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Oct. 12th, 2013 07:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
darchildreSaturday at Infocamp:
- I officially hate the lack of signage on the UW campus. I managed to get myself lost three time between the bus and the hall that the infocamp was held in. At one point, I found myself entirely off campus and at the UW hospital. This did not make for a stressless beginning to the day.
- However, I found the place well within the registration period, so I didn't miss anything. And I found the other people from KRL, so I wasn't on my own all day.
- So, what happens at infocamp is that there's a key note speaker and then people pitch the sessions they want to run. Anyone can run a session on pretty much anything that falls under the umbrella of "dealing with information technology or improving user experience". Anyone who wanted to got up in front of the crowd and explained what they wanted to talk about, and then you decided which session to go to. There were several networking-in-the-UX field sessions that I wasn't that interested in, but a lot of the things people pitched sounded really cool. There's stuff I totally regret missing because I wanted to go to something else just a little bit more.
- I ended up at three session. (All the things in the fourth session slot were about networking or getting a job, so I skipped those.) The first one was about wikipedia, which was cool. The second was, essentially, a brainstorming session on how to make the user interface better in public transit, or, y'know, thinking up ways to make the interior of buses work better. This was packed, because apparently a lot of people have a lot of opinions about buses. I am one of those people and, also, I am finding myself to be really interested in the details of urban infrastructure and how people use urban environments, so I really enjoyed this session. The third one I went to was about designing differently for mobile devices as opposed to desktop or laptop computers and how people use different kinds of devices for different things. Which was pretty interesting, and reminded me once again that I totally live in a science fiction novel, which I love.
- The food ended up being pretty good. I brought my own lunch today but, after seeing the provided lunches, I don't think I'll do that tomorrow. And they had great muffins in the morning, which was nice.
- I did get turned around a bit getting off campus but during my morning adventure, I had acquired a map and so got myself out of my predicament with much greater ease. And then I came home.
I am going back tomorrow and it will be much less stressful, since now I know where things are and won't get lost. I think that I may try to be a little less social tomorrow during breaks (I hung out with the other two KRL people pretty much all day and they were talkers which is nice, because it means I don't have to, but sometimes I need a break) - being surrounded by a huge bunch of people + joining discussions during sessions + social interactivity during breaks = totally exhausted Sara at the end of the day. At least one of the KRL people isn't coming back tomorrow, so I may have a little more time to myself.
Still, so far, it's been a really awesome experience. I may go back next year on my own dime if the library doesn't want to send me again.
- I officially hate the lack of signage on the UW campus. I managed to get myself lost three time between the bus and the hall that the infocamp was held in. At one point, I found myself entirely off campus and at the UW hospital. This did not make for a stressless beginning to the day.
- However, I found the place well within the registration period, so I didn't miss anything. And I found the other people from KRL, so I wasn't on my own all day.
- So, what happens at infocamp is that there's a key note speaker and then people pitch the sessions they want to run. Anyone can run a session on pretty much anything that falls under the umbrella of "dealing with information technology or improving user experience". Anyone who wanted to got up in front of the crowd and explained what they wanted to talk about, and then you decided which session to go to. There were several networking-in-the-UX field sessions that I wasn't that interested in, but a lot of the things people pitched sounded really cool. There's stuff I totally regret missing because I wanted to go to something else just a little bit more.
- I ended up at three session. (All the things in the fourth session slot were about networking or getting a job, so I skipped those.) The first one was about wikipedia, which was cool. The second was, essentially, a brainstorming session on how to make the user interface better in public transit, or, y'know, thinking up ways to make the interior of buses work better. This was packed, because apparently a lot of people have a lot of opinions about buses. I am one of those people and, also, I am finding myself to be really interested in the details of urban infrastructure and how people use urban environments, so I really enjoyed this session. The third one I went to was about designing differently for mobile devices as opposed to desktop or laptop computers and how people use different kinds of devices for different things. Which was pretty interesting, and reminded me once again that I totally live in a science fiction novel, which I love.
- The food ended up being pretty good. I brought my own lunch today but, after seeing the provided lunches, I don't think I'll do that tomorrow. And they had great muffins in the morning, which was nice.
- I did get turned around a bit getting off campus but during my morning adventure, I had acquired a map and so got myself out of my predicament with much greater ease. And then I came home.
I am going back tomorrow and it will be much less stressful, since now I know where things are and won't get lost. I think that I may try to be a little less social tomorrow during breaks (I hung out with the other two KRL people pretty much all day and they were talkers which is nice, because it means I don't have to, but sometimes I need a break) - being surrounded by a huge bunch of people + joining discussions during sessions + social interactivity during breaks = totally exhausted Sara at the end of the day. At least one of the KRL people isn't coming back tomorrow, so I may have a little more time to myself.
Still, so far, it's been a really awesome experience. I may go back next year on my own dime if the library doesn't want to send me again.
no subject
Date: 2013-10-13 04:45 am (UTC)