Looking Back to the 1st EstCHI Meetup – Blazing Success!
On the 27th of May we gathered at the Garage48 HUB to host the first ever EstCHI meetup in Estonia. EstCHI is the Estonian chapter of the ACM SIGCHI, one of the largest Human-Computer Interaction organizations in the world. Make sure to check out their Facebook site.
Other organizers were Trinidad Consulting and Tallinn University, the core team behind the World Usability Tallinn conference.
Why the event came to be
User experience is something that nearly everyone has heard about, but only some fully understand. In a new series of events we aim to bring together people from different disciplines to initiate a synergy between the interaction/industrial/UX/graphic design fields.
Another big portion of the event is networking, bringing various designers from all fields together under a single roof and learning from each other. The topics of the meetups are very varied. From trippy visuals to physical products and the design of information systems.
Unexpected interest – 100 people signed up in just a few days
When we were planning the event we aimed to get about 40 or so participants and never expected the level of interest to be this high! It seems UX really is the next big thing in Estonia.
The meetup kicked off with pizza, beer and welcoming words by yours truly, continuing with a brief introduction to what EstCHI is planning to do in the upcoming year by Hegle Sarapuu. For those of you who missed out on the event, this means 6 meetups a year that climax with our annual World Usability Day conference on the 13th of November
Our first guest was Nuno Correia, a Portuguese interaction designer who spoke about audiovisual UX design. Nuno showed a lot of his own projects and turned the hub into a cinema/concert hall of sorts. Good thing that we managed to find the light switch at the right time.
Once he was done the event continued with Ottavio Cambieri who introduced his Mash Maschine and continued with networking which went on until the late-late hours. The last brave ones left around midnight, still buzzing from the meetup.. or the free booze. We may never know.
Our next meetup takes place on the 8th of May!
Mark the date and see you at the event. The topic will be much more practical this time around. Everyone interested in the subject is welcome to see and hear what UX can offer and how it is perceived in various different companies.
This is your chance to speak up and share your experience with other like-minded people. So mark the date and be on the lookout for the invitation email which should pop into your mailbox in the next coming weeks.
More pictures are available on Facebook.
