At this year's "Vielmehr" conference (what was formerly known as "Mensch & Computer") in Lübeck, Germany, my colleage Iris Niedermann and I presented a paper and a tutorial. The paper (called "Usability Professionals – a role playing game") was targeted at young professionals and experienced people looking for a change of jobs; the tutorial (called [...]

Earlier this month, I had the chance to go to Florence to attend the 2008 CHI conference. I had been looking forward to CHI for several reasons: After being disappointed by HCII last year, I was hoping for a more practitioner-oriented conference; I knew that a lot of people I knew would be going; I [...]

This year's CHI (Computer-Human Interaction) conference will take place from 5 to 10 April 08 in Florence, Italy. They are expecting ~2000 attendees from 38 countries. I've always enjoyed going to CHI conferences – they offer a unique blend of current research and topics that are more geared towards practitioners. You can still get the [...]

November 8 saw this year's worldwide No. 1 usability event – the World Usability Day, conceived by the international Usability Professionals Association (UPA) and carried out in 23 countries by local UPA chapters or other interested parties. I took part in the event in Hamburg, Germany, which attracted over 300 people from industry, administration, and [...]

I've just returned from my trip to the HCII 2007 conference in Beijing, China – a huge event with some 2,300 participants, ten sub-conferences ranging from ergonomics in the workplace to augmented cognition, and literally a hundred paper sessions. Three days of tutorials preceded the actual conference and offered beginners and participants with intermediate knowledge [...]

Today, I watched the video of Steve Wozniak, the hardware engineer of the Apple I and II and one of the founders of Apple (Computers) Inc., giving a speech at Google HQ in Mountain View. It was an eye-opening experience – the enthusiasm, fascination, and dedication "Woz" brought across. But see for yourself …

I just registered for euroGel 2007 – it's going to take place in beautiful Copenhagen, in the Black Diamond again, from 6 to 7 September 2007 – and Dec 13 is the last day for an early bird price on the tickets: they are $600; after the 13th, they will be $800 (and after June [...]

Yesterday I paid my first visit to Slovenia's capital Ljubljana to attend the "Interaktivni festival IF 2006" and to give a talk on the AOL Phone Box. Vuk Ćosić, whom I had met at the euroGel 2006, had asked me whether I wanted to deliver the talk and share some insights and information on a [...]