Some of you may remember that I published a WWII book a few years ago - written by Harry A. Franck in 1944-45, it’s the story of the 9th Air Force in the ETO. As part of that effort, we set up a web site (cleverly called www.harryafranck.com) and sent copies of the book to many of the men mentioned in it. “Winter Journey Through the Ninth” is available through the site or Amazon, though as you might expect, after several years in print, sales have declined to what you’d have to call “minimal.”

As a result of that effort, I get lots of email and sometimes phone calls from people who typically have one of two questions:

1. “My (father/grandfather/uncle/relative/neighbor) was in the 9th Air Force, and he just passed away - can you tell me about his experience?”

Well, no I can’t. Unless he was one of the 200+ men mentioned in the book (and there’s a list of their names on the site), I have no idea what it was like for anyone in 1944-45. Though I can’t help these individuals, I do want to share the lesson with everyone else. The time to ask this question is while your *whoever* is still around to answer for himself! And I’m not limiting this just to WWII survivors - talk to ALL your older relatives and friends, help them to see the importance of capturing their stories while you can.

2. “I (or my father/grandfather/uncle/relative/neighbor) was in the 9th Air Force, and have a great story to tell! Can you help me publish it?”

Well, no I can’t, not really. “Winter Journey Through the Ninth” was definitely a labor of love, not a profit-making enterprise. No offense to anyone else’s family, but I just don’t have the passion or energy to do that much work again for someone I don’t know.

But I CAN help a little bit with both of these questions by pointing out that there are lots of people and organizations who are trying to capture these types of stories and preserve them for the future. Here’s just a few resources - either for learning about what those times were like, OR for contributing your piece of the larger story.

Library of Congress Veteran’s History Project provides forms and helpful hints on turning your notes into a story. They’ve got a whole archive of finished projects online.

The Army Air Forces Historical Association actually sell some of their collected oral histories.

The National WWII Museum has small set of oral histories, and lots of other information and events and programs.

“Our WWII Veterans” is a private organization that preserves WWII stories and also tries to help fund trips for veterans to visit the memorial in DC.

The EHistory site at OSU has a large resource set of primary sources for a lot of time frames, not just WWII. Easy to waste a lot of time looking through their fascinating info!

There are often projects for subsets of the larger “WWII” category - for example, the Oral History project at Rutgers University works hard to capture WWII stories with a New Jersey tie-in, and there are lots of organizations devoted to the sub-sets of the 9th or other Air Forces (such as the 391st Bomb Group Association.

Check out the History Channel’s “Save Our History” effort - lots of different topics, and links to resources for educators.

The important thing to remember throughout all of this is that EVERYONE’S story is valuable. Write things down, pull out the old cassette recorder, video tape where appropriate! Even just making sure that all those old photos have written captions on the back is a huge step toward saving what will become the story of your family.

This week, the Usability Professionals Association is having their annual conference up in Portland, OR. This year’s theme is “Bringing Usability to Life.” It looks like there’ll be lots of great sessions and terrific networking opportunities, and I’m disappointed that I can’t make it. They’re expecting something like 600 people!

Luckily for Arizona UPA folks, those who ARE attending will be talking about the conference at the next meeting of the local chapter (AZUPA). Here’s the scoop from their recent email:

Please join us for the Arizona Usability Professionals Association (AZUPA) Chapter meeting on Thursday, June 18. AZUPA President Miguel Almarez will present a summary of this year’s International UPA conference. Miguel’s presentation will include industry updates, best-practices, and other insights from his experience this week in Portland, OR (http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/conference/2009/). The conference theme this year is Bringing Usability to Life: Making everyday things better.

Other chapter meeting attendees will also be welcome to informally share their experiences from the UPA conference. In addition, you’ll learn about the UPA and meet local colleagues who share a passion for all things related to creating compelling user experiences.

Speaker Bio
Miguel Almarez is currently the User Experience Project Manager for Choice Hotels International and President of the Arizona UPA. He holds a B.S. from Arizona State University and a MBA from Western International University.

