The people
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About
The UXR Collective began as a handful of user researchers in Toronto swapping what they were learning. It became a local conference, then a large one, and in June 2020 — when UXRConf went fully remote as UXRConfAnywhere and dropped its ticket price to $99 with unlimited pay-what-you-can seats — it stopped being a Toronto event at all, drawing 3,000 attendees that year and 4,000 the next. That reach is what the founders built Learners on: the bet that professional development for researchers works better as a free, sponsor-funded community than as a paid course catalogue. Nine years in, the organisation counts more than 35,000 attendees across 30-plus events in ten cities and three countries, all free to attend, funded by sponsors. Its largest is Research Week, which in 2026 brought over 2,000 researchers to Fort Mason Center in San Francisco with 33 sponsors — the company calls it the biggest research festival in the world. Alec Levin, who co-founded the earlier user-research company SteadfastBeta and studied cognitive science at the University of Toronto, is co-founder and chief executive; Maggi Mitchell is his co-founder.
Backers
Sponsor-funded rather than venture-backed — the organisation states that sponsors are what keep its events free, and no funding round has been announced.
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Quick answers
What is Learners?
A worldwide community for user researchers and designers, running free events — UXRConf and Research Week among them — plus content and learning programmes, paid for by sponsors rather than by attendees.
Where did Learners come from?
From the UXR Collective, a Toronto meetup started in 2017 by Alec Levin and Maggi Mitchell. It grew into a local conference, then a remote one that drew 3,000 attendees in 2020 and 4,000 in 2021, and the platform followed from that.
How big is it?
The organisation reports more than 35,000 attendees across 30-plus events in ten cities and three countries, with Research Week 2026 bringing over 2,000 researchers to San Francisco.
Who from Learners is in this directory?
Alec Levin, its co-founder and chief executive, who spoke at TechTO in November 2015 on how to talk to users, then running the user-research company SteadfastBeta.