Happy December, everyone! We’ve been pretty busy since our last update, and I can’t wait to tell you all about it.

First, thanks to everyone who participated in our volunteer survey. We now have a list of 73 (!) eager and qualified volunteers. You guys are GREAT! We’ve been working through the list to form the committee, and we hope to make an official committee announcement in the next few weeks. For those who didn’t fill out the survey or who might not have quite as much time to offer, please consider helping us review submissions when the time comes. We like for each submission to get at least 5 reviews, and we’re hoping for about 300 submissions this year, which means 1,500 reviews! We’ll definitely need all hands on deck.

But before we can review, people need to submit! Submissions will open in January. Fortunately, that position you assume when warming your toes by a crackling winter fire (or, for my lucky friends in the Southern Hemisphere, when lounging poolside) is also one that nicely accommodates a notepad, tablet, or laptop. So start making some notes and organizing your thoughts! (Don’t worry too much about format just yet – almost all submissions will be exclusively via web form this time around! Woo hoo! Bye bye, Word templates!)

Think you don’t have what it takes? We respectfully disagree.  Jim Ross has a good counterargument for every excuse you can come up with. And Giles Colborne has a great set of suggestions for writing a killer proposal. So just do it already, ok? Ok.

Need a little inspiration? Check out pictures from last year’s event, conveniently located on our new UXPA 2013 Web site! http://uxpa2013.org just went live! That site is specific to the DC event and will include up-to-date information on submission and notification dates and registration information as it becomes available.

You’ll hear from us again soon. In the meantime, please keep sending your thoughtful comments, ideas, and questions to conf2013@uxpa.org.

Happy Holidays!

Danielle and Christina