[chisigmail] CHISIG Canberra chapter: notes from our meeting on 12th March 2009

[Duncan.Stevenson at csiro.au]

CHISIG Canberra
Notes from the meeting held on March 12th 2009

Attendance: Nine people attended the meeting, including a representative from the HFESA Canberra chapter.

The meeting discussed ways of maintaining members’ interest.  Several people spoke of the value of sharing events with other similar special interest groups as a way of keeping a critical mass of involvement.  In particular we will track HFESA events (as CHISIG members we are automatically members of the parent organisation) and notify them of our meetings.  The first of these will be held on Wednesday 18 March as a breakfast seminar.  I will attend it and report back.  If you get this before 11am Monday 16 March you can also register to attend.  Queries to Wendy Elford on 0438 310 176.

People asked for a mixture of academic and practical material to be presented at CHISIG meetings this year and that there be some regularity about the meetings.  I propose that we meet every 2 months, i.e. April, June, August and October this year and will arrange a draft plan for these meetings.  I would like to use the April meeting for two research projects – telehealth and remote control of industrial equipment.  If you have proposals for the other three meetings please contact me (see below).

Some regular events in Canberra that might interest CHISIG members were mentioned.  The following are details and notes from one of the participants:
- UX Book Club - see http://uxbookclub.org/doku.php?id=canberra - meets once a month and covers a different user experience design/information architecture/cognitive psych/human factors book - one is set for group reading/discussion, and another is a mini-review led by someone who knows the book.
- IA Cocktail Hour - see http://iacanberra.org - meets once a month to discuss UX/IA/KM topics that mainly apply to government.
- Social Media Club Canberra – see http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=73407306040 - meets for breakfast fortnightly (usually in the city) and is an informal meetup for people involved in the social media industry (again, usually in government, but people do attend from mainstream media and the nonprofit sector).
 - BarCampCanberra2 is on 28 March at the ANU (CS101, no less) – see http://barcamp.org/BarCampCanberra2 - all welcome to attend (and present). Last year we ended up with a fairly even split between the coder/geek and IA/UX streams.

CHISIG’s annual conference is OZCHI which will be held in Melbourne this year: 23-27 November with workshops and tutorials on the Monday and Tuesday and the conference papers and panels from Wednesday to Friday.  This will link with the HFESA’s annual conference, with some shared keynote speakers.  Details appear on both www.ozchi.org and www.chisig.org

The meeting finished with a short site visit (in the same building) to see a demonstration of the CSIRO ICT Centre’s broadband telehealth system.  This system will feature in a longer presentation at one of this year’s CHISIG Canberra meetings.

These notes will be placed on the CHISIG email list and on the CHISIGCBR Yahoo group.  If you have received this by other means and would like to be kept informed please join either of these email lists (www.chisig.org to subscribe to the email list – you don’t need to be a member).


Duncan Stevenson
Chair, Canberra chapter of CHISIG
Duncan.stevenson at anu.edu.au or phone 6216 7076 office, or 0419 140 209