A few months ago, us from the design team were buzzing with excitement when Shaza announced that anyone could potentially attend the World Usability Congress 2023 in Graz! About a week later, Azim, the UX Designer, Wan, from business development team and I, the product designer, got the news — the three of us were selected to join Shaza herself for the trip!

We strategised ways to gain as much knowledge, as this conference is a treasure trove of UX practices in global level presenting many learnings that we could adapt and adopt. Even though the four of us have different roles in Stampede, we came to Graz with one mission in mind. We all want to find opportunities to elevate the design capability standard in Malaysia! On the 8th of October 2023, the four of us packed our bags and flew to Austria. We landed in Vienna International Airport and straight away took the train ride to Graz, while soaking in the sights and learning about Austria’s train system along the way.

World Usability Congress is an international conference organised by Youspi (an Austrian UX, CX and Usability agency) focusing on topics revolving around usability and user experience design practices. Held annually since 2013 in Graz, Austria, the conference brings together professionals, researchers, and practitioners from various industries to discuss the latest trends, share insights, and showcase innovative approaches to continuously improve user experience. This event covers the wide spectrum of usability and user experience design practice; ranging from UX design, user research, product development, strategy, Ops and more, making it a highly relevant event for anyone in the tech and design field.

The event lasted for four days from 9th to 12th of October 2023. The first two days were Focus Days — containing industry-specific talks and in-depth workshops, and then the final two days were the Conference Days — the main event containing multi-track talks, masterclasses and keynote (maximum 4 tracks at one time). Azim and I attended workshops relevant to our respective practices, and then on Conference Days all four of us dispersed to maximise the learnings from the multi-track talks and connections made. Check out our learnings in another post with more detailed breakdowns!

Our main objective in Graz was to gather knowledge, but we didn’t miss the chance to connect with as many people as we can as the UX community in this side of the world is very friendly and engaging, like ours back home. We used this chance to build genuine connections with fellow UX-ers or virtually anybody we can interact with and built our presence in the region.

Even before the conference started, the interaction with the UX community already started by meeting Johannes of UX Graz — one of Shaza’s comrades in arms, having organised together the 24 Hours of UX in previous years remotely from across the world (Making this occasion their very first time meeting in person, which we couldn’t really tell from their sense of camaraderie)! He toured us around the beautiful city of Graz and introduced us to several of his colleagues along the way. Very memorable introduction to the event and hosting city. We also met Ahmed Al-Huwwari of UX Jordan and Peter Horvath — both committee members 24 Hours of UX, making this event such a special in-person meetup for them!

The following day, after completing our workshops, we attended the UX Graz meetup dinner that was open to any WUC attendees. As our usual practice in any mass gatherings, Stampede members scattered as we make connections with as many new faces as possible because we love connecting with a diverse cast of attendees, boosting the chance of getting many new and different perspectives. That very night was very exciting as everyone we met were very genuine and friendly, we also gained some insights into how the tech and design scene looks like in Europe through those valuable conversations. We all had the same mission going into the conference. The actual conference is on the next day, but we already got a glimpse of UX practice through the lens of Europeans and pumped up to go through with the rest of the event!

Real conference days came next. Naturally, we made many connections there as the WUC event was designed to give plenty of opportunities to network and mingle around — during breakfast, in-between talks (20 minutes gap between talks), lunchtime, and the night of picturesque hilltop at Schlossberg during the Networking Dinner. Networking there was so magical that we made so many new precious connections throughout the journey, and we long to see them again anytime in the future. Even after the event ended on our way back to Vienna via train, we connected by pure chance with Susanne, one of the WUC volunteers, that our hearts were filled with joy till the very end and beyond!

And I’d like to share some tips in connecting with event attendees of any large prestigious events, that might not be applicable to everybody but have worked for us;

Focusing too much on design & professional conversation topics every time with everybody can feel transactional and takes a toll on our energy. Just remember that everybody is human no matter how professional they are, and we just want normal conversations to know each other better before opening up more.

