Recently, multiple people have been asking me about cool conferences occurring in 2009. I have two answers for them.

1. These conferences are difficult to search for and place in one spot. I’m really interested in knowing what conferences everyone is going to in 2009. I don’t have an exhaustive list.

2. Regardless, and for visibility’s sake, I’ve made the following short list of conferences that I’ve found to be awesome. Please add yours in the comments, if possible.

I’d like to set this us as a Wiki so we can all edit, add, and collaborate. Blog posts are good for getting an initial idea to many people, but are not so good at allowing additional ideas (unless people read the comments).

Search Marketing Expo - West 2009

Santa Clara, California. February 10-12, 2009
Search Marketing Expo - West 2009 Website

SMX conferences serve up some of the most innovative minds in search marketing as keynote speakers, so you know what’s about to happen and prepare for inevitable change. Past speakers have included:

* Tim Armstrong, President, Advertising and Commerce North America & Vice President, Google Inc.
* Satya Nadella, Senior Vice President, Portal & Advertising Platform Group, Microsoft
* Bill Tancer, Author, “Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why It Matters”
* Frazier Miller, Yahoo! Local General Manager

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MakerFaire 2009

Saturday May 30, 2009 - Sunday May 31, 2009
San Mateo Fairgrounds
2495 South Delaware Street
San Mateo, California 94403
MakerFaire Website
RSVP on Upcoming

Maker Faire is a two-day, family-friendly event that celebrates the Do-It-Yourself (DIY) mindset. It’s for creative, resourceful people of all ages and backgrounds who like to tinker and love to make things.

Like a science fair, the Maker Faire will have lots of DIY tech projects from the magazine and elsewhere.

Make magazine’s and Craft magazine’s “urban Burning Man” for tinkerers and crafters returns to the Bay Area this year.

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Interaction 09

Interaction’09|vancouver will be held from February 5-8, 2009 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, in conjunction with Simon Fraser University’s School of Interactive Arts and Technology. Join several hundred Interaction Designers from around the world as we address the design of interactive systems of all types: applications (web and desktop), mobile, consumer electronics, digitally enhanced environments, and more. Start your year off with stimulating talk, fun parties, and smart discussions about our growing field.

http://interaction09.ixda.org/

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SXSW 2009

Austin, Texas.
Interactive: March 13-17
Film: March 13-21
Music: March 18-22
SXSW Website

Music, film, and interactive conference and festival. Includes schedules and band and film lists. The SXSW MUSIC AND MEDIA CONFERENCE features a legendary festival showcasing more than 1,800 musical acts of all genres from around the globe on over eighty stages in downtown Austin. By day, the Austin Convention Center comes alive with conference registrants doing business in the Trade Show and partaking of a full agenda of informative, provocative panel discussions featuring hundreds of speakers of international stature. In its 23rd year, SXSW remains an essential event on the music industry calendar.

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Webvisions 2009

May 20-22. Portland, Oregon.
Webvisions 2009 Website

Discover the future of Web design, user experience and business strategy for two days of mind-melding on what’s new in the digital world. Get a glimpse into the future, along with practical information that you can apply to your Web site, company and career.

Submit a Session, Panel or Workshop Proposal for WebVisions 2009

WebVisions is now accepting submissions for sessions, panels and workshops for WebVisions 2009, which will be held from May 20-22, at the Oregon Convention Center.
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WWW 2009 - 18th International World Wide Web Conference Madrid

Universidad Politécnica de Madrid, Spain. Apr 20-24, 2009.
www 2009 Madrid Website

The World Wide Web Conference is the global event that brings together key researchers, innovators, decision-makers, technologists, businesses, and standards bodies working to shape the Web.

Organized by IW3C2 since 1994, the WWW conference is the annual opportunity for the International community to discuss and debate the evolution of the Web. The conference will feature a range of presentations on world-class research, as well as stimulating talks, workshops, tutorials, panels, and late-breaking posters.

