European IA Summit – Building Communities
Tulip Inn, Brussels, Belgium
15-16 October 2005

Call for Papers

Scope of the Conference
The Summit seeks proposals for
Case Studies
Presentations
Panels
Posters
Submissions

Scope of the Conference
The first European Information Architecture (IA) Summit's focus is on building the IA community in Europe. The objective of the event is to bring together a number of disciplines and practitioner communities by providing a stimulating environment for debate and an opportunity for establishing cooperation. This community is not just limited to language or region, but all encompasses our specialization's like designing for mobile devices, and multilingual solutions. We are calling for papers that reflect those communities of practice, language and location.

If you are using techniques from related disciplines in your day-to day work or researching the latest ways to connect people and content, we would like to hear from you. Examples of relevant activities include, but are not limited to developing the IA practice in an organization or country by documenting methods, applying IA principles to European-focused platforms, providing multi lingual solutions and designing devices like interactive TV or mobile devices.

We are open to contributions from people with solid and relevant ideas, including areas that may be considered ancillary or outside of Information Architecture. If selected, we simply ask that you put in the time required to create a solid and professional presentation for the conference attendees.

We encourage submissions by students, developers and designers. We are looking for work of a specialized nature, work concerning new features, design elements, methods or processes, controversial topics, and work in progress. We are especially interested in receiving submissions from speakers in our field who have not presented at conferences in the past, including academics, professionals in related fields and information architects who have not yet had the opportunity to share their knowledge. We want to invigorate our conference with new thoughts. If you have a solid idea and proposal, but aren't an expert speaker, we can help. Our planning committee has experienced authors and presenters who can give a hand in fine-tuning your ideas and presentations.

How do you know if you have an idea worth pursuing? Imagine that you traveled to Brussels to attend the conference and sat in on your presentation? Would it hold your attention? Would it give you new focus or insight that you could apply to your work? Does it provide fresh perspective to what you think? If so, great. Go ahead and send along your proposal idea. Don't be shy. . .

The Summit seeks proposals for:
Case Studies – specific examples showing the use of IA in completed projects
Presentations – talks that discuss principles and ideas, or provide insightful analogies and mind-opening explorations to open the minds of information architects
Panels – differing opinions and discussion on the topics of the day lead by a moderator
Posters – illustrating a concept from research or practice

Case Studies
Case Studies demonstrate concrete information architecture solutions to challenging problems. The ideal case studies will place special emphasis on explaining and demonstrating the useful methods, tools, and metrics that were used to address the problem at hand. A case study should be for a project that is finished by the presentation time.

Supply a description of 300 words. The description should concisely detail:

• Type of site or application (e.g., entertainment, portal, intranet, content management or access control system)
• Problem addressed (successes and failures in the process)
• Solution applied (e.g., method, tool, metrics for evaluation)
• Measurable improvement to the site or application, either in terms of business metrics or user experience OR lessons learnt from the project

If possible, include the candidate site or application's URL and/or screen shots reflecting the work

MARKETING PITCHES FOR AGENCIES OR THEIR CLIENTS WILL NOT BE PERMITTED

Presentations
The guidelines for presentations should follow a similar form (300 word description) but describe:

• What core IA related issues are addressed?
• What the audience will learn/take-away from the presentation?
• How the presentation will reflect the theme?
• A brief bio including professional and speaking experience.

Panels
A panel is an ideal way to provoke discussion and opinion on the topics of the day. A panel usually comprises of 3-4 speakers and a moderator. The moderator introduces the topic and provides direction (and sometimes corralling) for the speakers on the topic. Each speaker has 5 minutes to present on his or her opinion of the topic and the moderator follows up with questions to the rest of the panel.

Each panel submission should be:

• 300 words describing the topic, the different facets of the topic and why this topic is applicable to the IA Summit
• The brief bios of the speakers and moderator of the panel including work and speaking experience.

What we are seeking
All talks will be judged on the basis of the 300 word text summary and any additional material you would like to provide. They will be evaluated using the following criteria:

• Originality
• Contribution to the profession
• Soundness of rationale

Posters
We are interested in seeing posters that demonstrate visually information architecture ideas, concepts and deliverables. We encourage work by students, developers and designers, work of a specialized nature, work concerning new features, design elements, methods or processes, controversial topics, and work in progress.

What Makes a Good Poster? Allow ample time, at least several weeks, to prepare your poster. A good poster is uncluttered and clear in design. It has legible text and logical organization. The main tenet of a good poster design is simplification. Use a crisp, clean design and a strong title. Do not tell the entire project history. Present only enough data to make your key point. The text material should be reduced to convey your points quickly and clearly. The most successful posters display a succinct statement of major conclusions at the beginning, followed by supporting text in later segments, and a brief summary at the end.

What we are seeking
Posters will be judged on the basis of a one-page text summary poster mock-up. The summary should place the work in context and make one or two innovative points.

Note that submissions must be in English but the actual poster can be in any language. Attachments of mock-ups must not exceed 500 KB. If size exceeds 500 KB, the mock-up must be posted on a separate website and a link provided. Be sure that your submission contains no proprietary or confidential material.

Submission of video or pictures of identifiable people should be done only with the understanding that responsibility for the collection of appropriate permissions rests with the submitter, not ASIST.

If your proposal is accepted, you will need to create the actual poster for the conference and supply a PDF image of the poster content at the time of the conference for posting to an ASIST Conference presentations page.

At the conference, interactive poster presenters are provided a 1.1 metre high by 2.3 metres wide (44 x 92 inches) display space. But your poster does not need to occupy the maximum space. We have found that 20 x 30 inches is a good minimum size. Presenters are required to be available at their posters during designated presentation times.

Submissions
The spirit of this call is one of inclusiveness. Even if you've never done anything like this before, follow the submission instructions and have an original, interesting proposal, you will have a good chance of showing.

Note that all submissions must be in English, and delivered by e-mail. Be sure that your submission contains no proprietary or confidential material.

DEADLINE FOR SUBMISSIONS
The submission deadline for case studies, presentations, and panels is 31 July 2005.

WHERE DO YOU SEND YOUR SUBMISSION
Please upload your submission here:  http://www.softconf.com/start/IA-Summit-Europe/submit.html

Copyright 2005, Association for Information Science and Technology