So, we tested a different approach with a Danish designer named Anton. Surprisingly, we found that genuine connections were made easily when we are invested in that person’s story. Our conversations that night started to change, as they revolved around our respective country, life, career journey and virtually anything that came across our minds. The conversation eventually led to career & professional topics at some point, but it felt more natural. It was less tiring, and we could maintain our social energy for a long duration. And more importantly, it didn’t felt

We carried this approach to make more connections throughout the event and we managed to learn more about people, common issues and values, and finally not forgetting; to talk about the design cultures abroad to learn from each other. We even scored an office visit to Eventim in Vienna (Thank you for your hospitality, Marcus and Katharina!), attributed to the small talk and genuine connections made with the people we met there. All in all, connections should be pure and have minimal underlying agenda, as we all appreciate the natural relationships between people — as we always do in design field.

The highlight of the World Usability Conference for us aside from the important profession-related learnings, was the connections made with the people, thanks to the numerous networking opportunities designed within the conference itself. We cherish all of them, and this bond will go a long way in the future in whichever means that we have no way of predicting.

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A Mexican wave was started by someone and over several rounds, grew into epic proportions. The gargantuan stage was generously illuminated by congregations of lanterns of purple, pink and green neons, all diverging from the top of the arena down to the center stage. The soundtrack on loop was “Reborn” by Talos. For a space this big, the acoustic was amazing and succinct. The backdrop, nestled between two giant screens, simply said “Web Summit”.

I was at the Davos for Geeks alright.

How did I end up here?

Late one night in November 2015, I received an email from Paddy Cosgrave, the founder of Web Summit, saying that Lilyana Latiff, the CEO of Aleph One has sent me a full guest ticket for the 2016 Web Summit in Lisbon under the Women in Tech initiative. That was a smart move by Web Summit, giving up 10,000 free tickets to female entrepreneurs and executives to promote better representation of women.

And obviously we women talk. And we talked a lot. We talked about Web Summit and Lisbon on Facebook and Twitter and to our fellow women friends. The 10,000 women were the catalyst to Web Summit’s social media marketing. Smart.

In the spirit of YOLO, I claimed the ticket and decided to worry about it later.

In the spirit of YOLO, I claimed the ticket and decided to worry about it later. With my workload, I didn’t think it was remotely possible for me to carve time, no matter how tempting the speakers lineup get (they tempt so, so bad) or how industry-changing the talks will be (they were) or just the fact it’s Lisbon, one of the most vibrant startup cities in the world (totally was).

I didn’t worry until October this year, when somehow, with the Web Summit happening in 3 weeks, I suddenly found three things converging at the same time: a good window of time to extricate myself from work, an amazing AirBnB deal and a good company to actually make the trip.

The opening (that we almost missed by ‘THIS’ much)

It was really difficult focusing on work to the days leading to the Web Summit. Some of us in what Malaysian Web Summit Whatsapp channel were already in Lisbon gallivanting in Belem and enjoying egg tarts.

A day before the summit, we arrived in Frankfurt for our connecting flight to Lisbon, which we totally missed due to the long immigration line and impossibly short transfer window. We were rerouted 14 hours later to Porto (300 km away from Lisbon) by the kind people at Lufthansa. We checked in to the most last-minute AirBNB I’ve ever pulled and the morning after, took the train from Porto to Lisbon. We arrived at noon, promptly settling in into our actual AirBNB in Graca, Lisbon’s historical neighbourhood. An Uber later, we finally joined the massive queue outside the MEO Arena.

We made it to the opening just in time.

The crowd lining up and moving into the arena. First sighting of my fellow geeks!

Some Web Summit veterans preferred to watch the opening keynote from the comfort of their hotel rooms. I contest that you have to be there to absorb the electricity that was Web Summit. The feeling of “I’m on the right track. What I do matters.” is the level of self-awareness you get being in the same room with 15,000 other geeks.

Collectively, you shape the industry and through the products you build, you shape how the world will experience the future.

Paddy Cosgrave kicking it off Source

Paddy Cosgrave kicked off the opening in his signature Web Summit tee and an iPad, which I assume is the lifeline of the entire operation. This is the 6th edition of Web Summit and despite the phenomenal increase in size (53,000 attendees this year), his team has found a good rhythm.

