2017 Symposium
View the 2017 Symposium Schedule: Google Docs PDF
Sites of Translation User Experience Research Center will host a two-day planning and visioning symposium on November 9-10, 2017 at the El Paso Museum of Art and at the University of Texas-El Paso. This two-day symposium will bring together user-experience, translation, and technical communication researchers, community leaders, and students from across the country. The purpose of this meeting will be for
- renowned researchers to hear the mission and the multilingual technical communication/user-experience needs of community organizations aiming to use their digital presence to support the needs of linguistically and culturally diverse users in their communities.
- community organizations to meet with user-experience researchers and find out how user-experience research can positively influence their organizations’ goals and objectives.
- faculty, students, and administrators from across the country who are interested in supporting this project to discuss potential ongoing collaborations both with the user-experience researchers and with community organizations.
The 2017 Symposium is generously sponsored by the El Paso Museum of Art:
Outcomes
Symposium participants will have opportunities to network, develop and get feedback on projects, and plan for next steps:
- Instructors and researchers in attendance at this symposium can set up community partnerships for their upcoming courses, innovating ways in which courses in writing, rhetoric, professional writing, translation, and technical communication (among others) can form a part of this collaboration.
- Community organizations will conduct presentations at this symposium to illustrate their mission and their needs, user-experience researchers will conduct presentations and workshops regarding their work in multilingual technology design, and faculty and students involved in the project will be invited to present on their specific interests in the project and on the courses they hope to become involved in this collaboration.
- Attendees will develop an actionable plan for moving forward, including plans to apply for future funding through a National Endowment for the Humanities Award for Faculty at Hispanic-Serving Institutions.
- A white paper will be developed immediately following this symposium, outlining the specific outcomes of the meeting and describing the needs (financial, technological, and personnel-related) identified collectively among practitioners, researchers, and faculty aiming to move forward with this collaboration.
Support: Who can get involved?
As a community-driven effort, this project is in tremendous need of help and support, both from people in El Paso and from contributors in other locations (You do not need to be at UTEP or in El Paso to participate!). The following is a non-comprehensive list of things we need help with. If you would like to participate in any of the activities below, and/or if you have other ideas for things you and/or your organization or institution can contribute, please contact the planning team at sitesoftranslation@gmail.com
> Design and Promotion work:
We need people who would be interested in designing materials to facilitate communication regarding the development of the center, both in preparation for and as follow-up to the symposium. Activities can include designing documents and logo(s), designing, testing, and maintaining/updating a website for the project, coordinating announcements, designing and implementing a social media strategy, and other communication-related activities
> Community connections:
Because this center is intended to establish and sustain partnerships with communities outside of the university, we need people who would be committed to building ethical community relationships throughout the development of the center. In preparation for the symposium, contributors to this group would commit to reaching out to community organizations who might be interested in partnering with this center and attending the symposium. This group would also work to secure any resources that community organizations might need in order to attend the symposium, working as a line of support for the duration of the symposium activities.
> Pedagogical and industry training connections:
We aim to make this center a site for pedagogical and industry-based training for students across departments both at UTEP and at other institutions. For this reason, we seek teachers and practitioners interested in developing training models for students who wish to work at the center either through class collaborations, internships, or in other capacities. If you teach a course in user-experience, translation, technical communication, or related areas and you would like for your class to participate in the development and sustainability of the center, please contact us.
> Presenters:
If you are a researcher, graduate student, practitioner, teacher, storyteller, and/or activist in the areas of user-experience, translation, technical communication, or related area, and you are interested in participating in the symposium as a presenter and collaborator, please write to us and let us know what you would hope to contribute to the symposium. We have a small budget available to help facilitate travel for interested collaborators.
> Research and publication team:
We need a team of researchers interested in coordinating research projects stemming from the center, starting with the planning of the symposium. This team will work on identifying potential publication venues, building research teams for specific projects, verifying IRB compliance, and incorporating community partners into research and publication plans as much as possible. The research and publication team will also coordinate the writing of a white paper to be published shortly after the initial symposium.
> Funding:
In order to make this center happen, we will need to secure additional funding. We seek people interested in identifying grant and other funding opportunities for the sustainability of the center. If you or your organization would like to financially contribute to a specific part of the center’s development, please contact us at sitesoftranslation@gmail.com