London IA Mini IV on Wednesday night

After last month's "London IA in a pub + talks" experiment, on Wednesday we are back to having one of our regular London IA Mini events, this time hosted by EMC Conchango near London Bridge.

We've got a great line-up of speakers.

Richard Sedley, director of the cScape Customer Engagement Unit will be giving a debrief from the Design of Persuasion conference in Brussels, and talking about "some of the more common uses of social psychology in website design and conversion optimisation".

The last time we had Jason Mesut talking, Cennydd Bowles called his presentation "batshit insane". This time around he'll be talking about 'play' in user experiences, which should be great. I've mentioned before that I don't think we leverage nearly enough the fact that everybody under the age of 40 has played loads of video games in our web application interfaces. People can take in a lot of status information at a glance if it is presented in the form of health bars, inventory status and a high score table.

Max Gadney will be talking as well, challenging IAs to stop doing things to enhance their portfolios and CVs, and instead to make sure that the work they do really improves the user experience. I worked with Max on a couple of projects at the BBC, and he is always an entertaining speaker. I shall hope to push the Q&A towards the awesome World War II infographics he designs and blogs about.

We've also got a first for our London IA evenings, as, fingers crossed, the final talk of the night will be Oliver Reichenstein, CEO behind the Web Trends Map, via Skype from Tokyo, talking about the future of news.

In previous London IA events I've been busy presenting things like "Introducing Information Architecture at The Guardian" and "The UX of moving house...with a pregnant spouse", blogging the events, live tweeting them, or videoing the whole thing. This time I've drawn the short straw and will be chairing the evening.

There will be competitions to win books prizes on the night, as well as the chance to blag a free tickt to the UXmas London IA Christmas party. The event is free, starts at 6pm, and there will be beer and pizza. Get yourself registered on the London IA Ning group and come along.

Posted by Martin Belam, November 9, 2009    
Read the latest posts about: BBC, Events, Information Architecture, London
The views expressed on currybetdotnet are my own, and do not reflect the views of Guardian News and Media Limited, or any current or former clients or employers. Read my blogging principles
 Get free updates via RSS       Get free updates by email       Follow Martin Belam on Twitter