Dear IxDA community & those who care about us, Firstly, THANK YOU again to all the IxDA supporters from around the globe who contributed financially during our recent fundraising drive. IxDA garnered $15,813, over half-way towards our ambitious goal of $30,000 to support the IxDA.org website redesign project (code-named Conan).
Some folks have been wondering if the Conan project will be able to continue despite not reaching our fundraising goal. I'm happy to announce that the project is very much a GO! The fundraiser was not the determining factor for this project. We started out with conference funds underwriting the effort. The money raised makes a significant difference to the impact that Conan has on our upcoming conferences fund and especially our ability to remain safely solvent during these four months before the Interaction'10 conference registration opens. (See http://interaction.ixda.org for info on that front.) Every dollar raised during the drive counts enormously; the funds have provided more surety around both the Conan project and the Interaction'10 conference, where previously one or the other may have been put at risk. Principally, the fundraiser provided IxDA with the flexibility to choose the very best vendor for the Conan project. And to that end, we are enormously pleased to announce that we have selected Palantir (http://www.palantir.net/) as our development partner for this project. Palantir is a highly-respected development firm filled with Drupal rockstars, people who authored & maintain core Drupal modules, have written books about Drupal, and worked so that Drupal can improve its overall user experience. Palantir is extremely supportive of IxDA, and provided us with a non-profit rate as well as opportunities to collaborate on theming in order to provide us with a competitive proposal that met all of our requirements. We are thrilled to move forward with extreme confidence that our new website technology will be built by some of the most capable Drupal developers on the planet Earth. Again, in addition to elevating our online discussion capabilities in various ways, our new website will: * Provide a dedicated Careers area, including resources for hiring managers * Create local group mini-sites with local leaders announcements, local discussions and job postings as well as local member directory * Present a calendar of IxDA events with RSVP tools * Provide searchable global member directory * Allow members to display desired personal information in their profiles, affiliating yourself with Local Groups and including external feeds * Integrate conference access from main site * Create space for mentoring program and educational resources * Provide better visibility for all of IxDA's important initiatives * Enhance the media library to better serve content from Interaction conferences and local group events * Refresh content for Home page & About Us sections to provide clearer paths to participate In the coming week or so, please look for an announcement to participate in reviewing the conceptual designs being created for Conan by the all-volunteer IxDA team. We will be seeking community input and hopefully validation of our visual design & interaction design proposals before we fully engage with Palantir. In two-three months after development kicks off, we'll also be seeking your inputs to vett the alpha or beta version of the new site. IxDA is nothing without its members, and I thank you again for your support and contributions to date. Onwards & upwards! Cheers, Liz IxDA Vice-President ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... disc...@ixda.org Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
