One thought on “Partnerships”

1. I do not want to dig up too much history, but has the “strategic partnership” with IIBA (Business Analysts) from 2007 to whenever been studied? What worked and what did not?

   In case no one even remembers this, here are a few tidbits I can find about it:

   http://www.usabilityprofessionals.org/upa_publications/upa_monthly/2007/november/index.html
   Catalyze is an online community for user experience professionals, business analysts and others who define and evaluate business systems, design software applications, or create websites. The UPA is a founding sponsor of Catalyze, as is the International Institute of Business Analysis (IIBA). Catalyze features discussion forums, blogs, an events calendar and other resources that make it a powerful resource for UX professionals who want to share and learn from one another.

   http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://mycatalyze.org
   Web Archive of My Catalyze, the site that was the main asset from the partnership. I see at least once snapshot from 2007 that had some pages indexed.

   http://www.modernanalyst.com/Community/Catalyze/tabid/255/Default.aspx
   At some point, Catalyze was merged with another BA community.

   http://tynerblain.com/blog/2007/06/18/catalyze/
   A blog entry from 2007 that has an extract from the site FAQ and a list of the features.

   For me, personally, I remember joining and trying to do some things there, but it had major usability problems and technical limitations (I recall it was impossible to link directly to certain pages). I did a webinar about UXnet there, which was fun. I recall that only BA-type people showed up and the 1 question I recall being asked was “How does what you do Keith relate to Voice of the Customer?”. That was the first time I had heard of VOC, so it was useful for me. But the feeling I got was that the whole effort was a way to bet BAs more involved in usability, not a way for usability folks to learn a lot. I joined IIBA for a year to see what it was about, and did not find enough value to continue.

   But, in net, perhaps we can learn something from this. I am not a UPA insider, so I do not know what else qualifies as a past “strategic partnership”, but this was probably 1 of them. Perhaps it is time to talk with IIBA again? Perhaps it is good to remember a few “what not to do’s” from this one?

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