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Speaking & Teaching

I enjoy speaking and teaching as time allows, on subjects ranging from the nitty-gritty topics of front-end development to highly-theoretical topics involving social psychology as it relates to user experience, and a lot in between.

Lately, I've been speaking about topics relating to:

  • Product Design as a User Experience discipline. How to think holistically about the product before and during the design process, considering business goals in concert with user goals, and shaping product requirements into an offering that has a great chance of success.
  • How design and UX fit into an agile process. Namely, how to ensure that designers of all types have adequate time and resources to do quality work while still fully embracing an agile methodology at the project level.
  • Low-budget and short-timeline UX practices. Anyone can do good UX work given an unlimited budget and timeline, but when the constraints are tight, it can be a challenge to do anything other than make assumptions.
  • The impact of psychology on the user experience. Design patterns and principles are what help us get from a problem to a solution faster, but when they don't address our solutions, there's another option besides trial and error: bringing theory from social sciences to apply them to design.
  • HTML5 & CSS3. These new front-end standards (or in-progress standards) may not be ready for every site yet, but judicious use of them can be made today and can save you hours of development time for the right clients. Note, this site makes use of both.

If you're interested in having me speak at your event, do contact me using my contact form.

Avatar of M. Jackson Wilkinson

I'm M. Jackson Wilkinson, a technologist, designer, speaker, educator, and writer in San Francisco. I'm the CEO and Founder of WeSprout, which is coming soon. I'm from Philadelphia, went to Bowdoin College in Maine, root for the Phillies, and love to sing.

I Teach

Since late 2008, I've been on the faculty of Boston University's Center for Digital Imaging Arts, where I teach part-time courses on web design-related subjects like CSS and project-centric classes. It's a great opportunity to help shape some great talent and encourage good work, and it makes other speaking gigs a piece of cake.

I'll be Speaking

I'm lucky that Viget allows me to travel and speak as I get the opportunity. In the next few months, you can find me speaking at the following talks or panels:

Designing Balance into your Agile Process
Webstock 2009, Wellington, New Zealand
February 16, 2009 — February 20, 2009
How MacGyver Would Do Design Research
South by Southwest Interactive, Austin, Texas
March 13, 2009 — March 17, 2009
How MacGyver Would Do Design Research
Web 2.0 Expo 2009, San Francisco, California
March 31, 2009 — April 3, 2009
Keeping it Snappy: Improving Site Performance
Atlantic Internet Marketing Conf, Halifax, Canada
April 22, 2009 — April 23, 2009
Panel: Getting Your Technology Right
Bootstrap Maryland, College Park, Maryland
May 2, 2009
Hey LaunchBox: User Experience Really Matters
LaunchBox Digital, Washington, DC
June 4, 2009
How MacGyver Would Do Design Research
Refresh B'More, Baltimore, Maryland
June 10, 2009
Getting Up to Speed with HTML5 and CSS3
Refresh DC, Washington, DC
July 16, 2009
Jacks of All Trades, or Masters of None?
South By Southwest Interactive, Austin, TX
March 11, 2010
Designing the Product
UX Web Summit, Everywhere
April 21, 2010