WWW2009 seeks original papers describing research in all areas of the Web covering the implications of ubiquitous access to the Web through the “three screens” – computer, phone, and TV – and how such Web access will change the way we live, work, and interact in the future. Accepted refereed papers will appear in the conference proceedings published by the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM).

Topics of discussion will include Browsers and User Interfaces, Data Mining, Industrial Practice and Experience, Internet Monetization, Mobility, Performance and Scalability, Rich Media, Search, Security and Privacy, Semantic / Data Web, Social Networks and Web 2.0, Web Engineering, XML and Web Data. The conference will also feature plenary speeches by renowned speakers, and tracks devoted to developers and to recent W3C activities that are of interest to the community.

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Improved Mobile User Experience 2009 (IMUx 2009) | HIIT

This the third IMUx workshop and it will be held in conjunction with Pervasive 2009 in Nara, Japan. The first IMUx workshop was held in conjunction with Pervasive 2007 and the second IMUx workshop was held in conjunction with Pervasive 2008.

Improved Mobile User Experience 2009 (IMUx 2009) Website

Topic Description

Current interfaces of mobile devices are rather limited when adaptability, context-awareness and proactiveness are considered. For example, they do not utilize the context of the interaction, nor the environmental changes in the user’s proximity or the capabilities of the device itself. This context can include information about the situation and the user preferences, longer or shorter time usage histories, etc. To improve usability and to provide a better user experience, the interfaces of the devices should become more intelligent and require less intentional user inputs. In order to achieve this goal, novel interaction methods need to be developed and combined with statistical models of the user that capture, for example, her behavior, personal preferences and goals.

Furthermore, the developed solutions need to be evaluated via extensive user tests to guarantee they are valuable to the users. To improve the dialogue between the different research areas and their practitioners, the workshop aims at bringing together researchers from the fields of user modeling, user interaction and user experience, with developers of mobile and ubiquitous applications. The ultimate goal of the workshop is to provide a common forum for exchanging ideas between these domains.

Submissions:

The workshop welcomes two kinds of paper submissions: research papers and position papers. Also demonstration and video submissions are welcome.

The research papers should present original research related to one or more of the following areas:

* user modeling in mobile environments
* user interaction in mobile environments
* user experience in mobile environments

The position papers should address challenges in combining the above-mentioned areas, and beyond, for an improved mobile user experience, and propose approaches for overcoming these challenges. We encourage authors to take a visionary view and a critical stand towards current practices and trends.

Example topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

* adaptive interfaces for mobile devices
* case studies of mobile computing applications with adaptation (e.g., mobile guides)
* considerate computing
* context-aware information retrieval
* embedded solutions for machine learning
* evaluating mobile user experience in situ or in the field
* large scale data gathering and its challenges
* methods and tools for evaluating mobile user experience
* meaningful abstractions of sensor data (e.g., activity recognition, social analysis, place identification etc.)
* minimal/implicit/reduced user interaction
* mixed-initiative interaction
* mobile spatial interaction
* sensor fusion on mobile devices
* statistical methods for providing feedback to the user
* use of machine learning for instrumented usability research

Publication

Authors of accepted papers are invited to submit a revised version of their work to a special issue at IJMCHI (International Journal of Mobile Human Computer Interaction) or PUC (Personal and Ubiquitous Computing).

Timeline

* Submission deadline: February 10, 2009
* Notification of acceptance: March 1, 2009
* Workshop: May 11, 2009

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More Conferences in ‘09?

I apologize for the brevity of this list. Surely you know of more conferences than I do. If you’d like to see something added to this list, please send an E-mail to caseorganic@gmail.com with the following:

*Conference Title
*Date
*Location
*Venue
*Website
*Description
*Optional: Paper submission details (if any).

Or simply comment below.

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Amber Case is a Cyborg Anthropologist and Tech Journalist from Portland, Oregon. You can follow her online @caseorganic.