HFES Presidential Town Hall (February 2023) | Bonus Episode

hello everybody Welcometo the hfes town hall for February 2023no matter if you're joining us livewatching or listening to this recordinglater thank you all so much for beinghere uh HF Essence has invited me toco-host to host today my name is NickRome I host of weekly human factorspodcast I'm joined today by the thepresident of hfes Carolyn summarick bythe president-elect Susan katowski wealso have Andrew and Barbara on the lineuh who are going to be talking about alot of really fun things today we got agreat Town Hall look at the latest fromthe society and look forward to thisannual this year's annual meeting uh ohand farzan as well sorry my apologiesfarzan forgot to introduce youum and uh later we'll be addressing someof your questions too so just a levelset with everybody on the format herethis town hall is open to everybodymembers non-members alike no matterwhich category you fall in I'm superglad that you're here we're all gladthat you're here we're broadcasting thisacross many different platforms rightnow that includes the human factorschannels as well as the official hfeschannels so LinkedIn Facebook TwitterYoutube twitch all of them you can findus there if you can't stick around forthe entire town hall today it will beavailable as a recording on all thoseplatforms right after we're done we'llalso be Distributing this audio versionof uh on on the human factors castpodcast feed so one last important noteas we're going through this today we askthat no matter where you're watching orlistening if you have any questionsplease leave them in the chat we can allsee those comments and and we might beable to address some of that stuff as weget closer towards the end of the uh thethe town hall today uh and and I wantyou all to give these guys some toughquestions give them some really toughquestions uh all right I've gone on longenough I'm gonna put everybody backstageand I'm going to leave Carolyn up hereto talk about through some Societyupdates Carolyn over to yougreat thank you so much Nickum and welcome everyone uh I just wantto shout out to Chris Reed who starteduh this uh Series last year I think it'sa greatum great initiative and so we arekeeping it goingsoumjust uh our agenda for today who are weSociety announcements and updates andthen we are going to be talking aboutour digital Communications efforts andthe uh upcoming International uh annualmeeting and that's why I've gotum these uh Compadres with me here todayBarb shaparo Andrew golzewskifarzangar and Susie kotowski so uh theseare just images from our previous townhalls and you can see everybody'ssmiling we have a good time uh with thisand we really enjoy uh yourparticipation so please do send usquestionssoum let me there is a survey as with allof ourum webinars and uh so uh this is thelink to it and then uh Nick also has aQR code there showing uh so you canprovide us with feedback uh through thatsurveyour mission at hfes is to advance thescience and practice of Designing forpeople in the systems in which they workand we do that throughuminteractions at various levels atdifferentumfrom systems levels to product levels toenvironments and and everything inbetween andum we we have expertise among ourmembership in terms of design and thesocial sciences in uh anthropometry andbiomechanics we are very widespread inthe knowledge that weum that we support and that we share uhwith um with the wider worldwe are formed in 1957 but we are notum stodgy by any stretch of theimagination as you can see by us usingthese um the technology that we're usinguh today for uh this uh this event wehave about 3 100 members uh and they aremainly in the United States but we havemembers throughout the world and we arefortunate for that and we really enjoyuh the benefits of that uh in terms oftheir participation in uh in our societyas as full members of the society and asstudent members of the societythere we go Newfoundland welcome thanksfor participatingwe have 26 technical groups so if you'vegot a special interest somewhere we'vegot a technical group that thataddresses that we also have fiveAffinity groups uh and membersof hvs are welcome and and encouraged tojoin both our technical groups and ourAffinity uh groups we have studentmembers from graduate programs uhthroughout the US and and Canada and umoops it means I actually switched outI'm not sure why that switched soquickly but I will worry about thatum to move myself along here weum we produceindividuals uh who can support uh workthat's needed in government and Industryand Academia uh to uh to develop thosesystems and enhance those systems forthe people who who are using them andas part of our membership services wesupport your careers we provide careerresources this is just a very limitedsubset of the kinds of career resourcesthat we provide uh to members we havejob board we have career fairs at ourHealthcare Symposium and our annualmeeting we have a member directory tohelp you network with people at inindustry and in Academia and inConsulting we provideumways for outside uh folks outside tofind our experts through our consultantand expert witness directory and youcould find more of our career resourcesat that link right thereummembership our members are really theheart of our society they truly are andI wanted just to remind you if youhaven't uh renewed your membership for2023 I encourage you to do that we havea lot of membership options includingreduced cost memberships for earlycareer Professionals for our students wehave new corresponding member level forfolks who belong to another ieaInternational ergonomics Association uhsociety that are outside of the U.S thisgives access to materials andPublications at a reduced rate we alsohave reduced rates for folks who are umliving inum emerging countries as as it's labeleduh and we also have a hardship uhbenefit that we can offer to memberswhen you know if you are not in afinancial uh situation where you canafford your membership in a given yearuh please reach out to us because wedon't want to lose you as a memberum your membership supports all of theactivities that hfes does it includeshelping to pay for our