Backstage Blog - 2020 -
We’re excited to announce the dates and venue for the next IA Conference. The conference will take place at the Sheraton New Orleans Hotel between 14th – 18th April 2020.
Between 16th and 18th of April 2020 we’ll be enjoying the usual three days of talks, corridor conversations and everything else that comes with the IA Conference main program. And keeping to tradition we’ll be offering two days of world-class workshops before the main program on 14th and 15th of April.
This year sees us moving our workshops to Tuesday and Wednesday, with the main program taking place Wednesday to Saturday. We hope this gives more people the chance to attend. We hope fewer people will have to leave early and miss the closing plenary. And it gives attendees the whole of Sunday to decompress and reflect on what you’ve heard and shared. Or you could even use the Sunday to enjoy the sights of New Orleans for one more day before the work week rolls around.
This year we’re going to be sharing more of the decisions we make as we take them. We’ll use this blog – and we’ll share links on social media – to keep you updated with how plans are shaping up. If you want to stay up to date with what we have planned, be sure to follow us on Twitter and watch this space for more updates from the co-chairs and volunteers. Speaking of which – if you’re interested in volunteering and playing a role at the IA Conference then please let us know by voluteering here.
We’re already making progress with planning the theme for the conference. Once we confirm that we’ll be choosing our keynote speakers, before opening submissions for talks and workshops. And with the venue now announced we’ll soon be sharing details of our promotional rate and how you can make your booking early.
So hopefully this is just the beginning of the excitement for the IA Conference 2020.
Dan Ramsden is Creative director for User experience architecture and UX Writing at the BBC. He leads a team of information architects who are committed to making the BBC’s tools, content and experiences more meaningful and connected. He’s also helping to establish the UX Writing discipline in BBC UX&D. Both roles give him plenty of opportunities for understanding and improving how teams work, getting the most from specialist disciplines and working with people who inform and inspire his own practice every day. Specialist disciplines at the BBC are sometimes embedded into product teams while others works on platform-level capabilities and insights. Dan concentrates on making sure their efforts are coherent, connected, efficient and resilient. He is based in Salford, at MediaCity UK. Dan likes jokes, magic, and making the most of moments. He also likes alliteration. He lives just outside Sheffield (UK) with a wife, a child, and a cat called Rosa. Dan has contributed to the IA Conference by speaking, offering career mentoring and coaching, presenting a poster and running a workshop.
Noreen Whysel is a NYC-based UX Researcher. Her first IA project was tagging buttons in a database at Chanel in 1990. She began her actual UX career in the late 1990s after seven years in real estate research at Price Waterhouse. She joined the PWC merger team as a WebOps Manager and was there for four years before starting an IA/Research consulting business, working on projects as diverse as bird taxonomies and identity ecosystems. She was the Operations Manager at the Information Architecture Institute for ten years and held a similar role at the OWASP Foundation. She currently is a Founder and COO of Decision Fish and hosts the Behavioral Economics NYC meet-up. She mentors and advises on events for IA, UX, Cybersecurity, GIS and DefenseTech. She has a BA in Psychology from Columbia and a MSLIS from Pratt Institute and has published academic papers on vision science and linked data. Noreen has attended this conference since 2007 in Las Vegas and has only missed two since then. She spoke about IA and Emergency Management in 2013, IA and Wikipedia in 2016 and Trust and Vulnerable Populations in 2019. She has presented at poster night five times and was the Experience Director at IAC19. For IAC20 Noreen will be leading the experience part of the conference, including logistics, social events, food, diversity and inclusion.
Sandra Lloyd makes stuff, fixes stuff, and helps people. That’s why she loves being a UX designer. Currently at Concur. Formerly at Fjord and Amazon, as well as orchestras in NY and LA as a professional oboist.