ux strategy, architecture & design

Johnny Holland has published a three-part summary of my experiences at the recent IA Summit. You can read the articles here:
Day 1 Summary
Day 2 Summary
Day 3 Summary

But I thought I’d share a few thoughts in addition to the coverage…

The last point I made in my coverage of Day 3 was: The conference was a great experience, although I won’t be back next year. So that doesn’t seem all that up-beat, does it? I mean, if the conference was so great, why the hell wouldn’t I go back?

Well, as I wrote about earlier this year I’ve recognised for some time that I’m not an information architect although I had approached UX via IA as one of my primary methods. I’ve also noticed that the approach I take to my work is more aligned with interaction design than IA. So, since I can’t afford the time or money to travel from Australia to the US or Europe for conferences on my own dime more than one a year, it makes sense that the ‘one conference’ next year would be Interaction 2010 in Savannah, GA.

Back to the conference itself…

As much as I enjoyed the conference sessions, it was the conversations that took place around the conference that really made it a valuable experience. Over breakfast, during breaks, at lunch, at the bar in the afternoon, over dinner and back at the bar afterwards, the 5 days I was in Memphis were filled with one engaging conversation after another. It’s hard to describe just how invigorating these conversations were: whether they were about user experience topics, war stories from our workplaces, or gun control laws; they were wonderful.

This is the sort of thing you miss watching the presentation video, listening to the podcast or clicking through the slides. As much as those can help teach you something: it’s not the same as being there. Which is a back-handed of way of saying: “Come to UX Australia and experience the vibe first-hand ”