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Twenty years ago when a non-profit organisation wanted to raise money they would “throw a ball”, or a dance.

A Ball was never just a dance. It was a party for people to meet new friends, and exchange new ideas.

About 4 months ago Danny Hope and me invited Rory Sutherland (famous for his TED session) to give a talk at UxBrighton, a local group that holds monthly meet-ups. Rory said yes, and then the panic set in. Our normal meetings attract maybe 50 people. How many people would Rory attract?

We would need a large venue. And to compound these problems we also decided to ask Eric Reiss, who is probably the No 1 European UX Guru.

Now Danny believes very strongly that the monthly events should be free, but this is getting harder and harder, as apart from some support from Madgex, UxBrighton has no sponsors. We had the stars. So why not throw a conference?

The idea was to charge a small amount (£69.00 early bird), and even smaller amount if the conference goer promoted the event via twitter. We did not have to charge as much as other conferences because University of Brighton has lent us their theatre.

Getting the talent to fill the other speakers slots was easy. Europe has many people with great ideas. The only issue is for them to get a chance to share those ideas.

The world wide web was the idea of an Englishman, Tim Berners-Lee living in France, working in Switzerland, working for a pan European organisation. Even the word User Experience was invented by a European, Bill Moggridge. But both Tim Berners-Lee, Bill Moggridge, and countless others had to go to America to see their ideas come to fruition.

UX Brighton is giving those new talents a platform, and hopefully other User Experience conferences will follow our lead and have more Europeans at their events.

Has the idea worked? Well the event has sold out. And next Monday we will find out if “we had a ball” or not

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