Simon Willison’s Weblog

What would be the best design conference to attend in 2013?

My answer to What would be the best design conference to attend in 2013? on Quora

That’s a pretty tricky question to answer... there are a lot of excellent UX conferences around (we’re listing 69 upcoming UX events on Lanyrd at the moment, and more get added frequently). A few things you should consider:

• Where are you based, and how far are you willing to travel?
• Are you interested primarily in learning things or in meeting relevant people?
• What’s your budget?
• Are you looking for a single day event or something longer?

In terms of UX there are more academic events (ACM CHI), more commercial events (the An Event Apart series, UX London), or events like IA Summit that bridge the two worlds.

There are also an increasing number of smaller one-two day events dotted all over the map—events like UX Hong Kong 2013, Convey UX in Seattle, UX Munich, UXMad 2013 in Madison, UX Lx in Lisbon...

Sorry this isn’t a direct answer to the question, but the truth is that there’s a whole bunch of factors in picking the right event for your time and budget.