wonderful staffwho who work on hfvsmatters uh throughout the days and weeksand behind the scenes that you don'tnecessarily see them until uh you cometo a meeting or or are you um interactwith the society need something specificfrom it butumit also your membership supports ourOutreach efforts uh government relationswe have so much work that's going on inthat area and your membership helps tosupport that uh so just wanna it's verymuch a two-way street membership weprovide services to our members and ourmembers help uh the society doum the Outreach work that's reallyimportant part of of hfpsI have some volunteer opportunities thatI want to let people know aboutum andum membership that's again one of thevalues of membership is to take onvolunteer opportunities and I want totell you about a couple of them theinternal affairs division chair andwebinars committee chair first though asusual I'm going to orient you to theorganization through our org chart andyes it's teeny tiny and can'tnecessarily read it very well but what Imainly want to point out isumthese two opportunities that I'mhighlighting here one is in the greenbox uh which is an international orInternal Affairs Division and the otheris in the Rose Colored box which is thateducation division so I'm just kind oforienting you to where these positionsareso the internal affairs division chairis the chair of the internal affairsdivision which is kind of the heart ofour membership uhin terms of uh of our differentdivisions and how they're organized sothe internal affairs division houses allof our chapter fares our local andstudent affairs it houses our Council oftechnical groupsum membership committee mentorshipcommittee our Council of affinity groupsand our practitioners committee butmostly I want to tell you what does adivision chair actually do andso all of our division shares theycoordinate and manage the activitieswithin their division they meetregularly with their committee chairscommittee chairs do so much oh theCommittees do you know the much of ourwork and so in order to support thosecommittees and the committee chairsthat's that's a big role for ourum our uh division shares they thedivision chairs serve as a liaisonbetween the executive Council and theCommittees theyum the division chairs conveydiscussions and and action items fromthe EC and the Strategic direction tothe Committees that are within a givendivisionthey the division chairs coordinateactivities between and amongst theircommittees so that there's notduplication of effort but where thereare synergies and where committeesshould be working together they help tocoordinate that they also help toconnect committees across divisions aswellum so if you're a person who reallybelieves in the activities and theumthis particular uh Division and whatthis division uh does I I urge you toget in touch with me and and let me knowabout your interests and and I don'twant to ignore the good work thatsamirani has been doing soum to me has been doing wonderful workin this area and and he's at a pointwhere he's ready to um hand this uhimportant work off to someone else buthe's also going to be staying on to tohelp ensure a smooth transition so it'snot like he's just going away and andyou know you're going to be left to yourown devices to sink or swim it's notlike that at all soum again if you have an interest in thisyou're just curious please get a hold ofmeso now I'm going to tell you about theother opportunity that I'm advertisingtoday and it is the webinars committeechair so the webinars committee ishoused in our education division whichis chaired by Keith Jones uh and thewebinars committee solicits topics andpresentations for webinars it helps usto generate ideas and recruit presentersit also works with TGs and other groupsthat want to host webinars and helps tocoordinate the timing of that with ourcentral office staff helps them to thinkabout what type of a webinar should thisbe is this more like a meeting or awebinar kind of more formal presentationor do you want more of a discussion andand helps to plan that out so if thissounds like it's uh an area that you areinterested in or you have someexperience with please get a hold of meor Keith Jones and we're more than happyto talk with you uh about thisother volunteer opportunities hey wehave elections coming up like we doevery year every year weum elect two at-large members of theexecutive Council a president-elect anda secretary treasurer elect all of theseterms are for three years essentiallyyeah executive council members it's athree-year term president-electsecretary treasurer lack basicallyyou're the elect and you're it and thenyour immediate past president so that'sthe three years of that andcouple years agoum at Ellen uh bass had the great ideato create a videoum kind of what is it about uh when youare thinking about uh you know runningforum one of these elected offices andalthough the dates are you know that wementioned some dates in there thatwouldn't be right because it's from acouple years ago the content is is veryinformative and so I have the link upthere uh for you and of course you knowyou can always just contact us for thislink because it's flying by too quicklyand you didn't get it we're happy toshare it with you later toolots of events coming up this year theseare are really big events so we just hadour Titan Symposium thank you so much toKermit Davis for and his team fororganizing thisum great highlights every year of umpeople who are really haveum moved the move the needle move thedial move the science uh move thepractice of human factors that's who wehighlight uh in this Titan Symposiumevery year and now we have you knowrecordings of these folks that are thenavailable you know into the future ifyou didn't get to attend the TitanSymposium you can find those recordingson the Learning Center uh those areavailable uh to be viewed at a laterdate they are currently doing the closedcaptioning on those so I don't thinkthese are available quite yet but theywill be soonthen we have upcoming our internationalhuman factors and ergonomics andHealthcare Symposium that is in Orlandoum registration has been open for awhile for that and we are stillobviously