Final Stretch until UI10
In just less than 10 days, we’ll start welcoming our guests to the User Interface 10 Conference. Attendees are coming from all over the world. We have folks arriving from Canada, Switzerland, Austria, Israel, China, Finland, Venezuela, Japan, Sweden, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Belgium, France, and New Jersey.
People are coming from all different industries: health care, universities, financial services, government, military, design consulting, publishing, non-profits, communications, energy services, and retail. Hundreds of organizations such as Travelocity, New York Life Insurance, eBay, The Vangaurd Group, MIT, AARP, EPA, City of Tucson, Intuit, Icelandair, Fidelity Investments, Microsoft, and University of Northern Iowa, have regularly been represented amongst our attendees over the years. The breadth and diversity of our attendees is what makes the conference so interesting.
We’ve been preparing for this event for more than a year. Eighteen months ago, we started talking to potential speakers. We started with more than 30 candidates and whittled it down to the 14 best. We’ve been working with them all year to ensure they produce the most detailed, best presented sessions available anywhere.
The details for producing a conference like this are impressive. Yesterday, I placed an order for 3,712 books for the proceedings. Christine, who handles most of the logistical details, has been preparing for the 7,012 individual food servings we’ll ask the kitchen to prepare throughout the week. For our 10-year-anniversary gift, we gave away hundreds of Apple iPods. The bookseller is bringing tons of copies of the newest titles in design and UIs to sell.
The last two weeks before the conference are the most intense and exciting, as all the disparate pieces start to come together. Believe it or not, once people start walking into the welcome reception, things become a lot easier — the ball is rolling and because of our team’s excellent planning, everything really just comes together.
(Not to say there isn’t a hitch every year. This will be our fifteenth conference in the ten years since we started the event. I’m sure something will not go as planned. As I say every year, we’re gonna just keep doing this until we get it right.)
The conference is really exciting and something I look forward to every year. I’ve enjoyed meeting the more than 3,000 people who have attended in the past 10 years. I’m looking forward to meeting another 400 this year. It’ll be great fun. I’m excited.
(I’d love the chance to meet you. If you’re coming, please make a point of stopping me and saying hi. If you’re not coming, well, there’s still a little room. You’ll want to register right away! I’d love to see you there.)