Coming back from the EuroIA 2014 conference is hard. I wish it was more than three days packed with workshops in the morning, presentations in the afternoon and Belgian food and drinks in the evening…

Ah, la dolce vita this conference was! I have learned so much about information architecture, user experience and the community. And I could only be sorry that this was my first time at this annual venue.  Eric Reiss has been trying to get me to go ever since we had met back in 2009. Now I completely got it. He knew it. Now I do, too. Thank you, sir!

It amazes me how many talented individuals were present there.  The talks and ideas exchanged were focused exclusively on enriching each other’s practices and make us better at what we do.  The evidence of this is the tens of pages of notes my little red Moleskine has now, Steve Portigal’s book “Interviewing Users” I won in the raffle and he signed for me, the many questions in my head raised by Mags Hanley’s and Giles Colborne workshops on Organizing Content and Simplicity respectively…

I will probably not going to have the opportunity to apply everything I have learned. But even if I get to do ten percent of what the other attendees have shared, I will be a happy man.

“User Experience” and “Information Architecture” are les mots du jour – the buzzwords of today’s reality. Not everyone understands what they mean, and many try to keep them in the digital world only. What struck me the most at EuroIA was when Lutz Schmitt said: “UX is just an educated marketing”.  Write that down!

I could have put some of the observations I have made in my notes, but this would have 1) made it a rather long post, and 2) offered you the opportunity to get everything just like that. Instead, I put some pictures and try gradually in the coming months to share some of the thoughts these wonderful presentations and workshops at EuroIA 2014 arouse in my mind.

Whatever industry you are in or job you are doing at the moment, I urge you to go to events that will allow exchanging ideas and experiencing with people who are just like you. Everyone’s setting is different, and this bears different experiences, problems and solutions. You can only learn from them by sharing with others and learning about theirs.

Oh, and did I mentioned that someone actually proposed from the stage and his loved one said “YES”? Beat that!

Next year Madrid it is…

EuroIA 2014 Photos

Copyright © 2014 Borislav Kiprin. All Rights Reserved.