Melt Yourself Down, The UX of Living & Push Conference

Weekly Update 2016-43: The indescribable yet lovely music of Melt Yourself Down, the user experience we apply to our lives and the places we inhabit, and the wonders of my experience at Push Conference in Munich last week.

Music: Melt Yourself Down
I am having a hard time describing this music. It sounds like world music, but has some really strange synth effects and repetition. I'd call it a mix of jazz, punk, and some sort of African tribal rhythms, with a DJ added in for good measure. Truly a case of multiple personality disorder if I've ever heard one through music. But it's great! It's got a good beat and kind of keeps me on my toes. Check this song out:

Accomplishment:
I have successfully taken my first trip all by myself! My trip to Munich went extremely smoothly, and I'd like to give a shoutout to the subway system, which was really easy to use and well designed. While I seemed to be one of the only attendees to bring a laptop, I took laborious notes for my colleagues to benefit from.

I also managed to buy, write, and mail eight postcards (you'll know soon enough if you were one of the lucky recipients of such postcards) all without the help of any actual people. The issue was that my last day was Sunday, when the post offices are closed. I had to google search how much postage I would need, and then obtain it from a stamp vending machine that only accepted coins. It was quite a feat. Now I can only hope they make it to Canada!

Goal:
Of course, the main reason I went to Munich was to go to the amazing Push Conference. It was truly eye-opening, with every speaker an obvious expert in their chosen field. How inspirational. So to commemorate the awesomeness, I'll be writing a blog post for each day of the conference. I'd like to get that done this week. I also have to make a presentation for my colleagues at work (to pass along the information), so it'll be good prep for that.

I'd also like to do my best to connect with all the people I met at the conference. I have a list of everyone, but I have forgotten some of the names so I don't know how well I'll be able to find them. I was surprised that the conference didn't have an event app, which would have made networking much easier...but there is a Facebook event that may help some.

Random Thought: The User Experience of Living
Moving into a new home, the thought of the process of moving, always gives me a little anxiety. Not because of the time and effort it takes to pack things up, hire movers, take time off work, none of that bothers me. Nope, it's really in the little edits we make to our homes as they relate to our daily lives. For example, where should I put the oven mitts so I'll be able to reach them when the cookies are ready to come out of the oven? Where do my clean linens go before I'm ready to use them? Where do the dirty linens go before I am ready to wash them? I have answered all of these questions as they relate to my current dwelling, but it has taken time and I still make little changes as I think of them, even almost a year later.

This idea of having to start the user experience of my home over is what I hate the most about the idea of moving. Though, on the flip side, I know that some people don't think about this nearly as much as I do. For example, a friend was expressing his distaste to me that his parents use utilitarian things like ladders and stools as storage for other objects. When he needs the ladder or wants to sit on the stool, he has to move the items somewhere else (and presumably back to their original home if he doesn't want to cause a fuss). Why wouldn't his parents view the visual of stuff piled on a stool as a reminder to find a better spot for the items? Perhaps I would be happier if I learned to care less about this sort of thing...but I think it's part of my day job.

Inspiration: Push Conference (of course!)
I seriously couldn't believe how magnetic all of the speakers were. I also really enjoyed all of the booths set up in the lobby with interesting things to check out and interact with. But what I really appreciated was that Munich (and Europe as a whole) really seems to place a high value on design. That, mixed with the fact that I had no trouble getting around made me feel like I could live there someday. Just as I felt in Shanghai, the world is becoming much more connected and even travelling 13 hours on a plane doesn't seem like such a big deal anymore. Now if they could only find a cure for jet lag.

More on my trip to Munich and the conference coming soon!