Hey Patrick, thanks for spending the time to chat.
Do you think it is more of an advantage being either a generalist or a specialist?
Thanks for your questions everybody.
The webinar is now over. We’ll write a wrap up post with answers to your questions.
For those of you that attended, we’d love to hear your feedback.
Thanks heaps to everyone who attended the webinar and contributed questions - such a great bunch of topics. We didn’t quite get through all of them on air, but we’ll continue the conversation here.
We’re just rendering the audio and video of the webinar now and will post that on the blog later today. A transcript will be up in the next day or two.
In the meantime, let us know any questions we missed getting to!
Question: i don’t know if this has been asked during the Webinar, but what do you recommend in a UX portfolio? How many pieces do you think is a good amount? I’m a student that is going to graduating in the next couple months and I’m trying to get myself ready for a job soon so any other input would be really nice.
A big thankyou for the great webcast this morning 
Thank you guys for great webcast, unfortunately I couldn’t participate in live session as it was deep night in Armenia, but I spend whole morning on it today. Thank you once again for the opportunitie to ask questions (it is always exciting to hear own name). There is only one thing I’d like to mention. Could you do better sound next time. I could hardly understand the words, or, may be, it was only hard to me. Thanks again.
Thanks for posting the recording…I was signed up, but was stuck in 4,000,000 inches of unplowed snow Saturday evening.
Whoa, that sounds awesome. It’s hard to comprehend since we’re currently right in the middle of summer! Where are you?
In the midwest of the U.S., also known as Hoth. Right now the idea of summer is hard for us to comprehend, this brutal winter has been the kind of thing Game of Thrones warns about.
Really wanted to attend this, should have snuck a few questions in beforehand, but snowstorm ‘Titan’ had different plans. I’ll give it a watch over the weekend.
If you have follow up questions once you’ve watched it, post them up and I’ll ask Patrick to jump in and answer.
I watched the video last night and have to say it was very informative, and a huge thanks to Patrick for sharing his time. I was pleased to hear his recommendation for Kelly Goto’s Web Redesign 2.0 book at the end…I bought that around when it came out, which was shortly after I graduated college, and is the only book aside from Krug’s Don’t Make Me Think that I’ve been dying for an update (the latter of which was just updated a few months ago). That book is so good, and was the one where I knew UX was what I wanted to do.
I don’t want to impose on his time as he’s already given us a ton of info already, but I do have a few other questions if that is OK? I know the man is busy so I don’t want him to have to be on retainer here in perpetuity.
I can’t speak for him but I’m sure we could swing it. 
Ask away.
As an aside: There is a thread here about recommended reading. Why don’t you add those books to it?
OK then:
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Quickie: What was the link to the portfolio site that you recommended/lauded as a good example? I never saw the URL in the vid. I think you were going to send it over & Matt was going to ink it in on the screen, but I didn’t see it.
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More in-depth/self-serving: I’m looking into UX positions. In the Chicago area quite specifically, which you mentioned being as better served towards more generalist types, rather than the west coast specialists. I’ve been mostly in-house web/UI design, doing wireframes, visual design/mockups, and front-end HTML/CSS/JS, and some Wordpress & PHP implementation. But with a scant body of work in my portfolio I’m not getting a whole lot of bites on applications. I’ve just been tasked with converting my employer’s site (national billion dollar company, I’m the sole web designer here) to responsive and I’ve convinced them to allow me to do usability testing, something we have amazingly abstained from for far too long. But would this project be enough? What kind of work should I be doing on the side, or should I focus that time on reading up on human/computer interaction, psychology, or other books related and just focus my time on this project? The link from #1 might be enough info. Hopefully I gave enough info of my own, don’t want to deluge you with a life-story.
Anyway, thank you very much!
Here’s the model I recommend:
https://www.behance.net/laiyeelori
You’re going to have to do more projects. Having just one set of usability tests isn’t good.
I would focus on reading books, and seeing how you can pivot your current job into a UX position. Remember that visual design is one skill set in UX, and you can combine it with others.
Looks like it’s time to get crackin’ then. I am positioning my current position towards more UX, especially with this responsive redesign overhaul, so looks like I’m on the right track there. Going to have to brainstorm how to get more projects on the side, particularly anything beyond brochureware (I know visual & front-end design, but am not a back-end guru by any means).
Thank you very much for response, I really appreciate it.
What about offering your services free to not-for-profits or schools or something? That would be win-win.