I have attended "CAUE - 2008" a national Conference on Advances in Usability Engineering, November 27-28, 2008 at Pune. This conference was organized by Department of Information Technology at Vishwakarma Institute of Information Technology (V.I.I.T) considering the need of a platform to get together the professionals, academia and students to discuss and share their experiences in the emerging field of usability. 
There were ~125+ registrations and the interesting part is 90% of the audience is the Industry professionals. Initially I was not much interested to attend this and was in a fickle situation whether to attend this or not, as my schedule were very tight. Thought for a while and decided to attend as I know the organizing committee and have good contacts with Pune usability friends.
When conference started, felt as a college annual day celebration and not much smelled as professional conference. Some topics were really boring as same old stuff "WHAT IS USABILITY" THE UCD PROCESS... blaw..blaw..blaw..! Later this became more interactive and interesting. The best part is all the invited speakers were also actively participated and made more interactive, shared their experiences, questions, views, etc.
Most of the paper presenters topics and invited speaks were really good. I really liked the second day of this event better than first day. VIIT team has worked very hard to make this event successful and for the first time they have organized this type of event and done a great job!
One thing which really felt bad is that I did not submit my paper on usability (as it was ongoing ..... iterative state – may be, I am following UCD process for my paper too ;). By seeing the conference published hardcopy proceedings, realized that it is very important to submit my paper and which will help some of the new upcoming professionals and indirectly our society.
Pune industry people should join as volunteers and help the VIIT team to make CAUE -2009 more successful. Dr.Dinesh Katre, Y.D Deshpande and VIIT team were the main back bone for this event and made this successful. Closing ceremony was dragged too long. End of this event i can say this is overall good, great networking, met most of my old usability friends and some learning’s :)
There were ~125+ registrations and the interesting part is 90% of the audience is the Industry professionals. Initially I was not much interested to attend this and was in a fickle situation whether to attend this or not, as my schedule were very tight. Thought for a while and decided to attend as I know the organizing committee and have good contacts with Pune usability friends.When conference started, felt as a college annual day celebration and not much smelled as professional conference. Some topics were really boring as same old stuff "WHAT IS USABILITY" THE UCD PROCESS... blaw..blaw..blaw..! Later this became more interactive and interesting. The best part is all the invited speakers were also actively participated and made more interactive, shared their experiences, questions, views, etc.
Most of the paper presenters topics and invited speaks were really good. I really liked the second day of this event better than first day. VIIT team has worked very hard to make this event successful and for the first time they have organized this type of event and done a great job!
One thing which really felt bad is that I did not submit my paper on usability (as it was ongoing ..... iterative state – may be, I am following UCD process for my paper too ;). By seeing the conference published hardcopy proceedings, realized that it is very important to submit my paper and which will help some of the new upcoming professionals and indirectly our society.
Pune industry people should join as volunteers and help the VIIT team to make CAUE -2009 more successful. Dr.Dinesh Katre, Y.D Deshpande and VIIT team were the main back bone for this event and made this successful. Closing ceremony was dragged too long. End of this event i can say this is overall good, great networking, met most of my old usability friends and some learning’s :)
