Introducing Talk UX, a conference celebrating the work of women in design
Ladies that UX Boston makes it our mission to create a tech industry that welcomes and celebrates women. We strive to empower design teams to keep women off the sidelines, whether it’s by leading teams, speaking at conferences, or otherwise participating in their communities.
Our monthly meetups serve to promote women in the field: we create a safe space for people to come together and support each other. For the women who come to our events, we have a community where they can learn from one another, have role models, and feel empowered. For the men who come to our events, we want them to feel encouraged to make room for women at the table in their companies. Oftentimes there’s no one who celebrates our accomplishments and raises us up in the workplace. Ladies that UX encourages women to do that for each other.
Now, we’re introducing Talk UX 2018, an annual, international design and technology conference led by women and put on by the Ladies that UX Boston organization. At tech conferences, women speakers are in the minority, and there are some great organizations, like Women Talk Design and Innovation Women, that are trying to close this gap. For Ladies that UX — the Talk UX conference gives us a platform to do our part. We want women to feel empowered to speak at conferences, so we’ve put together an all-women lineup of speakers, each one with incredible stories to tell.
We feel so lucky to have accomplished speakers, panelists, and workshop facilitators, such as:
- Laura Granka, Director of UX, Google
- Elena Ontiveros, Content Strategy Manager, Airbnb
- Lola Oyelayo, Digital Product Strategist
- Lara Tacito, Senior Manager of Product Design, HubSpot
- Amy Deschenes, Senior UX Consultant, Harvard Library
- Kate Brigham, Design Director at ezCater
- Amy Cueva, Founder & Chief Experience Officer at Mad*Pow
- Libby Maurer, Director of User Experience at Hubspot
- Sarah Gibbons, Chief Designer, Nielsen Norman Group
- Meena Kothandaraman & Zarla Ludin, Experience Strategists & Co-Founders of twig+fish Research Practice
- Bhavika Shah, Product Manager at PluralSight and Kira MacLean, Senior UX Designer at PluralSight
And we have some wonderful sponsors who want to do their part in supporting women and diversity in tech, such as our lead sponsor, Adobe. We’ve also had strong support from our other sponsors, like HubSpot, CarGurus, Pluralsight, and ezCater. And a special thank you to a few more sponsors, Balsamiq, fuze Women’s Network, Pivotal Labs, Veracode, and Vermonster.
Finally, none of this would be made possible without the (completely volunteer-based) help of some pretty amazing women. Olga Perfilieva and I have led the charge, but these women have been putting in so much time to make this conference a success — to celebrate other women in our field, to lift one another up, and to pave the way for future women designers. Katie Langerman, Kavitha Krishnan, Carolyn Swanhall, Emily Dufresne, Christene Fair, YiYi Liu, Allison Grinberg-Funes, Hannah Schindler, Alinna Chung, Tyler Berman, and Liz Cormack — you are all inspiring.
Talk UX is in one month from today. There are still tickets available, and workshops are filling up fast. Buy your tickets and come celebrate women in design with us.
Ladies that UX Boston strives to create a welcoming and diverse environment at our conference by including people from various backgrounds and perspectives. For this reason, we have scholarships available for people from underrepresented groups in technology. Please fill out this form to apply!