Meeting Location
The Art Institute of Phoenix
2233 West Dunlap Avenue
Phoenix, Arizona
Note: The meeting will be in room 456

Map: www.artinstitutes.edu/phoenix/AboutUs/Map_Directions.aspx

Agenda
6:00 pm Arrival, networking and light snacks
6:30 pm Brief business meeting
7:00 pm Presentation - Invited Speaker
8:00 pm Adjourn

This is a free event, but space is limited. Walk-in attendees are certainly welcome, but please RSVP to this address so that we can ensure we provide the appropriate accommodations.

You do not need to be a member to attend. Feel free to come and check us out!!! Also, please feel free to forward this message to any interested colleagues.

This looks like a GREAT event - lots of opportunity to learn about the conference and connect with other local usability folk. As is often the case, however, this meeting happens to be on the same night as the next TDAC meeting here in Tucson (with ITT Tech students and Sony Online talking about video game design). It never rains but it pours, huh?

Here’s the post I did on the previous AZ UPA meeting!

It’s been almost exactly 10 years since I moved from Billerica, Massachusetts (just north of Boston) to Tucson, Arizona, and I’m feeling a bit nostalgic. I’ve been happy enough here in the Southwest, but there are some things I miss about living Back East:

1. Proximity. Everything is very close together. A trip to the Berkshire mountains (or my old alma mater, UMASS/Amherst) was only a two-hour drive. The historic and cultural mecca that is Boston proper was less than an hour. Skiing in New Hampshire, swimming down the Cape, classes at any of the dozens of top-notch schools - all 2 hours away or less.
2. My private hide-away. Years ago, we purchased a piece of land with the plan to retire (someday) to the back woods of Maine. It’s 14 acres of blueberries and pine trees on a private, fresh-water lake, just two hours north of our house. This meant we could and did visit often.
3. Real seasons. Nothing like 3 months of bitter cold to make you really appreciate the thaw of spring!
4. America’s Technology Highway. Tons of technology companies line Route 128, and fill the space between 128 and 495 to the West. As a technical writer, this worked out pretty well for me!
5. Family near by. This one became more important after I had my kids - and not just because grandma was willing to babysit for free! I think it’s really important for my children to know their relatives so that they will understand where they come from (and why I am the way I am)!
6. Old friends. I grew up in Newton, Massachusetts, and though very few of my high-school friends still live there now, many of them remained in the area. There’s just something comfortable about hanging out with someone who saw me with permed hair and wearing a smock-top and decided to remain my friend anyway.
7. The T. No, not the letter T! I miss the MBTA - that’s the local public transportation. I’d call it the subway, but big chunks of it run above ground. There’s even a song about the T in Boston
   

   
   

   This video was made by the Kingston Trio in the late 1950s, but the original version was a campaign song from the 1930s.

8. Colonial style houses.I can’t help it, it’s what I was raised in. I like a house with layers, not all spread out and flat. I like attics and basements, neither of which are easy to get here in the desert. I like wallpaper and fireplaces and staircases.
9. Bowling. I guess most people call it “candlepin”, but I didn’t even know there WAS another kind of bowling until I went to college. I’m not very good at either type, but I don’t embarrass myself quite as badly at candlepin.
10. The 99. This local chain had TWO restaurants within a mile or two of my house in Billerica. The “big” 99 was good for large groups and evening events - for a while, there was even a disco-dance kind of place in the basement, but that’s gone now. The “little” 99 was more low-key, with the nicest bartenders you’d ever want to meet. Typical bar food - steak, burgers, chicken, and pasta - but lots of it at reasonable prices. This was also the most convenient after-work stop for most of the jobs I had. I’m still grateful for friendships formed and nurtured at the 99.

Don’t get me wrong - I like living in Tucson! It’s completely opened my eyes to all kinds of new things. But sometimes, you know, you just want to wallow in the old and familiar. I’ll have to plan a visit soon.

