What serendipity is providing for me to read

A version of this appears as an interactions magazine blog post; a version was expected to appear as a "What are you reading?" article in an issue of interactions magazine, but it was deemed far too long for that.

My use of Twitter and my attending local professional events have had a big impact on what I'm reading. Indeed, both have increased my reading greatly.

Everyday I spend at least a few minutes on Twitter -- time which often surfaces an abundance of online reading riches. You can get a sense of what comprises this reading by taking a look at my tweet stream, since I often tweet or retweet about compelling readings I learn about via Twitter. A few recent examples:

• The Unexpected Benefits of Rapid Prototyping -- In this Harvard Business Review blog post, Roger Martin (former Dean of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto) describes how the process of rapid prototyping can improve the relationship between designers and their clients. Roger and a colleague wrote about the importance of designing this critical relationship in a piece published in interactions magazine when I was its Co-Editor-in-Chief. This blog post extends that article.

• Cleveland Clinic's Patient Satisfaction Strategy: A Millennial-Friendly Experience Overhaul -- Here, Micah Solomon describes one of the ways one healthcare organization is improving the patient experience. The Cleveland Clinic was the first major healthcare organization to appoint a Chief Experience Officer, a role for which many experience designers and experience design managers have advocated for years for all sorts of organizations. This blog post reveals the role continues to have an impact in an industry not well known for being patient-centric.

• some of the blog posts written for interactions magazine -- Too few people know about these posts, as they are somewhat hidden away and don't all receive (individual) promotion via Twitter. But some are excellent. I've been most impressed by those authored by Jonathan Grudin (e.g., Metablog: The Decline of Discussion) and those authored by Aaron Marcus (e.g., My Apple was a Lemon). A guy named Richard Anderson occasionally has a couple of worthwhile things to say here as well. ;-)

• The essential secret to successful user experience design -- Here, Paul Boag echoes something that I've written about for interactions (see Are you trying to solve the right problem?) -- something Don Norman has been emphasizing of late in several of his speaking engagements:          

             Essential, indeed.

• Epatients: The hackers of the healthcare world -- This excellent post from 2012 shows how Twitter users don't always focus on the new. Here, Fred Trotter describes and provides advice for becoming a type of patient that healthcare designers need to learn from, as I described in another piece I wrote for interactions (see Learning from ePatient( Scholar)s).

Local events I attend sometimes feature authors of books, and sometimes those books are given away to attendees. I've been fortunate to have attended many events recently when that happened.

Lithium hosts a series of presentations by or conversations with noted authors about their books in San Francisco. Free books I received because of this series:

• What's the Future of Business? Changing the Way Businesses Create Experiences -- This book by digital media analyst Brian Solis alerts businesses to the importance of designing experiences. I've found the book a bit challenging to read, but its message and words of guidance to businesses are important to experience designers.

• Your Network is Your Net Worth: Unlock the Hidden Power of Connections for Wealth, Success, and Happiness in the Digital Age -- I think I'm pretty well-connected as it is, but I'm finding this book by Porter Gale to be of value. You might as well.

• Crossing the Chasm (3rd edition) -- Attending Lithium's conversation with Geoffrey Moore about the updated edition of his classic book was well worth the time, as I suspect will be true of reading the book. I should have read the 1st or 2nd edition; now I can catch up.

I attend numerous events at Stanford University. A recent event there featured Don Norman talking about his new edition of The Design of Everyday Things. I loved the original (when it was entitled The Psychology of Everyday Things), and shortly after this event, Don sent a copy of the new edition to me. It included the kind inscription: "To Richard -- Friend, colleague, and the best moderator ever." (I've interviewed Don on stage several times, once transcribed for an interactions article; see also the partial transcript and video of the most recent interview, with Jon Kolko.) I'm looking forward to reading this new edition and to interviewing him on stage again.

Carbon Five hosts public events every so often in San Francisco. Authors of three books were featured recently (two of which were given away):

• The Lean Entrepreneur: How Visionaries Create Products, Innovate with New Ventures, and Disrupt Markets -- Authors Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits join the many now touting lean in this book about starting or evolving businesses. This is a valuable read, given that designers are increasingly playing key roles in these activities.

• Loyalty 3.0: How to Revolutionize Customer and Employee Engagement with Big Data and Gamification -- Here, Rajat Paharia, founder of Bunchball, offers a book that should be of great interest to experience designers. I've found the book to be too formulaic in structure and presentation, but...

