April, 2008
by Bill Jouris, CMG‘08 Program Chair
As Program Chair for CMG'08 in Las Vegas, December 7-12, I invite you to help make this a great, information-packed conference!
We are bringing together the usual collection of industry leaders to participate as speakers and panelists. But what we need even more is you. What you can tell us, and industry leaders mostly can not, is what happens in the real world. What your experience has been - solving real problems in a real working environment. User Experience is something all of us can offer. And it provides a focus on reality that nothing else can. So think a little about what has happened to you, how you figured out what was going on, and how you coped. Check out the author instructions at http://www.cmg.org/conference/cmg2008/author-instructions.html
I think you'll look at it and say to yourself "I can do this!" But if you haven't written a paper before, and would like some support and assistance, we have a mentor system to provide exactly that: http://www.cmg.org/conference/mentor.html. Or just write directly our Mentor Chair, Denise Kalm, at and ask for help.
Another way you can help is to volunteer. I especially encourage you to volunteer as a referee. http://www.cmg.org/volunteer In June and July, we will have several referees read each paper that is submitted. As a referee, you get to help decide what goes into the conference. And there is another benefit. In my own experience, every year that I refereed I got to read a couple of good papers that I would otherwise not have seen until December. And most years, one of those happened to address a problem I was working on right then. Maybe I have just been consistently and amazingly lucky in what papers I got assigned. But I don't think it was quite that simple - and even if you only get one really good paper out of three, you're still ahead of the game.