Today, 14 November, is World Usability Day 2006, and in many cities around the world, events are happening to bring attention to and raise awareness of usability.

Vancouver isn’t one of the more active cities this year, unfortunately enough. There’s but one (somewhat low-key) event happening that I know of: a Vancouver UX Cocktail Hour in Yaletown from 6-7 pm this evening, an informal gathering for fans of user experience.

There’s also a Global Online Card Sort happening, which appears to be organized from Vancouver, but it seems to me to be a stretch to call a global web-based project a Vancouver event. But go ahead and count it as a second local event if you wish. Are there others that I never knew about?

Is the dearth of local events for World Usability Day 2006 because Vancouver’s already doing well as far as usability goes, or (as I suspect) because the local usability aficionados didn’t get around to organizing more. (I count myself in this group and am not excluding myself from the blame.) I wish there had been something along the lines of a (free, public) workshop or a talk—PowerPoint-free, if you please—but there wasn’t. A pity that this city didn’t celebrate the day in style, but then again, usability (or the lack of it) is everything and everywhere and everyday, not just something to think about one day a year. Perhaps there’ll be some events before the next World Usability Day rolls around.