Hi, I hope you don't mind me emailing this to the list. I know a few people on here from the Expo in the Autumn and I figured that this is probably a good starting place to reach people in the Open Source and Ubuntu communities who are interested in usability and HCI (human-computer interaction).
I'm a member of the British HCI community and, this year, I'm helping organise their annual conference, HCI 2007, which will be held at Lancaster University, UK in September. I'm responsible for the HCI Practice track, which is the particularly non-academic part of the conference, where we encourage submissions and participation from HCI practitioners (ie anyone who works in interface design/interaction design/usability/accessibility/technical writing/etc) who might not be up for writing a full academic-style paper but would be interested in writing a shorter submission about their experiences or burning issues. As a part of the Open Source community as well, I am very keen for there to be more crossover between the two groups. I know there is already some overlap but there must be so many people in the OS community who are interested in HCI, interface design, etc and could benefit from interacting with HCI people. And vice versa, I think HCI people could benefit from understanding OS issues and how they can benefit from and contribute to Open Source Software. So, I've pasted below the abbreviated call for papers. The full first call for papers is available at http://www.bcs-hci.org.uk/hci2007/downloads/HCI2007_CFP_first.pdf Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions that the cfp doesn't answer. Also, if you know of anyone who might be interested in this, please pass on the details below. Thanks, Laura --------------------------------------------------------------------- You are invited to participate… in HCI 2007: HCI, but not as we know it, at the InfoLab, University of Lancaster, UK, 3-7 September 2007. This is the 21st annual conference of the British Human Computer Interaction Group, a specialist group of the British Computing Society (BCS). For more details see www.hci2007.org · When a designer pieces together a set of environmental sensors and writes a program that coordinates them to monitor pollution automatically, where does the HCI happen? · When an airport security screener checks a passenger’s passport via a database while asking them standard bag-packing questions, where does the HCI happen? · When a student creates a homework blog for their classmates, where does the HCI happen? The answer seems to be that HCI no longer happens in standard one-to-one human-computer interactions, but across a range of different technologies, processes, groups and tasks that may not even have a recognisable interface. We invite you to submit full papers before the deadline of 31st March 2007. This year we have simplified and shortened the acceptance procedure. You will find out if you’ve been accepted by 18th May 2007, and final camera-ready copy will be due by 8th June 2007. You must remove from your submission all information that would allow the authors to be identified as the paper will be reviewed anonymously by an international panel of HCI experts. See the website for names of reviewers of previous conferences. Submissions should report original work which has not been previously published. The conference proceedings will contain all the full papers and will be published with full ISBN by The BCS and placed in the ACM Digital Library. Relevant topic areas include but are not limited to: · Ubiquitous interactivity · Disappearing, ambient or palpable computing? · Design and evaluation methods · Effecting affective HCI · Learning and training for HCI · Interfaces for pervasive systems · Interaction for the performing arts · e-Security and e-safety · Users with unusual requirements · Mobile media access and sharing · Interactive public displays · Fun and games - the next generation · Human-centred creativity Contributions that advance the theory or practice of any aspect of HCI are also welcomed. Papers must be prepared using Volume 1 of the conference publications format and must not exceed 10 pages including all diagrams. A 30-word summary must be attached. Online submission is required via the conference website by 18:00 GMT, Saturday 31st March 2007. Authors of accepted papers will be notified by the 18th May 2007 and will be required to submit a revised version of the paper for publication by the 8th June 2007, along with copyright release signed by all authors. At least one of the authors must register for the full conference no later than 8th June 2007, or the paper will not be included in the proceedings. Full Paper Chairs: Linden Ball, Lancaster University & Angela Sasse, University College London Additionally, the British HCI Conference has a long tradition of encouraging and publishing submissions from industry and the public sector. This year we are calling this “HCI Practice”. Contributions are particularly encouraged in the following areas: · tools and methods for usability and HCI design in the industrial context; · experiences in design for different user groups e.g. accessibility best practice; · results of experience in practice; · product evaluations; · experience of training people in HCI and usability techniques. You can either submit these as per the category deadlines and page-limits and these will be reviewed by industrial practitioners competitively against other submissions, or specifically as a “Practitioners’ Report” – submit 2 pages using the template on the web-site, direct by 10th May 2007 to the HCI Practice chair [EMAIL PROTECTED], who will review these and may accept them subject to specific conditions. HCI 2007 is an international conference and contributions are welcomed from all parts of the world. However, the official written and spoken language of the conference is English. Guidance on the use of plain English is available from the Plain English Campaign web site. (http://www. plainenglish.co.uk/guides.html). The conference also includes an exciting range of presentations, panels, workshops, tutorials, interactive demonstrations and opportunities to interact with fellow researchers, practitioners, educators and users. The deadline for workshops and tutorials is also 31st March. The deadline for other categories is 10th May 2007. Our keynote speakers this year are Steve Payne, Professor of Information Systems Design, School of Informatics, Manchester University, UK, and Elizabeth Churchill - Yahoo! Research, USA. Watch www.hci2007.org for further announcements. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/