started from scratch. We’ll be joined by Joe Sokohl, who is one of the primary movers of the Richmond UX scene in Virginia, and the session is going to be hosted and moderated by Eric Reiss, which should raise the energy and entertainment levels.

I’ll be making a return trip to the USA in June, where I’m also going to be talking at the UPA International Conference. The theme of the whole conference is “designing for social change”, and I’ve got a half hour slot to talk about how the introduction of guerilla usability testing methods has influenced the way we do product design at the Guardian. I’m very much looking forward to that, although a little bit intimidated by the thought of being in a room full of usability professionals and arguing that “me-and-my-Flip” is the way to go...

I’m also absolutely thrilled to be able to confirm that in April I will be in Warsaw, to give the opening keynote at the Polish IA Summit. I’ve already been planning what to present there, and I’ve settled on a theme of how my personal journey from tinkering around with the internet whilst working in a record shop in Soho in the 90s to the job I do today at The Guardian has intertwined with the way that information architecture and the other user experience disciplines have emerged as the web matures.

As well as those three events, I've also got an upcoming talk at The City University Journalism School on March 9th, and will be appearing at Future Everything in Manchester on May 12th. I'll be sharing a platform with Paul Bradshaw, Chris Taggart and David Higgerson to talk about “Digital journalism and open data”.

Finally, later this year I'll also be combining my regular role as host with that as speaker, and after slightly awkwardly introducing myself, I'll be giving one of the two talks at May's London IA event, currently scheduled for the 17th.