Conferences

I had an IA Summit epiphany today…

When I looked at the program this year, I was a bit disappointed that some of my favourite and noisiest IA folks weren’t speaking. It felt a bit odd to see a program with loads of names I didn’t know (back story - I’ve been on the organising committee and closely involved in the previous 4 summits). It didn’t bother me, and would never stop me from attending, but did feel a bit strange.

But then I was hanging out in the hallways in a break today and spotted lots of people with ’speaker’ ribbons that I didn’t know. And I felt something I thought was interesting. I felt glad that there were loads of new-to-summit folks who had gotten their stuff through a tough review process; and glad that there was a venue for the same folks to communicate their ideas to peers.

It really felt quite strange, and reminded me of why summit is my favourite conference, by far, for the year.

Who knew? I always thought Andy Clarke was a great visual designer and CSS dude. But what I didn’t know was that he’s a closet information architect.

I attended his workshop today at Web Directions. In this, and in his book (Transcending CSS), he spent a big chunk of time talking about meaning and structure - about identifying meaningful content chunks, using semantic naming for pieces of content and using microformats to make small pieces of content more usable.

I know this isn’t usually considered to be information architecture, but I personally think it is. What is more IA than analysing content, finding meaning and creating macro and micro-structures? That sounds like IA to me.

Andy talked about the idea that ‘designers’ should be involved in the development (or at least planning) of code structures. I think this is a perfect place for IA folks to also be involved (if they are involved in a project) - to best figure out how detailed content chunks can be used. But I don’t think this is only an IA role - it is important that everyone thinks at the broad level of communication design and the detailed level of communication execution.

And it was a fantastic workshop, wonderfully supported by The Jam & Paul Weller.

Oz-IA finished yesterday. For me the best part is catching up with smart colleagues I don’t see enough of (and smart friends I see often). And I certainly got to do a lot of that. I hardly stopped talking!

There were a couple of outstanding presentations (especially Matt’s semantic analysis preso which never fails to stun me). There were some good, solid, interesting case studies (my favourites were the news website redesign, user research in secondlife and the mentoring case study). There were some good theory presentations (Steve’s statistics, Iain’s page length).

There were a few disappointing presentations*. I won’t name them - that would hardly be professional ;). But there were a couple of presentations that were content-poor, impractical or overly general. There was one that I found quite condescending (without sufficient rigor to back up particular criticisms).

I mention this as I know we can do better. I know a large proportion of the IA folks in Australia and I know that you have the skills and the content. So I would like to encourage the organisers to focus on presentation quality next year - get the call for proposals out earlier, involve the community in choosing and be more transparent. And I would like to encourage all you smart folks to put in a proposal.

[* Who am I to criticise, after the most disastrous start to a presentation ever. It was bad enough that I had a screaming backache and forgot to grab my water and notes, but then the lapel mic battery died - I hate using handheld mics - if I can’t talk with my hands, I can’t express myself.]

Oz-IA 2007 is on in less than a month. As a sponsor and speaker I have two passes to the conference (and there’s only me in my company, so I only need one).

So I’d like to give one away to someone. I’d prefer to give it to someone who would like to go, but the registration fee is difficult to manage (whether it is personally hard, or organisationally).

If this sounds like you, email me (maadmob at gmail dot com) and explain why you want to attend the conference.

I’ll keep a record of everyone who contacts me and decide on 9 September. I won’t write here who I gave it to, and won’t tell anyone else - i.e. it will be private.

Don’t email if you work for a government department, large company or consultancy - I’m unlikely to believe you can’t manage $550

A bunch of conferences have been announced or floated by my radar recently. Some I can attend, some I can just dream about …

Conferences I’m going to:

• Web directions (Sep 25-28): I missed the first, but have been to the last two. My favourite Australian conference and the one my Australian web buddies will all be at
• Oz-IA (Sep 22&23): this year will be on the weekend before Web Directions (which is good as my brother is marrying the weekend after). This goes without saying.
• cmf2007 (Nov 6-8): I don’t think I’ve mentioned this, but I’m speaking at cmf2007 in Denmark in November. I’m really looking forward to it - my first Europe trip!

And the ones I can’t make it to:

• dConstruct (Sep 7): I’ve listened enviously to the podcasts for the past two years and so wish I could go. It would be even more awesome this year as the theme is user experience
• EuroIA (Sep 21-22): It is IA, it’s in Spain, and full of smart people … ’nuff said
• IDEA: few details yet, but it is at the beginning of October and will have as great a lineup as last year
• Connecting: Oh, I wish. I know this would make my brain pop.