• Rise of the DEO: Leadership by Design -- The enjoyment of the on-stage interview of authors Maria Giudice and Christopher Ireland prompted me to purchase this book, which proved to also be too formulaic for my tastes. Yet, given the increasing importance of the presence of design-oriented leaders in executive offices...

At a recent event launching GfK's new UX San Francisco labs, Aga Bojko talked a bit about her new book, Eye Tracking the User Experience: A Practical Guide to Research. In addition to offering complementary copies of the book, this event offered some of the best port I've ever tasted, from three different vintners! Plus Arnie Lund spoke about user-centered innovation. An excellent event it was, plus the book looks excellent as well.

Always an excellent event is the (near) weekly local live broadcast of the radio show West Coast Live. Early during the show, audience volunteers operate an ancient maritime device known as the biospherical digital optical aquaphone, after which the volunteers receive a gift. Recently, that gift was a copy of the book, How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big: Kind of the Story of My Life -- a book by Scott Adams, who was once a guest on the show and is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip. I wasn't sure I'd read the book, but I've found it to be thoughtful, entertaining, and compelling. And given the current mantra in our business regarding the importance of failing often and quickly...

Neo, the employer of Jeff Gothelf, author of Lean UX: Applying Lean Principles to Improve User Experience, hosts a series of events on lean UX in San Francisco. I heard Jeff speak about lean UX just before the publication of his book last year, and at a recent event, Neo was handing out a few copies. I'm finding the book to be concise and a quick read -- an excellent supplement to Jeff's talk and the many articles and presentations I've seen on the topic.

Kim Erwin spoke about her new book, Communicating the New: Methods to Shape and Accelerate Innovation, at another recent event in San Francisco. Unfortunately (and surprisingly, given the tendency revealed above), she was not giving away copies of her book, but since her talk was terrific, I made the purchase. I'm glad I did -- an excellent book touting collaboration and participation.

One of the final two books I'll mention -- and I could mention more! -- was sent to me by UX designer Katie McCurdy, whom I first met at Stanford Medicine X 2012. Katie and I were both there as ePatient scholars, so she knew of my health(care) nightmare story and knew that I would want to read a similar story told by Susannah Cahalan in the gripping book, Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness. This book and a similar book entitled Brain Wreck: A patient's unrelenting journey to save her mind and restore her spirit by Becky Dennis say much about why and how the U.S. healthcare system needs to be redesigned. All experience designers working in healthcare need to read these books and the many patient stories like them that are available on the internet.

Is this a typical collection of reading material for someone working in the experience design (strategy) field? Probably not, but I kinda think it should be. Is this typically how people working in this field learn about and acquire their reading material? Again, probably not, particularly for those who don't live in a place like the San Francisco Bay Area. But I'm delighted with the mix of reading material I learn about and consume due to serendipity. Thank you to those I follow on Twitter, and thank you to those responsible for local professional events.

The importance of the social to achieving the personal

A version of this post has been published as a blog post for interactions magazine.

During a recent Sunday evening, I participated in the popular healthcare communications and social media (#hcsm) tweetchat. This weekly chat, started nearly 4 years ago, was the first regular hashtag healthcare chat on Twitter, but it is now only one of many. And many of this many bring together patients seeking help and support.

Twitter conversations are just one of an increasing number of patient uses of social media in healthcare. Some of these uses are described in The Multidimensional Role of Social Media in Healthcare published in the July+August 2011 issue of interactions. Among them are online patient communities such as PatientsLikeMe.com and crohnology.com. Such communities comprise a growing system of peer-to-peer healthcare which empowers patients in ways essential to a fully-functional healthcare system.

Earlier this month, Jane Sarasohn-Kahn referenced some of the benefits of health-focused communities:

"Social networking holds significant promise for engaging people in health and changing health behaviors. Two thirds of people try to change their health behavior each year; 50% do not sustain those behavior changes... When people connect with a social network of peers, though, commitment to behavior change is bolstered and supported..."

This would be key to the success of, for example, the American Heart Association's recently proposed use of social media as a weight-management tool for children.

