Euro IA

I was at the Euro IA conference in Berlin recently - or not so recently, back at the beginning of october.

Finally having a catch up in london about it, which i'm looking forward to. I've always been crap at going to 'industry' meet ups, but after EuroIA where the best thing by far was meeting all these lovely people doing similar things to me I've realised how fun it is.

It was wonderfully liberating to spend time talking about esoteric topics without worrying about sounding like a freak. I love my job, more often than not, but it's still a stupid title.

Leisa Reichart has a good summary of the conference here. There's a bunch of others around the place. I should collate them at some point

My 2 second summary of the conference:

Low point - shambolic & rambling panel about 'process' *addendum to this in comments*

High points - meeting many many nice people, Jared Folkmann's talk on his experience framework, the framfab boys doing a great job with their wicked workshops presentation, olly wright provoking some thoughts with his talk on strategy (If you can't draw it, you don't understand it. Be careful with other people's money.). Steven Pemberton in his closing talk showed some very interesting possibilities with XHTML 2 and xforms. Must read more about xforms, i came away extremely impressed, but very aware that i didn't understand it fully.

Wierdest point - Almar van de Krogt talking about Virreal architectures. It seemed like he had a point there somewhere (how can websites be beautiful, memorable like a landmark?) but hasn't got a proper grip on the actual metaphor he's using.

Looking forward to discussing it at the london-ia meeting next week. Which i've organised (ie, sent an email) as the normal organiser is away.