Our session types are all about giving you more ways to participate, and more springboards for ideas and dialogues. Our final program will be assembled from a blend of the best available material.
Main conference submission formats
While we know many of you have great “traditional” talk ideas (and we want to hear about those!), we encourage you to also submit ideas for new and different types of sessions that fit the given time slots. A rapid-fire game show in 20 minutes? Sounds good to us!
20-minute session. A 20-minute session works well for a big idea in its most compact form.
45-minute session. A 45-minute session works well for complex ideas that need the extra examples or detail to be understood, or for duo and trio sessions.
Poster. Poster Night has become a favorite fixture of IAC. Prepare a poster to structure your story, model, or advice, then chat with attendees about it during our evening reception on the conference’s first night.
Pre-conference workshops
For the week before the main program, the IA conference is given over to half-day and full-day workshops. Run by experienced practitioners or educators, workshops allow in-depth and hands-on group learning in the company of a subject expert.
Attendees pay an additional registration fee for pre-conference workshop participation. The fees first pay for the costs for hosting your workshop, and the remaining profit is split between the workshop leader(s) and IAC.
If you are pitching a workshop, remember to plan for breaks and assume that participants should spend more time doing than they spend listening. The speaker support program will help you plan a virtual format.
Single-day pre-conference workshop
Most workshop topics do well in a 4-hour slot. It’s enough time for a few short lectures and several activities for participants.
Multi-day pre-conference workshop
To pull off a full-day workshop, you’ll need to tune carefully into the energy of your participants. Note that there will be a 1-hour lunch break between the two 4-hour halves.
Suggested workshop topics
We welcome any workshop topics related to Information Architecture and our theme of Emergence. Past attendees have asked for workshops on the following topics. If you have a passion for one of these topics, we’d love to see your workshop proposal.
- Beginner:
- Introduction to IA
- Taxonomy
- SEO
- Content Strategy
- User Research
- Usability
- Documenting IA
- Prototyping
- Intermediate/Advanced:
- Facilitating
- Communications/Soft Skills
- Service Design
- Understanding Context
- Ethnography
- Personas
- Semantic Relationships
- Algorithm / Machine Learning
