I am no longer an IAI Board member...

On December 17, 2008, I wrote a message to the IA Institute Board of Directors saying I wanted to resign from my position as Director for Local Groups.

The official IAI announcement will say "Because of personal and professional reasons, our fellow board member Peter Boersma has decided to resign his position on the IAI board." Here's some explanation around that phrase:

Recently I have found that my work life, family life and hobbies (which include organizing and speaking at professional events in our industry, but that is my problem ;-)) are (again) taking too much time and energy. I need to do less stuff...

One of the things I decided I needed to do less is worry about the IAI in a dedicated manner. For the last couple of years I have done that (worry and dedicate time) but, although I will always have a personal opinion on how the Institute is doing and what could be done better, recently I have found that I don't get enough energy out of it to continue. Combined with new responsibilities at work (the process freak in me is thrilled to be allowed to document Info.nl's design process!) and at home (I'm "sort of"(*) getting married to my girlfriend!), this has made me decide to stop worrying and resign.

I will definitely miss elements from the weekly conference calls with the Board and staff, late on Wednesday evenings; the first couple of minutes, where we exchange how we're doing personally, were usually hilarious (hi Russ! hi Andrew!) and the proud feelings I got when discussing the state of the field with fellow practitioners were wonderful! But I will also enjoy the extra hours, looking at wedding rings (?) and honeymoon locations (?) in the first half of the year, and watching the kids sleep (?) and going to bed early (and dream?) later this year. Those things give me energy.

Already I feel better now, thank you :-) And the IAI Board is taking measures to make sure Local IA Groups are on somebody's mind. I will also continue worrying about at least one local group; the Amsterdam UX Cocktail Hour series will continue in 2009. And I plan to continue being an internationally active IA...
But no longer as a member of the IAI Board.

There you have it. For questions about any of this this, email me.

(*) "sort of"? Yes, it's a long story but we are picking the things we enjoy from getting married without actually getting married. We will celebrate our love with friends later this year.