You would expect with the economy in the toilet and the outlook in some quarters looking a little bleak, that there wouldn’t be a lot of education events like conferences going on around the country. Usually one of the first things to go on the old corporate (and freelancers) budget is those expensive junkets *cough* conferences. With people falling back on the more traditional media such as books and free online resources for their professional education requirements.
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.
Gary Barber
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