Conversational Collective turns 3
I’m totally amazed the Meetup I created back in December 2017 has grown so much AND is now global. We have almost 800 members and received an overwhelming response to our request for 2021 speakers. We’re ready to deliver our best year of programming yet!
The idea for this Meetup all started when I realized I wanted to learn more about voice user interfaces (UIs) and user experience (UX) design. I’m a UX designer that believes #VoiceFirst will be the next big thing to dominate the tech industry. To quench my thirst for knowledge (and to make myself a more valuable asset — hello, job security!), I ventured out to learn more about this up-and-coming technology. In 2017, there was still limited information about conversation design available. I purchased a few books, and read what I could find online from the developers working at Amazon and with Google’s Dialogflow. What I learned through my research was great, but I knew it wasn’t going to be enough for me to get a job in this field.
Years ago, I read a book written by Seth Godin called “Tribes,” which gave me the idea to create this Meetup. His book inspired me to become a Tribe leader and to start my own voice Meetup in Austin, Texas — where I’ve been living and working. The Meetup would be key to connecting those interested in the conversation design with thought leaders in the field and give the community a dedicated space to learn from them.
I originally called the Meetup “Voice UX,” but in an effort to be more inclusive to all the technology and people this space encompasses we have since rebranded twice and are now known as “Conversational Collective.” At the first Meetup, there were only 4 or 5 people, but I didn’t let that discourage me and continued to schedule Meetups once a month believing in the need for this community. After a while, we gained momentum and before I knew it I had some amazing people asking me if they could help organize the events. I was thrilled! With the help of my new co-organizers, Chris Traganos and Meredith Schulz, we started working to get the word out and build our Austin-based Meetup into the thriving community it is today! Thanks to them, in 2018, we hosted a Voice UX Open House at USAA’s design office in downtown Austin where vendors and students shared their voice-related products and ideas to attendees. It was a huge success!
Later on, the Voxable team (Lauren Golembiewski, Matt Buck, and Brittany Walla) joined as organizers. They helped host some great events and spoke about what it takes to build intuitive voice and chat experiences. They teach a Conversational Design Workshop and graciously offered to allow me and other members of our Meetup to attend.
In late 2018, Sarah Lynch joined as an organizer to help us coordinate events and promote our Meetup in her network. She gave a great talk in February 2019 called, “Intent-ional Conversational Design: Using classification for Class-y responses”.
Since then, our team of organizers has gone through some changes, but we’ve always been lucky to maintain a group of dedicated individuals committed to the conversational space. In late 2019, Christy Torres asked to join us as an organizer after speaking at one of our events earlier that year. Her ideas and active involvement in many related Slack channels has helped us spread the word about our events and increase attendance! She also helped us execute our newsletter and has spent time networking with different industry players to fill our speaker queue.
Little did we know what was in store for the Meetup when the pandemic changed all of our lives in 2020. Thankfully, our organizer team took the “new normal” in stride and brainstormed ideas for how to host our in-person events online.
I was excited about the global reach virtual events were going to give the Meetup. During 2020, Conversational Collective organizers have become a collaborative powerhouse both successfully transitioning our in-person community online and EXPANDING our audience outside of central Texas. Some of 2020’s highlights include:
- Increasing online event attendance to match and surpass in-person event attendance
- Growing our email list by 10x
- Scheduling speakers in Europe and Asia to learn about what different people around the world are building/creating in the conversational space
- Expanding our reach by so much that when asked for 2021 speaker applications from industry thought leaders, we had SO MANY applicants we had to reconsider our original plan for programming to include more speaker slots (a great “problem” to have)
The Conversational Collective co-organizers (Meredith, Lauren, Matt, Brittany, Christy, and myself) are looking forward to 2021 and what the future will bring. We’ll continue to host our Meetup virtually and hope to incorporate in-person events back in the mix once it’s safe. We’re excited to share the 2021 programming with you and thank all the amazing speakers and panelists who will join us to provide insightful and useful content to everyone in our conversational community!
Cheers to 3 years!
Happy Holidays and a Happy New Year!
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