11 November 2010

Communication is the theme for World Usability Day 2010!

Date: Monday, September 20, 2010, 7:30 to 17:30
Location: Hyatt Regency Hotel, Montréal, Québec, Canada

A special rate for associations and groups is available (see below)…

Yu Centrik, Canadian partner of UXalliance, the international network of specialized user experience (UX) companies, invites a team of global experts to Montreal for a unique User Experience Masterclass on Monday, September 20, 2010 at the Hyatt Regency Hotel.

This is Montreal’s first User Experience conference which showcases innovative research methods and findings. The UX Masterclass incorporates outstanding stories and testimonials to inspire the audience. For a whole day, world experts in user experience will share the schedule to present case studies on targeted topics.

User experience is a part of the design process which focuses on the interactions a user may have with all aspects of a product, system or service. Assuring that the targeted users are satisfied with their overall experience encourages positive and lasting relationships between the user, the product and the company.

This conference will inspire anyone who cares about delivering good user experiences to their customers: UX Professionals, Designers, Product Managers, Interactive Marketing Specialists, and all User Experience Enthusiasts.

• 5 guest speakers
• 25 presentations and case studies
• 15 countries represented by the various speakers
• 6 major topics
• 3 rooms

Some featured speakers :

• Pay Pal, User Experience Senior Manager, Kuldeep Kelkar
• Forrester Research, Senior UX Analyst, Vidya Drego
• Fidelity Investments, VP Usability and author, Tom Tullis
• Cirque du Soleil,  Creative Lead, Creative Development Manager – Images, Events and Lifestyle, Welby Altidor
• LexisNexis, Global User Experience Director, Margot Dear
• Dallaire Industrial Design, Industrial Designer, Michel Dallaire

For more details and registration: www.uxmasterclass.com

Note: A special rate of $685 for associations and groups (e.g. CapCHI, HCI, SigCHI) is available.
Participants who wish to register under an association name and benefit from this rate must contact Joelle Stemp in order to get a registration code.

Joëlle Stemp: (514) 605-9823, or  jstemp@yucentrik.ca

By Master of Ceremonies, Michelle Gauthier, CAE Professional Services
The Background

An eager local CHI community gathered on June 17th, 2010, for an Interactionary event held by CapCHI. Four brave teams arrived to tackle a design problem within an insane time constraint, all the while working together in front of [...]

read more…

Date: October 19, 20, and 26 (note new dates)
Time: 9 – 5 pm
Place: The Courtyard Restaurant, 21 George Street, Ottawa
Website: http://www.followtheuxleader.com

Learn cutting edge User Experience principles by doing!

• Web Writing Course
• Information Architecture Training
• User Experience Training / Usability Training

Follow The UX Leader brings together insight, experiences and knowledge from Internet industry leaders in a series of training workshops on advanced web practices you won’t want to miss!

Taught by Ottawa’s foremost experts in User Experience Design and Web Content Strategy, Follow The UX Leader throws out the PowerPoint and shifts learning back to the way it was when we were kids ….hands-on, interactive, and fun!

Chock-full of cutting edge knowledge and resources you can use right away, workshop fees include invaluable give-aways totaling close to $500: books by Rosenfeld Media and Morgan Kaufmann, tools from Loop11, ClickTale, and the Optimal Workshop.

For more information, please contact Jeff Parks at jeff.parks@iaconsultants.ca or (613) 850-3218

When and Where: Workshops are held in the Loft Room at Ottawa’s historic Courtyard Restaurant in the heart of the Byward Market. Its beamed ceilings, gas fireplace, and stone walls serve as the perfect backdrop for a day of inspiration and creativity!

Who: Follow The UX Leader training workshops were created to deliver quality content and instruction on advanced web practices for web designers, web developers, marketing managers, project managers, and communications professionals.

Sponsored By: Information Architecture Institute, FatDUX, ClickTale, the Optimal Workshop, Morgan Kaufmann, Loop11, Rosenfeld Media, Marsworks

The Student Research Competition is a forum for undergraduates and graduate students to share their research results, exchange ideas, and improve their communication skills while competing for prizes at CHI 2010.

Students submit a short (6 pages max.) paper describing their research. Submissions will be reviewed by a panel of experts, and evaluated based on

• Quality of work
• Novelty of approach
• Significance of the contribution to the field of HCI
• Clarity of written presentation

Up to twenty-five students (15 undergraduate and 10 graduate) will be chosen to participate in the competition at CHI 2008.

Students accepted to the competition are entitled to a travel grant covering expenses for travel to CHI, including conference registration, transportation, lodging, and meals, up to a limit of US$500. Students must be members of ACM to qualify for these awards.