taking registrations it's uhstill got another month uh if you can'tcome to Florida you can view manysessions there'll be live streams so inthe registration for that is open nowthen we have our International annualmeeting coming up in October please cometo Washington uh and join us there uhthe first day of the meeting uh is alsogoing to be the date for ergox uh and soyou are able to find more informationabout that on our events page and umfarzan and Susan are going to be talkingmore about this so I'm not going to betalking more about it right nowwe have upcoming webinars thank you uhsustainability to ask for us you guysare busy uh you got uh two webinarscoming up one in March and one in Apriluh and we uh publish those on the eventslist as they are added so please checkthat out on a regular basis to find outwhat webinars we have coming upum in terms of the annual meeting againI'm not going to talk much about itother than to say the 28th February thatdate is coming up uh to submit aproposal and we encourage practitionersand academics to share what you aredoing what your what Your what you yourpractice your knowledge with the worldso this is welcome presentations uh frompractitioners and academics I cannot saythat enough times we want not just tohear from the academic folks but thepractitioners the whole idea behind theannual meeting is we come together andwe shareum our what we've been doing and wefigure out how can we collaborate uh inthe future so and again farzan and Susiewill be talking more about this in justa few minutesum let's also due student chapters heyif you want some money for this year getin your proposal toum our uh the co-chair of the studentaffairs committee Dr xiaomi Wang andkeep doing good activities there and ifyou need some funding for it put in foritMarch 17th what's due nominations forhfvs fellowsthe fellows designation recognizesoutstanding achievement uh Superiorprofessional performance exceptionalcontributions to both human factorsfield and the societyand again I want to emphasize that thisis not just for academics so here arethe different areas in which werecognize Excellence education yes butresearch and design applications andpractice management and supervisionOutreach and advocacy and this is what Ireally want to emphasize if you knowsomeone that you believe is excellent inone or more of these areas give them ashove give them a tap on the shouldergive them the benefit that you see thatthey would qualify for this and supportand encourage them to apply uh to thiswe got more Awards hvs awards are annualAwardsum the nominations for those areaccepted through the 14th of Apriland again I'm going to emphasize notjust for academics most of these awardsare availableum for both practitioners and academicswe do have a couple of awards that arespecifically for hfbs members but thesearen't even necessarily just for hvsmembers so take a look at the web pagethat describes our Awards read thedescription of the awards and you'll seeum I'm sure that you'll identify onethat is either is appropriate for you tobe nominated for or someone that youknow uh and uh and respectwhat's new well we want to welcome ournewest affinity group which is the khvsthe Korean American affinity group andagain I urge all of our members to checkout all of our Affinity groups and umconsider joining one or more of them youdo not have toumuh be a member of the particular uh uhdemographic you just have to beinterested and supportive uh so thatthere's the these Affinity groups are soactive and it's reallyum very enjoyable to participate intheir meetings and um learn more abouttheir great ideas and their experiencesso I I really encourage you to check outour Affinity groups I also want to justhighlight we haveum on theum various Heritage months andrecognition months we are we put upum uh our own message uh uh related tothose months and I want to give a shoutout to Barrett Caldwell whoum wrote our our message for blackhistory month thank you so much BarrettI always learned so much from Reading uhthese messages andum we'll have one coming up for women'sHistory Month here we're working on thatright nowChris Reed he gets around man this guyis in Cuba and all over the place takingthe message of human factors and hfpsumto the uh the much wider world so thankyou Chris for representing hfesum and uh in all different corners ofthe globewe have a new method series book outrisk management how to assess andcontrol risk related to human error andproducts and systems these little booksare great for educatorsum this is these are like the the littleSage books if you're familiar with thatseries they they're they this one sayshow to it really is a how-to book itgives examples it's not just talkingTheory it's it really will inform youabout how to use it so great foreducators to use in courses I urge youto check out this one and others in themethod seriesand for folks who are submitting tohuman factors you will be really glad toknow that we are expanding the pagecount and the number of issues so thatwill really support a more timely umpublication of our accepted papersum so don't give up on human factorsbecause you think there's a really longuh publication lag time because we areworking on that thank you to Rob radwinand Pat DeLucia uh forum bringing resolving this issue andworking to resolve thistwo more updates oh I was exhausted herebut there's just so much going on and Iwant to tell you about all of it we havenew memorandum of understandings withthe national Safety Council on theSociety of surgical ergonomics we formtheseum uh we make these associations as wesee that they can be mutually beneficialto members of both of the organizationswhen we decide to to make these and umso just and we have a page that thatshows the groups that uh that we'vedeveloped these withum national Safety Council I rememberone of the items in there specificallythere's some kind ofsupport money for students in there sowe are going to be definitelyhighlighting uh that and making sure ourstudents know about the opportunityrelated to that national Safety Councilmouservice agreements we have two newservice agreements these are investmentsthat the executive Council