Toledo UXnet

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.

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.

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).

I will miss the first meeting of the new "season" of MOCHI - Tom Brinck's farewell to Michigan on August 9th. But it is good to see something on the calendar. The MOCHI blog is another good sign, making it easier for me to stay in touch with my user experience colleagues up north.

An IA Institute job posting for "System Designer / Prototyper" at Klein Associates in Dayton reminds me of the "Management by Discovery" workshop that I attended in March. The workshop was part of the Mind your leadership conference at BGSU. (I missed the rest of the conference because I was travelling to the IA Summit.)

The workshop was officially titled "The cognitive dimenions of leadership: A practitioner's toolkit." I had no expectations, was mainly attending because it sounded interesting and it was close to home - worth the risk of a day of my time. What surprised me was that I already knew a lot of this stuff because Gary Klein is well-known for Cognitive task analysis and other HCI work (not sure how I missed Gary up until then). I had "stumbled" into an HCI person presenting to a business audience, so I felt right at home.

Management by Discovery is different than Management by Objectives and other management styles because it focuses on emergent goals (instead of upfront, well-defined goals, which never happens anyway). It means a lot of story-telling, sense-making, iteration and other things we assume with a user-centered design approach. "Taking UCD to the management decision level" might be a good summary.

Jay Rothman added his expertise on conflict engagement to the workshop. This was Gary and Jay's first collaboration on this topic.

All-in-all, a good day for me - sitting with a bunch of organization development people and "peeking over the fence" back at my own profession.

A pair of alumni from where I earned my degrees, Bowling Green State University Computer Science, are visiting us over the next few weeks.

On March 30th, Shantanu Narayen, President of Adobe, will be on campus to talk about Web 2.0, Rich Internet Applications, and Adobe's strategy for innovation.

On March 21st, Brian Rudolph (now with Systems & Applications, UNLV) will share stories about being a Software Engineer at SEGA, the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest, and life in Las Vegas. Last year I was watching some cable show about beating the odds in Vegas and was surprised to see Brian talking about slot / poker machines.

Brian will be talking at 7:30 pm in Hayes 111. Sponsored by the BGSU student ACM chapter.

It is great to see my colleagues doing well - and even better to have them coming back to BGSU to tell us about their escapades.