Hi Dave,

This is a great idea and I’m looking forward to seeing what you compile. Here’s my story:

I came to Interaction Design by way of journalism in the mid-90s when I mistook HTML for Word Perfect reveal codes(!) and fell madly in love with the internet. I created dozens of small (and sadly atrocious!) sites for local businesses, while reading everything I could about usability, design, etc. Most of my work in the 90s makes me cringe but by 2003, I had designed several decent enterprise software applications. I was enjoying my work but I was also frustrated. It was really hard to explain my job and my job titles were completely mis-aligned with what I actually did: Project Manager, Product Manager, etc. I didn’t have any formal design training and I’m a piss-poor graphic designer so I wasn’t really sure where I fit in the world of creating digital product. Not being able to confidently name and describe my role, left me feeling a crisis of confidence. I felt like something was missing.

In those days, I was the lone designer and my work was always being inserted as an afterthought. The requirements would be given to the dev team and they would already be building when the director of development brought me into the project. I tried to explain why this was backwards but got nowhere. I felt like I was taking crazy pills! I made an effort to be-friend the developers so they would bring me in earlier, and thankfully, one of them recommended Alan Cooper’s book, The Inmates are Running the Asylum. Finally, I felt like my ideas about flipping the process where validated. Doing a search for a pattern mentioned in About face lead me to stumble onto IxDA.org.

IxDA.org discussion list quickly became my #1 resource for all things interaction, and it gave me the piece of mind that I’m not alone, that others are struggling with the same design and format challenges, business communication issues, etc. I lurked for ages before I finally felt confident enough to start posting. When the first Interaction conference in 2008 was announced I knew I had to attend.

That first conference was a magic point in my career. Straight from the airport I headed to the Pirate House for the first local leader’s workshop where I met Josh Seiden, Dani Malik, Pauric O’Callaghan, MJ Broadbent, Niklas Wolkert and a dozen others who where running face-to-face groups in their cities. They were so helpful and encouraging! Meeting them made me sure that I wanted to start my own local group and their advice helped me formulate a plan to make it happen. The conference was kick-ass in every way. The speakers, the venue the food, and most of all the people. It was exhilarating to meet hundreds of other people who where my flavor of curious, empathic, techno-phile, sci-fi loving, nerdy awesome. It was like finding my secret family!

When I returned home, I started working to organize my first local event. Dave, you personally helped me by introducing me to Jennifer Bove at HUGE and suggesting that HUGE host my first event. It was incredibly helpful because I was really nervous about pitching a company to sponsor such a thing and also, I had applied for a job at HUGE (one of the top interactive agencies in LA) a few month prior and had been soundly ignored. The opportunity to plan and pull-off a large event with the company I was dying to work for that was an incredible gift! I worked with HUGE LA staff to orchestrate two back-to-back events on process and user research and luckily HUGE finally took notice of me and hired me as a senior interaction designer. Thanks to IxDA, I am now confident in my career, have many close friends in the IxDA community, and I am gainfully employed at my favorite Los Angeles agency!

I continue to look to the IxDA community for guidance, support, and occasionally entertainment. The Los Angeles IxDA face-to-face group has been meeting regularly with an average attendance of 75 and I am now honored to be on the Interaction ’11 planing committee as Global/Local Chair. I am so incredibly grateful that the IxDA is helping push our discipline forward and has helped me develop true friendships with other designers all over the the world.

Feel free to edit this down. I could go on and on about how much I love the IxDA!