 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
| AccessAbility SIG |
| Information Design SIG |
| Quality SIG |
| Instructional Design & Learning |
| UUX 2008 Community Elections |  |
Candidate Leadership StatementsThe following members are running for office: Candidates:
Leadership Statements Describe your leadership philosophy, skills, and experience. I follow leaders who lead by example, inspire me to high achievement, and reward creativity. I try to be that kind of leader. What positions have you held that involved the responsibilities of the office you are seeking, what specific responsibilities were assigned to that position, and what was the result of your efforts? In the Puget Sound STC chapter, I served as program chair for one year. I was tasked with determining topics or activities for each chapter meeting, finding speakers, publicizing the events, and making sure they ran smoothly. Attendance increased during my tenure and audience evaluations of events were unanimously positive. I managed the online competition for the Puget Sound chapter one year. Not only was it my job to make sure we got entries, but to organize 25-30 volunteers to help manage the logistics of receiving and cataloging entries, setting up distribution of entries to judging teams, locating a judging venue, judging entries, and managing the day-long judging process. I serve on the executive board of the booster club for the University of Washington Women's Basketball program. The appointed board members are responsible for ensuring the success of the club's fund raising efforts, with proceeds providing the team with resources not provided by the University, the Pacific 10 Conference or the NCAA. For the past three years, I was production editor and then editor of the club newsletter. My production role included editing and laying out the newsletter, establishing a publication process and calendar, and helping other staff learn to create an effective newsletter. As editor, I recruit writers and photographers, work with the Athletic Department staff to coordinate newsletter content with promotional and fund raising efforts, and write feature articles. For seven years, I co-owned a technical communications consulting company with revenues over $500,000 per annum and a peak staff of 35. I served as chief executive officer, setting strategic goals, developing effective customer relations, and providing leadership in the development of company work processes. Because we were small, I was also the lead user experience designer on most projects. I have also managed technical communications departments and been the user experience architect for an engineering group. What are your personal reasons for wanting to serve as a UUX officer? I have been a member of STC for 20 years. Over those years, I moved from learning about my profession from members who had practiced it for many more years than I to being one of those who have practiced for many years. While I have tried to share my knowledge through conference presentations and writing for Society publications, my leadership involvement has largely been local. I now have the time to give to a larger group and feel the Usability community is where I can make the greatest contribution. What are your goals and vision for the UUX community for your term in office? This STC community needs to distinguish itself more clearly from other organizations for usability and user experience professionals by developing a focused mission and strategic outlook that highlights our place within the larger technical communications profession. What differentiates us from UPA and SIGCHI? What unique perspective do we bring to the table? How do we compliment, rather than compete with, other organizations for usability professionals? The STC has set the strategic goal to tell our powerful story. How do you see UUX supporting this goal? We should seek out Society projects to which we can contribute our expertise in usability in whatever way is appropriate for that project. We should also be seeking how to raise the profile of usability in Society publications by encouraging community members to write for the publications. I would particularly want to develop a usability-focused issue of Technical Communication that the community would drive. An ambitious effort might be to develop a book on applying user-centered design to user assistance projects. Most usability books focus on software or Web usability, but both print and online user assistance must also be usable if the user of the software or Web site is to have a positive overall experience. In particular, how might UUX promote the contributions that technical communicators can make in creating successful user experiences and designing usable products and services? Case studies are a powerful way to demonstrate how usability contributes to the overall success of a product or service. The community should be pro-active in soliciting case study papers from our members and then publishing those in our newsletter, in InterComm, or distributing them to other publications where the audience can learn practical ways to apply usability methods in their own work. I want to find ways for we as a community to contribute our time and expertise to non-profit organizations whose Web presence can be made more effective through the application of user-centered design methods. We already know that the Web can be a significant source of contributions for organizations that know how to use it well; our effort on behalf of an organization can have an impact on the organization's constituency long after we have completed our work for them. You can see my complete resume at http://mdportfolio.blogspot.com and please, send me any comments or questions about my candidacy to mmdeaton@mmdeaton.com
