Call for Proposals

Our call for proposals has now closed. But you can still submit a 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. Posters are great for getting to know the community, especially for first-time presenters. Assume that you’ll be giving repeated short introductions and also engaging in natural conversations about your topic. Submit your poster concept before February 16, 2020. If your poster is accepted, we’ll send you a how-to packet on preparing your poster and presentation.

What to expect from IAC20:

Whether you’re a seasoned pro or a first time speaker, we want to hear from you!

IAC is a leading information architecture conference where information architects, UX designers, content strategists, taxonomists and other design practitioners meet to talk about understanding, organizing, and communicating information. Submit a proposal to share your ideas with the community.

We’re looking for new voices and new ideas, and especially those related this year’s theme: Sense and sense-making. While we welcome all submissions, we’re most interested in those presentations that are unique for the IAC community. That doesn’t mean you have to be an information architect to present. We want to hear diverse voices from all over the industry and we’re looking for a mix of hands-on, practical, “you can bring it back to work next week” sessions together with more thought-provoking, theory-driven talks.

The first step to becoming a speaker at IAC20 is to write a proposal. This is a short description of what you are planning on speaking about. Don’t worry, we have several session lengths to choose from. Our committee will then choose the most compelling proposals and invite those people to be speakers. We encourage all to submit a proposal and we want to hear from diverse members of the community.

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Understanding session types

Our session types are all about giving you more ways to participate, 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 presume that 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!

7-minute session. New to speaking or just have the beginning of an idea? Share it in seven minutes.

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 idea that needs 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. Posters are great for getting to know the community, especially for first-time presenters. Assume that you’ll be giving repeated short introductions and also engaging in natural conversations about your topic. Submit your poster concept before February 16, 2020. If your poster is accepted, we’ll send you a how-to packet on preparing your poster and presentation.

Pre-Conference Workshops

For two days ahead of 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 material and facility 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.

Half-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.

Full-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. 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
      • Sense-making in AR and VR
      • Mischief making
    • Intermediate/Advanced:
      • Facilitating
      • Communications/Soft Skills
      • Service Design
      • Understanding Context
      • Ethnography
      • Personas
      • Semantic Relationships
      • Algorithm / Machine Learning

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Resources for Writing a Great Proposal

• • It’s All About the Details: What the IA Summit Taught Me About Submitting to a Conference (IA Summit 2015)
  • Giles on Crafting a Proposal (IA Summit 2013)
  • Conference Proposals that Don’t Suck
  • How to write a kick-ass conference proposal
  • What Your Conference Proposal is Missing
  • Sample proposals for O’Reilly Conferences
  • How to write a compelling proposal