At the Boston UPA mini-conference last year, we brought this issue up because people in Boston had reached a point of saturation with meetings of the myriad organizations in Boston. There was a fairly strong sentiment that we could do some collapsing of organizations or at least having multiple organizations do things that are of general interest as joint events. This problem may only be prevalent in relatively high-density areas like Boston, but last year many people started to wear out (with mostly high-quality events and speakers).
Thanks, Chauncey On Wed, Jan 14, 2009 at 9:31 AM, Caroline Jarrett <[email protected]> wrote: > Chauncey Wilson >> >> Here is another prediction: > >> Growing frustration about the continuing splitting of communities (IA, UX, > information design, HF, UI design, usability, CHI, IxDA,) results in the > merging or re-integration of communities. > > I wish you were right but I don't think so. We're all still very tiny groups > (the biggest is only a few thousand), and there are few barriers to setting > up another group. If someone feels that a particular group isn't precisely > right for their particular interests then it's easy to use any of the many > social networking and other methods to set up a new one. > > It's only when you see a professional group get pretty big that the > advantages of staying in it, but with slightly different interests, start to > outweigh the benefits of a group that's 'just right'. My estimate: at least > 10,000. Then what happens is that you get SIGs setting up - within the > bigger grouping. And indeed: closing down again, as interests change. > > Even IEEE, one of the biggest there is at over 300,000, has a stable of > specialist groups that changes somewhat. Some of those groups are themselves > bigger than the whole UX community put together. > > Finally, what does it matter? One of the joys of the internet is that people > with highly specific interests can find each other. Forms specialists, say. > > Best > Caroline Jarrett > > ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
