... 21. - 22. april

The UX camp is coming up shortly and maybe you´ve already begun considering how you should put your mark on the event and contribute to making the camp an amazing experience for everybody. Perhaps you´re thinking about running a session or workshop, but you´re still unsure what the topic should be and what the approx 300 camp participants are interested in.

For inspiration check out this Wordle over topics of interest extracted from the UX Camp CPH participants registration forms:

More clear on your topic now? We´d love to hear about your idea, so why not post it here in the comment section and see what people think? This could also be a great way of finding people to do a joint-session.

Happy preparation…

It’s time to dig a bit deeper in the phenomenon UX Camp and how we are going to do it at UX Camp CPH. If you’ve never attended a UX Camp (or a regular BarCamp for that matter) before, the concept might seem a bit confusing. But there’s no need to worry. This might actually prove to be a unique opportunity for you to speak at a conference.

Quick note: Holding a session at UX Camp CPH is not a requirement (we will not force you on stage) but we invite as many of you to go ahead and give a talk, facilitate a discussion or what you might come up with. You might even team up with a colleague or someone you found via twitter, facebook or at the busstop.

There is one thing that makes an UX Camp special and that is the fact that the UX Camp is you! Without you there is no UX Camp. Unlike ordinary conferences you get to play all the parts of a conference. You are the the speaker, you are the listener, you are the critical part of a discussion that makes it interesting… You are the participator at every level. We are not going to invite keynote speakers to speak at UX Camp. We might persuade people we know to hold a session, but they will not be regarded as keynote speakers as you know it from regular conferences.

So how does it work then? Do we accept abstracts like most academic conferences? No, we don’t do that either. We simply want you to show up at UX Camp CPH with your prepared session (if you have one) and we’ll ask the crowd if they would be interested in your session (no need to worry, most times they are). After you’ve “sold” your session to the crowd, we’ll put it on the sessionboard and you can call yourself “an official speaker at a conference”. It’s that simple.

The programme, broken down
We’ve been asked about the programme for the UX Camp CPH. And it’s a bit tricky to say how the programme will look like since none of the sessions have been planned yet. But we will still try to explain how we expect it to be like (the programme is not final, so changes might occur).

We’ll start the day at 9 o’clock by having a light breakfast (and a sign-in the first day) and then get on with the schedule planning at 10 o’clock. The schedule planning is what makes UX Camp very unique. As written before, the schedule is empty at the beginning of the day but before long it will be filled with your sessions. From then on the day looks pretty much like any other conference… and we’ll finish off the day with a great party. There will be a lot of breaks between the sessions but that’s done on purpose. We want you to interact with the other participants and experience shows that the breaks are excellent for that.

We expect the days to last from 9 to about 16. It’s a long day, but we promise you that you’ll have a great time.

Planning your session
So it’s time to start planning your session. We just want to give you a few “heads-up” in order to get started. We are expecting every session to last 45 mins – but – try not to throw a presentation for more than 30 mins. We want you to have plenty of time to discuss your topic and interact with the listeners.

Regarding the choice of language, we encourage you to plan your session in english. As we wrote in the post “Conquering the language barrier” we want to include everybody and it is almost certain that you’ll run into someone who doesn’t understand danish or swedish. So plan for an international crowd.

We encourage unusual, fun, spacey, or just plain mad session but it’s no requirement of course. But UX Camp CPH is a great place to try out an unconventional way of giving a presentation. We also want workshops! We acknowledge that one session slot (45 mins) might be too short for a workshop, so if you need more time – we’ll figure it out. You might want to let us know if you’re planning a workshop – give us a buzz on twitter or by mail.

Call for great speakers
If you know someone who’s a brilliant speaker that you want us to persuade to attend UX Camp CPH, please let us know. It doesn’t have to be someone from the UX community as long as they can relate their topic/profession to UX…

Remember that UX Camp CPH is free to attend, but it’s partly your responsibility that it’s going to be an event to remember. Happy planning and we’ll see you in April.

So we are just three months away from the very first UX Camp CPH. Planning is going steady and we are all ready to give it the final kick in order to create the best possible conditions for an amazing event. But while we are busy planning, we just want to cover a question we’ve asked ourselves a couple of times: “How do we conquer the language barrier?”

