You the User
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London IA Upgrade

London IA group has eventually received its upgrade – no more Google Ads. Phew. Ning’s new business model is well documented and we secured the sponsorship for the year from Zebra People. Thanks Zebra People. The site now has a very clean feel to it which has gone some way to highlighting a distinct lack of activity (especially divided against the numbers of members). A core bunch of members (or ‘The Usual Suspects’ as they are sometimes known) drive most of the activity but there are quite a number of ‘outliers’ who need to be encouraged to get involved on a more regular basis. There are a range of things everyone can do – and it really can’t just be all me (otherwise the site is going to end up looking like my soapbox).

I made a list and was initially just going to share it with Martin, Tom and Ken but then realised that it needs to be seen by everyone so we can all get working at it and there is a democratic process in deciding the priority of action.

London IA is our community and we need to make it grow and be useful to everyone that visits it.

1. London IA film night needs a location
2. RSS feeds from blogs of London IA members and a London IA bog roll
3. What other RSS feeds can we pipe in? Johnny Holland, what else? What are you reading. Sharing Instapaper starred items. Google Reader shared items
4. Integration with activity on UX Exchange (http://uxexchange.com/) – an RSS feed of current activity
5. Should we set up Twitter or Facebook integration on the Network? (I don’t use Facebook and don’t know the level of use by London IA members. I obviously realise that Twitter use is endemic.)
6. We need to integrate how our sponsors, Zebra People, are threaded through the network
7. RSS feed of the LBi and Johnny Holland events calendar. (Coming Soon is an event site from Zebra People and UX People that can also be integrated.)
8. We Need Help. Would anyone like to help with organising London IA events? Get in touch with me to discuss.
9. London IA is starting a new Workshop strand. First up is a EuroIA Predux event where the five sets of London speakers who are presenting at EuroIA in September get the chance to rehearse their presentations in front of each other. (More details on London IA in the next couple of days.)
10. As a resource a page collecting together member’s past presentations – maybe powered by Slideshare
11. Philip Winwood is keeping London IA Jobs going. Shall we put up a link to the group pages (or maybe even integrating a feed of the latest opportunities.
12. A general resource section linking to great resources for sketching tools, research practice, interview techniques and guidelines, guerilla usability testing (ie Martin’s posts on this subject on Currybet)
13. Magazines we like
14. A virtual bookcase: Who’s writing a book. Upcoming books of note. Shared Amazon wishlists. Who’s reading what.
15. Someone needs to post about UXBrighton events please (especially their big event next month)
16. Someone needs to post about London Web Standards events and maybe South London Geeks. What else? Any ideas
17. Shall we integrate London IA members Flickr accounts? What other type of user activity from the internets can we integrate?
18. London IA Mentoring


6 Comments

Count me in for help with: 2, 8, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18. I hand the book in next week – meet for coffee after that?

Posted by Cennydd Bowles on 8 August 2010 @ 11pm

pity i cant sign up, “Who is the author of The Design of Everyday Things?” ..clearly isn’t working

Posted by shellyc on 9 August 2010 @ 11am

I’m keen on looking at 10, 12, 13, 14, 3 and 2… been thinking about starting an online ‘library’ of UX things that people can build a community around.

Posted by Boon on 9 August 2010 @ 3pm

I’d be interested in 8, helping to organise events

Posted by Michelle on 9 August 2010 @ 5pm

Re: 3 > how about having a delicious tag that we can link back to London IA? Anything we think would be useful to members could be tagged when saved to delicious.

New idea similar to book library: App/Tool rundown.
There are so many prototyping, testing tools out nowadays how about we get these companies to let use try some out for some reviews feedback or even if any of the members have used some of them. A rating system would at least give people who don’t want to write much some instant feedback/interaction

Re 8: Let’s also do coffee

Posted by Mr Bootle on 9 August 2010 @ 11pm

Great to see LondonIA developing! Pls put me down for 8 and/or 9, 12, 13, 14 (would folks want to include key research papers?).

Posted by alison on 11 August 2010 @ 8am

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