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SIGDOC Newsletter
September 2007 :: Volume 8, Number 3
Our Members
Notes from the Chair
Dear SIGDOC Members,
Please do check out the ACM SIGDOC 2007 Website for our upcoming conference being held in the home of the Franklin Mountains State Park, Fort Bliss, the University of Texas at El Paso, and McKelligon Canyon! El Paso, TX, for those of you who haven't started doing your obligatory pre-conference Internet research, is the location for this year's 25th International Conference on Design of Communication being held from October 22nd until the 24th, 2007. See the conference Website for more information on the conference: www.sigdoc2007.org.
David Novick (General Chair) and Clay Spinuzzi (Program Chair) and a 24-member Program Committee made up of international experts from both industry and academe have been very busy putting together a top-notch program that is summarized at www.sigdoc2007.org/schedule.cfm. Although I mentioned it in an earlier "notes," I wanted to reiterate that the conference will also include an exciting keynote and awards presentation. The keynote speaker at the conference will be Dr. Michael Muller, an international expert in participatory design, and a research scientist and design researcher with the Collaborative User Experience group at IBM Research, Cambridge, MA. The conference banquet will feature Dr. Judith Ramey, who will accept the ACM SIGDOC Diana Award for lifetime organizational achievement related to communication design on behalf of the University of Washington's Laboratory for Usability Testing and Evaluation or LUTE (depts.washington.edu/uwtclute).
Finally, I would urge you to consider reviewing Rob Pierce's thought-provoking ACM SIGDOC 06 conference synopsis which also addresses the complex and foundational question, "What is Design of Communication" (see newsletter archives from December 2006 and March 2007). Not only does Rob offer an entertaining and multi-genred account of our "conversations" in Myrtle Beach, SC, last year, but his feature article also elicited numerous related and equally provocative discussions captured in the most recent June 2007 issue of the ACM SIGDOC Newsletter. These discussions are of great interest to me and, I hope, to you as ACM SIGDOC members. The communication technologies that make it possible for the exponential expansion of efforts, institutions, and research literatures connected to the design of communication continue to infiltrate our everyday lives. For this reason, it is all the more important that we reflect on developments in our emerging area of inquiry and related disciplines and sub-disciplines to provide an historical context for current theory building and practice.
Gumport (2002) puts it eloquently: "Keeping pace with knowledge change in the contemporary era is compounded by changes in knowledge creation and dissemination practices. Worldwide, there is an increased societal demand for specialist knowledge producers at non-university sites, and a diffusion of technological applications that make possible new patterns of communication and collaboration" (p. 48). ACM SIGDOC members are in an ideal position to contribute and adapt research and practice to the new "global, high-tech economy of the 21st Century," the "post-industrial economy," the "global workplace," the "knowledge sector," "consumer society," "glocalized commercialization," "information age," "creative sector," "flat world," "third-wave post-capitalism," "globally competitive environment," or "digitized society" (choose your favorite millennial catch-phrase). And the stakes are high, between the plight of turn-of-the-Century agricultural and manufacturing organizations on the one end of the continuum and the centralization of our role in private, public, and educational domains on the other.
Looking forward to seeing you in El Paso, TX!
Brad Mehlenbacher
Associate Professor, Training and Development (ACCE),
Adjunct/Associate Professor, Ergonomics (PSYCH),
and Affiliated Faculty, PhD in Communication, Rhetoric, and Digital Media
NC State University, Raleigh, NC 27695-7801
919.515.6242 (ph)
chair_sigdoc@acm.org (e-mail)
www4.ncsu.edu/~brad_m (url)
Reference: Gumport, P. J. (2002). Universities and knowledge: Restructuring the city of intellect. In S. Brint (Ed.), The future of the city of intellect: The changing American university (pp. 47-81). Stanford, CA: Stanford UP.
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Introducing the new SIGDOC Secretary/Treasurer
Shaun Slattery, of DePaul University in Chicago, has been elected as Secretary and Treasurer of SIGDOC. Shaun is excited about the new direction of SIGDOC and looks forward to working with the board. He directs DePaul's Master of Arts in New Media Studies (http://condor.depaul.edu/~nms) and is an Assistant Professor in the newly-formed Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse. His research examines the role of information technologies in individuals' writing processes. He also teaches undergraduate and graduate courses in technical and professional writing. Shaun holds a PhD from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.
Shaun Slattery
Director of New Media Studies
Assistant Professor, Department of Writing, Rhetoric, and Discourse
sslatte1@depaul.edu
http://condor.depaul.edu/~sslatte1
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Notes from the SIGDOC '07 Chair
Over 40 authors from North America and Europe will present their research and experience reports at this year’s SIGDOC conference. SIGDOC 2007 takes place October 22-24 in El Paso, TX. SIGDOC thanks IBM for its generous sponsorship of the conference, which is increasingly a venue for industry-academic exchange. This year, SIGDOC will feature a birds-of-a-feather session for this kind of interaction. SIGDOC 2007 will also feature a workshop on “Implementing a Corporate Web Accessibility Compliance Program.” Key conference events will include: a keynote talk from Michael Muller on “Collaborative Activity Management: Organizing Documents for Collective Action;” presentation of the SIGDOC’s Diana Award to the University of Washington’s Laboratory for Usability Testing and Evaluation, with an acceptance talk by Judith Ramey; and a panel discussion of “What is Design of Communication?”
SIGDOC 2007 is being hosted by the University of Texas at El Paso at its striking campus, with buildings in the architectural style of kingdom of Bhutan. McKelligon Canyon is only one of the spectacular local sites to visit. . For details on and registration for SIGDOC 2007, please visit http://www.sigdoc.2007.org and the conference description in “Looking Ahead”.
David Novick
SIGDOC '07 General Chair
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