It’s going to be hard to follow up the fantastically thought provoking, engaging and informative Cocktail Hour in March—thanks to Donna and Stuart for some great presentations.

But Jessica Enders, Director of Formulate Information Design, is never afraid of a challenge and is going to do her best to entertain and educate with an interactive session on transforming an existing paper form into an electronic medium.

Those who are interested are welcome to join us afterwards for an informal dinner in Dickson.

Time: 17:30-19:00
Day/Date: Thursday 24 April 2008
Venue: Eureka Strategic Research
Level 1
55 Wooley Street
Dickson
(above Zeffirelli’s)

Please RSVP to [facibus AT gmail DOT com] as soon as possible for catering purposes.

“Success” is a loaded word - for me, it means 8-12 people turning up once a month and all feeling that it was worthwhile. Whatever success we’ve had as a group comes down to a few key points:

• interest,
• coordination, and
• networking.

Interest
I know it sounds trite, but without sufficient interest, there can be no Cocktail Hours. That said, the level of enthusiasm does not have to be universal across the group - if you have two or three people that really want to see it happen, then they will inspire others.

What you’re looking for are the people who care enough to engage with others - people who are already coordinating events, who know a lot of people, who want to make a difference.

Coordination
Coordination is also vital - but I’d have to say that there is a perfect middle ground between being totally organised and completely relaxed. In Canberra I think it is fairly safe to say that we tend more to relaxation than organisation because everyone is very busy here - yet thanks to the magnificent efforts of a few brave souls, we keep going.

Items that require coordination are:

• Venue,
• Sponsorship,
• Notifications, and
• Lining speakers up.

We tend to rotate between venues here - Cocktail Hours are hosted at the SMS office at the Airport, Stamford office at Fyshwick, and Eureka Strategic Research in Dickson. Our overheads (i.e. necessity for sponsorship) are low, in that the hosting organisation supplies beverages and nibbles. We haven’t had a dearth of speakers either - for which we are grateful - because we seem blessed with an abundance of IA/UX/UCD talent.

Networking
Networking is really important, especially when you’re getting started. Networking opportunities include:

• laterally with other Cocktail Hours and IA Peers groups - Eric Scheid coordinates the Sydney IA Peers group.
• vertically with potential sponsors/hosts.
• horizontally with other web-related groups and events such as WSG, WIPA, and WebBlast.

The process
If the Canberra group had to start from scratch and do it all again, this is one possible scenario process:

1. Get the interested people together and get them excited about it.
2. Talk to potential sponsors - chances are, the interested people work for the best potential sponsors (that is, they are probably employing IAs now, and probably looking to employ more if it is anything like the Canberra market at the moment).
3. Set a date and advertise the heck out of it.
4. Discuss the future of the group at the first meeting and line up six months worth of speakers.
5. Wash, rinse, repeat (in other words, just keep doing it).

That is about all there is to it - a little perspiration, a lot of love, and a few glasses of wine. Try it, you’ll probably enjoy it too

It’s going to be a bumper session, with:

• the ever entertaining Donna Maurer examining how work structure (consultant or freelancer) impacts on IA services
• a SAP Learning Support case study from Stuart Dunn, of SMSMT.

Those who are interested are welcome to join us afterwards for an informal dinner in Manuka/Kingston.

Time: 17:30-19:00
Day/Date: Thursday 27 March 2008
Venue: Stamford Interactive
Level 1
301 Canberra Avenue (Right near Officeworks)
Fyshwick
Please RSVP to [facibus AT gmail DOT com] as soon as possible for catering purposes.

We have two topics:

• Stephen Hall from SMSMT is going to talk to us about Integrated Administrative Design
• Dane Buchardt from SMSMT will walk us through a case study of a department coming to grips with e-learning. The department was struggling with high turnover of new staff and engaged SMSMT to develop an online induction facility to help engage and inform new appointments.

Time: 17:30-19:00
Day/Date: Thursday 28 February 2008
Venue: SMS Management & Technology
Ground Floor, 8 Brindabella Circuit
Brindabella Business Park
Please RSVP to [facibus AT gmail DOT com] as soon as possible for catering purposes.