Leadership philosophy No task, no matter how big or small can be accomplished by one individual. When an organization such as ours depends on volunteers, leaders must create an environment that places importance on respect, appreciation and recognition. What positions have you held that involved the responsibilities of the office you are seeking, what specific responsibilities were assigned to that position, and what was the result of your efforts? I am co-founder and first President of the Belgium Chapter. During my tenure, the Chapter earned the Pace Setter Award for amazing start up. I was fortunate to have dedicated volunteers to establish the chapter and organize events. Few people realize that being a chapter president is a challenging and demanding position. I sought advice of seasoned members of the France Chapter to guide me through the challenges of being a chapter president. My tenure as president taught me three important lessons: listen to your volunteers, make decisions that are in the best interest of the chapter, and if you make a mistake-admit it and learn by it. Since 1998, I have been the Managing Editor of Usability Interface. As Managing Editor, I oversee team of volunteers who help to solicit and copy edit articles. I keep in contact with them via e-mail and telephone. They joined the newsletter team because they enjoyed reading the newsletter and wanted to help publish it. Although I have not had the opportunity to meet all of them personally, I know them all very well and I am grateful for their contributions to help me publish a newsletter that has earned the acclaim of the Society and UUX community. What are your personal reasons for wanting to serve as a Assistant UUX Manager? For ten years I have served the UUX as Managing Editor of the newsletter. Whenever I finished publication of an issue, I would ask the Manager if there was anything I could do to help her. She would always tell me that managing the newsletter was an important job. My one and only challenge a Managing Editor is to deliver a newsletter that earns the acclaim of members for content and quality--and I have done that. I believe that I am ready for new opportunities to serve the UUX in a new capacity. What are your goals and vision for the UUX community for your term in office? My role will be to support the UUX Manager. Two tasks that I believe are important to the UUX and that I would like to lead is to revive the Excellence in Usability Award and conduct webinars. The Excellence in Usability Award is not only a recognition of achievement in the field of usability, but I believe it brings to light the efforts to accomplish it. Those efforts are the foundation of lessons that we can all learn and emulate by. Webinars will allow the UUX to leverage the talents of members
to share knowledge and experience to a wider audience than ever
before. I have already volunteered to help my Chapter investigate
ways to make its webinars more accessible to a wider audience. The STC has set the strategic goal to tell our powerful story. How do you see UUX supporting this goal? In particular, how might UUX promote the contributions that technical communicators can make in creating successful user experiences and designing usable products and services? Reviving the Excellence in Usability Award and conducting webinars will support the Society's strategic goals and provide opportunities for professional development of UUX members. I also believe the opportunity is ripe for more co-operative opportunities with the Usability Professionals Association (UPA).
Describe your leadership philosophy, skills, and experience. I believe in the power of small groups, and have been very successful putting together focused, multi-disciplinary teams to get very demanding projects completed. What positions have you held that involved the responsibilities of the office you are seeking, what specific responsibilities were assigned to that position, and what was the result of your efforts? I have been a Director at Charles Schwab and a Vice President at Wells Fargo, and led and supervised both technical and business-oriented projects. I have started and built a successful business that has survived ten very turbulent and dynamic years. I've had to deal with sales, marketing, finance, business development, training and communications. What are your personal reasons for wanting to serve as a UUX officer? Usability is my passion, and I need to be more formally involved. I also think I can help define the field, and figure out why it should continue to be a part of the technical communications community. I'd also like to work at differentiating the UUX community from anyone else involved in the field. What are your goals and vision for the UUX community for your term in office? To figure out a way to collect and synthesize everyone's ideas into a coherent strategy for recognition of both the field and the STC UUX. The STC has set the strategic goal to tell our powerful story. How do you see UUX supporting this goal? In particular, how might UUX promote the contributions that technical communicators can make in creating successful user experiences and designing usable products and services? I can help articulate the story, and find a dynamic person and strategy to sell it.
