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Live Webcast Plenary Session undefined Download Required in Advance

Our opening plenary session, which will be webcast live on November 8th at 8:30 am United States Eastern Standard Time, will feature an address from World Usability Day’s founder and director, Elizabeth Rosenzweig, and a panel discussion with distinguished speakers supporting the 2007 theme - Healthcare!

The panel discussion focuses on novel strategies and integrating solutions to healthcare challenges from a user centered design perspective. Challenges range from drug delivery, technologies, and medical devices, to pediatric healthcare and personal healthcare records. The panelists use these examples to show how the application of user centered design principles benefit vital issues in human health and how this will continue throughout the upcoming year and beyond.

The UPA 2007 Salary Survey will close on November 15. If you haven't completed
it, now's your chance! Every two years the UPA surveys user experience professionals to attain in-depth data about the development of the user experience field. The survey is anonymous and open to all user experience professionals, not just UPA members. A version of the report is freely
available to all, and will be ready in approximately three months. Please help us by taking the survey. You can also read the 2005_upa_salary_survey.pdf 2005 salary survey report .

Refresh the Triangle ...
is a community of designers and developers working to refresh the creative, technical, and professional culture of New Media endeavors in their areas. Promoting design, technology, usability, and standards.

• Where: Ruvane Auditorium @ GSK
• When: November 8, 2007 undefined 6:00PM to 9:00PM
• RSVP for World Usability Day!

Join UX professionals from around the Triangle area for an Interactionary (a live design competition), keynote speech, food, drink, and fun!
Keynote Speaker:
Anthony D. Hall, Ph.D.
IBM Global Web Strategy and Enablement
Interactionary
Simply put, the Interactionary is a live team-based design competition. Teams are given a design problem and 10-20 minutes to design a solution to the problem. Teams then present their design to the audience, and the judges.

Click here to join the competition

CED's annual tech conference is this Friday:

CED’s Tech 2007 will explore the future of emerging and converging technologies that are reshaping today’s hottest industries. Now in its 17th year, Tech 2007 will focus on the latest cutting-edge markets and global opportunities in clean technologies, medical devices, new materials, nanotechnology and more, as well as telecom, internet, software and hardware.

Also, regional gaming companies will be demonstrating their most recent wares at the Game Night reception, 5 - 7pm.

TriUPA sponsor Heather Hesketh (hesketh.com) is interviewed in the latest Carolina STC newsletter. Here's an excerpt:
How did you get started in the user experience business?
In 1995, businesses were asking “Web what?” and I was trying to change my career from technical writing to applied anthropology. So, it was user experience that brought me to the Web. From the beginning what excited me about the Web was its potential to transform business and communication. To be effective online requires balancing business goals, user needs, and technical feasibility. User experience brings to bear methodologies from applied anthropology, computer science/human factors, and marketing to strike this balance. It took ten years to evangelize this approach such that business would embrace it. For our part, we advocate the use of user centered design methodologies not through the message of “it’s the right thing to do” but through metrics and results.
Read the full interview at the STC's site.

Rebekah Sedaca from Capstrat led a great discussion on using comics to communicate design at our last TriUPA local lunch. You can read about Rebekah's experience in her Boxes & Arrows article, "Comics: Not just for laughs!" If you're interested in trying to use comics in your work, Rebekah shared a list of useful resources you can check out:

• Kevin Cheng, "Communicating Concepts through Comics"
• Carson Van Osten, "Comic Strip Artist’s Kit"
• Dan Brown, “How to Make Thought Bubbles in Visio”
• Scott McCloud, “Understanding Comics” undefined Buy at Amazon
• Microsoft’s Clip Art Gallery Live
• Comic Visio Stencil from Capstrat

Registration is open for BarCampRDU 2007!
A Bar Camp is an unconference where people interested in a wide range of technologies come together to teach and learn. Unfamiliar with the un-conference format? Here's the idea in a nutshell. Rather than having scheduled speakers, everyone pitches sessions the morning of the BarCamp. Those sessions are put on a schedule, and lots of little groups form for intense group learning. Everyone is expected to teach, to talk, to participate. Yeah, its different from a regular conference - but it works!
If you're interested, I would head over and sign-up soon, it looks like it could fill up fast. BarCampRDU 2007 will be August 4, 2007 at the Red Hat Offices, Raleigh, NC.

Triangle UPA now has a TriUPA Facebook Group! The group is open to members and non-members alike.

Thanks to everyone who came out and made the event a success!

DCampSouth is this Saturday!

Time: 8:30 AM - 5:30 PM
Date: June 2nd, 2006
Place: School of Communication Arts, Raleigh, NC

DCampSouth, the unconference for everyone interested in design and user experience, is this Saturday! I hope I'll see you at the School of Communication Arts in Raleigh this weekend, but first I wanted share a few interesting things about DCampSouth.

• We're opening with a keynote by Thomas Vander Wal! We're very excited that Thomas has agree to kick things off for us.
• DCamp is all about great discussions, and anyone can start one. We're going to invite everyone who attends to propose a session and add it to the schedule on Saturday morning. No PowerPoints are necessary, and you don't even have to prepare any material to propose a discussion.
• DCampSouth is FREE!

• There's lots more info on the DCampSouth wiki, so be sure to stop by and check it out. You can find a schedule for the day, proposed session ideas, directions and more... http://dcampsouth.pbwiki.com

  See you soon!