You see volunteers approaching people who seemed a bit lost (like us) offering genuine help and a smile—that sort of confidence will only come from solid crowd control planning beforehand. Most volunteers I know from other events tend to cringe from human contact or lacking information of the big picture. Even the live stream failure due to Wi-Fi problem was pretty much forgivable. After all, we’re the very people who deal with “shit breaks” on daily basis.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt taking the stage Source

Many people know Joseph Gordon-Levitt as the actor but you can add startup founder to that long list too now. His panel session was insightful and a major crowd-pleaser but I was almost envious at the lineup of Portuguese technopreneurs and startup founders honoured on the center stage by their Prime Minister and the Mayor of Lisbon. #startupLisbon is real.

The Summit happened during the US election day. One day we were all excited and empowered by the first Woman President and the next day everyone walked around in utter disbelief. This particular meltdown happened on that very day.

Another one of my favorite is the keynote by Gary Vaynerchuk. If you haven’t followed Gary, please do that now. He’ll psyche your inner entrepreneur like no one else can.

The Web App

The conferences are spread into three days and they run at the same so you will likely be running and dodging people from one stage to the next if you’re not careful with your planning. 53,000 people is quite the crowd and making real connection gets difficult when everyone has the attention span of a goldfish.

An app just for an event? Welcome to Web Summit. Source

The good thing is, the Web Summit has predicted this calamity-waiting-to-happen and released the Web Summit App two weeks prior to the event. You can browse attendees and speakers list and connect with them. (Hey, Ronaldinho did you get my message?)

I know a few people does this to secure seriously precious comm time with investors and potential partners before the Web Summit, and then attend the event to finally meet and seal business deals. The app also contains your ticket and people quite simply flip their smartphones for identification during Registration.

The Web Summit team also sends out push notification to alert attendees of potentially popular session so they can do crowd control better.

I used the app to connect to fellow Girls in Tech members, several key business partners and to plan my day throughout the Summit. The Web Summit team also sends out push notification to alert attendees of potentially popular session so they can do crowd control better. This is probably the gold standard for all conferences in the future.

21 Conferences under one roof (well, technically five)

The MEO Arena is not alone in hosting the Web Summit. The arena itself is huge (I’m running out of good adjectives here) but the 4 pavilions espousing it are each large enough to hold 2 conferences at both ends and an exhibition floor in the middle. There were in total 21 conferences happening at the Web Summit and if they didn’t make any sense to you at first (PandaConf? Future Societies?) trust me, they quickly would.

The MEO Arena

The conferences that were happening at Web Summit

AI is everywhere

Everybody seems to be talking about AI, bots and machine learning this year. Tech people are not necessarily fearful that the bots are taking over, but we do puzzle if our human skills will be made obsolete by smarter machines and how do we collaborate with AI to produce really astounding results and products we couldn’t possibly come out with without intelligent computational power.

Blockchain is making a huge wave too and I found myself nodding along, thinking “what in the world is blockchain?” and making mental note to Google it up.

Sidenote: I did Google it like the information hoarder that I am. A blockchain is the technology that allows for transactions to be securely recorded from computers globally into a decentralized digital ledger and cannot be changed after that. It is the technology behind Bitcoin but can easily be used between banks or financial institution, making transaction really fast and reducing cost. Think of sending money abroad and the transaction is almost instantaneous. Yes, we’re talking disruptive speed, baby.

But blockchains aside, one of the (many) reasons I happily endured the long flight to Lisbon was because of this guy.

Meet John Maeda

John Maeda is a designer and a technologist and his work explores the area where business, design, and technology merge. Previously a Professor at the MIT Media Lab and President of the Rhode Island School of Design, he currently heads Computational Design and Inclusion at Automattic (the company that build WordPress, yes THAT WordPress). Maeda advocates the movement of design for business and economic advancement (as opposed to design for arts) and that struck a chord in me. As a designer, we are positioned at a very strategic place to make a truly large-scale impact. In his own words, “Art is about making questions. Design is about making solutions.”

His panel session together with Bracken Darrell from Logitech titled “Design At The Core” touched on the importance of design thinking and its lack of inclusiveness in the industry. Designers by nature are not huge on collaboration. We tend to be private in our processes and vulnerable in our execution. In UX, sometimes we focus so much on making that we forget to ask the question who we are making it for. In the end, we should be aware that we are not designing for ourselves, but to solve problems for others.

