So there has been some kind of intense past argument regarding the IDSA website - I’m not interested in that. I did just take a look at it and it seems better than it was the last time I went there. I quit going in the past because I found it not to meet my needs. I’ll give it another chance. Re the PDMA website, I agree they have a totally cruddy logo. Local chapters’ sites vary in quality and content.
My dig mostly has to do with IDSA being a bunch of designers and who else? Philosophically, I look at what we do as product development, of which traditional ID is but a part of. Sometimes I do that, and sometimes I help craft value props. Maybe not the traditional view of ID, maybe it isn’t even ID. I don’t know. It’s good to talk to other designers but I like PDMA because it is a broader organization for anyone involved in product development (designers, project managers, marketers, engineers, UXers, etc), so a lot more points of view are represented. The meetings usually cover interesting topics, with Q&A from all of the above, so you get a great feel for what’s on peoples’ minds in the PD world as a whole. But that’s just one organization. Surely there are others.
I’m seriously interested in the non-IDSA non designer-specific organizations people find valuable for professional development. It just kills me that every topic in this section deal with IDSA as if that is the only organization that’s useful to any of us.
So again, what OTHER organizations do y’all find useful and why?