We’re all Event Planners Now

An excerpt from a conversation/podcast, I had with Russ Unger. Russ is a user experience consultant and the co- author of Designing the Conversation: Techniques for Successful Facilitation (Voices That Matter).

Joe: I had a feeling that this is somewhat, not necessarily the whole resume or the whole job description, of someone that manages the design group. These were actual things that a person had to have in his bag to be able to do his job.

Russ Unger: I think that’s very fair. I kind of jokingly said, “We’re all event planners now”. I mean from anything like getting your team together to defining a team charter or communicating rules or any rules of engagement. I think Kevin Hoffman talks a lot about meetings, and I think a lot of meetings aren’t run well and when you take a look at Designing the Conversation and you couple it with Kevin’s information about his meetings and stuff. That’s a good thing to put in your back pocket. I’m one of those rare breeds to tighten the meeting invitation to somebody it’s got an agenda or probably have the bullet points on what we’re going to do. I’m the one who is asking about next steps and making sure that we’ve spent our time well. I don’t like to waste other people’s time. I consider it to be very valuable. I want to make sure that we’re doing all the things we can and if that means putting in a few extra hours planning to get something right so that the hour that everyone’s together is more beneficial. That’s what I’m going to do. It’s funny people think of a one hour meeting as a one hour meeting, but you got 8 people in there and they are all making a hundred and twenty bucks an hour, you are suddenly wasting away potentially a thousand bucks just by having people not do something and over the course of time that adds up quick if you start not planning well. So, that’s the way I look at things at least.

Joe: Well, you also entered something else in just about each chapter, I didn’t check to see if every chapter had one, but the Meeting the Expert section. What was your thinking and what did you want to accomplish with that?

Russ: That is something that we tried to do with A Project Guide to UX Design too. We interviewed a lot of people in the field, and we wanted to make sure that people get perspective and it’s not just a Russ, Brad and Dan thing, but it’s also, here’s some other smart people who can give you their perspective and their view and if lines up with ours great, or if gives you an opportunity to find someplace else to explore, even better and if it’s a little contrary to what we’ve said, that’s okay too because there’s no real one right way to set every one of these things up. We’re just kind of basing it upon our experience and how we’ve refined ourselves over time. So, those experts, a lot of those are friends or referrals and people who became friends; they really rounded it out all out in the book and make sure that people understand; it’s not just Russ, Brad and Dan, kind of preaching their way.

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