Letters from the Equator

Belated Christmas present. Thanks @leeknits! (Taken with instagram)

Christmas isn’t a very natural time for me. I have to think hard about things to do and people to see. There hasn’t been a “traditional” Christmas in my life. My parents never celebrated Christmas, and coming from the Far East, Christmas was always either a very Western thing or a very Christian thing.

In London, it gets a bit better since Christmas is this secular thing so you can go shopping and feel like you’re not out of place amongst the tourists. At least you can feel at home as a Londoner bitching about the bad traffic. This is all fine until Christmas day when all the stores shut and the whole country retreat into dining rooms and halls with friends and family. This is the time I have to think about whether to hole up at home with my wife and enjoy a simple dinner, or find a festive goings-on with merry people somewhere.

This year, my uncle and aunt who live in Croydon have decided to exclude us from their traditional Christmas lunch, as I assume their family has grown larger with in-laws and toddlers. This isn’t a bad thing - interacting with extended family members can be a weird experience, because each nuclear family has different ways of doing things. Without a strong cultural glue (e.g. being British), it becomes even more difficult to interact, because there are more assumptions about the way we ought to behave.

I also think that the modern world is forcing people to have more complex (and often competing) worldviews with one another. I, for one, have certain habits that aren’t the norm. I don’t watch TV and don’t watch football or enjoy sports. My hobbies are all about design and technology. I spend a ton of time on online, on Twitter, and I often interact more deeply with my professional connections than my personal connections. In fact, the lines are so blurred for me that I sometimes think of my friends in the industry as “family”.

These worldviews occasionally compete with family traditions and practices, since many of them are based on values and principles. It’s not so much about the big stuff politicians and newspapers badger on about, but the little things people think about. Stuff like whether to have kids or not, or whether to rent or buy, or cooking meals at home vs. eating out, or whether we ought to buy Christmas presents for each other. Conversations like this against opposing views can be tiring and scary, which is not a good thing to have during a festive holiday.

Bad enough that some people only see their extended families once a year. There aren’t many shared memories to form strong relationships on, so the connections are weaker and conversations are more superficial.

Perhaps I’m just ranting because I have to fill this void about a ‘traditional’ Christmas, which I don’t really celebrate. Or, I need to find stuff to talk about that “normal” people talk about, like football, TV and politics - so I don’t feel so out of place amongst extended family. At least here in the UK we can talk about the weather.

“The hard part of professional journalism going forward is writing about what hasn’t been written about, directing attention where it hasn’t been, and saying something new.”

- “The new lazy journalism” - Seth Godin

Hello?

My useless tiny tower betizen.

Amazon review for top selling aluminum bat. “Pretty good for using on looters”

arainert:

teradome:

Organizational charts for tech companies. (via @mrandre) Actually, I think they got it exactly right.

These are really great though I imagine there’s a bit more centralized gravitational pull at Facebook than this one suggests.

Multicoloured sheep in the background. Somewhere.

Du Zhong Bu Yao Tang: Kidney Tonic Soup. Good for strengthening bones and removing backache. Thanks mom - I knew this would come in handy.

Sometime late last year, I offered to organize uxcamplondon 2011 with the support of previous years’ team and a bit of help from my friends. I was determined to see it happen this year after I missed last year’s uxcamp due to an illness. After all, I had learnt a thing or two after volunteering since 2009 – I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try.

But organizing an event for the first time teaches you a lot of things. It’s a very “people” job, one that often requires a certain amount of savvy, timing, and humility. Only then does everything else become “logistics”.

As Cennydd said, the devil is in the details.

So being an organizer, you will replay countless scenarios in your head, but the end result is often surprising. And just as some had predicted, we had a decent turnout (about 60 people – see update), the day went by quite smoothly, sessions were really interesting, and everyone had a pretty good experience through and through.

Some highlights included James O’Brien’s Agile UX talk, Laurian Gridinoc’s session on “reactive documents“, and the repeat of Cennydd’s IA summit wayfinding debut.

I regret not putting enough thought into my own session. That’s a scar I’ll have to bear forever, but the credit certainly goes to the many UXCamp newcomers like Nick Dunlavey and Clarence Lee, who presented some really interesting stuff.

Still, the best part of any UXCamp is the sheer camraderie and partnership you get from the combination of attendees, sponsors, and organizers.  What we may remember best is Jonty Sharples’ venn diagram oddities, finding common ground about UX in the enterprise, Dr. Simone laughing over a pint, Cennydd as a perennial UXCamp favorite, and the crowding of the otherwise quiet local to wind down the day.

Plus I met so many cool new faces on Saturday I stopped worrying whether this year’s camp would be as cool as the last.

And that’s the way it ought to roll.

 

(update: I made an error calculating the percentage of 60% turnout initially by basing it off an outdated list. The number is closer to 75%, or 20 no-shows. It’s still a concern, but not as bad as I originally thought.)