has made onewith rarifying you're going to behearing about that in just a moment uhregarding our digital Communicationsreview and redesign effort and then with360 Live media to grow our annualmeetingand there are opportunities for ourmembers to to assist uh with theseum because both of these organizationsare talking to our members to learn moreabout what's important to them in theworks we haveum our Awards renaming task force thatis still active and we have a new one onnominations and elections because wereally want more people to consider uhrunning for elected office and we wantto figure out how to reduce uh thebarriers uh to doing that and toencourage more people to participateum in our in our in running our societyum our Dei committee is working onrecognition Awards that's been in theworks for a long time and I think it'sreally going to hopefully happen thisyear that those are going to beum uh out in and up uh the U.S ux taskforce last yearum Rebecca Greer and herum uh task force did a great job ondeveloping a report with a number ofrecommendations and we are movingforward uh withumuh uh taking steps to uh uh enact anumber of those recommendationsso now I'm going to take a breath hereuh we have two groups that are going tobe talking with you today uh one Barbshaparo and uh Andrew golzewski aregoing to be talking about our digitalcommunication efforts and then we'regoing to haveum we're going to ask farzan and Susanto talk about the annual meetingforeignall right well thank you Carolyn reallyappreciate the the presentation soundslike there's a lot going on with thesociety so uh I think I think we'regonna check in with farzan first is thatright farzan and and Susan is is are wegonna check in with you guys first let'sbring you on all right so uh let's let'sgo ahead and talk about it so can youjust give us a little sneak peek of whatwe can expect at or of this year'sannual conference offeringsforeign[Music]you're chopping in and out there buddyuh is wondering if there's another uhsomething else going on with your audioumoh I'm sorryto see if the changeyeah it's just choppy I'm not surewhat's going onumlet's see here maybe maybe what we cando here is uh switch toum talking about digital Communicationscommittee first and then bring you on alittle bit later if we can figure outthose audio issues is that okaysorry to play off like the Oscars but uhwe'll we'll do that right now and we'lluh we'll come back to you in just alittle bit all right so for now let's goahead and we'll put you all backstageand let's bring out Barbara and helloBarbara let's see let's shift gearscoming away from the annual uh annualmeeting we'll we'll talk about that injust a minute but let's talk about uhthe digital Communications committeewhat is itokay well thank you very much Nick hopeyou can hear me okayall right so the digital communicationcommittee or what we're calling the DCCis a brand new committee within oureducation division whose goal is tooversee the hfes website and all thedirectly Associated subsites as well asrelated digital Communications so excuseme this includes the um Maine hivs.orgsite but also things like the LearningCenter our digital communitytechnical group uh sites and StudentChapter sitesexcuse mein addition to our our events of courseso the conference websites and theconference app that you use on site sooverall the committee goal is to reallyhelp Monitor and assess the usability ofour site the contentthe architecture and optimize the userexperience for for those that areseeking information about human factorsthe society and this is you know membersand non-members of the General Publicso so did this this formed from aprevious task force what what was thatprevious task force and what were thoseobjectivesyeah so the the committee came aboutthrough initial task force that wasstarted back in 2020 with Carolyn andRebecca Greer and Monty dimitro and andKeith Carnthis was the time when the site wasmigrated to a new platform and it wentthrough an initial redesign phase andrebrandingand so the goal of this task force wasto evaluate the site and provide somerecommendations for improvementand and so how did the formation itselfcome about of the DCC the the digitalcommunication Community yeah so the DCCis really a continuation of the taskforce work so task force in general tendto be shorter term engagements and so werealized thatum it would be best to have a standingcommittee that has the responsibility tooversee the website and Associatedmicrosites and to make sure it staysupdated and meets the needs of ourmembers and our non-members so we'realways going to have a digital presenceso this committee will be ongoingas part of the education division tohelp oversee all of that even astechnical technological advances occurand that we are able to work with thehfes staff digital teamthe other benefit of becoming a formalcommittee is that we were able toestablish some operating rules whichoutline what the committee will be doinghow it interacts and provides someaccountability back to the educationdivision and the executive Councilyeah I know the website is a big pointof contention for a lot of hfes membersthey comment about it we're humanfactors but the website iswell you all can develop your ownopinions on the website but I I do havea couple questions before we get to thatwhat is sort of the uh you kind ofmentioned it alluded to it what is theoverall role of the digitalcommunication committee within hfes anddo you have any primary objectives thatyou can talk about that the the group isworking towards yeah so I mean we'rewithin the education division but weoverlap with many of the other groups inthe society everybody has some aspect ofthe web presence or the online communityso that includes Outreach for suremembership and certainly the conferenceevent committees the website is oneplace that you know both members andnon-members can visit and it's for manydifferent reasons so the goal of thiscommittee is to really make sure thatthe information we're providing andwe're presenting is helpful and meetseverybody's needsokay so that's that's a pretty bigpromise how are we hoping to accomplishsome of those objectivesyeah so as you can