Frozen ecstasy

摘要

From the campus of the University of Texas at El Paso, visitors can see three states and two countries. This makes UTEP an ideal setting for SIGDOC, a conference at which people from many nations--and many disciplines--gather to share their insights, perspectives, and research. As we gather this year in the valley of the Rio Grande, we carry on a 25-year tradition of bringing our interdisciplinary perspectives to bear on the design of communication. >What is the design of communication? At first, SIGDOC focused on documentation for hardware and software. In 2003 SIGDOC refocused on the design of communication, emphasizing the potentials, the practices, and the problems of multiple kinds of communication technologies, such as Web applications, user interfaces, and on-line and print documentation. SIGDOC focuses on the design of communication as it is taught, practiced, researched, and theorized in various fields. In other words, SIGDOC is a meeting place for people of different fieldsand disciplines who study how people communicate in many ways: in classroom and workplace activities, in using websites and web applications, in managing information, and in writing and documentation. And this year's program illustrates that focus well: it features speakers from academics and industry and from fields as diverse as computer science, information science, information architecture, usability, communications, rhetoric, and technical communication, all gathered in the borderland of El Paso to share their insights about DOC.