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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!)

Contributors
To begin with, we’d like to officially welcome Evan Dickinson as our first featured Contributor. As Evan notes in his first article, he is “a Portlander and CHIFOO member who recently moved to Vancouver BC to study interaction design at Simon Fraser University (SFU) in the School of Interactive Arts and Technology (SIAT). Before I left Portland, [Member at Large] David Stubbs asked if I’d be willing to write about my time at SFU.” Evan graciously took up the challenge, and we encourage you all to follow his thoughts on his academic journey in our Resources section, under Commentary.

We hope that Evan is not our first and only Contributor. We invite any CHIFOO members who wish to contribute their own original content to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and tell us more.

Comments
Second, we have enabled reader comments on our articles. This means that any member of CHIFOO can tell the rest of us what they think: about an event or speaker that we hosted; about a book or product that a member reviewed; or about a Contributor’s latest column. Just follow the permalink to an article or event listing’s detail page—for example, Evan Dickinson’s first article, in which he specifically says, “I welcome questions – the point of these articles is to share what’s interesting, and your questions will guide what I write about,”—and scroll to the bottom of the page. There you’ll see existing comments and (if you have logged in) a form for adding your own.

Now, I did say “any member of CHIFOO.” Why are we limiting comments only to logged-in members? Simply because we are a volunteer organization, and our Executive Council members don’t have enough time to both run the organization and act as full-time Moderators of an online forum. We expect that you, as paid-in-full members of CHIFOO, are responsible enough to keep the discourse civil and follow the rules laid out in the CHIFOO Online Community Member Guidelines. We obviously can’t vouch for the entire rest of the Internet.

We owe special thanks to new member and recent immigrant to Portland, Sam Pierce Lolla, who helped design the Comments UI.

Member Profiles
Finally, we are going to be drawing information out of Member Profiles to bring useful content to the public face of the site: In particular, a Member Directory and ways of spotlighting individual members on a rotating basis (members who wish to be in the spotlight, that is). Although these new Member features won’t be introduced for several months, it would behoove CHIFOO members to update their Member Profiles now—especially the bio and photo. (Note that your photo will also appear alongside any comments you make on the site.) This way, you’ll actually have a face to show to the world when the time comes.

Another place in the Member Profiles where we need your help is with the “Field of Expertise.” We thought it might be useful for job seekers/recruiters to have this sort of designation: Human Factors, Interaction Design, Usability Engineering, and so on. We’ve populated the list of choices with a number of fields, but if you find that we’ve overlooked your area of expertise, then please .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) and we’ll see about adding it.

Enjoy the new contributors, enjoy the new comments features, and stay tuned for more updates!

“So you’re setting up your team’s workspace. You can choose to go the cube farm route, or you can keep the space wide open (like our editorial department here at Oregon Business). You can even set up something temporary in a communal lunch area. Does the environment really make a difference?

Turns out it does, particularly when it comes to encouraging teamwork and collaboration.”  Read the entire article at the Oregon Business website.

Practitioners came from more than 20 countries to share their knowledge with each other, solve common problems, network, and learn the latest techniques from innovators in the field. It was an amazing educational experience and networking opportunity.

Local Help Key to Hospitality Effort
In addition to introducing speaker sessions, stuffing bags, judging the student competition, and presenting on panels, CHIFOO members cheerfully staffed the Hospitality Booth, greeting visitors and helping them find their way around Portland. As perfect Stumptown ambassadors, enthusiastic guides hosted Dinners for Eight at local restaurants—a big hit with all who particpated.

Thanks to these enthusiastic and helpful volunteers: Demetra Gilmore Arnett, Callie B. Carroll, Evan Dickinson, Neil Doxtader, Lynne Fitzsimmons, Leo Frishberg, Fellene Gaylord, Barbara Karyukin, Janna Kimmel, Ann Marcus, Nancy McClure, Dick Miller, Yelena Nakhimovsky, Pechluck Pongched, Jackie Scherer, and Samantha Soma. We couldn’t have done it without your help!

Whether people are interacting with consumer electronics, medical equipment, factory floor production lines, websites, retail stores, customer support or the architectural spaces which they inhabit every day, usability and user experience reactivation share in the common goal of making it better. A wealth of speakers will be sharing their wisdom ranging from Jared Spool to CHIFOO veteran speakers Nathan Shedroff and Nancy Frishberg.

