Momentum: The User Experience Professionals Association

The User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) conference in DC was another opportunity for spinning dreams and making connections.  Plus a place to begin practicing my Spanish (Tengo que aprender español, pero yo no hablo todavía - sólo un poco!)  During the conference I met and brainstormed with three incredible folks from Latin America.  They are full of such energy and creativity!

Claudia Gutierrez is a professor in Chile and has great contacts throughout the region.  She is also the woman who leads the Spanish Translation Team for UX magazine.  She volunteered to do Spanish language coaching via Skype.  ¡Hola!

She and I also discussed a wide range of ideas - including ways to engage both academics and professionals across the region.  We cooked up the idea of a Development Consortium for Latin America that we propose to take place at next year's UXPA conference in London.  This would be modeled after Development Consortia that have taken place at the CHI conference.  We would bring key people from a region in the so-called "developing world" (at CHI, it was South Africa for one and Brazil for another) to the conference right before the conference starts. They would spend a day (or two) discussing how to build, nourish, and support a regional community - and then generate plans and recommendations for what they need from each other and from the organization to sustain their growing community.  The Consortium is a community-building activity itself but it also focuses on extending and growing community.  It's been a very successful model in the SIGCHI community and it seemed to us that it would be a wonderful event at UXPA - if the Board approves it.

At the final reception, I also met Adriana Betiol, who is the Regional Director for Latin America on the UXPA Board.  What a wonderful conversation!  Adriana is from Brazil and has been doing a great job of representing Latin America to the Board which works hard to make sure there is international input and reactions to ideas.  Adriana also oversees the Portuguese translations for UX Magazine.  

I created a proposal for the Development Consortium and submitted it to the Board the night before I left (actually, it was at about 2:30 am - and I had to be up and out by 4:30 am!)  The Board met after the conference this year, but did not get to discuss it fully.  However, I am hopeful that they will approve the proposal later this year, once the website has finally launched and other loose ends have been sorted out.

Oscar Yepez is from Peru but now works in Boston.  We spoke of ideas throughout the conference and then, brainstormed in an extremely early morning (o'dark-thirty!) cab ride to the airport.  Once we arrived, we then sat together in the terminal for more brainstorms.  Such exciting ideas - including ways we might make a Development Consortium work at UXPA if the Board approves it.

I am so incredibly impressed by these wonderful folks and can't wait to work directly with them!  I was excited before - but now I am practically flying! 

Momentum: Fulbright's Amazing Jennifer

While in DC, I also met my Fulbright mentor, Jennifer Fox.  She and I have been corresponding and talking on the phone for a long time and it was a delight to finally meet her in person.  She's incredible - which I already knew from my interactions but which was confirmed in spades when we met in person.  She's extremely bright, of course, as one would expect of someone in the Fulbright organization, and she knows SO much about the program but even more importantly, the process.  She was very encouraging and she got as excited as I am.  What a terrific afternoon!

She confirmed that Fulbright Scholars are encouraged to make connections with other organizations (such as the OAS) to extend their impact as far as possible.  Her one caution (which is a key one!) is not to over-extend too far.  That's a serious possibility, given how expansively the network is growing.

But how to make choices about where to focus my energy is something I haven't really mastered yet.  Perhaps by empowering others to do things with support I can accomplish all that I hope to?  Sounds like a good way to go to me anyway - thanks, Jennifer!

Interestingly, we were going to meet on Monday, but had to postpone our meeting because Jennifer was stuck in San Francisco (!) due to a plane crash at the airport shortly before she was leaving for DC.  How ironic!  I was taking the red eye to get to DC in time for our meeting - but we could have had it in SF had we only known.  She was in SF to fulfill something on her Pre-30th birthday bucket list - namely hang-gliding! See what I mean about amazing?

Momentum: The Organization of American States

Wow!  What a lot has happened since I last logged in and wrote about this wonderful adventure - but I haven't been idle.  Not at all!  Instead, there's been so much going on there just hasn't been time to write - a good reason, right?

I've now talked with many more people - including some Panamanians and Jean who taught at UTP on a Fulbright last year!  What terrific information they've shared with me!  I echo my earlier post:  People have been so open and willing to share even very nitty gritty information (like whether I need to cover my tattoo - which apparently I do)  To all of you, THANK YOU!

In the meantime, I've also been working on building relationships with people in Latin America to help define and build on my goals.  Matt Kam introduced me to 2 folks from the Organization of American States (OAS) when I was in Washington for the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) conference in early July.  I had a truly inspiring conversation with Dr. Juana Maqueria and Cecilia Martins - what incredible people and what vision for education in Latin America!  We agreed to work together going forward, so I'll keep them in the loop as things move ahead.  They can (and will) introduce me to the Minister of Education in Panama, Lucy Molina.  She has a big interest in how technology can improve education.

We also discussed the need for more open educational resources (OERs) in Spanish to make knowledge more readily available and accessible, both physically and linguistically.  I hope that UXPA's magazine, UX, and/or journal, JUS, can help provide high quality articles that are available online.  UX already translates the abstracts of the articles into Spanish (along with Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, Japanese, and Korean - one of my proudest legacies to UXPA from my tenure as Director of Publications)

OERs are going to become increasingly important IMHO going forward, so I discussed the possibility of publishing Spanish-language content in UX.  There are some significant issues with this, as Whitney Quesenbery, the talented person who has gotten UX online (another of my legacies to UXPA) pointed out.  She and Gerry Gaffney (my extremely wonderful successor) promised to look into this however so I'm crossing fingers that we can see such content from UXPA available throughout Latin America.