For any Ottawa-area students who are chosen to participate in the competition in Atlanta, CapCHI will award and additional CAN$500 travel grant (one student per paper) towards incurred expenses.

At the CHI 2010 conference, students will be competing for cash prices of US$500, US$300, and US$200 for first, second, and third place (separate categories for undergraduate and graduate students).

More information on the competition can be found at

http://www.chi2010.org/authors/cfp-src.html

ACM SIGCHI, our parent organization, is conducting a survey about local chapters and the people who participate in their events. Please read the following introduction letter and participate in the survey.

Hello SIGCHI Chapter Leaders and Members,

The SIGCHI Executive Committee is working to better meet the needs of its members, and especially local chapters. As part of that effort, we hope you will take a few minutes to complete a short survey.

Your feedback will help us better understand who you are and what your needs are.

Survey Link:
SIGCHI Local Chapters Survey, 2009

Thank you in advance for your participation.

Sincerely,

Nick Sabadosh, Vice President for Chapters, ACM/SIGCHI, sigchi-vp-chapters@acm.org
Elizabeth Churchill, Executive Vice President, ACM/SIGCHI, sigchi-executive-vp@acm.org

About IxDA
http://www.ixda.org/about.php

The Ottawa chapter is open for anyone to join by visiting

http://groups.google.com/group/ixda-ottawa?lnk=gcimh

The student application period is open until May 20 2009. The Season of Usability runs from June 1 to August 31 2009.

Student Requirements

* You must be an undergraduate or graduate level student enrolled at a College or University as of January 1 2009. (Recent graduates are eligible to apply)

* You must be a student of design, usability, human factors or other HCI-related major. Computer science and information systems students who are interested in applying must have had at least one course in human factors, user interface design, or human-computer interaction.

* Students from any country are eligible to apply; however, some English skills are necessary.

* You must be able to dedicate 10-15 hours a week to work on your project. This time requirement may vary from week to week depending on your project activities and responsibilities.

* After successful completion of your project and a satisfactory rating from your mentors, you will receive a $1000 USD stipend for your work.

* You are not required to have knowledge of a programming language, nor will there be programming requirements to the internship.

How to apply:

* Review the available projects and decide which project you would like to apply to.If you have any questions, please send them to students@openusability.org.

* Prepare a résumé or curriculum vitae with relevant education, work, and open source experience.

* Prepare a single page cover explaining why you would like to work with your chosen project.

* All materials must be submitted in Open Document Format (ODF) or Adobe’s Portable Document Format (PDF).

* Send your documents to students@openusability.org by May 20 2009. Please include the name of the project you are applying to in the email Subject.

* If you would like to apply to more than one project, please send separate application packages.

2009 Projects
* Amarok
* Drupal
* Gallery
* GeneMANIA
* GNOME
* Kadu
* KOrganizer
* OLM
* SemNotes
* Ubuntu

See the http://season.openusability.org/index.php/projects for more information on the projects and how to apply. Applications are due May 20 2009.

Questions about the projects or application process may be directed to students@openusability.org.

We would like to thank our sponsors, Google and Canonical, as well as our many mentoring organizations for making this Season of Usability possible.

Ellen Reitmayr
Season of Usability Organisation

http://season.openusability.org

www.openusability.org

For those of you who are not already ACM Professional Members, I wanted to let you know that ACM has a special offer for you to join. It includes a discount and a free gift. Their complete offer is below for your consideration.

As a Professional Member of the Association for Computing Machinery, you will have access to a host of career-enhancing benefits including:

• ACM’s newly re-launched flagship publication “Communications of the ACM”
• Discounts on ACM SIG conference registration
• Full access to over 3,000 online courses from SkillSoft
• Full access to 1,100 online books, including a large selection from Safari(R) featuring O’Reilly and many others
• Full access to ACM’s robust Career & Job Center
• Full member access to the new “Queue” website, “Queue” magazine, plus “Queuecasts” and more
• “TechNews” and “CareerNews” email digests
• ACM’s monthly electronic newsletter “MemberNet”
• The ACM Guide to Computing Literature with over one million bibliographic citations
• The option to subscribe to the full ACM Digital Library with unlimited access to all ACM journals, magazines, proceedings, and newsletters
• A free “acm.org” email forwarding address with high-quality Postini spam filtering

All this and much more by joining at:

http://www.acm.org/joinacm10.

Join ACM today, receive a 15% discount, and you will receive a Free ACM Flip-Top World Calculator!

Who would you like to see?

Or do you have an interesting topic you would like to present?

CapCHI meets on the third Tuesday of the month at 7:00pm at TheCodeFactory (246 Queen at Kent).

We have a small budget available to cover travel expenses.

Please send us your ideas by posting a comment here or sending email to announce@capchi.org.