Wall of Deliverables

The IA Summit is a place to meet peers, learn from others and get inspired through great workshops, presentations and poster sessions. Many of the sessions deal with ideas, concepts and theories of the IA field in which presenters regularly refer to actual projects and their deliverables to illustrate their points. We often see an interesting wireframe, a creative new way of showing a sitemap, or a funky diagram that really makes or breaks a project, but there is hardly ever time to actually go into much detail on those deliverables.

This year we have organized a Wall of Deliverables - a whole area dedicated to all kinds of different deliverables for people to browse through, discuss and be inspired by. And we need your help.

You must at one point in a recent project have thought: `Hey, this is a great way of showing this interaction to the client', or `Internal communication has really improved since we introduced this deliverable into the process', or `this was a spectacular failure, I sure learned from it!'. Those are the deliverables we are looking for - anything ranging from personas to wireframes to conceptual models to user research reports - the whole spectrum of outputs from your IA sweat and tears.

What's in it for me?

Inspiration & Knowledge Sharing

First and foremost, by contributing your own deliverables, you will be inspiring your fellow IAs and their approaches to deliverable creation. That in itself should be enough to win you over. By experiencing how others addressed their documentation needs, you may uncover new ways to tackle your own challenges.

This exchange will allow others to ask you questions about your work, and you will probably find yourself explaining a cool trick or sharing frustration over that missing tool in OmniGraffle or Visio. Let's geek out together!

Cool Prizes! Apple iPods!

To make things a bit more interesting, we will award prizes for the best deliverables. A panel of judges will look at criteria such as style, structure, organization, clarity, level of inspiration, `transcendence' and uniqueness. But more importantly, you have a say in this too. As you check out the contributed deliverables, you can vote for YOUR favorite deliverables. A grand prize Apple iPod Nano 4GB will be awarded to both the judge's top deliverable as well as the top vote-getter. Second and third place in both judging and voting will be awarded an Apple iPod Shuffle 1GB.

A special thanks goes to EightShapes and User Intelligence for sponsoring the awards. And your chances just got better since deliverable geeks from both organizations are ineligible for the prizes!

How can I contribute?

You can submit before the conference by sending your deliverable and cover sheet to summitdeliverables@gmail.com, or bring your deliverables to the conference and hand them to anyone manning the Wall of Deliverables.

To give your deliverable a little bit of context, we are asking all contributors to fill out a cover sheet with information about you and your deliverable. You can bring this printed along with your deliverable, send it to us along with your deliverable, or fill it out by hand during the conference - if you want to submit anonymously, let us know (as long as it's your work).

We'll aim to include a badge sticker in your welcome packet indicating that your deliverable is on display. This will make it easier for people to find you if they have questions or comments about your submission.

Constraints

There are a few limitations with regards to the size of your deliverables. We cannot accept documents that are bigger than Tabloid/A3 sheets (be creative, maybe a few pictures of your humongous deliverable are enough to tell the story!). If you are bringing your own deliverable, there is no strict limit on the number of pages. However, if you want us to print your deliverable, make sure it does not contain more than 20 pages. We cannot guarantee that we can print the deliverables in color, so it is best you bring your own if you have specific requirements.

Don't hold back! Just find your favorite deliverable, print it and bring it along. If you want us to print it, make sure you send it to summitdeliverables@gmail.com by April 1st, at the latest. Regardless, we would love to know if you're planning on participating (send us a note!) so we can ensure there is enough room for all contributions.

The folks who deliver
Livia Labate, Nathan Curtis & Jacco Nieuwland

PS: If you'd like to volunteer to help facilitate the Wall of Deliverables, please send an email to summitdeliverables@gmail.com.