EuroIA 2006 Berlin revisited

I finally find the time to share my view on the EuroIA Summit 2006 which was held in Berlin a few weeks ago.

This was the second summit EuroIA summit for me, and like the first one, I think it was a great success. 

There are different reasons for going to a conference. Some will go to learn and get inspired by the speakers, some will go to get input and a kick from meeting other IA’s or folks working with information, and yet others will go for the networking. I went mostly for the networking, meet new people from other countries, and perhaps get a new angle on my work as consultant. To be frank, I hadn’t checked the programme before I registered.

And I did get what I came for. I did meet a lot of nice and clever folks. People I hadn’t met before from Italy, Germany, Ireland, and Poland, and I got to met people from the UK, Norway, Belgium, whom I spoke with last year. I could ask questions, which I can use directly in ongoing projects, and discuss topics I’ve had on my mind lately. A great opportunity, not available elsewhere.

Regarding the programme; well, as I said, that wasn’t all that important to me. Fortunately I must say. I think there was room for improvement for a number of the presenters. Let me say, that there have been complaints about the form of the Summit (more on that in a future posting). I think the Summit was great in that respect. But some of the speakers were not very well prepared, considering they have had quite a lot of time, and that a presentation at such a summit is not just an average presentation. To mention a few:

Olly Wright was to talk about the connection between IA and strategy. Very interesting from my point of view. I’d expect him to talk about just that, but with an outset in the field of IA. Rather he gave us a quick introduction to the business consultant’s tool box. Without going into detail or offering any usable hands-on advise. I was like a turbo skimming of any introduction book to the trade of consulting. But the connection to the field of IA lacked. I can understand why. When you get deep into business consulting, you loose the connection to “traditional” IA. I know I have, to some extent. Perhaps that’s Olly’s problem.

Later that day there was a presentation by Almar van der Krogt on “Virreal Architecture”. I will not even comment on that presentation. I have the greatest respect for the committee, who have picked out the presenters. But what ever happened when they let him on the podium?! I think it’s great with a strange, novel, and new angle on things. Stewart Brand offered that when he was key note speaker at the US IA summit in 2003. But you got to have some calibre, novel ideas, and keep that helicopter view to offer just that. van der Krogt had none of that. A petty, as his ideas may be interesting.

The next day there was a special kind of presentation; “Wicked Workshop”, hosted by Jason Mesut and Warren Hutchinson. They wanted to discuss how we, as consultants, can use workshops engage the clients. However the choose to illustrate this by turning the room, with 120+ listeners into several workshops. And that just didn’t work. A key premise for success for any workshop is, that the participants know, that they contribute to some sort of relevant project, which was not the case here. I guess that was one of the reasons, that people was only semi-engaged. Therefore the message didn’t come across; they picked a format not suitable for the audience.

But – several of the presentations were excellent. I think Jared Folkmann’s talk on “Customer Experience Framework” was brilliant. Also Andrea Resmini, Emanuele Quintarelli, Luca Rosati’s presentation on social tagging was very interesting (in spite of some obvious “challenges” regarding presentation and language skills). And as always, Eric Reiss had some great input on the trends in IA. I’ll comment on that in a future post.

I’ll wrap up before I run out of power on my brand new Toshiba Tecra M5 laptop. Summing up: EuroIA 2006 was a great success. I've dwelled a bit on the not-so-good presentations, but I'll get back with details on the great stuff too.

I think those of us who didbother to mingle had the best EuroIA Summit. I was a bit disappointed with some of my friends from Denmark, who would sit for themselves most of the time. Come on folks! We meet once a month. Get out - live a little.

Comments

[Karen Loasby]

Wicked Workshops didn't work for me either. Too many people, too unfocused, take-away learnings felt superficial.

The idea that it was demostrating the need for workshops to have the "potential to fail" seems like sophistry. If the workshop had been successful then the presentation was a success. And if the workshop failed then the presentation was a success! Nice odds if you are a presenter.

[Warren Hutchinson]

..in response to 'Wicked Workshop' format didn't work. I'd have to disagree.

Over 2 days of very dry, top-down presentations we tried to do something, that had potential to fail, to illustrate a point.

I walked around the different groups and it is true that some were better engaged than others, but on the whole we've had very positive feedback and if next years conference sees more interactive sessions, then we succeeded.

A presentation about workshops would have been a contradiction in terms and would have super-failed.