I’ve been home from the STC Summit in Atlanta for about a month, and only feel like I’m caught up with work as of this week. Pitiful, isn’t it? But that’s the situation when you are independent and have trouble saying “no” (though I’m working on that last bit…. “nnnnot right now”…”maybe later”…”I’ll see what I can do.”)

This week’s priority is work on the upcoming IEEE/PCS conference, and I’m getting really excited about it! The program is coming together nicely.

Our keynote will be Blaise Aguera y Arcas from Microsoft. If you haven’t seen his Photosynth demo on TED, you should probably go check it out right now. It’s a really collaborative way of working to make online, interactive pictures. He’s a dynamic speaker and I’m really looking forward to meeting him in person!

I know that some people think of this conference as somewhat academic, and while it’s true that we have significantly more professors and research papers than , say, the STC Summit, we also have a lot of practical workshop type of sessions. For example, we’ve got the always-fabulous Sarah O’Keefe (from Scriptorium) talking about Movable Type and XML, we’ve got George Hayhoe describing how to implement the new ISO standard for documentation into your workplace, and we’ve got Tharon Howard from Clemson University (whose work I’ve admired for years!) talking specifically about user testing of information products.

Though I was not involved in selecting the accepted papers (that was the dedicated and hard-working team of Sandy Bartell and Anne Watt), I’m really pleased to see lots of sessions that apply directly to my current interests. There are sessions on social media (of course!), controlled languages, globalization, and visual communication. I’m particularly excited to see some sessions that combine two or more subjects that I find fascinating. For example, I’ve been doing a lot of work over the past several years with emergency preparedness and business continuity. I’m also a big proponent of social media, as my twitter followers know! I can’t wait to see the presentation by Liza Potts called “Peering into Disaster: Social Software Use from the Indian Ocean Earthquake to the Mumbai Bombings”.

As you can see, I’m pretty excited about our conference program! For people thinking about joining us, I do think it’s important to understand that this is a bit different from other events you may have attended like the STC Summit or DocTrain events. Because we’re an IEEE event, the sessions are mostly paper-based. That means that (except for the ones clearly labelled “workshop” or “panel”) some sessions are reports of new developments or studies that have been conducted recently. In a typical 90-minute session, you’ll get to see up to 3 different but related paper presentation. And of course, all papers go into the proceedings and are eventually available for purchase from the IEEExplore digitial library.

Another difference is that we don’t have an exhibition hall. We do accept sponsorship (just drop me a note if you or your company want to send us money!!) but the only booth you’ll see is the one for IEEE membership.

But like the other conferences, the main benefit (for me, anyway) is the opportunity for networking. I sometimes learn more inbetween sessions that at the formal presentations. If you’re looking for something fun (and deductible) this summer, join us in Hawaii in July!

Pubsnet, Inc., owner of the DocTrain series of conferences, announced on Monday that they are going out of business, and all future conferences are cancelled. This comes just two weeks before the scheduled DocTrain/DITA event in Indianapolis. As sad as this is, there are several people trying to figure out how to replace the valuable experience that was DocTrain. Though there isn’t any word yet from Pubsnet, and their sites haven’t changed, there is a public discussion on Scott Abel’s blog, the Content Wrangler. There’s also Scriptorium’s plan to put their presentations intended for DocTrain onto their site as webinars. And an interesting discussion just starting on Bill Swallow’s Techcommdood site.

I certainly understand how difficult it can be to put on conferences. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m the general chair for the upcoming IEEE/PCS IPCC 2009 conference this July in Hawaii, and we’re definitely feeling the impact of the current economic situation.

But I am confident that the content we’ll offer to our attendees and the opportunity to present and to publish that we offer to our speakers will be beneficial to the participants and to the larger technical communication field. Combine that with the opportunity to meet and mingle with the others who feel equally passionately about the field, and I wouldn’t miss this one for the world! The Hawaii location is nice, of course, but a specific venue is honestly just a secondary reason for me to attend conferences.

