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Ideas for Presentations and Discussions

This is the place to propose and discuss ideas for presentations, BOFs, panels, tutorials, or any other venue that we can make happen for the 2008 Spring Conference.

Spring 2008 Topic Suggestions.

Have an idea for an interesting presentation suggestion? Want some inspiration on what you could give a talk about? Check out the topic suggestions page.

Ideas from the Fluid Folks

There has been a lot of discussion amongst the Fluid Project members of what they can bring to the conference, and what sorts of things the members of other projects and communities would find most valuable. Some of the following activities have already been proposed, and some are just ideas for things that could be offered, depending on what people think. Comments and suggestions are invited from everyone.

UCamp Session

The UCamp sessions held at Sakai conferences and the Rutgers Unconference have been very well received. A UCamp session is planned for the Wednesday afternoon BarCamp period. This is partly in response to interest expressed by the Kuali Student folks, but we expect it to attract interest from the other projects as well.

Session Leader: ~Barbara.Glover@utoronto.ca and members of Fluid UX community

(Anyone in the community at large: if you're interested in lending a
hand with this seminar, please let me know! – Barbara)

Help Us Plan the UCamp

Minnesota April 2008 UCamp Planning Page

Title: UCamp: Exploring UX issues and techniques for open source communities

(At this point we are still canvassing the communities to see what specific topics we should focus on at the UCamp.)

In general UCamps offer information about what is User Centered Design (UCD) and how it can be applied to improve the user experience of learning management systems and other higher educational software. We will have topics on basic UCD and possibly other more advanced topics. All topics will be presented in a workshop like format to encourage collaborative learning and discussion amongst UCamp participants.

Technical Seminar on JavaScript and DHTML for Portal and Portlet Developers

Writing client-side code for "Rich Internet Applications" is not for the faint of heart, especially within a portlet container. The objective is to describe techniques for ensuring that your code is safe and sane, as well as being effective and meeting accessibility requirements. A half-day seminar is planned for Sunday afternoon. Here is a pre-publication draft of the seminar description:

Title: Writing Fearless Javascript for Portlets, Widgets, and Portals

Session Description:
This session will provide developers with a hands-on understanding of modern JavaScript and DHTML programming techniques within the complex environment of a portal. We'll cover:

  • Unique features of the JavaScript programming language
  • How to use the jQuery toolkit and the Fluid plugins
  • Techniques for avoiding collisions with other JavaScript code
    running in the portal
  • How to make your DHTML code more accessible

Background Material: http://wiki.fluidproject.org/display/fluid/Javascript+Best+Practices

Introduction to User-Centred Design

A session on user-centred design would be based on the very popular presentation given by Allison Bloodworth and Gary Thompson at the Rutgers Unconference.

User Research

A presentation on "User Needs Assessment" or "Contextual Inquiry" could be of interest to several of the projects.

Design Patterns

Work is being done in the Fluid Project on the creation of design patterns, and a design pattern library. The intention is to have the library be federated with other pattern repositories. Since design patterns can serve as a common standard for design expression between developers and interaction designers, a design pattern session could be of interest to any of the conference attendees, and across all projects.

User Testing

The Fluid project has done a lot of work developing approaches and protocols for doing user testing in projects distributed across many sites – mainly with uPortal and Sakai.

Collaboration Opportunities

There are a number of specific areas where projects may find opportunities to collaborate with Fluid. In brief outline form, these include:

UX Toolkit

  • user research
    • share personas
    • collaborate on modeling
    • techniques/UCD approach (low cost)
  • design patterns
    • advice to accompany UI templates
    • open source design patterns library
  • user testing protocols
  • UX walkthroughs (of existing systems)

UI Technology

  • DHTML accessibility techniques
  • portal-friendly DHTML
  • advice on client/server architecture
  • components if useful
    • file-picker
    • file upload
    • sortable tabs
    • reorderer

Venue Ideas for Any Project

Working Sessions

While it is uncommon for conferences to schedule sessions that result in a technical work-product, a very successful outcome of a session at the Rutgers Unconference was the design of a feedback portlet, which has now been implemented by Jen Bourey. If this inspires you to think of other work that could be accomplished if you could just get the right people in the same room for an hour, then propose a working session, or come prepared to rally folks around your idea for the Wednesday afternoon BarCamp.

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