imagine this this isnot a small task um there are a lot ofmoving pieces here and so the task forcerealized about a year ago that it wouldbe most beneficial to have a dedicatedresourceto evaluate our site and all theassociated systems so we worked with thehfes digital team last spring on an RFPfor a ux consultant to do a deep diveassessing the capabilities of hfeswebsite platform all the third partytools that are being used as well as totalk to our members about their websiteexperiencesso you know hfes supports many differentsystems it's not just hfes.org but thelearning management systemmembership system journals onlinecommunities all the above so the RFP wasto find a dedicated resource that couldexamine all of these from a userperspectiveso late last fallwe were very excited to get approval tohire Andrew from the consulting firmrarifyso I think he could walk through whathis process is is going to be it's it'sunderway right now we're in thebeginning stages of thisum but I think it's it's very excitingwhat we're going to come out withyeah I was about to say so so we hiredsomebody for to to look at all of hfesux across the board and you're tellingme that they're here too what howamazing is that hey Andrewcould you hey could you tell us a littlebit about this multi-phase Consultingagreement or engagement that um thatwork that's been plannedyeah absolutely so um so I can startwith the broad scope of of theengagement which is basically toformulate a digital strategy uh alongwith specific ux recommendations uh thatare going to serve members serve theorganization and uh and be sustainablemoving forward and maintainable movingforward uh by the people who are who areresponsible for working on thesewebsitesum and Barb was talking through some ofthe challenges there so there is a umthere's a heavy Reliance on volunteersupport and expertise to help uh youknow bring new content onto the websiteum but most importantly hfes online hasso many different componentsum it may seem like one website andreally it should seem like one websiteuh but it's actually a collection of alot of different platforms and toolsthat that Barb and Carolyn alsomentionedum and furthermore so certain thingslike the message board and the LearningCenter are necessarily powered by othertechnologyand these things are customizable tovarying degrees so you can imagine somechallenges around delivering aconsistent experience and sort offine-tuning all of these experiencesum to make them really ideal and andreally uh user centered as opposed totechnology centeredum yeah go ahead yeah no I was justgonna say as a as a member I love thisthis is amazing and this is probablysome of the best news that I've heard ina very long time so this is like I saidthis is a big ask can you walk methrough some of the key stages that isinvolved in this engagementmm-hmm yeah absolutely so um so evenleading up to thisum since the new website launched aboutthree years ago there has been a lot ofwork done to assess its usability andsuggest improvements so we're notstarting from scratch yeah I have areally fantastic starting point to workfrom uh but so much happens day to dayfrom the standpoint of content updatesand Website Maintenance that it can behard to take a step back and understandthe big picture of how well all thesetools are are really workingum so you know my main goal is really toidentifyum the highest value improvements thatwe can make for for members and and forthe organization so how do we do thatright it's a big it's a big askum the first phase of the engagement isuh is a discovery phase which is justwrapping upum and that has been about understandingthe work that has been done to date anduh and the current state of things andthere are a lot of inputs to thisum so one is examining the differentplatforms themselvesum and that includes the end userexperiences as well as underlyingmetrics like analytics and usage datahow many people are using these thingswhat are they trying to doum and sort of understand the thenumbers behind how these experiences arecurrently performinguh I've also as part of my Discoveryphase gotten to conduct many interviewswith the people who are responsible forworking on these websites uh tounderstand how things are going from aprocess standpoint uh and of course it'sa lot of reviewing member feedback andprevious issues that have beenidentified uh and and really getting thethe lay of the land that wayum so I'm coming out of this discoveryphase with a great understanding offirst of all hfps members which is avery wide range of people who have verydifferent needs and jobsum and it's uh it's been you know reallyenjoyable kind of wrapping my headaround that uh and I'm also coming outof Discovery with a lot of questionsthat I hope to ask in my next phasewhich is a user research phaseum and I can give a quick plug aboutthatum as we are getting into it so in thecoming weeks I'll be conducting in-depthinterviews with currents and formermembersum and a survey is going to follow fromthat as well uh which is going to focuson the member experience and the valueof all of these digital platformsum so if anybody who's listening anybodywho who watches the recording if you getan invitation to participate in aninterview or fill out a survey uh pleaseconsider doing souh it's really important for us tocapture a broad range of perspectivesum you know that's demographics that'sprofessional disciplines uh academicsand practitioners it's early mid latecareer it's um whether you go tomeetings or don't go to meetings uhwhether you engage online or don'tengage online you know your perspectiveis really important um and and is goingto be influential to to how thesedigital properties develop in the futureso uh so we really want to know what youthinkthat's awesome I I will happily promotethat that link let's get some feedbacklet's make this site this the suite ofsites for hfes the best they can be uh II guess the thelast question I have for you Andrew ishfes this is an organization thatpreaches usability user-centered designuh putting the user in in the middle ofeverything what sort of benefits canthis have for the society as a wholeyeah wellum yeah where to begin you know