Love is the Killer App

I attended the opening keynote at the HRPAO 2005 Conference. The speaker was Tim Sanders, a VP at Yahoo! and the author of Love is the Killer App: How to Win Business and Influence Friends. His session was titled "The Compassionate Leader". It was a very, very interesting discussion about the power of intangible skills, particularly in leaders, that can help companies (organizations) succeed.

Tim is a fantastic speaker, in his bio he mentions this aptitude and it is well deserved. He is one of the most entertaining speakers (specially at an HR conference) that I’ve ever had the pleasure of listening to).His talk was structured around the ideas presented in "Love is the Killer App".

  • Knowledge

  • Network

  • Compassion

This had me thinking about the Toronto User Experience community and my conversation last weekend with Jess McMullin. The community feels fragmented, andcompetitive. I used to go to "network" which was nothing more than a uphamism for handing out business cards and hoping to find work. They wasn’t a lot of value for me. But I look at the success of new communities: Boxes and Arrows; AIfIA; Open Usability; UXNet; FLOSS Usability and others. Is there a need to create a Canadian community focused around the user experience that is not being served by the forementioned communities or by an existing community (UPA, SIGCHI, HFES, ASIS&T, etc.)?

This entry was posted on Wednesday, February 2nd, 2005 at 4:28 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any comments to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

  • Daniel Ponech

    Dude, I feel your pain, I really do. You see, there was this thing, the Canadian Usability Summit Society, dedicated to addressing the very issues you raise. More than just usability, it was an organisation that aspired to be an open forum that helped break through the barriers that divided the fragmented, competitive user experience community in Toronto and beyond. It wanted to help move the community of which you speak beyond its current “Lord of the Flies” state into something, well, better. Alas, CUSS fell on hard times and we’re left with things the way you describe.

    Still, I got nuthin’ but love for ya, baby

  • http://www.usableviews.com Dmitry Nekrasovski

    I think this is a fantastic idea. Here in Vancouver, the SIGCHI chapter died for lack of interest and relevance, but there is now a non-denominational organization called VanUE (http://www.vanue.com) that seems to try to be more inclusive. It’s mainly a forum for presentations, though, and meeting people is difficult.

    I also noticed that all the “new communities” you mention are primarily virtual – could this have something to do with their non-competitive nature?

  • http://www.drivelikefeynman.net Matthew Milan

    At an emotional level, I really like the idea of a Canadian UX-ish practitioner organization. That being said, I do have concerns as to how much utility another UX organization would bring. From the perspective of someone who’s only become involved in UX in the last two years, my initial take on the Canadian (and Toronto) UX community was that it was pretty much non-existent. I realize now that’s not the case, but I think my initial observation does open some interesting questions, including one that I consider to be rather important; namely what kind(s)of roles need to be filled by a UX community organization with a Canadian angle for it to be relevant both internally to its members and externally as a front for a community of practice?

    Your suggestion that organizations like AIfIA (soon to be IAI) seem have it right is bang-on in my opinion. As a member, you feel that IAI is working to support you on a whole bunch of different levels.

    What similar ‘support’ would entail in a Canadian context needs to be well defined, or at least better understood. For a Canada-centric UX organization to be successful it would have to provide some kind of added value above and beyond more generalized UX organizations and their local chapters. The discussion you and Jess had was very enlightening for me, but on relection it made me feel that the Canadian UX community is in a state of disconnect.

    I haven’t really thought about a Canadian perspective on UX up to this point, but your post makes me feel that it’s relevant, and neglected. Maybe a Canadian UX organzation wouldn’t appeal to all UX professionals in Canada, but an organization doesn’t have to have to be everything to everyone to be relevant. I’d personally settle for an organization that understands and realizes its mission, even on a very small scale.