Since this was my first Web Summit, my purpose was to absorb and learn as much as I could. I wanted to get a glimpse at the future in tech and I wanted to position Stampede to embrace that future.

Most of my time were spent attending talks and panel sessions chaired by design thinkers and tech entrepreneurs, discussing themes ranging from the future of working collaboratively with AI to designing responsibly in a world that is constantly hijacking your attention. I found myself overwhelmed and awed by the depth and strong morality theme behind design as the agent for good and I’m inspired to share them with as many designers out there.

Malaysians at Web Summit

My trip buddies were Lilyana Latiff, Linda Rasip and Ty Mazawaty from Aleph One. The long flight, the running like possessed trying to catch our flights at Frankfurt airport and eating so many Portuguese egg tarts we lost count; I did it all with these girls.

Trip buddies!

I’ve also had the privilege to meet a few other Malaysians at the Web Summit. Summer Goh was one of them. Originally from Pahang, she now lives in the south of France with her husband and came to the Summit as a volunteer. We connected over the app a month before Lisbon and she looked me up at the Creatiff Track. Summer and I also met Arnaud Ginioux and Leon Hudson from the stock image giant, 123RF.

Meeting up with fellow Malaysians

The crew of 16Two were also there, all 16 of them for the entire two weeks for some well-deserved Lisbon Time.

More comrades at Web Summit

I also met Karu Khoo, a veteran of Web Summit and founder of CreativeUnicorn, a digital marketing agency based in KL. After the Summit, Karu came up with his own bot to drive better brand experience. How cool!

Creative Unicorn’s brand building bot

Lisbon

The Web Summit started in Dublin but quickly outgrew the city’s available infrastructure (one of them the facilities to enable wi-fi usage for 50,000 people). It moved to Lisbon and will stay in Lisbon for at least another 5 years, and for good reasons. The Summit generates 200 million euros for Lisbon’s economy through hotel bookings, restaurants and taxi rides alone, and we haven’t even talked about direct values to businesses and startups in terms of investments, mentorship and market penetration. Uber raised their first $37 million at the Web Summit.

Sights of Lisbon, beautiful

But if I could sum up Lisbon in three words, it is efficient, charming and (pretty) cheap.

Efficient because the entire city geared up and prepared well for the onslaught of the Web Summit. The government has a positive and supportive presence at this totally non-political event and you cannot miss Web Summit banners around the city. There was hardly an Uber driver who does not know where the Summit was held and we also found that Uber sent additional drivers from Porto to help meet the demand for Uber rides throughout the event. A few Uber drivers were even attendees themselves and have their own startups. The metro station closest to the summit is 3-stops away from the airport, and within short walking distance from the arena itself. Since there were four of us, we took Uber mostly and the longest we’ve had to wait was 9 minutes.

Charming because the people of Lisbon are friendly and always happy to help. I have not been to many European countries but Portuguese are easily the friendliest ones I’ve met so far. In Portugal I felt welcomed and celebrated as a person in tech.

Cheap because the cost of living in Lisbon is comparable to Kuala Lumpur, which I didn’t know possible for a European city. Some groceries are in fact cheaper than KL and public transport makes going around really easy. All attendees get heavily subsidized metro fares for the entire week, making travel to and fro the event affordable and quick. If you’re flying TAP Portugal to attend the Summit, you could also use an attendee code and get 10% off your flight fare.

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As a production, the Web Summit is truly a massively successful undertaking. There is much to learn from how the Web Summit team managed to pull this feat and what attendees bring home with them after the event. As a city, Lisbon is beautiful and at the cusp of a technology revival, with the right startup infrastructure and without the astronomical cost of Silicon Valley. It has grown on me and I’m excited to bring members of the Stampede team with me for Web Summit 2017.

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A few months ago while waiting for my dinner, like many misanthropic millennials out there, I took out my phone and browsed around the Internet. A link lead me to an application form to attend TEDxUbud, which event is only limited to 300 participants. I thought, “Why not?” and filled the form up.

My dinner arrived, I stashed my phone away (because food is priority) and forgot about it.

Until a couple of weeks later, an email arrived in my inbox saying that my application has been approved!

So this is yet another why-not.  I booked my flight ticket to Bali in September and announced to the team I was going to represent Stampede at TEDxUbud. They first went “wha?” before going “yay!”

