CapCHI Event: Lightning Talks

Please join us on Tuesday, December 8th for an "unplugged" version of CapCHI. We're moving away from our usual format to bring you a more casual night of Lightning Talks as we head into the holiday season. Ugly Christmas sweaters welcome.

Date: Tuesday, December 8th, 2015 
Time: Doors open at 6:00 pm; presentation begins at 6:30 pm
Place: The upstairs room at The Fox & Feather Pub and Grill, located at 283 Elgin St., Ottawa, ON, Canada (foxandfeather.ca).

Come for complimentary appetizers during our 6:00pm networking session and our partners at The Fox & Feather will provide attendees with a 10% discount on food and non-alcoholic drinks throughout the evening.

What are Lighting Talks?

Lightning Talks are a series of 5 minute presentations from a wide range of professionals and academics in the HCI, UX, and/or Design worlds. The topics are about what interests and excites them outside of their nine to five. Whether it's about technology, culture, art, or history, there's someone in our community who has a topic they're passionate about and we're going to hear 5 minutes of it. No matter what your interests, we guarantee you'll come away from this event having learned something new.

Here is our list of presenters, along with a brief description of their talks:

• Brett Tackaberry (Technical Director, bv02): Ottawa is a city full of great people doing incredible work. Meeting those people – especially if they’re outside of your field – can be challenging. Brett wants to introduce you to Tech4Good - an initiative bringing together people using technology for social good - and Random Hacks of Kindness - a hackathon for social good. We hope you will be inspired. We hope you will see that your expertise and experience is invaluable and you have a lot to give.

• Ben Waldman (Creative Director, bv02): A New Definition of ‘Memory': Did my Parents Drive a Citroën? Our understanding of the human brain is growing in leaps, and while we’re still a decade away from even nailing down the optic process of a mouse, there’s plenty to be excited about — especially for creatives. In a lightning talk that stretches beyond his normal call of duty, bv02 Creative Director Ben Waldman will present some of the interesting finds he’s made in the neuroscience of memory, what it means for creative marketers, and what it has meant to him personally.

• Ali Arya (Associate Professor of Interactive Multimedia, Carleton University): Marriage changes everything, or how I learned to stop worrying and love kids’ apps! A brief look at my experiences on the subject of family, and my journey from writing bedtime stories with my son to developing an educational app for children.

• Cornelius Racheriu (Managing Director, Ampli2de and Founder & Co-Chair, CanUX): Wanderlost - As designers, we are on a constant quest for inspiration. However, our daily routines and familiar environment can only inspire us up to a point. Cornelius will make the case for getting lost (mostly) on purpose in an unfamiliar environment while travelling, as an ideal activity that challenges you to break down your own creativity barriers and fuels your imagination. 

• Alasdair Stuart-Bell (Co-Founder, Jumping Elephants): Minecraft: UX HR's Perfect Tool -This talk by Alasdair Stuart-Bell, father of two avid Minecraft inhabitants, will explore how Minecraft functions as the perfect tool to assess whether UX practitioners are a good fit for your team.

• Jennifer Fraser (Design Director, Macadamian Technologies): Shaken or stirred: A Study in the Craft of Cocktails - We will take a whirlwind tour through the rise, the fall, and then the resurrection of the craft of cocktails. What led to the celebration and proliferation of this craft, why did it become a lost art and why has it risen again in popularity?

• Alvaro Vargas (Marketing and UX Design, Government of Canada): What I Learned from A Week on the Camino - These days we are not often put in situations in which we come upon our limits and are given a choice to stop or blow past them. In this brief talk, I will share some of what I learned while walking through northern Spain. 

• Anna De Medeiros (UX Designer, Electronic Arts): Fake it 'til you bake it – Are we born with our passions, or can passions arise from mastering skills? I’ll share how my love for the culinary arts blossomed out of a need. Drawing on social and cognitive learning theories, I explore how peer-to-peer online learning and related design patterns were critical to my transformation.

• Vidushi Gupta (VP of Design and Operations, Graduate Students' Association at Carleton University) - Travel fast, Travel often - At the age of 20, I took to travelling around the world for 3 months. I wandered to places I have never been and spent the night in several different locations. I barely ate two meals a day and slept little. I experimented with my conscience and my principles. I will be drawing out from specific anecdotes and how they inspired me to think, live and breathe design.   

• Luc Lalande (Executive Director, Entrepreneurship Hub at University of Ottawa) - Live biohacking of rotten meat in public spaces; creating living human skins on LEGO minifigures; and growing human tissues inside of apples. If you think this is science gone mad, you will be surprised to learn that the instigator of these projects is not only a scientist, but a self-described artists, hacker, endurance runner and entrepreneur. This talk is about a young scientist who sees no barriers between art and science.

• And You!!! That's right, if we have some extra time, we'll be opening up the floor for those so inspired as to tell us a story of their own.