Conference activities

Sponsored Panel: Organized and presented Trends in User Research panel featuring experts Jean Anderson, Janice (Ginny) Redish, Whitney Quesenbery, and Todd Zaki Warfel. The session was well-attended and received overall good reviews. A podcast of the session will be made available in September.

Community activities: UUX hosted a welcome table at the opening reception, where we collected cards from attendees who stopped at our table for a door prize (1GB USB drive). The drawing was held at the community social, a first time event for this community. The social was at the local Hard Rock Cafe and had just over 20 attendees, which is more than business meetings at breakfast times have drawn in recent years despite being in competition with some other evening events. UUX provided appetizers.


Election of full slate of officers

 In June, a full slate of officers was elected. UUX now has a leadership core:
Manager, Mary Deaton
Assistant Manager, David Dick
Treasurer, Michael Harvey

Accomplishments thus far

1. A conference call was held to discuss budgeting for 2009 and activities for the remainder of 2008. 
   
2. Established a wiki for use by UUX leadership, hosted by Mary on her business domain. The wiki has reduced the amount of e-mail communication and provides a record of discussions. Google Docs is used for collaboration on reports, budgeting, and other activities.
   
3. Volunteer Eric Hughes assists Assistant Manager David Dick in developing plans for educational Web seminars.
   
4. Manager Mary Deaton and Webmaster Cheryl St. Charles are evaluating wiki services.
   
5. Manager Mary Deaton has a blog (using the free Blogger service) to keep members informed about budgeting.
   
6. World Usability Day planning, and other activities the SIG is involved in. The blog allows for more time-sensitive communication than the quarterly newsletter and does not require additional time from the Webmaster.
7. Conducted a UUX member survey to evaluate priorities of training and education offerings.
   

Plans for remainder of 2008

Mailing to members: This Fall, we will mail our membership to inform them know about plans for 2009 and encourage them to update their email information so they do not miss out on announcements.

Pilot Web seminar: We are considering learning more about Web seminars by co-hosting a seminar with another SIG.

Newsletter: Published one issue of Usability Interface during this period. Articles were "Usability for Everyone" by Michael Harvey; "Making a Case for Explicit Documentation Requirements" by Pradipto Das of the India Chapter; and "Evaluating Online Help" by Meghashri Dalvi of the India Chapter.

Sherri Martin, Assistant Editor, replaces David Dick as Editor starting with the October issue. We did not receive articles for publication and had to collect articles through direct solicitation (cold calls). We were also unable to find suitable articles in Chapter newsletters; very few newsletters are publishing articles about professional development and tools. Despite few contributors, the newsletter team continues to publish a newsletter with educational and informative content.
Planning for 2009

Membership survey: To prepare for budgeting, a survey was posted for all members asking which of several activities they would prefer the SIG undertake in 2009. The survey was announced on the discussion forum and via email to the entire membership. Over 115 members responded.

Based on results of the membership survey, our focus in 2009 is to develop educational Web seminars and podcasts, start a wiki as a means of sharing knowledge within the community, and increase our presence at the annual conference.