Vacasa Office

CX Obsession is a meetup for Customer Experience professionals and a showcase of brands doing awesome, innovative work in CX.

In Hospitality, experience is everything. So what can we learn from the industry that all but invented Customer Experience? AskNicely presents CX Obsession, an evening with four customer-obsessed hospitality brands relentlessly focused on delivering amazing experiences. Hear from the experts what sets them apart in their quest for the ultimate experience. You will walk away inspired and with a few new ideas to apply in your own practice, whatever your industry.

Taking place in Vacasa's beautiful Pearl District office space, come to CX Obsession ready to exchange questions, stories, and ideas with those just as customer-obsessed as you are. We'll provide the drinks and snacks.

Here's what we have planned:

5:30pm - 6:00pm Registration, Drinks & Appetizers: Check in and network with the CX Obsession community while you grab a bite to eat and drink.

6:00pm - 6:50pm Inspiring talks and a panel discussion/Q&A with our speakers:

Liz Walker, Product Lead — Airbnb Nate Tomlinson, Director of Customer Experience — Vacasa Chris Bebo, Director of Operations — Provenance Hotels Sean O'Connor, General Manager & Partner — KEX Portland

6:50pm - 7:00pm Debrief: In small groups, take a moment to reflect on what you've heard and share your observations. Write down one action item or takeaway that you will take back to your organization.

7:00pm - 7:30pm More Drinks, Apps, and Networking: Grab a few more nibbles and chat with your peers as we close out the evening (or take a peek at the view from the gorgeous rooftop patio!).

We are at Vacasa again for our April 30th Meetup! This time for a CSS study night.

Bring your projects, mockups, designs, questions, concerns and let's work on them as we learn the power of CSS together 🎉 We are also going to be enjoying some pizza, beers and drinks courtesy of TEALS - Bringing CS to every High School (sponsored by Microsoft). Help us provide the right amount of food and drinks, kindly RSVP at: https://www.meetup.com/LatinxTechPDX/events/259793278/

Agenda
* 6:00p - Doors Open
* 6:30p - Socialize + Snacks & Drinks
* 7:00p - TEALS - Volunteering opportunities (Helen Henry)
* 7:10p - 8:30p - Geek out and learn some CSS together

One thing that became abundantly clear in 2018 is that our relationships with our phones, and digital technologies in general, began to seem less like a partnership and more like an indentured servitude.

The zeitgeist last year was saturated with terms like “digital attention crisis,” “distraction addiction,” “mindful tech,” ethical technology,” and “time well spent.” When, in August, Facebook and Instagram introduced a new dashboard to tell us how long we’ve spent inside their apps, they were responding to a groundswell of concern that these apps are hijacking our attention in ways that are not aligned with users’ best interests but, rather, mainly with the interests of advertisers. “Engagement,” the chief currency of Silicon Valley since the first personalized ad appeared, has become inextricably linked with the hidden design practices that prioritize user time on platform above all other considerations. As a result, we’ve all begun to feel the pinch of “the cost of free.”

In 2018 some of us started pushing back. People like former Google Design Ethicist Tristan Harris and groups like the Center for Humane Technology sought to make our digital tools more human-centered, more accountable and maybe a little less less powerful -- and their views flipped from fringe to the mainstream in what has been called a “techlash.”

On January 29, we’ll gather for a hands-on look at how design is at the heart of this issue: the bottomless newsfeeds, the limited menu choices, the proliferating Autoplay function, notifications set to “ON” by default, and all the intermittent variable rewards that turn our phones into slot machines with dopamine payouts.

We’ll examine our own relationships to our devices and the apps we can’t stop looking at. And we’ll explore what a truly human-centered digital ecosystem could look like.

PCDT organizer Patrick Sharbaugh will be joined by Dr. Dan Rubin, a Portland clinical psychologist who specializes in mindfulness-based psychotherapy and is an adjunct professor of psychology of Maitripa College, where he teaches courses on the intersection of psychology and Buddhism. Dan and Patrick are both active members of the Community for Humane Technology, the outreach arm of the Center for Humane Technology whose aim is to align technology to humanity's best interests.

Bring your mobile device. You’ll need it!