Yes, it has been almost a week since the IA Summit finished and I am only now posting my wrap up (the long back-story combines a long flight, my birthday, a server rebuild, an office reorganisation and waitressing - you don’t want to know).

I attend a lot of conferences and the IA Summit is by far my favourite. It has to be - I wouldn’t offer to be program chair for something I didn’t care deeply about.

My IA Summit experiences fall into three categories (yes, I am an IA): content, personal and life/business:

My favourite content experiences were:

• Joshua Prince-Ramus’ keynote which showed how function contributes to form, how end-to-end design process works and great visualisations
• Again doing the IA Slam, and again spending more time watching how teams work together than producing the deliverable
• Andrew Hinton’s presentation was great - he did an excellent job talking about communities of practice, how to design for them and wrapped up the discussion about whether IA is a community of practice or a discipline. This was particularly neat as I think the three elements met the needs of a large proportion of the audience
• Remembering that much of the world is not like me, in Jason Hobbs’ Communal computing and shared spaces of usage: a study of Internet Cafes in developing contexts
• Seeing Grant Campbell combine a research paper with observations from the conference (this was amazing)

Personal:

• Hanging out with Lynn, Mags, Eric, Chris, Matthew & Dan (I have this niggling bad feeling about mentioning just a few people out of everyone I like, but I have hung out with these guys for 3-4 conferences and they are fab!)
• Standing on the edge of the grand canyon
• Being introduced to Escargot & Thai tea (in separate meals!)
• Talking about name dropping with name-dropees
• Looking around at lunch on the first day and seeing 500 people in animated discussion
• Being amazed at how many people went out of their way to stop and say thanks for the work I did
• Talking to my family every day for as long as we liked (and knowing it wasn’t costing much)
• Doing the ‘Star Trek Experience’ with skeptical, grown-up Trekkies (and squealing & jumping out of my seat)
• Meeting Andrew Hinton face-to-face (we had previously met only in Second Life)
• Having a couple of people ask about my Fair Trade T-shirt

For the life/business category, the IA Summit always feels like the start to my work year. It is a chance to stop barelling along, think about what I do, what I like and what it means. I have made the most significant career decisions at this conference - in 2004 I realised how connected I was to this community; in 2005 I realised I wasn’t doing what I wanted and quit my consulting job; in 2006 I realised that university study wasn’t giving me what I needed and quit in order to study what I wanted. This year’s decision was not so profound, but solid (I’ll elaborate further tomorrow but would like to say thanks to Jared, Dan, Lou, & Ant for kicking me in the pants).

See you next year!

Technorati tag: IASummit2007

I’ve been working flat out as program chair for the IA Summit. So much has happened in the past few weeks:

• The new website is up (and looks fabulous)
• The conference program is available (check out the pre-conference workshops too)
• Registration is open
• Hotel booking is open
• The blog is ready to go

And I think it is time to have a rest.

(Of course, none of this is my work alone - just look at how many people are involved.)

Technorati tag: IASummit2007

Here are the slides from my keynote at Ozchi 2006 last week. My talk was called “User centred design: Is it working?” which is a bit lame, but I really couldn’t come up with a better one.

I talked about 3 things:

1. my take on where the practitioner user-centred design field is currently up to
2. a look at some of the neat apps practitioners are interested in (and I didn’t say web 2.0 once)
3. what I think we need to do to move forward

I recorded it and here it is in two parts - the first file combines the first two topics, the second file combines the last topic plus questions (if you were there, you’ll hear some edits - I trimmed the questions we couldn’t hear and deleted an example from the body of the talk):

• Ozchi 2006 industry keynote part 1 (MP3, 19MB)
• Ozchi 2006 industry keynote part 2 (MP3, 12MB)

The second file is definitely more interesting than the first, but the first gives context.

And here’s some quotes from the second part of the presentation:

• We have to stop selling usability. It doesn’t have a value proposition. Usability is a quality aspect of something – it is not a process, an artefact, a deliverable or anything that anyone cares about what you are going to give them. I read consultants websites and I think, if I didn’t already know about that, I wouldn’t have a clue about what you are trying to sell me.
• We want to swoop in and be the centre of the universe and be involved and involved up front and be the centre of it and forget that we are working in teams and working in a context.
• We’ve got to stop treating people like they are stupid, because they’re actually not. Developers are not stupid. I think Jakob Nielsen and Alan Cooper have done our whole field a disservice by peddling the fact that developers are stupid…They’re working within what they know, we work within the stuff we know and nobody ever knows everything. Nobody goes to work to do a bad days work. More than any community I’ve seen, our community treats them like they’re dumb.
• I think that Jakob Nielsen’s stuff should be removed from the galaxy…all those bloody rules that don’t fit in any context and lure people into a feeling that you can just get these rules and get it right.

