IA in Spain

After describing the IA scene in Belgium, in this post I will describe the IA scene in Spain. Again, please correct me where I go wrong. Unfortunately I didn't take any pictures (couldn't find my camera) when I was there. If you have any pictures, send them over, I'll add them to this post. IA in Europe (and Germany) in general isn't doing that well. People are frustrated with clients who don't know what IA is, and there doesn't seem to be much innovation. Imagine my surprise when I visited Spain and found a small but thriving IA community! I gave a workshop in Barcelona first, organized by Raquel Navarro who works at the department of technology of the Pompeu Fabra university. Attendance was good, there was a variety of people (Spain's largest bank sent 8 attendees), and the workshop went pretty well. Workshops in Spain are fun, by the way, people are not afraid to speak up and ask questions. I also had the pleasure of meeting Ricardo Baeza (Javier Velasco worked with him in Chile) - an expert in information retrieval. Unfortunately I had to run because I was visiting friends that night and the next day I had to be in Madrid. Afterwards Toni Granollers i Saltiveri gave me a ride (and Jesus Lores Vidal), and explained me the UX work (in the GRIHO) they're doing in the university of LLeida. For example, they are experimenting with online cardsorting and building a new tool to make that easier. They are also doing remote classes (online teaching) and seem to have a great deal of experience with this. Then I went to Madrid for an informal talk (a "Cadius lab") organized by Cadius, the Spanish speaking UX mailing list/community. I gave my talk which was mercifully brief, we went to the bars and a good time was had by all. By the way, if you are ever invited to give a Cadius lab, go. They're great hosts. The talk was in La Biblioteca de las Indias Electronicas (Libary of the electronic indians - the BIE), a non-profit small library space focused on Internet research. It has a big iron spider on the ceiling, some sci-fi, a bunch of UX and political books and hand dolls. It felt like home. They do a lot of events there. Here are some of the people I met: Nacho Puell just came back from a trip to Japan, and has one of the oldest weblogs in Spain (since 2000). It's about usability, information visualization and such. Javier Cañada has a weblog too, and Nacho described him as "our most famous person outside Spain", partly for his representation of the UX cosmos (PDF). He and Nacho together are the founders of Cadius. Isa (isabel ines casasnovas) is, within Cadius, the person that organize the Labs (thanks Isa!!) and works at the UX team of Idealista.com. Juan "3 verdades" Leal (works with Isa) explained to me the three truths about men. Ask him. He has an interesting blog, and also runs seisdeagosto.com, where he translates interesting articles originally written in English or Spanish to Portuguese. Isa says about him: "Somehow, he is the "link" between Spain and Portugal in UX matters". Juan "Taliban" Fuertes was doing research on mobile phones so had dozens of them (or so it seemed) with him that night. David de Prado works at the DNXGroup as well. David de Ugarte is one of the world's experts on social networking analysis (you can even follow a course on social network analysis in Madrid!). They're doing social network analysis with a political/enthographic bent - fascinating stuff. He writes a lot at ciberpunk.net Too bad we didn't have more time to talk. He gave me his book ("networks to win a war") - thanks! I really hope it gets translated into English. Apologies to all the other people I met whose names I didn't remember. If you send me an email I'll add you to this list. And here's an (undoubtedly incomplete) list of UX companies in Spain.

• DNX (Nacho Puell works here), founded by Humberto Matas: a user research consulting company who are doing very interesting research work and have a pretty impressive international client list. An extremely talented bunch was my first impression. A tip: if you go to interview with them, no need to shave if you don't want to ;)
• The Cocktail is DNX's big competitor in Spain. Both companies fight for the same clients, but there seems to be a great deal of respect between them. Javier Cañada works here. Another really talented bunch of people.

I was pretty impressed with the Spanish UX scene. Not only are they active, they are innovative. They are coming up with their own ideas and their own research. I see a great future there, especially because they have a common language with (most of) the isolated talent in Latin America, which means they should be able to really innovate outside of the box the traditional/US IA's seem to be stuck in. Keep an eye out for them. More pictures. More comments (in Spanish) (I am now known as "el gran xfml father"). More blog posts about the talk. More pictures from Madrid:

# May 3, 2005

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