Ottawa’s own Jeff Parks will present at UXcamp 2012

Rounding up an already stellar lineup, Ottawa’s very own Jeff Parks will make his UXcamp Ottawa debut this year.

Creativity – The Missing Link Between Data and Common Sense
Oct 13, 3:45pm / 25 MINUTES

Data overwhelms almost every industry and sector today. Our collective inability to see through this “fog” of over analysis has created a kind of creative paralysis. The need has never been greater to ask ourselves are we disagreeing with the individual or the idea? Are we open to learning from other experiences and professions or are we resolute in our process and job title?

We huddle up in scrums through Agile, trim the fat in UX approaches in Lean UX, and some still believe in the hierarchical waterfall to get work done. But in an era of never ending wind-sprints focusing who can be first I will demonstrate through stories of other creatives – and my own experiences in the health care and IT communities – this essential human need to not just create but to engage in the creative process every day.

Drawing on the stories of children’s TV producer Bruktawit Tagabu in Ethiopia, authors Ayn Rand, Dave Gray, Thomas Vander Wal and Austin Kleon, IBM, Jon Cleese, and the Canadian rock band Rush I will illustrate this need to focus more on the creative process in our professional endeavours – imagining what is possible rather than justifying what is not.

Speaker Bio: Jeff Parks

Jeff is the co-founder of DIGIA UX Inc, a member of the Board of Directors for the Information Architecture Institute, and trusted mentor to over a hundred designers the world over. He presented at the 2011 Information Architecture Summit in Denver and was the Closing Keynote at the 2012 Polish IA Summit in Warsaw Poland, “Designing for a Global Culture”. He is an ambassador of the Ottawa UX community, and has founded the Ottawa UX Book Club. He has also been involved as a speaker with IxDA Ottawa and CapCHI.

Jeff continues to guest lecture at universities and colleges, and leads workshops on advanced web practices through Follow The UX Leader which he co-created with Canada’s leading Content Strategist Kris Mausser. He has trained designers and business leaders on Information Architecture and User Experience from Boeing, Fujitsu, iStock Photo, Tribal DDB Worldwide, Manulife Financial, Open Text, Western Union, Scotiabank, and many more.

Over the past five years Jeff has led countless conversations and produced two of the most popular podcasts in user experience interviewing practitioners, thought leaders and renowned authors from Google, eBay, ClickTale Web Analytics, Citrix, Adaptive Path, Rosenfeld Media, Morgan Kaufmann, and New Riders on industry leading webzines Johnny Holland and Boxes and Arrows.

You can follow Jeff on Twitter @jeffparks.