The Web And Beyond: Mobility places going fast!

Tonight we will have another meeting with the organizing committee of The Web And Beyond: Mobility the Chi-Netherlands conference for which I am the Program Chair. One of the items on the agenda is an update on the number of registered attendees and whether we should take action to increase that. I think that last bit will not be necessary: places are going fast!

If I am not mistaken, we have already sold 325 out of the 450 seats! Historical data predicts that we will see 2 or 3 more spikes with registrations before the cut-off date for payments (May 16).

This means that if you planned to attend the conference, you may want to register right now (or, if you are Dutch: hier registreren).

The Web And Beyond: Mobility early bird deadline is Sunday

This is just a short notice to inform you that if you have been thinking about registering for The Web And Beyond: Mobility, the early bird registration deadline is this Sunday, April 27.

For members of Chi Nederland, BelCHI, ACM SIGCHI, BNO, the prices are:

• Regular price: €110 (after 27 april: €140)
• Students and PhD candidates: €40 (after 27 april: €50)

For non-members, the prices are:

• Regular price: €140 (after 27 april: €170)
• Students and PhD candiodates: €55 (after 27 april: €65)

Given the fact that this is a full-day, 3-track program with 4 international keynote speakers (Ben Cerveny, Jyri Engestrom, Adam Greenfield and Christian Lindholm) plus presentations by TomTom, Philips and The Netherlands' most mobile bank, Rabobank, this is exceptional value for money!
Registration is available on the website, both in Dutch and English (at the bottom of the page). I suggest you register now and thank me later, alright?

Keynotes for The Web And Beyond: Mobility

The Call for Participation for The Web And Beyond: Mobility was closed last month. Since then the Program Committee has been reviewing the submissions which included companies like Philips and TomTom as well as German, Danish and, of course, Dutch companies and universities.

We are close to publishing the program which will include tracks on mobile applications, maps & location based systems, social profiles & rich presence and ambient intelligence & everyware.

Those tracks also match nicely, and not unintentionally of course, to our four international keynote speakers. I am happy to announce them here:

• Adam Greenfield, author of Everyware, will present ideas from his upcoming book in "The City Is Here For You To Use".
• Christian Lindholm, ex-Yahoo!Mobile and ex-Nokia, will predict the future in "The New Mobility: Visions of mobile in the years to come".
• Jyri Engeström, founder of Jaiku (now owned by Google), will talk about clusters in the social graph (I think) in "Nodal Points".
• finally, Ben Cerveny, ex-frogdesigm, ex-Silicon Graphics, ex-Flickr and now advisor at Stamen and Director of the Playground Foundation, will talk about "Models of Urban Dynamics".

More about them and (soon) about the program, will be published on the conference website (also in English)

New Little IA: Emiel Boersma

Like his older brother Kasper, my second son took his time before he decided it was time to add one to the world's population but: On Friday, March 7, around 10 in the evening, Emiel Oscar Boersma was born!


Shortly after the home-birth he and his mother had to be taken to hospital: Emiel was underweight and cold, Marijke had lost quite some blood. Emiel was placed in a small, heated bed, Marijke had a tube placed in her arm with some clear, salty fluid dripping in.

Thirty-six hours later, we welcomed them back in our house and they've been going strong ever since. Emiel is growing fast and Marijke has been spotted cycling outside!

The first pictures are up on Flickr, tagged with "emiel". I am sure many more will follow.

Become a Leader!

At the upcoming IA Summit, the IAI Institute will once again sponsor a pre-conference workshop. The theme this year is "Becoming a Leader".

The intro of the workshop's description says it all:

Information Architecture is maturing as a profession, and IAs are increasingly being called on to leadership positions within their organizations. This seminar will be a daylong workshop that will explore the relationship between Information Architecture and Leadership.

The workshop will consist of four sessions:

• The Courage to Lead, by Christopher Fahey
• Teams that lead, by Margaret Hanley
• Strategy Matters, by Harry Max
• The Users That Use You, by Karen McGrane and Josh Rubin

Assuming I make it to Miami (I am supposed to have a newborn baby by then!) I plan to attend the workshop and hope to see you there!
(P.S.: I also have a poster at the Summit!)

That's not me!

Recently, a company called Frisia (a credit supplier) started airing commercials where a character has my name. Several people pointed me to the commercial. And, purely for the record: that is not me!
Yes, I work for financial institutions (the word "bank" appears five times on Info.nl's portfolio page and there's a couple more names from that industry) but I do not appear in their commercials (yet :-))!

The Web And Beyond: Mobility - Call for Participation

As I promised last November, I will post relevant updates about the The Web And Beyond: Mobility conference for which I am the Program Chair. Today's update is a shout-out to you to participate in the conference.

Earlier this month we published the Call for Participation (also available in Dutch). Here's an abstract:

Themes for the conference include (but are not limited to):

• Mobile applications
• Maps and location based services
• Rich presence and social profiles
• Ambient intelligence and everyware.

We are interested in submissions that deal with user needs in these areas and the associated design/technology solutions, as well as their impact on (interaction) design, business, education, and our society as well as individuals.
The following formats will be considered: Talks/Presentations, Panels, Posters, Mini-workshops, and Product Demos/Interactive Prototypes.

I hope you will consider submitting a proposal. If you're not sure if you should, feel free to contact me.