it's uhfrom one standpoint it is important forevery organization to prioritize userexperience rightum you know everyone needs to understandtheir their users their customersum their needs their expectations andthen ultimately uh what is the rightcontent what are the right featuresum you know that need to be presented ina in a digital propertyum but of course with hfes there is thiselement of we need to practice what wepreach rightum and this sends the best possiblemessage uh both to current members andto prospective members about the qualityand the expertise that you can expectfrom hfes and from being a part of it uhthe the home page uh you know right nowif you go to hfes.org it says systemsthat work for humans and our digitalpresence hfes digital presence is a Asystem that should be working for humansright and so we're uh we're using thisengagement to look at the whole systemnot just the website but the people andthe processes uh behind the websitesum because we really want to deliver onthis notion of of user-centered designthat informs so much of the other thingsthat hfes members do professionallygreat so so that's an awesome effortBarb I'm going to go back to youbasically how is the DCC the digitalcommunication committee going to workwith these recommendations and uh youknow kind ofwhat are you gonna do with themyeah so Andrew's not going away rightafter the recommendation so there is aphase where we will be working with himand we're maintaining we're in the loopas we usually we speak on his differentphases and uh learning from each otherso you know at the point where we haverecommendations the goal of the DCC isto help withum implementation right andprioritization and understanding youknow what we need to do first secondthird so we're really eager to see someof the results that Andrew comes up withand we'll continue to work with him tomake a better siteyeah I I can add to that a little bitum yeah so so that that's a great PointBarb and something that we discussedextensively in the uh in The Proposalstages we were crafting this approach isyou know I'm going to uh develop thislist of ux recommendations it's notvaluable to drop that list in people'slaps and say good luckum you know that's uh no no engagementuh Consulting engagement should endthereum so I'm also budgeting time toprioritize first of all these suggestedimprovementsum you know with the help of the teamand this prioritization will be based onboth the value that theserecommendations will bring to themembers and the organization uh but alsobased on how heavy a lift they will beto implement right so it's easy to say Iwant this website to be different inthis wayum but you know we don't always havevisibility into the developmentresources that are necessary in order toreally make things happen and we need tobe deliberate about the order in whichwe tackle thingsum and then even beyond that I'm goingto be staying on on a temporary basis tohelp monitor the implementation of thesehighest priority recommendations andmake sure that the output is true towhat we've what we've been talking aboutthis whole time and and what came out ofthe the initial research phasesum so yeah definitely looking forward tosticking around and seeing it through uhand and as as an hfps member myself uh II do ux Consulting I also do humanfactors Consulting and and uh have lovedbeing a part of hfes and so selfishly II want to uh see a better website and abetter organization uh for all of usall right as do we all so thank you Barband Andrew I'm going to put you allbackstage and we're going to try to talkto farzan and Susan again uh about theannual meeting updates let's see farzancan you hear us are you coming in loudand clear yeah is it better now oh somuch better so much better night and dayall right thank you all right well wellwelcome back to the stage the questionthe question that I had asked you beforethe audio issues uh were werewere there basically can you give us asneak peek of this year's annualconference offerings I am so excited forthis year I think we're going to haveone of our largest events to date uh interms of attendance uh in in recentyears at least you can expect a verydiverse inclusive technical program Ithink it's going to be a lot of energyand funum we're gonna kick it off with thestudent uh career and professionaldevelopment day which is a super popularevent among our students it's a full dayof program tailored just for our studentmembers uh this year we try to offer arange of technical workshops and we tryto reduce the overlap between thestudent career day and the workshopsbecause it happened the same day firstday of the conference so our studentscan take advantage of both last year wetried a new format for the openingreception we included this new awardceremony thanks to Chris Reedum and his leadership on this thefeedback was overwhelmingly positivepeople had a lot of fun I think you hada really energetic start to theconference so we're gonna go ahead andrepeat it and this time you know withsome improvements of course uh thenwe're gonna have our four days oftypical technical program combined withsocial plenty of networkingopportunities social activities thatwe're planning almost one largereception per day except for Fridaywhich is a half dayand hey we're going to be in WashingtonDC a great location many attractions Ithink we're gonna have a very largemeeting with hopefully many familymembers attending too uh we're going tobe at Hilton at the Hilton which wasrecently renovated location is veryconvenient especially to Reagan Airportit's very close to a subway station withaccess to some great attractions as youknow Smithsonian museums ArlingtonGeorgetown National Zoo White House iswalking distance from the hotel I reallyencourage attendees to stay at theconference hotel for their conveniencebut also to help us keep the conferencefee lowerum I want to be really honest hererelative to other conferences I'm goingto I think HF is still the value outthere our registration fees among thelowest especially for students andsocieties have been absorbing enormouscosts to keep it affordable low so oneway you can support us is to be at thehotel Southeast block be allocated