Future Practice User Experience Webinars
User Experience guru and author now turned editor, former UXnet colleague and - last but not least - good friend Louis Rosenfeld has just launched a brand new initiative for all you UX professionals and practitioners out there: the Future Practice User Experience Webinars.
The webinars will cover the cutting edge of contemporary user experience research and design methods and will be hosted by top nocth UX speakers (such as Modern Web Form Design with Wroblewski - you might also want to take a look at my article Label placement in forms on the same subject).
These 60-minute webinars are initially available as live classes, and then are made available in a recorded, edited format.
There’s a 25% off special discount (for the live and, ultimately, recorded webinars) for the loyal readers of Yellow Line that will use this promo-code:
PENZOWBNR
Lou and his crew are doing a wonderful job with the UX related books adventure; I’m sure they’ll produce high quality webinars too!
Frontiers of Interaction 2007
When I first contacted Leandro with a proposal to produce an event on innovation, cool technologies and user experience back in 2005 I’d never ever had thought that it would be so successfull to be repeated for three full years.
Ladies and gentlemen please welcome The Interaction Frontiers 2007 which will be held at University Bicocca in Milan on the 28th of June starting at 9 completely free for all (registration required - this year we also have a cool Bastard personalized t-shirt for our guests).
While the 2005 theme was user experience/interaction, the 2006 one was on new interactions, this year edition will be about The Internet of things: we’ll have mindstorm robots, human-like robots, ebook readers, nazbatag and all that sort of geekeries available for a try… you really shouldn’t loose them!
This year keynote speaker is Jeffrey Schnapp from Stanford University, a bright minded man who founded the Stanford Humanities Lab:
“a Center for Transdiciplinary/Post-Disciplinary Study. We discover fascinating futures to be explored in ignoring and crossing disciplinary borders.
With new developments in areas such as biotech, digital culture, global society, SHL believes that some crucial questions — about what it is to be human, about experience in a connected world, about the boundaries of culture and nature — transcend the old divisions between the arts, sciences and humanities, between the academy, industry and the cultural sphere.
We engage in experimental projects with a “laboratory” ethos — collaborative, co-creative, team-based — involving a triangulation of arts practice, commentary/critique, and outreach, merging research, pedagogy, publication and practice. We don’t just comment and discuss, we build: new media, interactive archives, predictive models of social change, new courses, collaborative research workshops, art exhibitions.”
With such a background we’re really entrigued to have him on board!
We’ll daily blog our progress on the event site; we already delivered the press release, next appointment is to fix the agenda and release A3 poster to you all. Stay tuned!
Speaking at the World Usability Day
As previously posted, tomorrow I’ll be at the Bicocca University premises to hold a small talk at the World Usability Day 2007 (see details about the event). I’ll present UXnet - the User Experience related org I represent in Milan - introducing WHAT it is and HOW it can practically help other organizations.
Set your agenda on November 14th from 10.00am to 2.00pm (CET+1), Marco Martini Room, U6 building - Milano-Bicocca University. There’s also going to be a live webcast so you can follow the talks from your computer; stay tuned on the event official web site.
UXnet and the World Usability Day
As many of you probably know i am the UXnet ambassador for Milan, which actually means it’s my job to create connections between companies and the UX community, UX professionals and UX associations and son on.
In this continuing effort I decided to volunteer for the organization of the UPA World Usability Day at a global level becoming one of the UXnet provided Regional Liasons.
Since there’re just two of us in EU I’ve had the chance to get in touch with a whole lot of UX people from a lot of countries: UK, Spain, Belgium, Poland, France, and the list might continue… it’s been a WONDERFUL experience.
UXnet also recently welcomed Michele Visciola as ambassador for Turin and Rome. Michele alsso happens to be the President of the Italian UPA chapter and the organizer of the Italian WUD event in Milan (here’s the program and a list of speakers in English).
I think there shouldn’t be a better chance to talk about UXnet; yours truly has been invited for a short (short short short 
) talk about our community. See you there.
Next speaking appointments
I’m starting my autumn season for seminars next week, and I’d say that yours truly has been invited as a speaker to pretty interesting and high level seminars this year.