(My I’ll figure it out later was where to stay – but let’s not worry about that for now.)

Representing Stampede

I arrived and beamed when I saw my name along with my designation and Stampede, on the name tag.

If we have spoken to each other before, you would have known how proud I am of Stampede and my team based on, but not limited to, these facts:

• We are like family.
• We all work remotely since the beginning, and have found the workaround for most of the classic challenges of remote working of which many companies have been facing (i.e. communication, timezones, cultural differences, management etc.)
• As modest and relatively small as my team is, we produce great work all year round.
• We are like family.

I spent the day circling around the crowd, getting to know each other and eventually introducing Stampede amidst my incessant demands of asking them to view our website on their devices.

I hope I am not being creepy. Moving on.

When Traditions and Technology Merge

It was hard not to be inspired by all the speakers’ stories and achievements, honestly – they were all amazing.

I am a fan of design thinking and strategy, and all the possibilities design and technology could pave ways for dying traditions, so here are my two favourites.

Nancy Margried

Seven years ago, Nancy Margried and her team at Batik Fractal met with one of the most respected batik designers in the country. They told him they were able to create batik patterns using a computerised math algorithm called jBatik software. They were sure he’d be excited about their idea and wanted to collaborate, but he ended their meeting by saying that batik and technology should never go together and that Nancy and her team were insulting batik as a sacred culture.

Fast forward to 2014 and Nancy and her team have been training more than 1000 batik artisans and students throughout the country. As a result, Batik Fractal are bringing older and younger generations together to learn from each other and collaborate not only to preserve batik as a cultural icon, but also to develop an industry that supports millions of batik artisans throughout Indonesia.

Nancy is glad that seven years ago she didn’t listen when she was told that batik and technology should not come together – even if the man who told her was a batik legend.

Rizal Abdulhadi

Rizal Abdulhadi is a uniquely talented multi-instrumentalist, folk singer, and social activist from West Java, Indonesia, who has dedicated his music to struggle for real change and a more creative Indonesia and world. His latest project is called “Rasendriya”- an instrument he independently created from bamboo, combining guitar with didgeridoo and percussion. His lyrics, in both Indonesian and English, talk of travel, adventure, democracy, and opportunity.

Rizal spent over four years traveling and playing concerts through his homeland of Indonesia between the years of 2008-2012, since then traveling with his music through Singapore, Malaysia and Australia. His new album “Rizal and Rasendriya, Away” featuring his newly invented instrument and 5 musicians from Turkey, Czech Republic, Australia and Indonesia.

His energy is infectious – he simply brought the house down with his closing performance!

Those of Us In-Betweeners

On top of the inspirational talks, what I also love most about the folks attending TEDxUbud is most of them are like me – perpetually in transit between many cities.

Late 2012, after moving temporarily to London, I made a pact to myself that I would travel as much as I could and probably will not stay in one place for a long time. Because I am greedy, I also decide to work while on the move. Being in Stampede gives me the flexibility to project manage my team in any cities I’d be staying.

This concept is popularised as the term digital nomad. I am skeptical of the term, but if that is what describes my current lifestyle, I would take it any day.

About TED, TEDx and TEDxUbud

TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) is a nonprofit organisation devoted to Ideas Worth Spreading. Started as a four-day conference in California 30 years ago, TED has grown to support those world-changing ideas with multiple initiatives. The annual TED Conference invites the world’s leading thinkers and doers to speak for 18 minutes. Their talks are then made available, free, at TED.com.

Created in the spirit of TED’s mission, “ideas worth spreading,” the TEDx (‘x’ stands for ‘independent’) program is designed to give communities, organisations and individuals the opportunity to stimulate dialogue through TED-like experiences at the local level. To date, more than 7,000 TEDx events have taken place all around the world.

Each year TEDxUbud features amazing lineup of Indonesian and international entrepreneurs, designers, storytellers, and performers sharing their ideas with a curated audience of 300 at Fivelements in Bali, Indonesia.

(P.S: With the exception of my big grin in the second photo, the rest of photos, and some of the words are reworded from TEDxUbud 2014 Official Facebook page. Thanks!)

(P.P.S: And if you are worried that if I ever did find a place to stay, it was actually pretty sweet!)

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