toconferenceanother very amazing thing that's goingto happen this year is because we're inDC we're going to be in close proximityto all the main government agencies uhthe interest in human factors oreconomics including you know Highhopefully High attendance fromgovernment entity which makes up forgreat opportunities for networking andhopefully uh invited talks and panels bythese folks from NSF NIH Specialtiesfunding agencies uh they're going to bereally interested in connecting withyou want to know about some of thechanges they're making yes that was wowthat was my next question how it'salmost like we're reading from the samedocument here yeah can you tell us aboutsome of the changesawesome all right we have some uh reallygreat initiatives and improvements thisyear I'm gonna just name a few maybe umbut one of these initiatives is to makethe event a little bit more appealing toour HIV practitioners this year we madesome changes to our submission system uhto tack practitioner oriented papers alittle bit better and be working withour technical groups to make sure uhsubmissions from practitioners receivefair reviews by our peer review panelsuh that now includes some practitionersand they're valued fairly based onsubstance of the contribution and levelof interest of our audiences for thetalk uh their impact and Novelty ratherthan just you know size of the paper oryou know if they had statisticalanalysis or not I hope that makes sensethis year uh we're also askingpresenters to include a little bit ofpractical implications of the work aspart of their presentation so make ityou know a little bit more meaningfulfor our uh practitioner attendeesanother very important ongoing activityis that we're improving the offering forour members from the ux community uxpractitioners and researchers has beenalways a very important part of ourmembership uh we'd like to make thisevent a little bit more attractive forthem we've traditionally celebrated thiscommunity with a user experience daywhich which was a collection of talkstailored to usability and ux audiencebut this year uh we're trying to workwith various ux groups to add a littlebit more flavor and variety to thisspecial day members from the uxcommunity stand by I think you're goingto be surprised you can expect anexciting day of technical talks combinedwith invited panels interactive sessionsdemos and social uh events orientedtowards ux Community beer in theformatted stages of planning it soplease reach out to me or Susan oranybody on this call so we can hear fromyou and use your feedback to improvethis experienceselfishlyum that's really it and I hope you haveuh human factors casting in you probablywould be the energy last year we'll bethere and in fact I'm I'm gonna I wouldhave saved this for the Q a but myco-host Barry Kirby here in the in thein the comments here asking the milliondollar question is it worth coming fromthe UK for and and really any anywherein the world is it worth coming fromanywhere in the world forabsolutely we're really an internationalSociety you're gonna see a lot ofsubmissions internationally and a lot ofuh networking opportunities forinternational collaboration purposes andthis is a large family this is aninternational family it's not just aNorth American based in my opinion uhalways appreciated meeting myInternational peeps uh and that's that'sthe exciting part that's really the onlytime in the year I get to see themso I would love to see moreInternational folks coming maybe ifBarry comes farzan will dance at theopening reception I will do that oh allright Barry there's there's yourincentive now now we have to get you tocomeand if if we are there in a in the sameor similar or bigger capacity for humanfactors cast we'd love to uh have youthere in person too Barry so I have toask you one more question here farzanyou've mentioned that there's a lotgoing on how can folks get involved ifthey want to volunteer or give youfeedback or anything like thatsure uh Caroline talked about ourvolunteering opportunities we have adefined pathway for volunteering for theentire Society but if you're interestedin helping us with the annual meetingyou can come to me contact me directlyor contact Susan or email education athfs.edu which would get then you knowyou know get transferred to me uh Iwould love to talk to you and get youinvolved we love the energy from ourmembers the the never you know ignoreideas or feedback in fact I want to givea shout out to some of the Committeeshere at HFS including the diversityinclusion community community and ourAffinity groups who are doing an amazingjob our Council of affinity groups coagyeah is feeding us with a lot of good recommendations and we're taking it seriously we're working uh on implementing a lot of these recommendations now to make sure all of our interest groups are well represented this year in our program for example made some changes to our submission form to better capture any sort of Deirelated submissions and planning we're planning on changing even the review process and allocation process for non-technical submissions for you know fair treatment of these non-technical submissions it's going to be a great year a week-long program more than 600 presentations I've heard from some of you and these are you know this is not you know a lot of people but I just wanted to say I hear you out people who feel a little bit overwhelmed with the program it's a very diverse very large program we understand that but trust me in saying that we're trying really hard to address this by identifying some redundancies holding more joint TG type of sessions and we're also working on the app and our printed program to make sure attendees can better navigate this large program that's amazing so that's that's 2023.now now Susan I have to ask you are we already looking forward to 2024 do you have anything you can tell us we absolutely are as crazy as that sounds um yeah so just a really quick sneak peek we are working on a little bit of ora lot of reimagining the 2024 meeting so even more exciting things to come in2024 uh we'll probably have a whole nother discussion on that in a while but um yeah we've engaged a group that's working