Needed: 55 - 60 Person Venue in Silicon Valley

Apple Park

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I'm looking for a presentation venue in Silicon Valley that can hold 55 – 60 people. An ideal venue would be a college classroom with A/V.

Details

For nearly four years, I have been giving my speaking engagements in Silicon Valley. My talk focuses on Apple's design and marketing philosophy and why that makes Apple different.

The venue I've used for my presentation is no longer available. I found a similarly priced venue, but it only holds about 40 people. So, now, I need a new space which could be any professional location such as a large conference room, classroom, auditorium, etc. Do you know of a space that's available which isn't publicly advertised?

Requirements

1. Seat 55 – 60 people in a classroom setup with a screen and laptop projector.

This great venue, that I used for years, is no longer available

2. Located within 15 – 20 minutes of Cupertino for our visit and warm welcome at Apple Park.

A group photo during my group's warm welcome at Apple Park

3. Competitively priced with my previous venue ($200 – $250 per 1/2 day).

I had a great time presenting to billionaire Lu Junqing
and his philanthropic daughter, Jennifer.
Since I'm not a billionaire, I need an inexpensive venue.

Caveat

Over the years, I have looked at many venues near Cupertino, so I'm aware of hotel ballrooms and salons, but their costs can easily be 3x – 5x what I'm currently paying after adding in service fees, tourism and city taxes, A/V equipment rental, setup costs, etc. So, please let me know if you're aware of any large space that typically remains unused since that might be a good fit.


Plan B
What if I can't find a Silicon Valley venue that meets my requirements? Well, then, it's on to Plan B, which isn't all that bad... a full-time job in tech, ideally located in San Diego.
This is me: http://joemoreno.com.

Apple Design. Apple Marketing. Apple Talk.

Apple Park

1. Apple Design
2. Apple Marketing
3. Apple Talk


1. Apple Design
A good base metric for usability is both how long it takes to accomplish a task and how many actions it takes (clicks, taps, etc). Although good UX, involving human-machine interactions, typically involves familiarity, it doesn’t necessarily have to be familiar to be intuitive. (Think about the first time you saw the rubber band effect on the iPhone as a user scrolled to the top or bottom of a list – that was unfamiliar, yet intuitive.)

Fitts’s Law, named after USAF Lt. Col. Paul Fitts, puts a finer point on usability and ergonomics using simple formulas that relate the distance to a target with the size of the target. Fitts’s formulas date back to the mid-1950s and they apply nicely to computers and cockpits.

Fitts’s formulas:

Index of Difficulty = log₂ (2 x distance to target / target width)

Throughput = (Index of difficulty) / (Average time to complete the movement)

Throughput is important with computers because you don’t want a user to hit the wrong button and then have to backtrack to fix their mistake. While a computer can be very forgiving, in an aircraft, you don’t want to put the ejection button next the landing light switch so as to not accidentally hit the wrong one. 

Thanks to Fitts’s Law, this is why, on macOS, the menu bar for the active window is along the top of the screen, whereas, on Windows, the menu bar is attached to the top of each window. Having the menu bar on the top of the Mac’s desktop screen gives the target (File, Edit, View, etc) an infinite height because a user can’t move their mouse pointer beyond the edge of the screen, no matter how much they try. This is why macOS’s four corners of the screen make great hot spots. It is extremely easy to move a mouse pointer to any of the four corners to, say, lock the computer (requiring a password to unlock it). This, effectively gives the pixel, in each of the corners of the desktop, an infinite width and height, off the screen.

And while Fitts’s Law is great, design does have a bit of an artistic aspect to it. Good UX is designed with people in mind.

2. Apple Marketing
The goal of marketing is to match customers with products to generate revenue. A novice mistake new entrepreneurs make is to focus inward on what they think is important, instead of focusing on the customer experience. For example, many entrepreneurs will spend a lot of time and money designing their logo. Customers don’t do business with companies based on what their logo looks like. In other words, “No One Cares About Your Company Logo.” However, how you use your logo is very important; it’s critical to stay on brand in order to prevent brand dilation.

There’s a lot of noise out there, so a company’s marketing communications have to be clear and concise. This starts by leading with a product’s benefits before its features.

What’s the difference between a benefit or feature? The key features of a product (or service) enable the benefit for the customer. In other words, use a product’s key features to summarize its key benefit.

One of the best examples of leading with the benefits before the features was the introduction of the first iPod in October 2001. I believe, if any other company had created the iPod, such as HP, Dell, or Microsoft, they would have marketed it as “a 6.5 ounce MP3 player with a 5 GB hard drive, measuring 4” x 2.5” x 3/4”.” Even as a software engineer, I would have to breakout a calculator to figure out how many songs a 5 GB hard drive could hold.

Instead of touting the features, the slogan for the first iPod was, “1,000 songs in your pocket.” Elegant.

Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.

Lead with the benefits, before the features.

3. Apple Talk
So, what is it I do? I've detailed that here:
http://blog.joemoreno.com/2018/06/the-apple-way.html

More info on my talk, The Apple Way of Design and Marketing, here:
http://joemoreno.com/talk