sacha chua living an awesome life

When Mira Jelic and Jyotika Malhotra told me about UsabilityCamp, I immediately signed up. Good thing I did, too. The event filled up quickly and more than a hundred people were on the waiting list. If last Tuesday is anything to go by, the next UsabilityCamp will probably fill up in a few hours! <laugh>

It was great crossing over into a different world and learning more
from user experience designers who focus more on user interactions
instead of code. My favorite presentation? I can’t decide between Ilona Posner’s demonstration of these very cool immersive devices that let kids (and adults!) experience what it’s like to be a cat, frog, or butterfly, or Michelle Ivankalc(sp?)’s talk about the physical design of objects.

I really enjoyed getting to know a bunch of new people, too. I met
Paul Forest, who’s on the steering committee
of the International Game Developers’ Association (Toronto Chapter).
He’s looking for a development job, and has experience in everything
from C++ to Java to .NET. Richard McCann
asked me about technology evangelism when he noticed it on my nametag,
and we ended up talking about his newly-fored company called
IdeaFarmer. I met Veau Trotter for the second
time (first was at Enterprise2.0Camp). I met Daniel Tsang again, too, and we chatted a bit about FreshBooks, a web-based accounts receivables system. He told me about monkeyonyourback, which I should definitely look for. I also got to know Robin Ward, and we got into an animated discussion of extensible software (Emacs for me, Firefox for him). I should ask him about the Firefox extensions he wrote…

I was particularly glad to have an opportunity to chat with Mira Jelic and Jyotika Malhotra, both of whom are very cool people (in both tech *and* style!). Kudos to them for organizing a great event, kudos to Ilona Posner for pulling in more sponsors and speakers, and kudos to everyone for making the event tons of fun!

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