We’ll start on Monday 3 October with a so trendy Web 2.0 closed group seminar in Torino (yes, where we had Olimpic Games early this year) in a medieval castle. The stage should be pretty interesting based on what the organizers told me. But just the fact to talk about innovative technologies inside a castle is really amazing.
What am I gonna to talk about? Mobup my friends. And how we managed to have a multi-level mash-up between the phisical and the digital worlds.
On October 10th I’ll daily commute to Rome (Trenitalia PLEASE stay stick to your timetable!) for a talk at the Tor Vergata University organised uber-cool Interfacce06 Conference speaking about the international User Experience group I’m representing in Milan: UXnet.
This year I’m also actively participating as Regional Liason for the organization at a European level of the UPA organized World Usability Day 2006 acting as a link between all the european event organizers and the central comitee (pretty interesting job though). I’ll also have a small speech at the Milan WUD event at the Bicocca University with a UXnet based speech, again.
Tomorrow I’ll be in Bergamo to listen to a seminar by Marvin Minsky (Genious and MIT AI Lab founder) on emotional robots. I’m not speaking, but will be a nice chance to chat with some old friends in the innovation business.
Interfacce06
This year I’ll be involved - as part of the efforts of the divulgation of UXnet related themes in Italy - in the organization of the interaction day at Interfacce06 (Interfaces06) a whole 2 days on usability and user interfaces that will be held in Rome on the 10th and 11th of October 2006.
The call for papers is still open, you might want to give it a look (note: it’s written in Italian); don-t hesitate to contact me should you need further infos.
Call for papers NOW open
I managed to publish (I’m still recaping from the flu that hit me this week) the call for papers for the 15 mins short talk slots at The Interaction Frontiers 2006.
If you’re a bright-minded soul that has something to say about
- Softwares able to understand users’ moods
- Adaptive interfaces
- Ubiquitous computing
- Robots and automas
- Natural interfaces
- Augmented interfaces
Send - before May 25 - an email containing your position paper in PDF (no more than 4 pages) to interactionfrontiers@gmail.com; the four best are going to speak about their project against TIF06 public.
Are you ready?
The Interaction Frontiers 2006 site is live
The Interaction Frontiers 2006
I spent lunchtime with Leandro Agrò and Flavio de Paoli in a nice Oktoberfest resembling steak house in Bicocca, the uber-modern quarter built in the ex-Pirelli factory area, chatting about new-born babies and the lacks of modern digital compact cameras.
The last minute meeting was set up in order to evaluate the Milano-Bicocca University conference room that’s planned to host this year edition of “The Interaction Frontiers” (you can find the 2005 site, with speakers - including Dirk Knemeyer - bio, abstracts and slides here), which will be the main UXnet Italy event for the current year.
The event is planned to be held on June 16 from 9am to 4pm and will be about
The traditional GUI windows [that] are now enriched by simul-human symbolic representations (avatars), have input devices and sensors capable of collecting emotion rich informations and finally come out from their screens and walk on their own wheels and robot legs.
This year conference room will have seats for 150/200 people, Wi-Fi + plugs will be provided for free to all the attendees and bloggers, so remember to bring your laptop!
Learning from the LIFT06 experience the first 4 seat rows will be reserved to people without computer as the famous laptop free zone.
We plan to have a world renown geek as keynote speaker and a bright minded researcher specialised in emotion capable machines (I’m sorry but cannot be more precise at this stage) plus a top class panel of User Experience/HCI experts and a bunch of great speakers. We have some 15mins speaking slots still available and will open a call for papers once the conference site will be ready (a couple of weeks or so).
I’m really excited to be involved in the organization of such a cuttin edge event which - by the way - will be provided FOR FREE to all. If curious you can find photo details of the conference spaces on Leandro’s Flickr set.
Podcasting Keith Instone of UXnet
Keith Instone IBM fellow, Information architect and among the UXnet founders was recently interviewed by DesignCritique during Internet User Experience 2006 on User Experience Network (which I’m honoured to be part of).
“UXnet was formed to help make connections between the people and organizations that represent User Experience disciplines, and to encourage interchange and cooperation.”
The whole interview has been recorded and is available as podcast (MP3 file), worth a look… ehm… listen.