This importance of the social to achieving the personal was one of the recurring themes of the Stanford Medicine X 2012 conference in September. Some examples: Pew Research Center's Susannah Fox referenced the integration of apps and a website with in-person support groups as the secret to the success of Weight Watchers; founder Sean Ahrens argued that the key motivator of crohnology.com use is that users' entries are status updates for all -- that users self-track for others, for sharing; IDEO's Dennis Boyle echoed this, stating that the quantified "us" is more motivating that the quantified "self"; and Ernesto Ramirez, a leading facilitator of the Quantified Self movement, argued that the "ourness" of data is what matters most -- that a word better than the word "empower" would be "emp-our-r." At a subsequent "The Future of Health" event in Palo Alto, Keas's Adam Bosworth spoke about the increasing importance of gamification to individuals' achieving healthy behavior, arguing that if you're not a part of a team, you won't sustain in the game.

Note that the social influences more than motivation. As pointed out by Stanford's BJ Fogg:

In short, people can often learn a great deal from others in social networks that is of direct relevance to achieving their personal goals and to triggering advisable behavior. Indeed, much of importance can often be learned. As Roni Zeiger puts it, "a well-functioning online patient community is a network of microexperts."

However, not all applaud such uses of social media. As Elizabeth Mynatt put it subtly in IT in Healthcare which appeared in the May+June 2011 issue of interactions, "online sites such as PatientsLikeMe.com are causing a stir in the medical community."

Yet, things keep moving forward. Reports of the benefits of peer-to-peer healthcare are accumulating. Without a doubt, achieving the personal is often much too hard without the social.

An abundance of learning opportunities

Recently, a local friend asked me if I knew of someone I could recommend who would be a good mentor for her. After thinking a bit about who I might recommend, I came up with an answer she didn't expect: instead of seeking a conventional mentor, become active on Twitter and in LinkedIn groups. Via Twitter and LinkedIn, one can learn a great deal, including information about upcoming webinars, tweetchats, and in-person events -- often low cost or even free -- in which one can participate.

Before Twitter and LinkedIn existed, I contributed to the rise in number of in-person events as BayCHI's Program Chair for twelve years and as SIGCHI's Local Chaper Chair for five years. Today, BayCHI and other SIGCHI chapters around the world have lots of competition. Here in the San Francisco Bay Area, there is something going on of relevance to the fields I care about nearly every day.

I try to take advantage of this fact as much as possible. During the seven day period I'm in the middle of as I write this, I've got an evening design charrette (sponsored by the CCA MBA in Design Strategy), two daytime webinars, two evening talks (one via TEDxBayArea), a Creative Mornings San Francisco talk, and an afternoon design research "whiteboard" on my calendar. And then there are the many new blog entries and a couple of LinkedIn discussions that I'll be trying to keep up with...

Yes, I have other things going on in my life. Hence, I'll probably not make it to everything I have on my calendar (indeed, I've already missed one webinar), and I know for sure I'll fall further behind on the reading I'd like to do, but in today's quickly changing world, ongoing learning (and sharing) are vital activities.

I particularly value the longer participatory activities. The design charrette mentioned above focused on healthcare redesign, a topic of particular importance to me. Last month's two-day SF global service (design) jam and January's one-day Stanford d.school bootcamp enabled me to work with people I wouldn't otherwise, rekindle old relationships and develop new ones, refresh and reenergize, and learn (and try out) a few approaches new to me.

And I'm even continuing to contribute to the list of local events, though less frequently than years ago. An example of this was my 2-hour interview of Don Norman and Jon Kolko on stage this past September at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco; a video of this event is available via YouTube.

During a time when our system of education is considered outdated and otherwise broken, taking and giving advantage of new learning opportunities is important. For a good book on this topic, see A New Culture of Learning: Cultivating the Imagination for a World of Constant Change by Douglas Thomas and John Seeley Brown; I received a copy of this book for free at a local presentation by the second author.

All of this might not completely supplant the guidance of a good mentor, but...

No more worshiping at the altar of our cathedrals of business

A version of this article was published in the January+February 2012 issue of interactions magazine.

I've been reviewing an excellent manuscript for a book on design thinking and reading about a new game and kit developed by IDEO to help explain it. These things delight me, since for years, I've been focused on expanding the role of design/UX to be a full participant in defining business strategy and in being a catalyst for that change. More recently, participation in defining social strategy became an important part of that focus. Design thinking came to be advocated by business visionaries to be a major part of a fix to a broken strategy definition process. Jon Kolko and I published our and others' writings about such things in interactions when we were Co-Editors-in-Chief.

