Group Coordinator Survey
We asked information architecture professionals from around the world
to share the experiences and challenges they faced while coordinating
local IA group events.
1. How did you determine that a local group was feasible in
your area?
- I knew enough people personally to know there was an interest.
- Being located in a well populated city with many who have IA knowledge
and experience.
- I started by posting an announcement to SIG-IA and also by asking
everyone I was able to meet who worked in or was interested in information
design aspects of web design. I also attended a local STC (Society
for Technical Communication) chapter meeting to see if there were
parallels there.
- Knowledge of large employers who had IA employees in the area.
- Just tried it and kept hosting it month after month until a core
group emerged.
- I knew another IA in town, we had been communicating for a while
but had never met and decided to set up a cocktail hour and send out
invitations… we have a few people that we know will show up,
and we plan on getting together and talking regardless, and if other
people show up, great.
2. About how many hours per month are required to coordinate
and promote your group’s events?
- 1 hour a month or, more precisely, 3 hours per 3 months.
- Around 5, including attending [the event].
- One
- One or less
- Less than one, it doesn’t take much effort.
3. In what ways do you publicize events?
- Email to group members.
- Post to IAwiki
- Email to sigia-l
- I send an announcement (1 month in advance) and a reminder (1 or
2 days in advance) to the members of the Yahoo!Group
and follow these up with messages to sigia-l.
- I send out one or two emails to announce the next event.
- Evite invitation
- Flyer at the previous month's meeting
- Reminder email to my colleagues at work
4. In what ways do you generate participation in your group?
- Word-of-mouth by attendees of previous events.
- Sending announcements to IA-related mailing lists.
- Face to face meetings for this group work well. Because the group
has been running for a few years, there is a core set of attendees,
and all are comfortable discussing issues. This helps newer people
as well. Most people come to these meetings interested in contributing
and discussing, not just listening.
- I accept suggestions from the group, and we try to give everyone
a chance to speak, for example using a show-and-tell format.
- The most important way I've generated participation is by being
persistent—I try to hold a meeting every month, no matter how
busy I am, how many or few people show up, whether there is a topic
I'm really excited about or not.
- Try to gather opinions about what the best time/place to meet is,
what kind of subjects people want to talk about.
5. What level of IA knowledge is expected from those who participate
in your events?
- Limited. As I state in the description of the group “If you
feel your work is related to Information Architecture, but your business
card says Interaction Designer, User Interface Engineer, Concept Designer,
User Experience Consultant, or similar, you're welcome”.
- None
- Personally I wanted a group of experienced people who could skip
the basics and discuss substantial design issues…so it’s
for advanced people only, lest the discussion get diluted and people
lose interest.
- Virtually none beyond having an idea that IA is about organizing
information—we get a number of people who don't do IA but hear
about it from people they work with and come because they'd like to
learn more.
- We hoped originally that people would at the very least know what
IA is and have some experience doing it, even if that experience was
just making a wireframe once. In reality, most people are total newbies
and the events end up with us teaching them an intro to IA rather
than having a good discourse.
6. What is the typical format for your group’s events
(e.g., speaker presentations, round table, cocktail hour, salon, etc.)?
- The format used to be a Cocktail Hour (show up at a bar, share stories,
and buy drinks) but the latest event was an in-house event with a
presenter, a brainstorm session, and sponsored drinks & snacks.
- Speaker presentations, discussions, sometimes general chat. We usually
have a topic or a presentation by a member.
- Once in a while there is a presentation, but usually it’s
a group discussion on a pre-determined topic.
- We try to do every other month where one month will be a specific
topic to discuss and the next will be a cocktail hour that will be
networking and more free form but we aren't religious about it—if
there are interesting topics we will go several months in a row. Because
our setting is a restaurant each meeting has something of a networking/cocktail
hour aspect to it. We're quite informal. Occasionally we'll have a
formal presentation at someone's office, but that's generally a bit
harder to plan.
- Varies, though we’ve done mainly cocktail hours. We’ve
had presentations, collaborative workshops, show-and-tells, etc.
7. Please describe the venues for your group’s events
and why you’ve chosen those venues.
- All but two events were held in a café/bar/restaurant downtown.
I know the owners, and they would point people inquiring at the bar
in my direction.
- One event was held in a bar in another city, 1.5 hours away by train.
Both bars serve snacks and/or meals in addition to the drinks.