It might not come as a big surprise that danish can be pretty tricky if you are not from one of the Scandinavian countries. And we do realize that the choice of language can have an excluding effect on many.

So here are the two scenarios:

1. If we choose an all-danish approach we’ll exclude a large amount of potential attendees from outside Denmark and even internationals living in Denmark – and we don’t want that.

2. If we choose an all-english approach we might scare of potential danish attendees that feel uncomfortable in communicating in a foreign language – and we are not too keen on that either.

So what do we do? Well, we’ve decided to go the pragmatic way and chosen scenario 1,5 – the “in-between” scenario. We know that the largest amount of attendees will be danish and we will not force you to speak english if you are not up for it – but we want to bring in talent from outside Denmark as well, so be prepared to speak a little bit of english when needed.

So what we are trying to say is that you might want to prepare your session in english. But that’s not a problem, because danes love to speak english, right? And to our international guests: “Don’t worry, we’ll speak english. Welcome to UX Camp in Copenhagen.”

Året er ved at gå på hæld og det er tid til at gøre status og samtidig sige tusind tak for alle de positive tilbagemeldinger vi har modtaget. Planlægningen skrider planmæssigt fremad, men vi kan samtidig se at vi får rigtig travlt i starten af det nye år. Vi er stadig på sponsorjagt og er i dialog med nogle spændende partnere som vi forhåbentlig kan præsentere snarligt. Det bliver også i starten af det nye år vi vil frigive billetterne til UX Camp CPH, så hold dig orienteret via Facebook og twitter så du kan sikre dig en plads til det fedeste UX-arrangement i København til dato.

Vi har fået en del henvendelser om hvordan en UX Camp forløber og hvordan i som deltagere kan medvirke aktivt til at skabe en fantastisk camp.

Som udgangspunkt er det alles ansvar at UX Camp CPH bliver lærerigt, spændende, inspirerende og ikke mindst sjovt og socialt. Vi, i UX Camp-teamet, forsøger blot at skabe de bedst mulige rammer for camp’en og det er så vores fælles ansvar at det hele går op i en højere enhed under selve afviklingen. Dette kan lade sig gøre under mantraet: ingen turister – kun deltagere.

Ingen turister – kun deltagere!
Hvad mener vi med dette mantra? Det er et mantra der går igen ved alle events der afholdes efter BarCamp-principperne og betyder i sin enkelthed at det forventes at alle er engagerede i sessions, diskussioner, samtaler og sociale sammenhænge i forbindelse med camp’en. Vi har ikke plads til at alle kan holde sessions men selvom du ikke lige holder et oplæg er dit engagement alligevel uhyre vigtigt og værdifuldt. Deltag i diskussioner, stil kritiske spørgsmål, bidrag med din viden.

Før, under og efter
Selvom der stadig er et stykke tid til det gør løs kan du allerede nu deltage aktivt i at sprede budskabet om UX Camp CPH. Jo flere der er med, jo sjovere bliver det. Derfor opfordrer vi dig til at tale med dine kolleger om UX Camp CPH, tweet’e om camp’en, blogge om dine forventinger og ikke mindst begynde at forberede dit/dine oplæg.

Hvis du allerede har deltaget i andre UX Camps opfordrer vi dig til at dele dine erfaringer med andre. Smid et link til dit blogindlæg på facebook.

Samtidig opfordrer vi dig til at dokumentere så meget som muligt under UX Camp via din blog, twitter, flickr etc. så andre der ikke er med har mulighed for at få en bid af det der foregår (Hashtag: #uxcampcph). Det samme gælder naturligvis når du kommer hjem og har fordøjet det du har oplevet. Del, del, del.

For at blive endnu klogere kan du læse mere hos vores venner fra Berlin (http://www.uxcampeurope.org/) og London (http://uxcamplondon.org/) som har afholdt nogle fantastiske camps.

Til sidst vil vi gerne hylde de skæve, sjove, inspirerende sessions. Fold din kreative sjæl ud og gi’ de andre deltagere en oplevelse de sjældent glemmer. En af vores favoritter er Holger Eggerts (@holgereggert) session om kreativitet fra UX Camp Europe 2010. Nyd den:

Rigtig godt nytår og vi ses til UX Camp CPH den 21.-22. april 2012.