So, I have been intrigued by proclamations that design thinking is a failed experiment, that it is misguided to attempt to describe the process, and that design thinking must be recognized as the purview of the trained designer. Innumerable attempts at explaining the usually less ambitious "user-centered design" have been greeted by similar negative reactions over the years.

Just what is going on here? Why the negative reactions? Sometimes stepping aside to look at comparable happenings in a seemingly different context can provide some insight, so allow me to describe some of what is happening in the world of healthcare.

In today's world of healthcare, a ballooning number of patients seek at minimum full participation in defining their diagnostic/treatment strategy. Why? Because of an outrageous number of medical misdiagnoses, because of what is often an insulting patient experience involving doctors who don't listen to or even bother to touch their patients anymore, because doctors tend to just "regurgitate (knowledge) rather than think" and disregard limits to their knowledge and experience, because a system of referrals and approvals prevents direct and ready access to doctors with needed expertise, ... -- in short, because of a healthcare system declared to be "broken" by speaker after speaker at Medicine 2.0'11 held at the Stanford University Medical Center.

Patient efforts to meaningfully pierce the diagnostic/treatment process have been greeted with claims that patients lack the skills/training to do this successfully, that only doctors can diagnose and prescribe correctly, that anything patients learn via the internet is highly suspect, that reducing diagnosis/treatment to a process in which patients can participate ignores the fact that the practice of medicine is as much of an art as a science, ... -- reasons coming from members of a community (i.e., doctors) classified as a stage 3 (of 5) tribe: "I'm great, and you're not."

You should be seeing a lot of parallels...

In spite of proclamations against greater participation of patients, the "epatient" movement is growing rapidly, with peer-to-peer healthcare increasingly seen as an essential part of a fully functional healthcare system in which social media play vital roles. A Society for Participatory Medicine has been formed as part of this movement "in which networked patients shift from being mere passengers to responsible drivers of their health, and in which providers encourage and value them as full partners." I'm even seeing suggestions of a need for an "Occupy Healthcare" movement. Meanwhile, medical rebels such as Jay Parkinson are showing how a patient-centered healthcare practice can work in spite of active resistance from the medical community, and programs are being designed to train medical students how to listen and talk to patients.

The following observation by an attendee of Health 2.0 San Francisco 2011 speaks to all of this:

And as I write this, the Occupy Wall Street protests are going global. As Thomas Friedman states in The New York Times:

"Occupy Wall Street is like the kid in the fairy story saying what everyone knows but is afraid to say: the emperor has no clothes. The system is broken."

Indeed, the businesses in which many of you work are broken, operating and/or structured in ways more appropriate for an earlier era. Many of these businesses are faced with the need to become genuninely user- or customer-centered and connected/social. To achieve this, design/UX leadership is badly needed. However, as Samantha Starmer warned after learning that design/UX personnel are not the ones getting the many newly created Chief Customer Officer positions:

"Given the current power of CX at the C-level, UX practitioners must step up our game, otherwise we will lose progress we have made to be more deeply involved in strategy beyond just performing usability services. We need to act now to be part of the broader CX solution. If we don't proactively collaborate across divisions and organizational structures, we will be stuck playing in the corner by ourselves. If we don'f figure out how to manage partnerships with other departments in a collaborative, creatice, customer focused way, the discipline of UX as we know it is at risk. CX management will take over."

New social, user/customer-centered businesses are needed. "Citizen-centered" social strategy is needed. And design (thinking) can lead the way.

Describing/explaining the design process for others to understand -- to enable their effective participation -- is essential for this to happen. However, more educational programs akin to that provided by the Austin Center for Design are needed. Perhaps a new professional association -- a resurrection of a sort of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility -- fully focused on this kind of participatory design would be helpful.

We've reached the point of no more worshiping at the altar of our cathedrals of business. The marginalization of design (thinking) and UX is finally on its way to the rag pile.

It is a very good time to be a design( think)er.

Community manager -- hmm, that role sounds kinda familiar...

Having seen more and more references to a role called "community manager" in recent months, I decided to find out what people in that role do. In doing so, I found out that I had been a community manager -- a very good community manager -- in different contexts for years.

Wikipedia refers to this role as the "online community manager," and the role is sometimes confused with that of the social media manager. Some have tried to clarify how these two roles are distinct, but UserVoice's Evan Hamilton is one of probably many community managers who find themselves performing the social media manager role in addition to others.

