wellieswithwings

New Year, new conference

Tuesday, January 6th, 2009 | clearleft | No Comments

The Christmas break was lovely, well apart from the flu, but now I’m back in the office and starting to prepare for UXLondon.  We launched the tickets on Friday, and I’ve been happily watching the invoice requests roll into my inbox ever since.

There’s going to be lots to organise in the run up to June, so I’m starting to plan for this now.  Fortunately last year’s dConstruct doesn’t seem too long ago and so I don’t feel there’s a huge amount to remind myself of before I get stuck in.

They are both very different conferences, so I’m looking forward to seeing how UXLondon differs in terms of organisation.  There’s the obvious distance issue – London rather than just around the corner at the Dome.  UXLondon is also aimed at a very different audience, as Andy mentions.  It is really exciting to see it really start to take shape now and I have to say, what a fantastic line up!

On another Clearleft note – we’re looking for an new intern to come and join us.  This will be the third internship we’ve run since summer last year and are finding them really beneficial, as have our interns. Yay!

Tags: clearleft, internship, UXLondon

Hello to the worms

Monday, November 10th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

Two years ago I bought Tom and myself wormeries for Christmas, an odd sort of Christmas present perhaps but I assure you that he had asked for one.  For a year or so they provided lots of lovely fertilizer for the garden but in the end met their demise, probably from over-feeding.

So a couple of weeks ago I decided it was time for a new wormery.  I do like our wormey familiars, they provide the lovely fertilizer for all those bulbs I’ve been planting recently and it’s also a lovely way to recycle all those kitchen scraps.

It takes a couple of weeks for the worms to get settled into their new home, but from this Wednesday we can start to feed them proper food.  In winter they eat a lot less, so it’s going to be a slow start, making sure we’re not overfeeding them again.  In a couple of months we’ll start to get the liquid fertilizer from the wormery, just in time for all the crocus, daffs, snowdrops, bluebells, tulips, irises and alliums I’ve been busily planting.

I’ve got my fingers crossed that the garden does fill with all these flowers.  I’m a little unsure of the quality of the soil, although this years summer plants did well (until the slugs got them anyway).  There’s still lots of ivy removal that needs to be done before spring, and the buddlea needs to be trimmed back.  With any luck, come March/April the garden with be alive with colour, rather than alive with fighting cats.

Tags: garden, home

catching up

Tuesday, October 7th, 2008 | Uncategorized | No Comments

It’s now been a month since dConstruct and I do feel that I’ve caught up with myself.  It was a huge success this year, drawing in more attendees than ever before and yet again filling the day with some excellent speakers.

Despite what I may have said at the time, the few weeks and days before the event are what really makes me tick.  This was something I missed last year, being in the desert coping with a separate set of extremes.  There is something about the last minute panics, those problems you find you can do nothing about and of course watching the all those plans finally fall into place which makes the whole event for me.

This obviously means that I’m really pleased that we’ll be running another conference next year.  Running along different lines, a much more focussed three day event, UX London will taking place in London next summer.  It’s that bit further from home, which I’m sure will throw up a few logistical challenges: I can’t just run back to the office!  We have a fantastic line up, with Don Norman, Jared Spool and Jeff Veen to name but a few.  Just a little extra pressure then!   I am really looking forward to turning my hand to something a little different though.

Life at Clearleft has turned back to it’s normal pace now.  We’re working on some improvements to Silverback, working on some interesting projects and have been wrestling with the Agile UX bear.  I’m also going to be heading off to Future of Web Apps later this week, and Future of Mobile in November and am really looking forward to finally jetting off to SXSW next March.  A normal pace but not all that quiet; just how I like it.

Tags: clearleft, dConstruct, UXLondon

Packing up and moving on

Friday, August 1st, 2008 | home | No Comments

Instead of spending my Friday night in the pub, I’m knee deep in bags and boxes, packing up the most important things in my flat.  A year and nine months on and I’m moving out, leaving the fantastic wallpaper behind and settling in a couple of hundred yards down the road with Tom.

I’ve spent the last two hours sorting through my wardrobes and realising how many clothes I have that I simply never wear.  Of course, this would be the perfect opportunity to throw things out, and I have made a bit of a dent but I’m hanging on to what is a terrifingly large amount of jeans and jumpers because, quite frankly, you can never have enough of them.

Next up is the kitchen, I’m quite determind to hang on to a large amount of kitchen implements too.  You may be starting to suspect that I’m finding it quite difficult to let go of “my stuff”, and you could be right.  I however, have a perfectly good reason for this.  My stuff is just plain better!  Well, I might get away with that for some things anyway.

Despite the hoards of boxes and the prospect of deciding over which iron irons best, which kettle boils fastest and which toaster you can fit more bread into, I’m really looking forward to moving.  I will miss my little flat.  Unlike my last house, I’m the only person who’s lived her.  And it’s all mine, my first mortgage.  I was somewhat apprehensive at first, a mortgage means that you’re old, finally grown up.  In all honesty though it’s been no different to paying rent.  Well, except I suspect a landlord wouldn’t let me get away with chinese dragon wallpaper.  I shall be keeping hold of it though and renting it out for the foreseeable future and so can still call it “my little flat”.

Once I’ve got the kitchen packed, I’m going sit back and spend the rest of the evening bathing in the nostalgia, spending what could well be my last night here.  I shall settle down with a cold one, lie back on the sofa and trawl through the memories, before stepping on to the next adventure.

Tags: home, moving

Thursday, June 26th, 2008 | sophie | No Comments

Where have I been?  Well if I tell you that tickets for this year’s dConstruct launched on Tuesday, you’ll understand that right now I’m in the middle of a conference organising fever.

The build up to dConstruct is always exciting and with two months to go I can already feel it start to bubble.  I’m really looking forward to this year’s event and the fact that, without last year’s EPIC travel FAIL, I will actually be here!  There’s no dashing off to the desert for me, although I am going to miss being at the Burn this year.  Who’d have thought I’d miss that dust?

Conference aside, it’s been an emotional couple of months.  On a philosophical note, I guess you can never have the really good up’s without the really horrible down’s.  To fit both into two months has been, shall we say “interesting”.  It is really good to be feeling more myself again.  It’s also been lovely to stop and catch up with the world.

What would I take out of the past six weeks?  Well, I guess much of it is pretty obvious really.  Friends are great, wine is probably best drunk in moderation (I still haven’t made up my mind on that one!), and sometimes you just need a really big kick up the proverbial.

There: no earth-shattering gems from me I’m afraid; but I do recommend that people watch out for curbs – they have a nasty habit of attacking you when you least expect it and causing post-gig ankle injuries.