WHAT I DID
BRANDING
CONTENT STRATEGY
MARKETING STRATEGY
MidwestUX is a community-organized design conference that celebrates the many definitions of design. Over three days, 600 attendees and 25 speakers come together to advance UX through the lens of a particular theme each year.
As the 2018 chair, my vision was to turn this yearly conference into a community. Because the committee changes hands year after year as it travels from city to city, there was no structure in place for teams to expand the brand’s identity or strengthen the community — all their efforts were put towards getting things up and running anew each year.
During my 14 months piloting the ship, I set out to create three things for the organization:
Brand guidelines
Content strategy
Conference planning template
WHAT I FOCUSED ON
BRAND GUIDELINES
I created documentation that would quickly and thoroughly onboard any new MWUX member — content guides, templates, best practices, macros, and a solid jumping-off point for future content.
CONTENT STRATEGY
Given my goal of cultivating community, my content strategy focused on engaging members of our community beyond just those who attend the conference year after year.
SPONSORSHIP & MARKETING CONTENT
I wanted all content to provide value to attendees, including what would have otherwise been traditional “Sponsored by” signs that fade into the background. I extended a concept from our social media strategy to give sponsors a personality and create more engaging signage.
CONFERENCE PLANNING TEMPLATE
Since the conference planning is passed on to a brand new group of individuals each year, there were many items being created from scratch each year — this included previous sponsors’ goals, email macros, a timeline template, and even brand assets. I created a massive template so that teams can now focus on the important, creative aspects of planning: theme and content.