Earlier this month, I attended the first Oracle Usability Advisory Board meeting in Europe (held in Oracle's big campus in Thames Valley Park, Reading, in the UK).

My main interest here of of course was to listen to customer's experiences and requirements in the area of user experience, focusing in on user assistance natch, but also, given my background in the translation and internationalization world, to watch out for issues in those areas that impact on the UX.

I met some great people there and took away some powerful UX thoughts about where might go with the area of language in the UI, localizations, and other cultural issues.

One area of special interest to me is language as part of the user experience. By language I mean terminology and style of wordings you see in interfaces and help. Are they reflective of how people really work and are used to. What is its relationship to competitiveness and productivity. An area rich in research potential for UX.

Debra Lilley Fujitsu (Oracle partner), who also attended, has some good coverage of the event here. On to the next one!