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SIGDOC Newsletter
September 2009 :: Volume 10, Number 3
Our Members
Notes from the Chair
Dear SIGDOC Members,
The ACM SIGDOC 2009 conference (http://www.sigdoc.org/2009/index.html) is a month away and it’s difficult not to get entirely too effusive at this point, beginning sentences with phrases like “None of this would have been possible without…” or “Without a doubt, this experience has been the most….” So permit me to emote briefly.
Thank you to Aristos Protopsaltis, my Conference Co-Chair, and, especially to Shaun Slattery and to Ashley Williams, this year’s Conference Program Co-chairs, for the many hours they devoted to the planning, deliberation, and coordination of the conference proceedings and schedule. They implemented an innovative two-pass blind review process that matched reviewer expertise with submission type for the first time in SIGDOC’s conference history. They also worked tirelessly with Rob Pierce, our Local Arrangements Chair, to organize a special one-day Indiana University at Bloomington conference focus that explicitly connects our multidisciplinary conference themes with our conference university site. The strong relationship this year between our SIGDOC organization, conference program, and Indiana University Bloomington is due to Rob Pierce’s tireless coordination efforts on the ground, in email, and via old-fashioned technologies like the telephone. Rob organized a two-day site visit to Bloomington with me and I watched with delight as he set up numerous creative conference collaborations with IU’s School of Informatics (http://www.informatics.indiana.edu/) and the Kelley School of Business (http://kelley.iu.edu/). As a result of Rob’s efforts, James Shea, IU Informatics, and Anne Massey, IU Business, have become longtime friends of SIGDOC I hope. I also watched as Rob effortlessly negotiated menu items, organized banquet events, and coordinated hotel and conference center room arrangements, clear evidence that an academic should never be allowed to attempt to do these things. I found myself, more than once, mumbling about articles in obscure journals, safe ground at best!
For those of you still thinking about how you’ll spent your time in Bloomington, remember to check out our hotel and conference site (http://www.imu.indiana.edu/hotel/index.shtml) or the Indiana University Bloomington campus site (http://www.iub.edu/). For information about Bloomington in general, see http://bloomington.in.gov/, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bloomington,_Indiana, and http://www.visitbloomington.com/. Looking forward to seeing you October 5th-7th in Bloomington, Indiana, for this year's 27th ACM International Conference on Design of Communication (SIGDOC 2009).
Finally, I’d like to take this opportunity to thank Drs. David Novick, John Stamey, and Shaun Slattery for contributing to our SIG election process by adding their names to the SIGDOC docket this summer. Shaun Slattery, as well, has contributed beyond the call for the last two years as SIGDOC’s Treasurer and as this year’s Program Co-chair.
Without these elections and your vote, SIGDOC would not exist as a part of the greater Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). More importantly, without the active engagement and contributions of our member volunteers and conference site planners, we wouldn’t be able to bring you the consistently stimulating conferences or newsletter updates (and check out our Web presence via Facebook Twitter, and LinkedIn!
I’m looking very forward to serving as your Chair for another two years. I hope we’ll get the opportunity to visit in Bloomington and I very much welcome your ideas for invigorating our SIG. As I’ve surely admitted too frequently to too many of you, SIGDOC is a consistent high-point of my job, equal only to reading articles in obscure journals!
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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SIGDOC Board Election Results
ACM SIGDOC Board for 2009-2011
The following individuals were elected to serve as SIGDOC officers for the term July 1, 2009 – June 30, 2011:
Chair:
Brad Mehlenbacher, North Carolina State University
NC State University,
Raleigh, NC
brad_m@unity.ncsu.edu
Vice-Chair:
Robert Pierce, IBM Rational Software
IBM Corporation
Lexington, MA
robertp@us.ibm.com
Secretary/Treasurer:
Liza Potts
Old Dominion University
Norfolk, VA
lpotts@odu.edu
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Notes from the Treasurer
Liza Potts
I am incredibly honored and excited to be your new Secretary/Treasurer. Brad and Rob have both been incredibly welcoming, and I thank them for their support. I also want to thank Shaun Slattery for his service and dedication to SIGDOC, not the least of which is his efforts (combined with Brad Mehlenbacher, Aristidis Protopsaltis, and Ashley Williams) regarding this year’s conference.
As part of introducing myself to you, I want to tell you a bit about my background and share my hopes for how we can further the interdisciplinary goals of SIGDOC.
Currently, I am the co-director of the Center for Mediated Experience and an assistant professor at Old Dominion University. I earned my Ph.D. in Communication & Rhetoric, my M.S. in Technical Communication (HCI), and my Graduate Certificate in HCI from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. My research interests include technologically-mediated communication, experience design, and participatory culture. On the industry side, I have worked for internet startups, Microsoft, and design consultancies advising both Fortune 100 and 500 clients. I’ve had titles such as director of design research, user experience architect, information architect, usability engineer, program manager, and technical writer. I have built prototypes, constructed taxonomies, tested software, conducted field studies, designed services, and wrote design specifications. My academic research has been published in peer-reviewed journals such as Technical Communication Quarterly and the International Journal of Sociotechnology and Knowledge Development. My work is also published in proceedings for conferences such as the SIGDOC, the British Computing Society’s Sociotech group, and the IEEE’s PCS.