Describe your leadership philosophy, skills, and experience As a teacher and a manager, I helped launch many careers in technical communication, guiding others to assume leadership roles in STC and technical communication departments. I enjoy helping others discover their strengths and giving them opportunities to develop and use them. This plays to my own strengths, which include making new connections, communicating, and finding and focusing on what makes others unique. That aspect of my career best reflects my leadership philosophy - you lead most effectively when you help others shine, creating opportunities for others to do what they do best and to learn, grow, and succeed. Successful leaders build strong teams. With over 15 years of management experience, I have learned a lot about what works and what doesn't when forming teams. You're not a team simply because you say you are. You're a team when you successfully synthesize individual talents to achieve shared goals. What bonds individuals together as a team is the process of working together to clearly identify shared goals, agreeing upon and articulating high standards of performance in their pursuit, and determining how best to apply the full range of individual skills available to achieve them. What positions have you held that involved the responsibilities of the office you are seeking, what specific responsibilities were assigned to that position, and what was the result of your efforts? I served as Treasurer of the STC Carolina chapter, managing tens of thousands of dollars of our chapter's funds to stage local conferences, hold competitions and awards banquets, and maintain a pipeline of compelling training courses. I take the fiduciary responsibilities of Treasurer of a professional organization seriously. Funds must be managed effectively and put to work for the benefit of the entire community. Years ago, I served as "Wampum Bearer" of my daughter's Indian Princess tribe. At every meeting, Princesses would stand and relate a service that they had performed for their family and give to the tribe a dollar that they had earned for that service. I would stuff one dollar bills into my pocket, recording who gave me what and the service that had earned it, and often make change for girls who could only scare up a five or ten dollar bill. After we had sufficient wampum, we decided as a tribe how to spend the funds toward service to our community. Working with a local charity, our tribe spent our wampum on clothes and toys for a needy family at Christmas. It didn't matter whether it was thousands of dollars or single bills stuffed into my pocket. I responsibly managed the funds with which I was entrusted. I pledge to do the same for UUX. What are your personal reasons for wanting to serve as a UUX officer? Technical communicators and usability professionals share an interest in how easily someone can use technical information. I've been interested in the creation and use of information since college, where I double-majored in English and Psychology. In graduate school, I did research in cognitive psychology, which provides the scientific underpinnings to the practical field of usability. (Donald Norman was a cognitive psychologist before he became a usability guru.) In the course of my career, I've gravitated toward the middle ground between creating effective technical content and creating interfaces so intuitive as to render technical content unnecessary. It was only natural for me to join the UUX community as my day job began to embrace more aspects of usability. Serving as a UUX officer will give me the opportunity to give back to this community. It will give me a chance to play to my strengths, engage with a broad cross-section of community members, learn from them, and more actively participate in creating a vision of our community's future. What are your goals and vision for the UUX community for your term in office? The Treasurer should be dedicated to the most effective use of its financial resources to the benefit of UUX community members. The Treasurer also should be an active member of the community's leadership team. If elected, I pledge to be an active listener, taking in as much as I can about what the community has achieved in the past and what its members want to achieve in the coming year. I will be a responsive and diligent steward of the community's financial resources. The community's stated purpose is to focus "on issues related to the usability and usability assessment of technical communication, providing a forum in which STC members can share information and experience." In addition to continuing to provide technical communicators resources so that they can become more proficient in the field of usability, I envision UUX serving as an active liaison between communications and usability professionals, building on areas of common interest, and helping each other promote our special skills. Technical communicators have deep knowledge of effective content creation, and usability specialists have deep knowledge of efficient content use. Working together and marrying our complementary skills, communicators and specialists can build frictionless and satisfying user experiences. UUX can become the hothouse in which to grow a fruitful partnership. The STC has set the strategic goal to tell our powerful story. How do you see UUX supporting this goal? In particular, how might UUX promote the contributions that technical communicators can make in creating successful user experiences and designing usable products and services? At the core of our powerful story is the value of well-crafted, highly-accessible, and easy to use technical information. UUX is best positioned to articulate what "highly-accessible" and "easy to use" truly means. UUX lives in the middle ground between creating effective technical content and designing interfaces so intuitive as to render technical content unnecessary. We naturally focus on a person's entire experience with a product. That experience determines a product's success, and that success helps determine how much money it makes. When you start talking money, folks pay attention. When you want to tell as powerful a story as we have, it helps to have already gotten someone's attention.
Describe your leadership philosophy, skills, and experience I possess strengths in coordinating activities and managing multiple projects at one time. My manager commends me for forging strong professional relationships and for being highly reliable in delivering on commitments. What positions have you held that involved the responsibilities of the office you are seeking, what specific responsibilities were assigned to that position, and what was the result of your efforts? Through various professional and volunteer roles, as well as in my personal life, I have demonstrated several characteristics that make me a good candidate for the position of Treasurer. I handle money carefully and am confident with numbers (I've completed college-level calculus courses). Colleagues describe me as an honest person with good integrity. And I have demonstrated an excellent eye for detail, willingness to follow process, and the ability to make good decisions. What I don't have in formal treasury experience, I make up with energy, enthusiasm, and a willingness to learn. And I wouldn't be doing this alone - the Treasurer at my place of employment has offered to mentor me in this volunteer position---she has 20 years of related experience that would serve the UUX well. In addition, I am a dedicated, committed volunteer in my community. For example, I am a fundraising volunteer for my children's public school and I volunteer to test and maintain the website of our local foodbank. Now I welcome the opportunity to give back to the UUX community. What are your personal reasons for wanting to serve as a UUX officer? I am a big supporter of usability---in fact, I am the voice of usability at my place of employment---which is why it's important to contribute my time to the UUX. I also see this as an excellent opportunity to further my business skills. What are your goals and vision for the UUX community for your term in office? To protect the interests of members by managing and protecting the funds and assets of the UUX.
|
 |
|