Just below these words are the slides from my Oz-IA talk called ‘Lakoff’s Women, Fire & Dangerous Things: What every IA should know’ (I don’t think the slides appear in my feed - you have to visit my site).

I think this was the best presentation I have ever given. This is a quite hard topic and somehow it ended up quite hilarious - no doubt helped by Alex and his ‘boobies’ comments.

Download the audio and listen along…

(read my review of the book)

I’m back home from my conference run - Web Directions then OZ-IA.

OZ-IA was, predictably, terrific. I met lots of interesting people and caught up with some I hadn’t seen for a while. There was a good mix of presentations - some philosophical, some practical and some hands on.

I particularly liked the way the conference was structured. The first day was a single stream with a mix of conceptual & practical talks. The second day had 2 streams with case-study material in the morning, mini-workshops in the afternoon and an open session last.

I talked about George Lakoff’s ‘Women, Fire & Dangerous Things‘. I had talked about this at the IA Summit this year and hated my presentation. I completely rewrote it for OZ-IA and this time was very happy with it - there was much laughter, which is good for a dry topic in the after-lunch slot. It has been recorded so I’ll blog it when it is ready.

I think there were around 100 people - that’s a great turn-out for a first IA conference, on a weekend, and on a grand final weekend. I’m impressed & think we can do bigger & better things next year.

I only have a small list of things to follow up:

• Read this: Beyond Usability and Design: The Narrative Web
• Get this: Social Emergence: Societies As Complex Systems
• Update my LinkedIn network (if you met me and want to connect, send me an invite)

Web Directions is over for another year and was again fabulous. I attended 3 out of 4 days - Dan Saffer’s Interaction Design workshop and the two full conference days (including my own intro IA talk on Friday).

All the sessions were interesting, inspiring and well-prepared (I hope mine was as well). As an indication of the general goodness, I didn’t skip out on any sessions, ask pointed questions, sleep or read my email (much). Nor did I cross-stitch, something I’ve been known to do.

I have a strange list from my ‘things to follow’ up page:

• Subservient chicken (mentioned by Kelly)
• See if Genevieve Bell is at Ozchi this year (mentioned by Kelly, answer is yes)
• Look up the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (Jeremy)
• Newshutch (I’m on a never-ending quest for the perfect RSS reader)
• Use hReview on maadbooks (of course, writing content would probably be better)
• Corked
• hCard my contact details
• Listen to Thomas’ folksonomy triad description
• Update web connections with everyone I met before I forget
• Start blogging properly again (something I should be able to do now my conference run has settled

So now, breakfast then rewrite my Lakoff presentation (nothing like having good ideas a couple of hours before) and down to Oz-IA…

WD06, webdirections06

What does everyone do after a Web Directions dinner? Why, go and update their connections…

WD06, webdirections06

I’m off early tomorrow morning to Web Directions then Oz-IA where I will be spending the next 6 days talking non-stop to lots of smart people about web and IA stuff.

If you’ll be at either, make sure you come talk to me. And if you’re at Web Directions, go fill in the most excellent Web Connections - the best conference social networking app evah! (go tag me)

This year I may get set up to do some blogging… And let’s see if either of these conferences can beat my IA Summit experience.

I’m at a conference at the moment - a 2-day event which meant one night in Sydney.

I hate carrying too much stuff, so this time I brought only the essentials, all in one bag that I can carry all day.

Of course, my essentials list ended up being a bit odd:
- tablet pc plus cables
- iPod
- mobile phone
- USB stick
- one green pen, one pencil (no paper)
- two cross-stitch bookmarks - one almost finished, one ready to start (this is my new can’t-sit-still-at-a-conference trick)
- neuromancer (because it’s skinny)
- purse
- one clean black shirt
- one clean pair of underpants
- toothbrush, mascara, deodorant, lipstick

Every time I blog about a conference I’ll be attending, I say how excited I am.

But this one, I am soooooo excited about. OzIA - the first Australian information architecture conference & retreat. September 30 & October 1, in Sydney (back to back with Web Directions).

I’ll be there and I hope you will too. It’s going to be so much fun.