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Current SIGDOC Newsletter
December 2009 :: Volume 10, Number 4
Our Members
Notes from the Chair
Brad Mehlenbacher
Dear SIGDOC Members,
The ACM SIGDOC 2009 conference (http://www.sigdoc.org/2009/index.html) held this past October at Indiana University at Bloomington was a huge success and I'd like to extend my thanks to the conference organizers, distinguished program committee members, keynote and award speakers, and many presenters who contributed to a stimulating and thought-provoking conference. Thanks also to Indiana University's School of Informatics and Kelley School of Business, IBM, Old Dominion University's Department of English and, especially, to the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) for their sponsorship and support.
The conference call for papers attracted 84 submissions from Asia, Europe, and North and South America and the conference program included 43 papers, experience reports, workshops, and posters. Highlights for me, personally, included paper-presentations on alternative design methods (user-, goal-, activity-, and experience-design approaches), on sensory, semiotic, semantic, and value-based methods for designing and evaluating Websites, help systems, and user assistance, on rhetorical and cultural analyses of technical artifacts, on collaborative and peer-to-peer community formation and meaning making, and on the compelling relationship between informatics and communication design.
As well, I absolutely loved the IU community, the accommodations, food and site services, and the hidden joy that's Bloomington, Indiana!
Our plans for the 28th International Conference on Design of Communication, ACM SIGDOC 2010, are in full swing. If you are interested in contributing your ideas or energy to our conference in Sao Paulo, Brazil, please contact either me (brad_m@unity.ncsu.edu) or our conference co-chairs, Junia Anacleto (junia@dc.ufscar.br) or Renata Fortes (renata@icmc.usp.br).
Our continuing initiative to address membership growth has been following several strands. First, we are investigating the possibility of developing a European SIGDOC Chapter and of creating several Student SIGDOC Chapters (at, for example, East Carolina State University, Old Dominion University, and at NC State University). The work for getting these chapters formally approved and supported by the ACM is in the preliminary stages and we would welcome your involvement or your input on other potential locations for chapters.
The second strand is that we recently had a graduate student team consult us on our current support of members and on future strategies for involving and supporting SIGDOC members. Their findings, which they shared in a real-time virtual environment with the SIGDOC Board, were based on survey results of 41 members and a review of the strategies of similar organizations (for example, the STC, ASTD, and IEEE). Members indicated a strong interest in more interactive means of communicating with each other (for example, via blogs, wikis, and asynchronous discussion boards). In addition, there was considerable interest in the idea of offering regional workshops and/or tutorials on topics of interest to SIGDOC members and non-members. Of particular note was the overwhelming interest surveyed members had in volunteering for activities and we are currently talking about ways to involve and support these volunteer activities and contributions. This process of course involves collecting and presenting ideas and tasks that members would be interested in seeing implemented -- here, again, your ideas and initiative would be of great value.
At this point, you're probably feeling a little overwhelmed by the number of requests I've made for your input, so I'll sign-off for now. Before doing so, and speaking of considerable volunteer efforts that deserve extraordinary mention, please join me in thanking Rob Pierce for his work these last NINE years as the Editor of our SIGDOC Newsletter. Not only did Rob conceptualize and implement the newsletter, but he in large part kept it relevant, informative, and creative no matter what the state of the organization or its board. Liza Potts, our Secretary/Treasurer, and a group of talented students at Old Dominion University will be taking over the newsletter and we're all excited about more involvement in its development and direction. Still, please take a moment to write and thank Rob for his contributions on this front, contributions I only clumsily acknowledge every time I throw my coat over mud puddles whenever he starts to cross the street near me.
Brad Mehlenbacher
Associate Professor, Training and Development (ACCE),
Adjunct/Associate Professor, Ergonomics (PSYCH),
and Affiliated Faculty, PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media (COM/ENG)
NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7801
919.515.6242 (ph)
chair_sigdoc@acm.org (e-mail)
www4.ncsu.edu/~brad_m (url)
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Notes from the 2009 Program Co-Chairs
Ashley Williams and Shaun Slattery
SIGDOC ’09 was a smashing success! The program included sessions on social networks, web design and development, multimedia, requirements gathering, privacy and security, help systems, documentation, accessibility, and pedagogy and disciplinarity, etc.--sessions that addressed issues relevant to the design of communication from such perspectives as rhetoric, genre, computer science, semantics, and methods and methodologies, etc.
The program also included a panel on the role of technology in communication design and invited talks from Jim Shea, Director of Planning for IU’s School of Informatics; Ramesh Venkataraman, Associate Professor of IS at IU; Michael Priestley, lead DITA architect for IBM; and Jason Melton, Data Management Sales Specialist of IBM Software Group. Sandy Korzenny, Director of Product Documentation at Apple, accepted the Diana Award on behalf of this year’s winner, Apple. And Karen Schnakenberg gave the Awards Banquet presentation, "Documentation in the 21st Century: The Evolving Challenges for Academic Programs," about enabling students with the analytic and problem-solving skills needed to enter into and succeed in the current workplace, and the skills that are neededfor students to understand and meet the challenges of a media landscape that's continually emerging and evolving.
Overall, the conference was a great mix of research, theory and practice, industry and academia, and expert and novice—all across various disciplines. Such diversity in action is refreshing if not reinvigorating. Very few conferences are able to enable a sense of community in the way that SIGDOC does, where we create a certain cohesiveness despite our seeming disparateness. For a few days in October, on the beautiful IU campus in Bloomington, we came together as a community to share stimulating perspectives, to explore multiple technologies, and to discuss issues, methods, and case studies, etc. in communication design—when we might not have done so otherwise, given that we’re scattered across various academic and research institutions and various small businesses and large multinational corporations in various countries across the globe. And that’s what helps make SIGDOC a great conference.
Interested in photos or talks from the conference?
SIGDOC ’09 talks on Slideshare
http://www.slideshare.net/event/acm-sigdoc-2009
SIGDOC ’09 Photos
Have photos you’d like to post to the conference website? Please write to Ashley at ashleyw@acm.org. Have SIGDOC photos on Flickr? Tag your photos: sigdoc09
Sincerely,
Ashley Williams and Shaun Slattery
..............................................................
Ashley Williams, Ph.D.
SIGDOC Information Director
SIGDOC 2009 Program Co-Chair
ashleyw@acm.org
Shaun Slattery, Ph.D.
SIGDOC 2009 Program Co-Chair
sslatte1@depaul.edu
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