Blogs

I must have not been paying attention to the local IT scene, because I just learned about CodeMash a few days ago. "...educate developers on current practices, methodologies and technology trends in variety of platforms and development languages such as Java, .NET, Ruby and PHP." It has all of the leading experts that you would expect from a top-notch conference, but this one is different:

• It is in Sandusky, which is an hour east of where I live. We do not get a lot of the first rate events in this part of the country - we usually have to fly to a coast for this level of quality.
• It is dirt cheap. Part of that is the low cost of living around here. Part is because it was organized by user groups in Ohio and Michigan who are not trying to make a profit. A "community-driven developer conference" they call it. And a good set of sponsors - including IBM (in this case, Rational).
• It is being held at a waterpark resort - Kalahari. I spent a day there this summer (with the family) - it is fun. Maybe not quite like HICSS in Hawaii, but perhaps having technical conferences at resorts is a trend that will continue.
• The Mash part - from the reactions I have seen, the combination of platforms is appealing to people - people must be tiring of going to .net events separate from Java events.

I doubt I will be able to attend - since it is short notice and I do not do any "real" development myself. I am sure I would learn something useful from all of those experts, tho. Add in a "user experience" track and I'd be there, no doubt.

Even without attending, I am still helping to promote CodeMash. It is just too good not to let others in the area know about it. Through NWOACM, the local ACM chapter, we are offering a special discount - save $50 on the already low price. Here is our announcement that we are emailing out to spread the word:

It is not too late to register for CodeMash, a world-class technical conference being held in our area - January 18-19, in Sandusky, Ohio (about an hour east of Toledo). Go to https://www.codemash.org/register.aspx and use 06ZY86 as your "Sponsor Invitation Code" to save $50 - making the 2 day conference only $99. This is an unbelievably good price for a top-notch technical conference - especially one that is a short drive away. Also, the conference is being held at the Kalahari waterpark, so you can have some fun as well.

What is CodeMash? CodeMash is a unique event that will educate developers on current practices, methodologies and technology trends in variety of platforms and development languages such as Java, .NET, Ruby and PHP.

Some of the internationally recognized speakers include:

• Bruce Eckel, internationally recognized speaker and author of "Thinking in Java" - presenting "The World is Dynamic"
• Neal Ford, application architect at ThoughtWorks - presenting "The Productive Programmer"
• Scott Guthrie, General Manager, Microsoft Developer Division
• Scott Ambler, internationally recognized speaker and author on Agile development and database refactoring - presenting "Introduction to OpenUP"

One of our leading local experts, Greg Huber, will also be presenting on several Ajax topics.

Check out http://www.codemash.org/ for more information about this conference. Do not forget to register using 06ZY86 and get your $50 discount.

Feel free to pass this information on to others who may be interested. If you are a professor, please encourage your students to attend. It is priced right for them, and a chance for them to hear about a wide range of issues they will be encountering after they graduate.

This information is being distributed by NWOACM, Northwest Ohio's professional ACM chapter - http://nwoacm.org/

If you go, let me know how you liked it. (Here is a Technorati tag for codemash so that I can track what happens.) I hope this is the first of many similar events in the area.

The Platform Lab is coming to Toledo. Based in Columbus, the Platform lab...

...is the nation's only non-profit information technology test and training facility. We provide organizations in Ohio and across the nation with the complete means to conduct a variety of IT test projects and increase the quality of their applications, organizations and people without investing in expensive short term assets.

Their Toledo facility will be at the University of Toledo's Health and Science campus. I do not think the "grand opening" has happened yet, but the CIO Forum of Northwest Ohio was planning on visiting in December.

It looks like they support a broad set of IT events across the state. The latest newsletter lists one that jumped out at me:

User Experience is the Key to Unlocking IT's Value: Learn how to deliver Superior End-User Experience and IT Value through Proactive Application & Network Management. IntelliNet, Compuware Corporation and Platform Labs will be hosting a seminar to discuss proactive end-user monitoring and its benefits to the bottom line.

The event is happening in 2 parts of the state:

• Columbus, January 31, Platform Labs/TechColumbus
• Cleveland, February 1, IntelliNet's HQ office

I am looking forward to having the Platform Lab active in our corner of the state. Perhaps we could get NWOACM added to their list of community partners and have Toledo be a stop for their next user experience event.

Michigan State > College of Communication Arts & Sciences > Department of Telecommunication, Information Studies & Media just announced its Master of Arts in Serious Game Design. Notice the 3 circles of Theory + Content + Game design. Good to see HCI listed, and the broad coverage of expertise and roles that are included.

I see involvement of professors from across Michigan State, which is great. Who is the local MSU HCI expert, tho - I do not know who that would be - I'd like to meet him/her. And I wonder where the MSU Usability and Accessibility Center could fit in. Serious games do need to be usable and accessible.

Anyway, cool things happening up at Michigan State!

Related to the IA research agenda from the IA Summit, now comes the Web Science Research Initiative with its plans for "web science" and a web research agenda:

There is...a growing realization among many researchers that a clear research agenda aimed at understanding the current, evolving, and potential Web is needed. ...The Web is an engineered space created through formally specified languages and protocols. However, because humans are the creators of Web pages and links between them, their interactions form emergent patterns in the Web at a macroscopic scale. These human interactions are, in turn, governed by social conventions and laws. Web science, therefore, must be inherently interdisciplinary; its goal is to both understand the growth of the Web and to create approaches that allow new powerful and more beneficial patterns to occur.

