Interaction 13 Call for Participation
Interaction 13’s call for participation went out yesterday. Like last year, they are accepting 10 and 45 minute talks, as well as half and full-day workshops. Of course, one constant for the Interaction conferences has been the ever-changing format, and there are some new offerings this year. Posters are a staple at many conferences, but this is the first year they will be exhibited at Interaction. There will also be Pecha Kucha sessions—those 20-slide, 20-seconds-per-slide presentations—and a unique concept called the Idea Market.
The Idea Market is a space for enabling the social exchange of ideas, crowdsourced from the design community. It’s an active environment where your “ideas” can be brought to a vibrant and diverse market. Participants will bring prototypes or visualizations of their product or service design idea and “setup shop” in the Idea Market. Conference presenters and attendees can engage in pitched ideas, prototypes, pilot or beta projects and receive constructive critique and input to help shape your projects outcome over 3 days of open and participatory design.
With this wide range of options, there is a lot of room for new speakers, which has been a difficult balancing act for conference organizers in the past. The conference receives hundreds of submissions each year, from world renowned practitioners right down to students, and only a fraction of them will fit into the program. How do you provide a stage for up-and-coming designers while also seeding your program with known speakers that will both draw attendees and maintain the high-quality identity that the conference as built? Of course, this is also one of the reasons that the submission once again requires a video. I was thinking ahead this year and recorded my presentation to my local group, which was fortunate, since Midwest UX was not able to record sessions.
You have until September 1st to submit. I’ll be hard pressed to get together a workshop submission by then, as I have a busy schedule next month, but I’m going to try. Please give me feedback on the topics I’m considering.
