Spring time news

So, I'm emerging from my lonely general exam cocoon, here's some news:

School

• I passed! Woo hoo, this means I'm now a Phd candidate instead of student. My committee was super fabulous and I ended up learning a great deal (go figure). Now...onto the dissertation!
  
• No rest though, lots of exciting school and work related things going on right now. I'm taking a really awesome studio class in Value Sensitive Design.
  
• I'm also TA'ing a class in Computer Science on Computing for the Developing World. The topic is fascinating and close to my area of interest and seeing the CSE from the inside is also quite a treat in terms of interdisciplinarity. The class is being simulcast at Microsoft and also at Lahore University of Management Sciences in Lahore, Pakistan.
  

Work

• New projects, new clients, familiar challenges, some familiar faces.
  
• Prepping for a talk that we're given at UPA in Baltimore in June.
  

Local and personal

• This weekend is the famous Olympia procession of the species - I've never been but it's supposed to be super fun. According to the web site, "The intent of the Procession is to elevate the dignity of the human spirit by enhancing the cultural exchange that we have with each other and with the natural world..." - a tall order!
  
• The farmers market is open! Yay! We went a couple weeks back but there was hardly any produce - too early still, but rumors abound of asparagus - so we'll have to check it out again.
• We FINALLY got over our narrowband dilemma and put up the cash for satellite Internet. It's not the fastest connection in the world, but it beats the pants off of dial-up. The worst part is there is this punitive penalty for going over your 200MB daily download limit. If you do (or in my case when) the ISP slams on the breaks and slows your connection to a trickle. They call this their "fair use policy" - I call it BULLPUCKY. Although I can't believe I went almost a year without Internet at home.
  
• Also, trying to catch up with folks since I've been one of these the past couple of months:

On the stage

After being on the wedding stage last weekend, we've returned to life as usual. Life around here is both hectic and fun. Looking forward to that honeymoon next month, but for now it's back to reality.

That also means back to life on the professional stage. Monday we gave a big presentation to a client. It was the result of a benchmark usability study for an organization new to user-centered design. It's always hard to give this type of presentation where the bulk of the message is bad news. But at the same time, the message that the current site isn't working helps create a sense of urgency that can bring about the possibility for change. And that change can be brought about through user-centered design. It went well and I'm excited to see what kind of improvements can be made.

Yesterday, I was up in Seattle to talk at an industry event sponsored by the folks at Zaaz. It was great to connect with familiar faces, former students and current members of the TC family. In addition, I met a whole slew of new colleagues and many interesting folks working in the field.

My talk focused on the methodology we used for our study last summer in Kyrgyzstan. It was really fun to talk about ethnography to the UCD community. It's great to get folks excited about qualitative methodology which is definitely my favorite type of work to do. Also, the audience seemed genuinely interested in the Central Asia work and the results. For the talk, we were limited to 15 minutes so it was tough to get to everything I wanted to talk about. I'd definitely like to iterate the presentation, maybe tighten it up and give the talk again sometime.

Ryan, one of the organizers of the event has positive comments about all the presentations on his blog. Also, Minoru Uchida had some nice things to say also at his blog Yummy or crummy.