I know, the web is not IA and IA is not the web, but I see many similarities. For example, from Creating a Science of the Web, I see topics that interest me as an information architect:

• moving from text documents to data resources
• reuse of information
• "policy aware" systems

The Framework for Web Science has more about this research agenda. Where would an IA research agenda overlap, where would it differ?

(Josh has more excerpts, links, and his social web design angle.)

I think it was coincidence: Parade magazine published John Maeda's How to keep it simple the same week as World Usability Day. John's article was based on his 10 Laws of Simplicity.

I am collecting links to blog entries, trip reports, press releases, etc. about what happened in Ohio for World Usability Day. Leave a comment here if you find something else so that I can update the list.

Also, if/when you upload your photos to Flickr, be sure to put them in the World Usability Day 2006 gallery and tag them Ohio so all of our photos show up together. We have photographs from the Northwest (me) and Southwest (Kara Lock) corners already.

I just upgraded this blog site to Drupal 5.0 beta. Working great so far, very easy to upgrade, love the new admin screen (which I contributed to 0.001% of the design of - I reviewed it for Dries and said "great job!").

I am typically many Drupal versions behind - the code that this is replacing was installed in 2005 and not really upgraded. So for the first time I am "leading edge."

The upgrade is also part of a move to a new hosting service and cleaning up my user-experience.org site. More content migration coming.

Jim Lewis (a usability practitioner with IBM for over 20 years - here are some of his publications) has an article on Sample Sizes for Usability Tests in the November-December 2006 issue of <interactions>. His article is part of the special edition on "Waits & Measures" (aka "measuring usability").

Do not let the subtitle of the article scare you ("Mostly math, not magic") - the math is not that difficult to follow. I expect to see replies to Jim's article from several places. User Interface Engineering (note that Lori Landesman, one of those UIE authors in 2001, is now an IBMer too). And Jakob. And PeterMe / Dennis Wixon to remind us that asking "how many users" is pointless.

The other article in that issue by an IBMer is the regular column "Pushing the Envelope" by Fred Sampson. Fred sets the stage for a future issue about the user experience challenges with Web applications / Web 2.0 / social computing (or something like that) - Whither the Web?. This will also be our internal-IBM topic for World Usability Day on Tuesday.

I decided to make a little web site devoted to all of the World Usability Day activities in Ohio. I hope this view will make it easier to see what is going on in our state on November 14th.

If you know of additional events, or a change to the existing events, leave a comment here and I will update the site. Afterwards, let me know about trip reports, photos or any other news from the Ohio events and I will include them there as well.

Finally, we have the details on the World Usability Day dinner for Northwest Ohio: 7:30pm, downtown Bowling Green, at Cucina di Betto. Hope to see you there!

We have not finalized our plans for the November 14th World Usability Day activity in northwest Ohio (it will be small), but if you are in the area, there are lots of "regional" events you can go to if you are willing to drive 2 hours.

To the north is a full day conference at Michigan State University (serving the whole state of Michigan).

• 9:00am - 5:15pm: World Usability Day for USA - Michigan - workshops on communities and web usability, talks on automotive issues, podcasting, and collaboration
• Detailed program (MSU Usability & Accessiblity Center)
• Sponsors include: Michigan Usability Professionals, Michigan-Ohio Human-Computer Interaction, Southeastern Michigan Technical Communicators

To the east are two events in northeast Ohio: a daytime event at Kent State University and an evening session at the Cleveland Museum of Art.

• Noon - 2:00pm - Everyday Usability - Eyetracking demonstrations, Usbaility awareness games
• Sponsored by: Kent State Information Architecture and Knowledge Management
• 6:00pm - 8:00pm - Northeast Ohio World Usability Day - Informal roundtable discussions of Accessibility, Web 2.0, User research, Remote usability testing, and more
• Sponsored in part by: Northeast Ohio Usability Professionals

To the southeast, there is 1 event in Columbus, at Nationwide Insurance. (October 30 update: this event is for Nationwide employees only. I will let you know if there is anything open to the public in Columbus.)

• Nationwide Insurance Usability Day Recognition - an informal booth for most of the day with a 2 hour panel in the afternoon

To the south, LexisNexis in Dayton is hosting a conference.

• 10:00am - 4:45pm - Workshops on Cognitive work analysis for design, Ethnography and design, and Converging perspectives on data
• 5:30pm - 9:30pm - Southern Ohio World Usability Day - Posters, dinner, panel on Exploratory research to inform design and innovation, and break-out sessions
• Sponsored by: Tristate Human Factors and Ergonomics Society

Some parts of Indiana are within a 2-hour drive, but the Indiana World Usability Day 2006 Conference is farther, in Indianapolis.

Also, you can partiicpate in World Usability Day without leaving your home or office, via Webcasts & Podcasts. There are some webcast-only events and several local events are being broadcast so that you can attend online. Note that some of these webcasts might take place on November 13th for us here in the Eastern US time zone.

Later, I will send out news about our local gathering here on my blog and also at NWOACM (the local group sponsoring it).