The Fluid team is in the midst of preparing for our 5th uCamp, this time at the JA-SIG Spring 2008 Conference in St. Paul, Minnesota. Planned as a half-day event on Wednesday, April 30th, it will bring together members of the uPortal, Kuali Student, Sakai, Fluid, and other communities to talk about user experience, design, and accessibility.

What are uCamps?

uCamps are informal, collaborative events designed for the whole spectrum of contributors to successful software projects–developers, testers, designers, and everyone in between. The idea is to get everyone in a room to discuss UX tools and techniques, share our experience, and collaborate on real projects together.

One of the motivations for starting the uCamp was the belief that everyone should share a basic vocabulary for user experience, and that we should promote techniques that help everyone engage in making open source software better. uCamps were modeled after the DCamps organized by Rashmi Sinha and others in the Free/Open Source Software world. They’re intentionally ad-hoc and informal; bring your ideas, techniques, and inspiration and share them with the group. Our uCamps usually include lightning talks about various design-related topics, hands-on workshops, and time to work with your colleagues.

The uCamps are one of our longest-standing Fluid activities. The first uCamp was held in Atlanta back in 2006, when Fluid was still just in the proposal phase. A great group of volunteers have worked hard since then to ensure that the uCamps are a central point for UX collaboration within the Sakai and uPortal communities.

Sharing the Effort

As many of you know, Fluid is entering its second year as a project. We dedicated our first year to community building, and the uCamps are one example of our success in this regard. Fluid has become the place to go to talk about and collaborate on great user interfaces in the community source world. In our second year, we want to build on the strong community we’ve established and focus our efforts on creating new user interface components, design patterns, and the JavaScript framework to support them.

To this end, we’d like to pass the uCamp torch to other members of the community. The uCamp at the JA-SIG conference in St. Paul’s will be our last Fluid-funded uCamp for awhile, but we’d still like to help other motivated members of the community offer them in the future. If you’re interested in leading the next uCamp, we’ve got a great page of resources on how to organize a uCamp. Paul Zablosky, our uCamp Coordinator, is willing to help get you started. And of course, we’ll be still be here to help with lightning talks and participate in collaborative activities.

A special thanks to everyone who has helped with and participated in the uCamps over the past couple years. And don’t forget to join us in St. Paul’s!