AIfIA and Local IA Groups Survey – September/October 2003
Open-ended responses regarding AIfIA services
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What resources do you need to have in order to run a successful local IA group?
- How to generate and maintain interest in your group
- Access to peers leading other local user experience groups
- How to liaise with other local user experience groups
- How to find sponsors for your group
- How to organize and market your group's events
- How to liaise with AIfIA
- Guidelines for assembling a leadership structure for your group
- Blogs, mailing lists, wikis, web space to manage your group
- Local event venues, catering, etc.
- Reporting and bookkeeping for your group
What other services might AIfIA offer that aren't listed above?
- Formal mentorship relationships – i.e. people as contacts, as distinct
from resources.
- Financial support in connection with certain events, printing expences, promo material etc.
- A few ideas for general sessions to help groups get up-and-running i.e. the answer to "so what are we going to discuss first?" question. Also help in organising local group "exchanges"/"visits" where these might be possible.
- provide speakers for local events
- A structure for a mentoring program for aspiring IAs! Yes, one can read all of the books and throw themselves into the work. A great resource would be a mentoring system, not only for building each IA's skills, but also for the whole concept of local groups. Some mentoring might be needed to help the "first time leaders" get started. Just some thoughts...
- translation, connection with global resources
- A speakers' bureau Reading lists, etc. (from the earlier question) Outreach at IA Summit meetings, ASIS meetings, etc. to encourage membership
- Information on blogs, wikis, etc. would be more valuable if there was an effort to bring local IA groups together into one uber-IA resource. This way, some consistency would be present across sites. Also, a note: I participate in a local IA group (New York City) sponsored by Victor Lombardi. It's been a great success thanks to him and the others that attend.
- Can't think of any right now. Linking IA's who're interested to find out if
a local AIfIA chapter is feasible (Peter Boersma et. al.) in the Netherlands
would be a good start!
- Speakers bureau
- Online community for the local group leaders to share information
- Funding/sponsorship; "Association" discounts on professional development and local conferences... i.e. assistance if a local group and AIfIA wanted to "cosponsor" a seminar, or discounts if members of the local group want to attend conferences or courses that AIfIA is affiliated with
- create a network infrastructure for all the groups meeting in different cities to communicate and share success strategies.
- a speakers guild, where speakers can register to speak on a topic, and then the local chapters can try and schedule various speakers
- Suggestions for program themes.
- Entertainment!!
- Access to other local IA organizers, to share stories and what works/does not work.
- I marked #2 for the above because most of these resources I already have. I already know most of the ideal venues in town and can arrange to have meetings there. I already know the organizers of other local user groups very well and I can use them as a resource for tips and such if needed. The only thing I don't have is a bookkeeper if that is needed and a place to put the local web site and mailing list.
- Published succes stories; promotional material about local groups in general
- I'm kind of located in the boondocks – there aren't that many of
"us" up here in central NH/VT. I could imagine a social hour (lunch, or
a F2F kind of arrangement) working well, but I don't think we have critical
mass for a formal group. I guess the best way to get something like that
going would be to know who in my area is interested in not just IA, but
also interaction design, experience design, and even just interface/graphic
design – broadening the topic a bit to get more warm bodies. I'm not
sure how to find that information – maybe AIfIA could be a resource
for it. We do have an informal group here we call "Web Authors" – there
are about 10 of us, all engaged in some form of interaction design: web
design, web consultancy, information architecture, graphic design, etc.
Sarah Horton is part of this group – I'm sure you know her. We have
a listserv and meet monthly. Anyway, it's casual, but affords a great opportunity
to network and learn from others. The listserv is also a great resource
for Q&A and information dissemination. I'm not sure if this Web Authors
group would be a good forum for specifically IA related topics. Maybe. But
(again) since there are so few of us working in this discipline in this
area, we all need to be good at a lot of different skills, so when we get
together we tend to talk about a range of topics and issues. That's a long
way of saying that if AIfIA had a list of people in my area (30 minutes
driving distance to Hanover, NH/ Dartmouth College) who were interested
in IA topics, I'd be happy to get a gathering together once and see what
happens. At the very least, it would be a great opportunity to meet some
like minds!
- Legal help if any, technical help.
- Implied above, but most important: persistent national and international community of local groups, with real interaction, sharing of events and findings, perhaps sharing of speakers. BTW, we do have a local group in the DC Metro area, DCIA.
- A way to easily communicate activities about the local group to the larger national group. (probably via the AIfIA web site.) A way to have members from other cities come to speak at local events in other cities. (like an exchange program of sorts...)
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