I.A. Slam 2005

We had another great Slam this year, with about 45 participants and one winning team. Congratulations to Team Orange (names do not correspond to the photo, sorry!): Matthew Milan, Matt Leacock, Chris Farnum (not pictured), Mike Lee, Jess McMullin, Tony Byrne, Prentiss Riddle, and Sacha Jerabek for their winning entry, "It's OK to Indulge!"

IASlam2005winners.jpg

Thanks to Mike Lee for the amazing photos. Erin Malone also posted some wonderful photos of the IA Slam to the flickr photo blog.

This year we asked the teams to provide an information architecture to facilitate a merger situation: the big box value-conscious retailer Bal*mart had purchased the legendary service-oriented apparel retailer Fordstrom, and was looking to leverage their existing supplier agreements and customer loyalty to monetize the seamless integration of customer experience and merchandise value across multiple channels. (Is that enough bizspeak for you, Dave?)

I'd like to join the other members of the IA Slam production team (Eric Reiss, Matthew Fetchko, and Chris Chandler) in thanking all of you who participated this year. What we get out of the IA Slam is directly related to what you get out of it, and we're grateful that your energy and enthusiasm continue to inspire us to greater heights (or depths?)

We've already begun considering ideas for next year's proposal, and we'd welcome any feedback you'd like to send us. You can post it here, for everyone's viewing and response, or you can send it directly to us at lynnboyden (at) gmail.com. We can't guarantee we'll incorporate your suggestions, but we'll certainly read them, and almost certainly argue about them.

Thanks to everyone, and congratulations again to Team Orange!

Posted by lynn.boyden at March 8, 2005 08:01 PM

Comments

From: Matthew at March 8, 2005 09:15 PM

I'd also like to thank everyone who played, and everyone who took the time to give us feedback and thoughts. As part of the "behind-the-scenes" magic (sorry Chris!) we do prep work to gather facts, info, misinformation, design the pins. etc. So, please, any and all comments will help refine the Slam even more. However, the design people have been alerted to the "IA Slam" vs. "Islam" confusion, so next year's design will take that into account. Also, would winners get more use out of a tiara instead of the medal? Or is that much bling just a bit much for everyday wear?

From: Mike Lee at March 9, 2005 06:41 AM

The slam was great fun for me too. With active contributions from a great team, everything came together in the last few minutes of our alotted time. Then Tony Byrne and Matt Milan did a very smooth standup presentation which tied all the chunks of concept togethe.

I just heaved a bunch of summit images up as a web gallery to http://www.visuallee.com/photos/ia_summit_2005_web/index.htm. I'll get more sociable and post some of these to my flickr gallery http://www.flickr.com/photos/curiouslee/ to share with the summit pool in the next couple days.

If you need to use any of the photos for a newsletter or presentation, feel free, but a link would be nice.

From: Matthew Milan at March 10, 2005 05:11 AM

I'll echo what Mike has said - it was a great time, and we really had a lot of fun doing this.

Props to everyone, including Jess McMullin who helped us get going on the right track.

Thanks for posting the pics, Mike. In rushing out the door to catch the train, I forgot to grab my camera. It seems I can only manage to keep four things in my head at a time! ;]

From: Prentiss Riddle at March 11, 2005 04:45 AM

What fun! I snagged a shot of the Team Orange posters, which you can see here.