
So on with the summary of the second day for OZIA 2008. Okay this is a few days late, but better late than never, eh. Day two sees the return of three minute massages, juice bar, real coffee and great speakers after the official and alternative (late) dinners. As with day one I’m not going to summarise it all, but just go over few highlights I had.

So now it’s day two of OZIA 08, after having Japanese food thrown at us last night at dinner, it’s now time to review the highlights of yesterday.
Where is Square 1? - James Hunter.
James gave us a good perspective of the problems people have getting into the IA industry and how hard it can be to in fact cross train and become an IA. The problems of lack of mentoring, local internships and general training. He raises the question, where are the junior IA positions. He has a very good point, we are just not fostering junior IA development in Australia.

If you are a regular reader of this blog, you will know that it is now conference season here in Australia. Over the next two weeks or so you are going to be getting nothing but posts on conference related activities. Sorry if this isn’t not what you were expecting.
Presently I’m in the belly of a 737-700 just crossing the eastern side of the Great Australian Bight on my way to Sydney for Oz-IA 2008 and Web Directions South 2008. This year there is yet again another special event, besides the traditional Port80 meetup on the eve before Web Directions South (proper). Yes its WebJam time again, that crazy time when 18 or so web peeps take to the stage and delivery what can only be described as a roller coaster of information in 3 minutes or less.

It’s on again, OZ-IA, the Sydney based Information Architecture conference, now in its third year (Sept 20-21st). Yet again I’ll be lobbing into Sydney for this event, and looking forward to catching up with all my IA and UX colleagues. Over the last two years I have always met new people in the field or learn a fair few new things at this conference, from the formal sessions and corridor talk.
Now OZ-IA may seem like a lay back conference, I’ll tell you it isn’t, in some respects, some of the topics can be a little full on. But that said the social aspect in previous years has been spontaneous yet entertaining.