Parking: please remember that Brindabella Park has different parking arrangements than those found in many parts of Canberra - there is free parking for the first hour adjacent to the entrance of 8 Brindabella Circuit. After that you have to move your car or pay for parking (and this applies past the end of the meeting).

It didn’t take much effort to find and agree on a solution. LibraryThing is just what we needed. The premise of this site is that it allows you to list what you have, find books that you may like (either by your social network or other similarities). It also has a group function - we can create a group that allows us to see what *we* have. Problem solved.

We’ve set up a group called iacanberra.

So what we’d like to do is:

• If you are interested in being involved, email Andrew (facibus at gmail dot com) with your username and he’ll  send you an invite
• List your books
• Tag any books you think are suitable for our group with iacanberra
• When you want to borrow a book, browse the group, find out who has it and arrange to borrow

Simple!

We have two topics:

- iacanberra.org library: we’ve talked about having a virtual library over the last month or so – and now it is time to put something in place. We all own some books that we don’t mind loaning to friends, and we don’t mind lending them from other friends – but how do you know what everyone else has and where your books are at the moment? What we’d like to do is use an existing online system (like librarything) or roll our own – so that those that want to share their books can.

- Change Manager extraordinaire Julie Hale has been running a study on where we are as a group and where we want to go over the last couple of months. Julie would like to present the findings of her study so far so that we can discuss them.

Time: 17:30-19:00
Day/Date: Thursday 15 November 2007
Venue: SMS Management & Technology
Ground Floor, 8 Brindabella Circuit
CANBERRA AIRPORT ACT

Please RSVP as soon as possible for catering purposes.

Parking: please remember that Brindabella Park has different parking arrangements than those found in many parts of Canberra - there is free parking for the first hour adjacent to the entrance of 8 Brindabella Circuit. After that you have to move your car or pay for parking (and this applies past the end of the meeting).

• different types of accessibility/disability they had to work with
• differences between designing for a custom-built and COTS product
• challenges working with different roles
• challenges involved when there is no management support or funding for accessibility

It was a really good talk, and I’ll link her slides if she makes them available.

After Ruth finished presenting, we were talking about different types of accessibility and how to work with them. We were talking about dyslexia and Matt pointed out something that I hadn’t thought about - people with dyslexia are often well-served by an audio version, either one you create or an automated version.

But the funniest bit was when he related it to Heroes (something I’m completely addicted to) - he said (something like) “it’s like Matt Parkman - when he reads minds he can understand it, but when he looks at it on paper, he can’t figure out out”. Fancy Matt making a connection between real-world accessibility and a TV series

It was a list of topics we wanted to discuss. This is what we wanted to talk about back then:

• Storytelling
• What is KM?
• Deliverables
  • wireframes
  • site maps
  • personas and scenarios
• Faceted classifications
• Content management systems
• Creating controlled vocabularies
• Data modelling
• Difference between websites and intranets

It makes me think of how much has changed in that time. 5 years ago we were all talking about day-to-day, tactical challenges. In recent months we’ve talked about much more theoretical and strategic topics.

What do you think? What should we be talking about now?

We follow a meet’n’greet/presentation/chat format, with the emphasis on information exchange at practitioner level. This is a great opportunity to talk with other IAs in Canberra, have a few drinks, and chat about work.

Time: 17:30-19:00
Day/Date: Thursday 30 August 2007
Venue: SMS Management & Technology
Ground Floor, 8 Brindabella Circuit
CANBERRA AIRPORT ACT

Please RSVP to Andrew (contact details here) as soon as possible for catering purposes.

Parking: please remember that Brindabella Park has different parking arrangements than those found in many parts of Canberra - there is free parking for the first hour adjacent to the entrance of 8 Brindabella Circuit. After that you have to move your car or pay for parking (and this applies past the end of the meeting).

PS: there is a contact list for the Canberra IA Cocktail Hours: you can join via http://au.groups.yahoo.com/group/canberra_ia_community or subscribe to updates via this blog (http://iacanberra.org)

Ruth’s spoiler t-shirt:

Caronne, Nigel and Ruth at dinner:

Matt Hodgson:

Stephen Hall:

Donna Maurer:

Andrew Boyd:

Stephen Collins: