IA of IDEA 2008

I noticed this as well. I don't know whether this is bad IA, or just a
bad business decision.

I think it's rather strange to expect people to decide to attend a
conference merely based on the list of "names" who may or may not
speak there, with no indication of a program. So strange, in fact,
that I removed IDEA from my "conferences to consider attending" list
for the coming year.

Dmitry

On Fri, Jun 27, 2008 at 8:39 PM, Will Evans <will at semanticfoundry.com> wrote:
> Does anyone else find it either: a) annoying; b) deceptive or c) bad IA that
> the IA sites navigation has a tab for Program and Speakers, and then have
> just a list of confirmed speakers. Should they not have a schedule listed
> there? A sub nav item perhaps? Is there any excuse for this?
>
> Filed under: Findability, Navigation
>
> --
> ~ will
>
> "Where you innovate, how you innovate,
> and what you innovate are design problems"
>
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Will Evans | User Experience Architect
> tel +1.617.281.1281 | will at semanticfoundry.com
> twitter: https://twitter.com/semanticwill
> ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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Thanks for bringing up the issues that are being seen with the IDEA
website. I can assure you the intent was not deceptive. After taking
a closer look, I can appreciate what is being called out. I think it
has been an oversight--this is the first feedback that I've seen
about it, and I am glad to see it pointed out so that we can evaluate
and hopefully improve upon it.

I can also say that many conferences do not have finalized programs
until very close to the conference date--if I recall correctly, the
IA Summit did not have a full program until a few weeks prior, and An
Event Apart in Chicago (1 week after IDEA) won't be announcing their
list until mid-July.

Perhaps the "Program" aspect should be removed or more information
should be provided as to when that will be available in the
right-hand column to hopefully help alleviate confusion.

The same design template has been used for the previous 2 years, and
as the date got closer, we published the program in the right column
of that page.

Thanks again for bringing these issues to light. I appreciate that
attention has been brought to this so we can do a better job; IDEA is
a pretty "young" conference and we definitely want to keep
improving.

Perhaps this is the part where the "excuse" comes in, but as with
many organizations, we are relying upon volunteers who have other
responsibilities. I'm truly sorry that the oversight and/or
confusion would cause anyone to mark us off of their list as
conferences to attend.

I think the dialog is great and welcome anything else that I can pass
along to the team to work toward improving.

--Russ

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