Though DocTrain is no more, there certainly ARE other events in the tech comm and related fields.

Usability Professionals Association annual conference, Jun 8-10, 2009, in Portland, Oregon, has the theme this year of “Bringing Usability to Life”. I like that they aren’t exclusively focused on website usability!

LavaCon, October 25–27, 2009 in New Orleans, Louisiana, is a professional development conference for technical communicators and project management professionals. This dual mission tends to make the event appropriate for a slightly more senior audience than other similar conferences.

Tekom, November 4 - 6, 2009, Wiesbaden, Germany. This one is tons of fun, and don’t worry, presentations are in English! It’s also interesting to see the differences between the U.S. tech comm industry and that of other countries.

JUST ANNOUNCED! WritersUA, The Conference for Software User Assistance, March 21–24, 2010, Seattle, Washington. I am still disappointed that I missed this one this year, and once again have put it to the top of my list for next year! Very focused, a real international event, and lots of practical sessions from some of the most prolific people in our field. Not much on the site yet (it’s still earlyl), but check back often.

I will definitely miss the DocTrain events, they were the backbone of my conference calendar. I’ll be scrambling a bit to figure out where best to put my efforts for the rest of this year, and will post upcoming events as they’re confirmed.

As I’m mentioned before, I had the privilege of working on the program committee for the STC Summit this year in Atlanta (I was track manager for “Designing and Assessing the User Experience”). As always, the event was jam-packed with valuable sessions, interesting people, and loads of networking opportunities.

As track manager, I was delighted that we had special guest Jared Spool (ALWAYS entertaining!) and Shawn Lawton Henry (from the W3C). In fact, I was lucky enough to snag an autographed copy of Shawn’s book “Just Ask: Integrating Accessibility Throughout Design”. The whole thing is available online or as a printed book.

Though usability and accessibility topics were prominent, they were not by any means the only buzz! STC added a whole series of career-related topics that seem to have been a hit. I saw John Hedtke’s talk - lots of good advice! - and heard great feedback about Jack Molisani’s talk. The keynote speaker, David Pogue, was very funny, and though we didn’t record this particular session, there’s a link to his similar TED talk on the STC Accessibility site (with the song and everything)!

I was also impressed with STC’s push toward incorporating more modern technology in the Summit offerings. This was apparent even before the event, with the Live Learning Center and Itinerary Planner tools, and during the event with a live Twitter feed display (the hashtag was #stc09 for those who want to follow!) and recording for almost all sessions. The session recordings captured the audio of the speakers and the slide presentations, and these two things will be synched to create a file you can access through the Summit@aClick site (coming soon - keep an eye on the Learning Center site) for more info. There’s also an STC YouTube channel, though there are only a few videos there so far. The ever-present and wonderful Rachel Houghton has already posted many of her photos on her Flickr set.

And yes, Twitter was everywhere! Many of us had special Twitter badges made - see my earlier posts on that! - and many more attendees signed up for Twitter right at the Summit. We had two Twitter sessions - a formal “What is Twitter” kind of thing during the Summit, and an informal Tweetup at a local pub one evening. I hope we can continue this sort of thing, it was a blast!

The exhibit hall seemed a mite smaller than usual, but traffic seemed good and the vendors I spoke with had lots of interesting things to say. I missed out on the opportunity to get a caricature drawn (courtesy of LinguaLinx), but hopefully some other attendees will post theirs.

For my own efforts, I was happy to sit on a panel on Global Virtual Teams with Judith Herr, Karen Mardahl, and Pam Brewer. Rather than each presenting our own opinions in a string of mini-presentations, this was much more of a discussion with the audience. I think it went well - when the recording gets posted, you’ll have to check it out and let me know what you think! The only disappointing thing about our session was that it was scheduled directly opposite Alan Porter’s “Technical Documenation and Comics”, a session I would have love to have seen. As a close second, I did get to spend some time chatting with Alan, and it looks like we’ll be attending several more of the same events over the rest of this year. I’ll definitely be grilling him for specifics later! Um, nicely, of course.

