News Archive: January 2010

In past years, a common feature of CHIFOO programs was the request for someone in the audience to act as a journalist for the evening, and write down their take on the presentation. It allowed us to hear (or, rather, read) different viewpoints, and also provided an unbiased view of the proceedings for the presenters and organizers (so that we would know if our efforts were hitting the mark). It also provided a valuable record of the evening as it actually happened (rather than how we planned for it to happen), helping to add color to the program description and the presenter’s slides, and to improve the quality of our web site archives as a resource for the CHIFOO community—and the world.

We’d like to continue this tradition. With the Comments section of our Events pages now open, we ask that you log in and share your thoughts about the CHIFOO programs you attend this year. There are lots of ways to do this. You can write down your thoughts at the meeting (or immediately after) and then type them into the Comments area for that event a day or two later. If you have a laptop with you at an event, you can log in to CHIFOO.org and live-blog your comments as the evening progresses. And if you see an exciting program coming up, you can even make comments (i.e., “... I saw her speak last year and she was awesome! ...” or ask questions (i.e., “... is he planning to talk about the work he did while he was at Google? I hope so ...”) about it before the event takes place. And, since time is limited at our CHIFOO meetings, we hope you will use the Comments section to continue the discussions begun during the programs.

Go get started! Why not begin with Scott Berkun’s event? (I’m particularly interested, since I couldn’t make it to the program that night!)