Indeed, community managers often play a wide variety of roles, as revealed at a recent community manager breakfast hosted by Evan. Roles played by one or more of the community managers in attendance include:

• helping customers (i.e., the community members) have a great experience;
• trying to get customers to stay customers;
• finding product bugs;
• giving feedback to product managers;
• being a gatekeeper for all customer communications;
• figuring out the right kind of metrics to use to measure their own effectiveness;
• managing social media activity;
• driving the brand voice;
• advocating for users;
• organizing events/contests/...

Attendees reported that they work in businesses of a wide variety of sizes and find themselves positioned organizationally in a wide variety of departments, including marketing, engineering, product, customer service, and sales support. Views varied as to which department community managers should report to, but all thought it best that the role evolve to be a "horizontal, strategic role" touching all parts of the company and that it should eventually include a C-level role known, perhaps, as the Chief Happiness Officer.

All these topics and many more were discussed by ~200 community managers nearly a week ago at the Community Leadership Summit (CLS) West 2012 held at eBay Town Hall in San Jose, CA. CLS West was an unconference with a packed agenda of 40 different sessions, and all attendees were enthusiastic participants.

Why so much attention to the role of community manager? A John Hagel and John Seely Brown blog posting from earlier this week provides one answer:

"Building an effective virtual community is no simple task. Most importantly, it requires a deep understanding of the unmet needs of potential community members rather than simply approaching it as a marketing opportunity for the company. It is no wonder that so many have tried to create these communities and yet so few have succeeded."

However, what is most interesting to me about all this is the similarity of some of the community manager roles and challenges and aspirations to some of the roles and challenges and aspirations of user/customer experience personnel: advocating for users; understanding their unmet needs; helping customers have a great experience; providing input to product managers; figuring out the best location in the organizational structure; evolving into strategic roles; the Chief Experience or Customer Officer; ...

Also of interest to me is how many of these roles and challenges and aspirations are among those which I dealt with in my past roles as a community manager (though I never had that specific title). Having had extensive experience with the world's first online community -- PLATO -- while in graduate school, I developed and oversaw the use of social media tools modeled on PLATO's tools to employees working at Pacific Bell, then became much more of a community manager during the founding and early years of BayCHI. After years of serving the BayCHI community, I became a manager of an international community of community managers in the role of SIGCHI's Local Chapters Chair. In this role, I provided support to (potential) local community leaders in multiple forms, including workshops and articles, some of which remain of relevance to community managers of today. Two examples:

• The Social Design of a Local SIG: this discussion of the key elements of the design of cutting-edge virtual communities is as fitting today as it was in 1997;
• Challenges Facing CHI Local SIGs: (potential) community managers of today can benefit from being aware of these lists of challenges identified by a large international group of CHI local chapter leaders in 1998.

As suggested earlier, user/customer experience personnel also have (had) experiences that should be of interest to community managers. I'd like to someday see a large-scale meeting (of the minds) of UX/CX personnel and community managers to the probable benefit of both communities.

___

Note that I've played the role of community manager in another context as well (Co-Editor-in-Chief of interactions magazine), and it is possible that I will be playing the role again in yet another context in the future. Will the label of "community manager" finally be appropriate for me then? We shall see.

Managing User Experience Groups (second offering starts in October)

I'm excited about offering Managing User Experience Groups beginning in October, our second offering of this 6-session evening course.

In preparation for the course, I've been interviewing more user experience Managers, Directors, and VPs across a wide range of companies. Plus, we are trying to figure out how to fit everything more tidily into the 6 3-hour sessions which span a six-week period. There is so much to cover!

Common user experience group goals include:

1. get more done;
2. have what is done not be a waste of time, effort, money, …;
3. have group and its members succeed and improve/grow;
4. play a more important role (often/eventually: move earlier in process to play a more strategic role).

In short, the course -- really a "workshop" in many ways -- is intended to help participants achieve these and related goals wherever they work.

As stated in the course description:

"Becoming an effective user experience group manager requires a significant shift from being an individual contributor or managing other types of groups. And thriving as a user experience group manager usually requires addressing significant organizational challenges."

So, if you are in or near the Silicon Valley, and if you:

• presently manage and/or are in the process of building a user experience group;
• may in the future build and/or manage a user experience group;
• lead or manage (in) an organization which includes user experience personnel;
• or (can) impact how user experience personnel work or are managed,

we'd love to have you join us for this second offering of Managing User Experience Groups.