I was disappointed that I didn’t get to see many of my friends and colleagues who simply couldn’t attend this year for one reason or another. I think the companies that cut back on sending people to training events like this are being short-sighted. The economy WILL recover (we’ve been through this before, remember?) and the companies who ensure that their employees remain up-to-date are the ones who will be poised to move ahead most efficiently.

And one final personal note - I’m happy to say that the bookstore sold out of my “Career Tactics for Technical Communicators” book! Well, I’m sad that so many felt they needed it - the economy is tough all over - but I’m happy I could provide something useful.

Here’s the announcement about the First-Ever Arizona UPA Meeting - Thursday, April 30, 2009. Not sure if I’ll make it up there - a 2-hour commute each way on a weeknight is a lot (unless I can convince some other Tucson UX people to rideshare!)

Please join us for the first-ever Arizona Usability Professionals Association (UPA) Chapter meeting on Thursday, April 30. Dean T. Barker, Director of User-Centered Design at Sage Software, will speak on integrating user-centered design into various software processes.
Dean will explain why software projects fail and how user-centered design (UCD) can be used to improve and optimize your product development methodology. He will present a structured approach to tailoring and integrating UCD into the software development process. In this presentation you will also learn about the critical gaps in your software development methodology, how to unify design and development, how to express UCD in the “language” of your methodology, how to promote usability activities within development, and how to make UCD a routine part of your software processes regardless of whether you’re using waterfall, agile methods, the Rational Unified Process (RUP), or other methodologies.
You’ll also learn about the UPA and meet local colleagues who share a passion for all things related to creating compelling user experiences.

Speaker Bio
Dean T. Barker is the Director of User Centered Design and User Assistance for Global CRM Solutions at Sage Software. He has over fifteen years of experience in design and software product development. He has been a co-editor and author of ISO standards for Software Quality and is co-author of the book Designing Effective Speech User Interfaces. Mr. Barker has a B.A. in Business Management and Communication and a M.S. in Software Engineering from the University of Minnesota. He is also the Membership Chair for the Arizona UPA Chapter and is the Phoenix-area Local Ambassador for UXnet.org, an online community connecting people, organizations, resources, and ideas to enable the growth of User Experience as a practice.

Meeting Location
The Art Institute of Phoenix
2233 West Dunlap Avenue
Phoenix, Arizona
Note: The meeting will be in room 456

Map: www.artinstitutes.edu/phoenix/AboutUs/Map_Directions.aspx

Agenda
6:00 pm Arrival, networking and snacks
6:30 pm Brief business meeting
7:00 pm Presentation - Invited Speaker
8:00 pm Adjourn

This is a free event, but space is limited. Walk-in attendees are certainly welcome, but please RSVP to this address so that we can ensure we provide the appropriate accommodations.

You do not need to be a member to attend. Feel free to come and check us out!!!

Though it’s exciting to me, I was a bit surprised at how exciting this operation has been to lots of other people. We made the newspapers (Arizona Daily Star and the Tucson Citizen) and I’m told the monkey was also on tv last week. The big move was Saturday. Just in case anyone else ever needs to move a 17-foot tall cement monkey with attached palm tree, here’s how we did it!

First we had to brace the separate pieces.

Then a concrete-cutting specialist got up on a ladder with the biggest old circular saw you ever saw.

There was a bit of settling, but nothing too drastic!

Once separated from the monkey, the tree needed to be separated from the ground. It was fairly narrow, so the circular saw worked just fine.

Up up and away! The tree was lifted over the fence…

And onto one of the waiting trucks. Sometimes it’s good to have a friend who happens to own a truck that can carry 5,000 pounds!

He looks kind of sad with his arm missing like that, doesn’t he? He was hanging off that tree for about 40 years!

