Talking Business: Strategic User Experience and Digital Excellence

After May’s sold out Content Strategy Lightning Talks (https://www.meetup.com/content-strategy-london/) event, at this meetup we’ll dig deeper into the challenges of the business world, with a combination of two fantastic full-length presentations, an interactive “fish-bowl” panel, and the return of “content strategy speed dating” where you get to network, share your experiences, and pepper the speakers with questions at the Mermaid’s bar overlooking the Thames. It isn’t just about learning from experts, it’s also about sharing what you know with your peers.

Essential information

What: The London Content Strategy Meetup

When: Thursday 5 July 2012, 6pm–9:30pm

Where: The Mermaid Conference Centre, Blackfriars. (Nearest tubes: Blackfriars, St Paul’s.)

To get your ticket, choose “RSVP” and pay £9 via PayPal. It only takes a minute, and you don’t need a PayPal account.

Leisa Reichelt: Strategic User Experience

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If we’re going to positively affect our users’ experiences, we need to move beyond the interface, the design, and the content, and into the business. For most of us, the prospect of taking a seat at the strategy table is exciting but terrifying—and it requires entirely new skills, techniques, and language. In this presentation, Leisa will explore what it means to get involved with Strategic User Experience, through:

understanding experience across touchpoints, throughout the customer lifecycle; working across disciplines and silos to shape the product or service; and learning how to speak to business people about user experience in a productive way. We’re delighted to welcome Leisa Reichelt (http://www.disambiguity.com/), a leading user experience practitioner and community organiser. She left the agency and consulting world four years ago to work on finding ways to help start-ups get access to user experience consultancy, and to make some good experiences of her own. She has a background in user-centred design, design research, and information architecture, and she’s passionate about making these practices more accessible to companies with limited resources.

Diana Railton: Content Strategy and Digital Excellence

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Fresh from her presentation at Confab 2012 in Minneapolis (http://confab2012.com/speakers/bio/diana-railton), Diana will show how an effective content strategy depends on the right digital communications management, multi-disciplinary collaboration, and on integration of strategies across the organisation. As a growing number of organisations set up digital boards and digital centres of excellence, content strategists should take a pivotal role.

We’re delighted to welcome Diana Railton (http://twitter.com/dianarailton), who runs DRCC (http://www.drcc.co.uk/index), a corporate communications agency specialising in content strategy. In the last 12 years, she’s helped many organisations with web content and communication issues. Originally trained in commercial publishing, she’s held both communications management and research positions.

Schedule

6:00pm Arrive, grab a drink at the cash bar in the River Room (overlooking the Thames) 6:30pm Leisa Reichelt in the Studio 6:55pm Break (refresh your drink) 7:05pm Diana Railton in the Studio 7:25pm Break (refresh your drink) 7:35pm Interactive panel in the Studio (fishbowl-style (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fishbowl_(conversation))) 8:05pm Content Strategy Speed Dating in the River Room 8:45pm - 9:30pm Drinks and informal networking

Venue

Our venue is the beautiful Mermaid Conference Centre at Blackfriars. The talks and fishbowl panel are in the Studio, an intimate room with great acoustics and enough space for everyone to sit down, and the drinks and networking take place in the River Room, with panoramic views of the Thames—there’s a cash bar all night.

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