And if you are a Manager, Director, VP, or Chief Officer of user experience (or some subset or variation thereof) anywhere in the world and might be up for a chat, let me know. I'd love to connect with you.

Still time to register for "Managing User Experience Groups"

I will be co-teaching a 6-session, evening course entitled, "Managing User Experience Groups" in Silicon Valley beginning 25 January.

The course -- really a workshop -- is intended for those who presently or may in the future manage a user experience group; those who are higher level managers whose domains already or may in the future encompass user experience; and others who in other ways (can) impact how user experience personnel are managed.

What is the scope of "user experience" and of the work a user experience group does or should do? Who should be a part of a user experience group? With whom should members of a user experience group work, and how? How should such groups be positioned in companies? What reduces the effectiveness and impact of user experience groups, and what can be done about it?

Join us in exploring answers to these and other questions of relevance to effectively managing groups that are often cross-functional (i.e., composed of designers, researchers, information architects, and others) and often misunderstood. Learn answers to these types of questions for a wide range of user experience groups in a wide range of companies, and gain insights for answering these questions in your company.

Dates, times: 6 consecutive Wednesday evenings, January 25 - March 1, 2006, 6:30-9:30pm

Location: UCSC Extension Silicon Valley Campus, 10420 Bubb Road, Cupertino, CA 95014

For more information or to register: UCSC Extension Silicon Valley course website

(And as stated in a previous blog entry, we have been talking with numerous user experience group managers, directors, VPs, etc. from a diverse mix of companies as we have been working on this course. We intend to talk with more in the coming weeks, and hope to hear from more to expand our network.)

In preparation for teaching a course on "Managing User Experience Groups"...

I will be teaching a 6-session course with Lillian Svec via University of California Extension entitled, Managing User Experience Groups, beginning late January in Cupertino, CA.

As part of our preparation for that course, we are interviewing an assortment of user experience managers/directors/VPs in an assortment of companies to learn of their approaches, challenges, strategies, etc.

If you are a manager/director/VP of user experience (or some subset or variation thereof) and might be up for a chat with us, please let us know. We'd love to connect with you.

What is happening with UXnet?

I am a member of the Executive Council of the User Experience network (UXnet), an organization focused on furthering the User Experience (UX) field, in part by facilitating collaboration and cooperation among UX-related organizations and individuals. Earlier this year (in June), we "soft launched" UXnet to facilitate our networking with prominent UX-related organizations and individuals about UXnet while we worked on a roadmap for long-term UXnet governance and funding.

This morning, we disseminated an announcement about what we have been up to since the soft launch. Here is that announcement:

UXnet Update

The tremendously positive response since UXnet's soft launch in June has greatly strengthened our belief in UXnet's mission to help make connections between the people and organizations that represent User Experience disciplines. As you can tell from our early and incomplete list of both organizational and individual supporters (see uxnet.org/supporters), this concept of connection and collaboration is one that resonates for many.

We wanted to let you know that we have been busy moving UXnet forward. Since June, the Executive Council has been at work formulating a comprehensive, long-term strategy that will enable us to achieve our goals. Look for more about this sometime in January.

We have also been busy with our initiatives. Since June, UXnet's Local Ambassador initiative has rapidly gained momentum, with over 25 participants in 18 regions spanning nine countries and four continents. These Ambassadors have begun to provide user experience opportunities and resources in their respective localities. In fact, events in the San Francisco Bay Area, New York City, and Zurich have already been hosted in cooperation with UXnet.

The UX Events Calendar & Groups Directory initiative has been working with the Local Ambassadors to understand their needs as users and enablers of the directory and calendar. Additional research has included a review of existing calendar systems and the technology, standards, and policies behind them.

As for the Organization Collaboration initiative, UXnet will participate in and is encouraging the participation of numerous UX-related organizations in the Development Consortium being held just prior to CHI 2005 in April in Portland, Oregon (see www.chi2005.org/cfp/devcon.html). This two-day consortium will assemble organization leaders and others to identify strategies for working together to better serve the needs of the UX professional and of the organizations.

As you can tell, things are going well. But we welcome your help! You can find out more by visiting our initiatives page (uxnet.org/initiatives) or by emailing us at council@uxnet.org.

Thanks to everyone for their continued support, encouragement, and contributions to moving UXnet ahead.

The UXnet Executive Council