Before cutting, we hooked up the crane to a halter around the monkey. That way, if anything unbalanced, we’d have a safety backup in place.

This part was tricky. The feet were too wide to use just that circular saw, so we had to have a jack hammer and multiple people clearing away debris until we loosened the monkey from his base.

The big heavy crane lifts him over the fence. Estimated monkey weight=4,000 pounds.

We had to lay him down for transport, but he didn’t lay flat and required even more bracing. And ropes. And strapping. Good thing we had a couple of engineers on hand!

Good bye, Magic Carpet! We had our own mini-parade heading down Speedway - two trucks, the crane, various helpers, and even a couple of newspaper photographers.

At the new location, we do it in reverse. Well, not the cutting part, just the lifting. First we pulled into the driveway…

Then lifted him onto the side yard. This part wasn’t quite as dignified as the first lift.

And there he’ll rest for a bit, waiting until we can arrange to set him upright again.

In case you missed it, here’s my post on the purchase!

I just got the new tweetup badges for the STC Summit coming up in May - and they look GREAT!

I placed the order on April 1st and they showed up today (total turnaround including shipping=8 days). This means that if you want to get one for yourself, but missed the first round, there’s still time! One detail you might want to note - the “@” is actually silver, not the bronze color it appears in the photo.

OR, if you want, I can do another group order. Same deal as before - drop $3 in my paypal account, and I’ll order them as a group and bring them with me to Atlanta. Deadline this time around is April 22nd. The more badges we do at once, the more cost-effective it is, so tell all your twittering friends!

And of course, I’ll tweet the offer now and again closer to the deadline. I’m looking forward to seeing you all in Atlanta!

Yesterday I posted a note that I had just adopted a giant concrete monkey statue from Magic Carpet Golf. It didn’t even occur to me at that time that people might think I was joking - that it was all one big April Fool’s Joke. But I wasn’t joking, and YES, I really did just adopt this monkey.

Some background:
In the late 1960s/early 70s, a man named Lee Koplin built two miniature golf courses on Speedway in Tucson and opened up “Magic Carpet Golf”. Each hole had a different (usually gigantic) concrete and stucco sculpture, many of them modeled after the “Goofy Golf” course he had built in Panama City Florida. Fast forward 40+ years to late 2007: Magic Carpet is run-down and starting to look shabby, and other miniature golf courses in town offer more! better! faster! attractions for the same price. The owners decide to sell, and a local car dealership buys the primo property.

At this point, no one knows what’s going to happen to the statues - clearly the car dealer wants the land for his CARS, not giant tiki heads. Rich Luhr was one of the people who went to take pictures of the course on the very last day it was open. He writes about it here (including a link to his Flickr set):
http://tour.airstreamlife.com/wordpress/?p=1137

Another year goes by, wherein the preservationists in town (and there are lots of them here!) try to find public spaces that are willing to take on the cost of moving and maintaining these statues. The largest, a 30-foot tall tiki head, has already been moved over to a tiki-themed restaurant called “The Hut” on Fourth Avenue.

Four others are slated to go to Valley of the Moon, a sort of fantasy-park. Finally, they decide to let the rest of the statues pass into private hands rather than be destroyed. THIS is what I’ve been waiting for! Bids are due by the end of March, so I get mine in and hope for the best. And my luck holds out: I WIN THE MONKEY! He even comes with the tree that he’s hanging on. There was once a motor in his butt that made the tail swing slowly back and forth, but that’s long gone. I’m told the eyes light up, but haven’t seen that in person yet.

Now all I have to do is arrange for someone to cut him out of the ground, separate the monkey and tree, lift them onto a flat bed, drive over to the downtown house. He’ll probably rest there (on his back!) for a while until I can get the new site properly prepared - slab, or footing, or something. Then “simply” stand him back up, re-attach the tree, and we’ll be good to go.

Added 4/13/09 - post with pictures of the big monkey moving day.