- The latest event was held in a kitchen/relaxation room [of one of
the event’s organizers] where attendees sat around a kitchen
table and on couches.
- We have finally found a good venue after trying 4 different places.
We now have a private room at a local sports club. It is a big room,
and quiet. We have access to a bar so we can have a drink and can
use the dining room if we want to stay for dinner. So far this venue
is working well, but my company does sponsor the group by paying for
the room hire.
- Our own apartments. They are quiet and allow for great conversations
and richer interaction. It’s also cheaper.
- Our first venue was a local bar, but they wanted us to pay for use
of the space, so we found a new location. That location proved too
loud/dark to really have a good meeting space. Finally we found a
restaurant/bar that has an area set off slightly. It works well for
us and they are very accommodating; no extra charge, they happily
keep separate tabs. We have also met in my office conference room
on several occasions and at the local offices of a small web design
group on several occasions.
- If it’s at an office, it’s usually one of the organizer’s
offices that we use. If it’s at a restaurant/bar, we try to
pick a central location where we can be guaranteed a big table and
the wait staff won’t get mad if we are there for a few hours
but don’t order much.
8. What types of challenges have you faced while coordinating
your group?
- Low attendance numbers, resulting in a core group attending, but
no new blood, which in the long run will lead to extinction. Luckily
I got new people interested out of the blue and that didn’t
happen.
- I feel I have to be present, which limits the opportunities slightly
(I am occasionally out of the country for work), especially when I
get “requests” to organize an event by visiting foreign
IAs.
- Finding good meeting spaces. Keeping a mailing list up to date.
Keeping disciplined about planning & organizing.
- Challenges around unifying the reasons for setting up a group and
its purpose when co-leading a local groups’ initiative.
- Managing the invitation list so it is neither too large nor too
small.
- Attendance
- Finding good meeting spaces. Keeping our mailing list up to date.
Keeping myself disciplined about planning & organizing.
9. What advice would you give to someone looking to coordinate
a local group?
- Start small, allow the group to grow slowly.
- If you don't have a group in your community DEFINITELY create one—it
will pay for itself many times over in networking, knowledge and skill-building.
If you can co-coordinate with someone who will hold up their end of
the deal, that will give you some flexibility and wiggle room.
- Don't be discouraged when few people come or there is low energy—these
things cycle. Accept that you have to make it more of a priority than
anyone else is likely to and don't get discouraged or offended when
it's low on other's lists—time really does build stability in
this kind of group.
- Don’t get too formal too soon.
- I think that finding a good venue is possibly the most crucial aspect
of the group – for us it needed to be quiet enough to talk,
have food and drink, easy parking, and be convenient to workplaces
and homes. Poor venues have included:
- Meeting rooms in offices – it is just too uninspiring
to go to a meeting room after being at work all day. Yuck!
- Previous bars were a little noisy, and a couple of members commented
that they were too smoky
- We used a nice café/bar for a few meetings, but it really
only suited informal meetings
- Merely meeting isn’t enough, give people something to get
excited about. In our group, we know at the very least there will
be something to eat and some good social interaction.
- Find a good location
- Allow discussion and networking around a topic
- Make it fun and interesting
- Find ways to introduce people to each other – we use name
tags, and they do work well
- Involve people from a range of backgrounds
- Look for interesting topics, especially ones that might not be of
day-to-day interest but are from related fields
- People love case studies
- Find a way to allow online discussion so people get to know each
other online and people who can’t make the meeting can still
learn and be involved
- Alternate lunch and evenings if possible – some people can’t
attend after work due to family commitments
- It’s pretty easy to put a group together, so don’t make
more work for yourself than is necessary. Find a place, choose a topic,
and get the word out. That’s really all you need to do to start.
10. What advice would you give to someone looking to participate
in a local group?
- Ask for one on an IA-related mailing list, and there’s a good
chance that someone else in organizing one for you. Attend one if
you it advertised; it will never be a waste of time.
- Go along to both learn and contribute.
- Go to as many as possible to see what you like.
- The more people that show up, the better, so help to get people
to attend. You’ll get much more out of it if the people are
at your level or more experienced than you, so make sure you can get
a good group of attendees.
- Do it! Put it on your calendar and go even when you're not in the
mood. Speak up about topics you're interested in and recommend ideas,
but most importantly just show up—you don't have to be a major
extrovert to be a valuable member of a local group.