on currently reaching out to members we're listening to you we're hearing we're working towards making that uh you know meeting experience even bigger even better keeping all the science we know that's super important but just making it more fun more engaging so yes keep your eyes out for2024 as well awesome I'm excited for both 2023 and2024. with that let's bring everybody back on the stage here we'll bring everybody back out and uh looks like we had some pretty good questions in chat if you are watching um you know I know this was originally set for an hour-long presentation but there's just so much information so sorry we made it an entire hour our our panelists have agreed to stay for a little bit longer to answer some of the questions that came through and chat if you have anymore throw them in there but I do want to uh ask a couple here the first one from uh we're gonna go back to Barryhere Barry says how are you thinking about growing collaboration internationally with the charteredInstitute of ergonomics and human factors for example that seems like a really selfish one but anyone could talk to this onesoum we uh were in uh delft uh in theNetherlands uh at the end of October Beginning of November for the ieaum meeting and had the opportunity to meet face to face with representatives from a number of organizations including chief and and I think there are some really good opportunities there it's it's um you know a matter of of setting uptime to identify what those what those opportunities would be that would be most beneficial to our members you know as I mentioned we've got mous with organizations in the U.Sumand and you know when we were talking with the folks uh in the iea meeting certainly the uh the folks who were at the Canadian ergonomics Association and chf those are both really uh present you know other great opportunities for so I'm kind of dancing around it just because I we don't have anything specific in mind butum but we did talk there about that they're you know we provide a lot of opportunities em they're almost uh so too too many toto think about in terms of any specificones but yes um I think we'll be workingon thoseum reaching out to both thoseorganizations cihf and the CanadianAssociationum this yeargreat hopefully that that satisfies yourquestion there Barry we got another onehere this one's by David and and hewrites um I'm in career transition andhoping to get into the field of humanfactors or ux research recentlycompleted a PhD where I conductededucational research on engineeringstudents I also have a background inAerospace mechanical engineeringI was wondering how I can get involvedwith human factors and what resourcesyou would recommend for someone withtheir background so uh you know comingfrom a um a transitionary uh fielddoes anyone have advice for for DavidhereI guess one thing I would say is there'sa lot of peopleyoung person in in hfes I mean I thinkwe all came from almost all of us camefrom someplace else right so myundergrad degree is mechanicalengineering uh and then I found humanfactors and you know I I certainly usemy mechanical engineering background itserved me really wellum in uh as a as a foundation for humanfactors and and so I I think that youknow his background is greatum for this so whether you want to be onyou know more of a physical productphysical person interaction or more onthe cognitive side of things or or bothum I think his background is great we'rejust in a meeting today talking aboutthe FAAum so somebody with an aerospace uhinterest in Aerospace certainly there'sa lot of folks who have interests in indifferentumelements of Aerospace be it you knowplain design or on more on the cognitiveside of things in terms of say airtraffic control issuesum I would say look at the technicalgroupsum but also if you are a member of hfesyou can go into the directory and findpeople who work where you think youwould like to workum and I think you can introduceyourself to people that way hey I foundyou through the directory you work atNASAI would really love to find out moreabout what you do at Nasa and and Ithink people are receptive to that tothose kind of informational interviewrequestsum yeah so that's a real benefit ofbeing a member is that directoryand anybody asked Davidum we have a we have an Education andTraining TGso given your background giving your PhDwork you might find it interesting toplug into that group and kind of find overlap between what you've done inhuman factors that might open up opportunities it's a very active group all right anybody else have anything they'd like to add to David's comment before we move on here all right well I think uh I think that's gonna be it I know we're over time by a little bit here um and uh with that you know I think we'll go ahead and close out this presidential Town Hall uh we wesincerely hope you all enjoyed this downhill discussion if you like this come and join us at the annual meeting or the next time that we do one of theseTown Halls uh you know as a reminder there is a link to a survey here so if you if you can we'll go ahead and throw up the QR code there so you'll have access to it uh you know go fill that out let us know how we did today what you might want to hear from uh in the future think I want to thank all of our distinguished panelists for and everyone else on the hfvs side of the house for making this happen you can always find the latest from hfes at hfes.org we encourage you all to go join the hfesLinkedIn group uh get connected with others or take a look at some of those hfes bulletins that are coming through your emails keep up with some of the society news as for me I've been your moderator Nick Rome you can find me on human factors cast our weekly podcast cast we talked about the latest news from around the human factors worldthank you all for uh for joining us anduh hey you know all of our panelists on the town hall you know how I like they usually end my show is uh we say it depends at the end because u you know in human factors it always depends on a lot of factors so if I Could just have us all do it depends on the count of three that'd be great let'sdo it one two threeit depends