From my perspective as a researcher and a practitioner, SIGDOC represents a place where these two worlds blur - allowing us to share knowledge, make connections, and push the limits of our work in an interdisciplinary environment. In this month’s newsletter, there is information about three exciting opportunities for you to get more involved with our community. First, the formation of our new student chapters will provide a place for collaboration and mentorship. Second, the Bridge Building award seeks to recognize our interdisciplinary achievements. Third, the online communities are where you can find your fellow SIGDOC members to discuss ideas, exchange information, and collaborate on projects.
In sharing these ideas with you, I am inviting you to continue this conversation online where we can further explore these ideas, decide if and how they will play out, and share how we can put them into practice. Please take a look at this newsletter for further details on how you can participate in these conversations on Twitter, LinkedIN, and Facebook. Special thanks to the hard work and efforts of our Information Director, Ashley Williams. If there are other places you think are important places for us to communicate our message of communication design and share ideas, please let us know!
Bridging: SIGDOC Student Chapters
I am delighted to announce the formation of our new Student Chapters for SIGDOC. A major reason why I returned to academia was to help train the next generation of communication designers. As part of that training, I would like to encourage the establishment of these SIGDOC student groups in our universities, institutes, and colleges. These groups will promote interdisciplinary work by creating a space in which students who work on communication design projects can meet, discuss ideas, and collaborate on projects. Please feel free to contact me for further information on these chapters.
Bridging: SIGDOC Bridge Building Awards
Building from SIGDOC’s foundation on strong interdisciplinary work, we are working on the creation of Bridge Building awards to recognize these collaborations. By publicizing these achievements, we can encourage others to continue this work and support our movement. More information will be distributed about these awards soon. If you would like to be involved, please contact Brad, Rob, or me.
Liza Potts, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor of Professional Writing
Co-Director, Center for Mediated Experience
Old Dominion University
English Department BAL 5020
Norfolk, VA 23529
AIM: LizaPotts Skype: lkpotts
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Notes from the 2009 Program Co-Chairs
Ashley Williams and Shaun Slattery
We are very excited about this year's SIGDOC Conference! Hosted in Bloomington on the beautiful campus of Indiana University, this year’s conference includes presentations of research and experience drawn from an unprecedented number of submissions. This year’s call for papers attracted 84 submissions from Asia, Europe, and North and South America. The program committee accepted 43 papers and experience reports as well as workshops and posters representing the wide range of perspectives which inform our multi-disciplinary field. The program includes 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; Michael Priestley, lead DITA architect for IBM; and Jason Melton, Data Management Sales Specialist of IBM Software Group. Finally, Sandy Korzenny, Director of Product Documentation, will be accepting the Diana Award on behalf of this year’s winner, Apple.
Each SIGDOC conference is a true team effort. We would like to thank the many authors who submitted excellent proposals and worked hard to develop the ideas and insights presented in these proceedings. We also thank the Program Committee for their hard work reviewing papers and providing suggestions for their improvements. Thank you to Indiana University for hosting this year’s meeting. A special thanks to our sponsors, The School of Informatics and Kelley School of Business at Indiana University, IBM, ACM, and the Department of English at Old Dominion University, whose contributions made our meeting possible. We would also like to thank this year’s conference co-chairs Brad Mehlenbacher and Aristos Protopsaltis, program co-chairs Ashley Williams and Shaun Slattery, and Rob Pierce who contributed in countless ways to make this year’s meeting successful. Thanks also to Mike Albers who coordinated the student competition. Thanks to local arrangements chairs Jim Shea and Rob Pierce. Special thanks go to Ashley Williams who, in addition to serving as Program Co-Chair, set up and maintained the conference website, paper submissions system, and online registration. Finally, we thank Lisa Tolles of Sheridan Printing who was instrumental in producing the quality proceedings you hold in your hand.
By meeting each year, we identify ourselves as a community, albeit a diverse one, committed to advancing our understanding of communication design from a variety of perspectives including computer science, information science, information architecture, usability, communications, rhetoric, and technical communication. This year, these perspectives inform work on web communication and design, documentation and help, accessibility, usability and user-centered design, textual analysis, applications development, pedagogy, and social networking. By meeting together, we are able to share our own work, learn from the work of others, and engage in conversations which expand our collective understanding with the benefit of these multiple perspectives. We hope our meeting and these collected proceedings provide you a valuable opportunity to share ideas with other researchers and practitioners from institutions around the world.
Sincerely,
Ashley Williams and Shaun Slattery
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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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Membership Committee
We have established a membership committee (consisting of David Novick, Kathy Haramundanis, and John Stamey) to develop strategies for increasing our SIG's membership numbers. Importantly, this is not an issue that only we are facing. The Association for Computing Machinery has, in fact, established a task force to look specifically at declining SIG membership across the organization; this year, for example, SIGs lost approximately 1000 members and, since, 2001, they lost over 3000 members. SIGDOC's membership, since 2004, has decreased 18%. Importantly, though, we have a very healthy fund balance that is up 36% from 2004-2008. In these volatile times, having an annual membership fee of $35 dollars for professionals and $25 dollars for students puts us in an excellent position to grow if we're cautious and strategic!
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