EuroIA is nearly upon us

 by Martin Belam, 28 August 2012

It is just about a month to go until EuroIA, which this year is being held in Rome. The full programme is now available for download, and discounted “early bird” tickets are still available for a couple of days until the 31st. Speaking at the event, amongst others, will be Peter Bogaards, Eric Reiss, James Kalbach, Mike Atherton and Jonathan Khan.

I will be participating in two sessions.

“Responsive IA” - pre-conference workshop

As well as the two day conference, EuroIA runs a day of pre-conference workshops. On 27 September you can join me for a morning session learning about “Responsive IA”:

“A range of new technologies and devices have created a new set of digital buzzwords, like ‘responsive design’ and ‘mobile first’. Both seem to dictate that you should show less content on devices with smaller screens. But how do you determine which content to show? If some content is superfluous for mobile devices—that is, we don’t need it on some digital screens—then why show it at all? In this workshop you’ll learn how the principles of information architecture can work in a ‘responsive’ design, by uniting content, context, and user to underpin a satisfying and successful user experience. As an information architect you need to know which type of deliverables to use to support this kind of project — and you need to produce them at the appropriate level of fidelity.

Whether your product is content-based or transactional, Martin’s techniques will help you to design for the modern multi-platform web without throwing out the principles of user-centred design.

You’ll leave having learned to:

* How to hone your information architecture and core functionality down to the bare minimum.
* How to test your honed-down designs with users.
* How to sell this approach to stakeholders.
* How to produce responsive deliverables for your development team.”

Book now - €200 before the end of August, €225 during September

“IA in the touch screen era”

Near the close of the second day’s talks I will be presenting “Responsive IA - IA in the touchscreen era”. This talk will look at how, personally, my ways of working have been changed by the growth of touchscreen smartphones and tablet. You’ll learn about the approach I take to making deliverables for responsive projects, with some real examples from products I’ve worked on.

Register for EuroIA 2012 in Rome

A broad church

Like most “specialist” disciplines within the broader user experience field, EuroIA welcomes people who don’t consider themselves to be information architects, but who would like to strengthen their understanding of the IA component of building digital products and services. You’ll have fun and Rome is beautiful. And Roma are playing Sampdoria on the Wednesday night which you might be able to squeeze into. What’s not to like?

Any questions?

I’m the UK rep on the organising committee, so if you have any questions, fire them in my direction or leave a comment below...

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