I am so ready for Spring! Up here in the glorious Northwest, Winter lingered into April in Seattle. At our cabin in the Cascade Mountains, it snowed yesterday, April 13! Thank goodness I am going to Atlanta for Summit 2009, where the sun will shine and the weather will be warm.

I know it is a rough year to get funding for conference attendance; I am going with support from you, the UUX members. But in some ways, this is the most important time to get together. We need to support each other through these rough months.

Here are some activities Usability and User Experience is sponsoring or taking part in that you want to be sure to check out. Just click the image to open a full-size image.

Monday, May 4, 7:30 am: UUX business meeting. Breakfast is provided.

Monday, May 4, UUX Networking luncheon. For a ticket, sign-up for the luncheon when you register and pay the $35 fee. You may also be able to buy a luncheon ticket on-site.

Monday, May 4, Community Reception 6 pm

Below are the days and times of several sessions of interest to those of us doing usability and user experience. Of course, none of you want to miss the UUX Progression to learn great methods of testing documentation usability.

Labels: conference, educational, UUX business

UX will have a business meeting on Monday morning, May 4, at 7:30 am. I know; its early. We will feed you, however.

Also on Monday is the UUX networking luncheon. For that, you need to spend $35 and sign up for it when you register. Registration closes April 15.

And Monday evening is the welcoming reception in the exhibition hall. UUX will have a table.

I would love to know who is planning to go, and who is planning to attend the business meeting and the luncheon.

Labels: conference, UUX business

Sue Heim is tweeting all about it, and the tweets are all at UUX Manager on Twitter.

Labels: conference

Pull out your calendars!

The STC-Philadelphia Metro Chapter's 2009 Conference - Visualizing Communication - will be held March 27 and 28 at Penn State University - Great Valley Campus.

And we are very pleased to announce that we will be joined this year by the STC Instructional Design & Learning SIG, as this event will be a regional conference for their members as well. The School of Graduate Professional Studies at Penn State Great Valley has also signed up as a Supporting Organization.

And this year we have something new to offer: the two Instructional Design Workshops on March 27, and the Instructional Design presentation session track (four presentations in all) on March 28 will be available via webcast!

Conference Looks at Leveraging Visual Communication

Find out how to use visual communication to improve the effectiveness of your technical documentation and instructional material at this year’s version of our exciting, award-winning Conference!

Our keynote speaker, the internationally acclaimed expert on visual communications Jean-luc Dumont, will kick things off by presenting his simple but solid guiding principles for designing visually effective communication. We're honored to welcome Jean-luc Dumont and proud to help debut his new book: Trees, maps, and theorems - Effective communication for rational minds.

Following the keynote will be more than a dozen presentations over four sessions covering areas such as:

- Career development

- Instructional design and e-Learning development

- Content management

- Writing and design skills improvement

Of course, there will be ample opportunity to network, catch up with old friends, and make new ones.

Workshops Examine Visual Communication, Instructional Design

This year we’ve doubled our workshop offerings, with Jean-luc Dumont and instructional design/E-Learning expert Jane Smith both leading two half-day workshops.

Extend your visual communication and IDL IQ as Jean-luc and Jane introduce key concepts, and then facilitate hands-on exploration of those concepts through case studies and group exercises.

Dates and Times

Workshops:

Friday, March 27, 2009
Morning sessions: 8 am to noon
Afternoon sessions: 1 to 5 pm

Conference:

Saturday, March 28, 2009
8 am to 5 pm

Location

The Conference Center at Penn State Great Valley
30 E. Swedesford Road
Malvern, PA 19355

Webcast information to be available shortly on the Conference website.
Look for more details about the STC 2009 Workshops and Conference on www.stcpmc.org.
Or contact us directly: conference@stcpmc.org.

Labels: conference, UUX business

Join us at the Usability and User Experience networking luncheon on Monday, May 4 at the 2009 STC Technical Summit. It's a chance to see old friends and meet new community members. If you are not a member of UUX, but are considering joining, this is a wonderful opportunity to learn more about our community from those who are members.

To include the UUX luncheon in your conference schedule, be sure to indicate you want to attend when you register for the conference, and pay the $35 fee for the luncheon.

Early Bird Registration is open now. Go to http://conference.stc.org/ for all of the details.

Labels: conference, UUX business

A new year always brings a combination of excitement and dread, and all the prognosticators in the world telling us what to expect. At The Content Wrangler, they asked Dave Kellogg to predict the technology changes that would affect content management. At Usability News, Katie Greene predicts what might happen to the user interface.

I am going to take the bold step of predicting what will happen in UUX in 2009.

1. UUX will begin holding regular Web seminars.
2. The UUX Web site will add podcasts and videos to its resources.
3. Summit 2009 in Atlanta will feature a progression of all of the UUX managers in the history of UUX.
4. The UUX Manager's Thoughts will be integrated into the UUX Web site.
5. The UUX newsletter editor will become a mother.


6. Five members who do not currently volunteer with UUX will volunteer to coordinate new projects for UUX.
7. The UUX Twitter page will surpass 100 followers.
   

Don't miss out on all the fun!

Labels: conference, interface, Twitter, UUX business

Registration is open for seventeenth annual WritersUA Conference for Software User Assistance. The event takes place March 29-April 1, in Seattle, Washington. The conference goal is to continue to provide an event with the most comprehensive and timely information specifically designed for user assistance professionals. It features over seventy cutting-edge topics from over forty experts, project demonstrations from other user assistance developers, plus an exhibition of products and services, certificate programs, and networking events.

The opening session of the conference features Scott McCloud, creator of the Google Chrome Comic.

For further information, see http://www.writersua.com/ohc/index.html.

The conference topics cover a broad range of key tools, processes, technologies, and techniques.
* DITA, XML, Structured Authoring
* User-centered Design & Usability
* eLearning Tools and Techniques
* Hands-on Computer Tutorials
* Web 2.0 and Interactive UA
* Adobe, Microsoft, Google
* Case Studies

P.S. Your UUX Manager is presenting a half-day workshop on usability testing documentation.

Labels: conference