The main conference registration includes two and a half days of presentations with sessions at each level of usability expertise from Wednesday - Friday of this week. Whether new to the field or an experienced expert, you’ll find sessions of interest.

Are you on Twitter? Watch hashtag #upa2009 tweets for conference updates, comments and insights in action.

Find out full details about the conference at UPA2009.org.

A culture’s penchant for participation is not dictated by technology; rather, it is the result of changes in human behavior and social organization including innovative design, adoption, appropriation, and adaptation of technologies to their needs. In this talk, Gerhard will share some of his experiences designing and assessing socio-technical environments for cultures of participation. His approach is grounded in the basic assumption that innovative technological developments are necessary for participation cultures, but they are not sufficient. Socio-technical systems are needed because the deep and enduring changes of societies are not just technological, but social and cultural as well.

Throughout the evening, Gerhard will encourage the audience to explore two themes: meta-design (a framework aimed at defining social and technical infrastructures in which new forms of collaborative design can take place) and social creativity (focused on harnessing the complex problem-solving power of our interactions with other people and shared artifacts).

About the Speaker

Gerhard Fischer is a Professor of Computer Science, a Fellow of the Institute of Cognitive Science, and the Director of the Center for Lifelong Learning and Design (L3D) at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He is a member of the Computer Human Interaction (CHI) Academy. His research interests include learning, working, and collaborating with new media; human-computer interaction; cognitive science; assistive technologies; and cross-disciplinary collaboration and education.

Over the last twenty years, Gerhard has pioneered and developed innovative conceptual frameworks and socio-technical environments for distributed intelligence, social creativity, and meta-design. In these areas he has published extensively, directed research projects, applied the conceptual frameworks to education, founded new research initiatives, and advised organizations in reinventing themselves for the information age.

What kind of scenes are we looking for? Click REFRESH a few times on the home page to see what we’ve already posted. The subject matter is Computer-Human Interaction, but with a focus on the “human:” People using technology to work, play, and lead richer lives. Try to think beyond the world of stock of photography and grinning businesspeople staring at laptops.

Please be sure you are authorized to share and distribute this photo. Send along a byline or link (to a Flickr location, for example) that we can put into the image’s TITLE attribute. By submitting the photo, you grant us permission to use it on the CHIFOO.org Web site and in other communications.

E-mail your submissions to .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).

You can check out the latest chifoo09 tags (or grab the RSS feed to plug into your favorite feed reader) right here at CHIFOO.org. Just take a glance at the sidebar on the Resources page.

Don’t have a del.icio.us account? You can sign up online. Then, start tagging. It’s easy! See? I just tagged this very article.

The first event is scheduled for January 14th at 7pm. Please note that our regular CHIFOO programs have moved to a new location in SE Portland: CubeSpace on 622 SE Grand Ave.

Our first speaker is Kathryn Everest, a Social Software Advisor at Jive Software, and the topic will be “Designing Successful Collaboration Using Social Network Analysis.” Kathryn helps leading organizations achieve business goals, such as improving innovation, knowledge access, and retention and collaboration across complex and geographically dispersed organizations. Read more >>

If you are interested in sharing some enlightening conversation and dinner beforehand, CHIFOOd will be meeting at 5 pm at the Eastbank Saloon on 727 SE Grand Ave—just a block away. CHIFOOd is a fun way to meet like-minded folks and is open to everyone.

Registration—and yet another opportunity to network—will occur at CubeSpace between 6:30pm and 7pm before Kathryn’s presentation.

The program is free for members (with a $20/year membership) and $5 for non-members.

We’re looking forward to seeing many new and familiar faces!

CHIFOO marks a new chapter in its history with the upgrade of its website.  The changes are both subtle and profound, some of which are immediately evident and some may be completely invisible.  Four years ago, the CHIFOO Executive Council established a plan for upgrading the ways in which the organization can serve its members, and likewise, ways in which you can serve yourself.

Without going into excruciating detail, trust me when I say that the means by which our council manages and maintains our membership information is byzantine at best. Now, firmly ensconced as we are in the 21st century, we can take advantage of web based (I won’t go so far as to suggest Web 2.0) methods!

Some of the key changes include:

• New look and feel
• Members’ Only areas
• Rapid update of content
• Member profile and self-service capabilities

This area will serve as a platform for the Executive Council to communicate with visitors. Perhaps you have something you want to offer to the community - a book review, a particularly nice (or nasty) example of an interaction design, or a recent conference experience.  As we move forward, look back for more changes.