Alex around the World

At last, I will be attending a major web development event. I’m going to spend a week at the User Experience 2006 Conference organized by the Nielsen Norman Group (5 - 11 November, London, UK). Out of the 29 full-day tutorials available, I took 4 of them:

• Getting from User Data to Design. Speakers: Tamara Adlin, Adlin, Inc. & John Pruitt, Microsoft
• Content Usability 1. Speaker: John Morkes, Expero Inc.
• Content Usability 2. Speaker: John Morkes, Expero Inc.
• Making Search Work. Speaker: Martin White, Intranet Focus

I don’t really know what to expect from this training, but from what I’ve seen on web experts’ blogs, it’s a very useful experience, not only because you learn a lot from people who know their subject, but also because you can become part of a network of people who have the same questions, fears and ideas about the web.

I’m going there with 4 of my colleagues, with different backgrounds and experience in web development and web content management. We’re not attending the same sessions, but the idea was to share what we would learn in each of our sessions and start to create a real community of web experts within our organization.

International organizations such as the UN are not known to be very reactive at changes about the web, but I guess it’s partly because people who give directions, plan a web presence strategy or make key decisions don’t really know what to expect from these changes and how they can/will affect the organization. As web designers, content managers, information architects, etc., it’s our role to help educate these people, and I’m sure participating in these conferences and sharing this new knowledge with our colleagues is the first step of this education process.

Has anyone participated in previous editions of the User Experience Conference? What’s the reputation of the speakers? Let me know.