Great speakers from Think About conference 2019
Conf organisers! I wanted to shout out some brilliant speakers I saw at Think About! conference last week. These are fabulous people, accomplished speakers, writing valuable, meaningful and educational talks. You need them on your lineup.
In the order I saw them:
Linda Rising
First I saw Linda Rising. I’ve been in the wrong circles because I hadn’t heard of her work. Hers was the perfect opening keynote, priming our minds and attitudes for the rest of the conference with science, talking about the agile mindset. Blew my mind.
Eriol Fox
Next was Eriol Fox. Their insightful talk about diverse representation in design made tricky topics way less intimidating. The way they wove bad examples alongside how to do better was so enlightening. AND they’ve got a great talk proposal ready.
Eriol’s talk proposal: “Effective design for crisis & natural disaster relief in developed and developing countries”. Eriol’s website.
Aly Blenkin
Then I saw Aly Blenkin. Her talk really got into deep thinking around ethics in design, and considering the impact of our work. She showed real processes and approaches for understanding/measuring impact, giving us takeaways we can all use in our work.
Ryn Daniels
Next up was Ryn Daniels who made devops accessible to even me while still addressing the topic in depth. Their talk melded stories with examples and lessons learned, looking at both code and humans, on some very big and daunting projects.
Eileen Wagner
I was sad to miss most of Eileen Wagner’s talk, because the tail-end that I caught got me really fired up and inspired. Looking at how to use design to improve security and privacy, I learned so much in that short time from her accessible examples.
Vimla Appadoo
The fabulous closing keynote was Vim Appadoo. Her explanations of the connections between diversity and privilege gave me loads of “aha!” moments, which she set against a vulnerable and fascinating story of her own life and background.
Legendary conference organisers
Also a massive hats-off to Chrissy Holderbaum, Jakob Holderbaum and Andreas Rosing for putting this immense lineup together. Can’t wait to see what they put together next year.