Last week I attended the CHI 2005 conference in Portland, OR. Not a bad little conference, all thing considered. I took a full day tutorial on implementing the user experience at a strategic level within an organization. This provided some very tasty fodder for further thinking on the issue. One side note — the conference proceedings were provided on a dvd, and I don’t believe there is a dvd drive anywhere within my 2000 person organization. Not that this is any reflection on the priorities placed by the organization on any given individual’s environment.
Perhaps the most enjoyable aspect of the trip was I needed to devote my evenings to working on the other website that I maintain, so all networking obligations were off. This did not mean that I devoted all my time to coding. One memorable evening was spent ordering hefeweizen and wings from room service while watching Bad Santa on the cable. Nice. Alas I saw nothing of Portland except the cab ride form the airport and the 6 block stretch from the hotel to the convention center. But I’ve heard nice things, so a return trip is definitely in order.