You might also check out Jared Spool’s UIE Summits, but perhaps there’s not enough emphasis on search there to make it worth your while. Plus it’s a bit pricier than the academic conferences.

I want to learn from skilled search information architects and interaction designers, without all the distracting sales speak noise.

Perhaps you can show me the way, Daniel?

I had some work that I thought was relevant to Defrag, and I was considering contacting Elizabeth Churchill about it.

But then I was listening to a couple of podcasts about Defrag, on IT Conversations, and the conference seemed to be more about coding/hacking/building, than about academic-type discussions.

What is the nature of your “academic” type content goals, for 2009?

I’m also intrigued at the emphasis they place on how “no speakers are paid”. No speakers are paid at academic conferences either (including the SIGIR ’09 Industry Track), but I suppose that at least some speakers are paid at industry conferences–and certainly at vendor user groups like FASTForward and Discover.

As an attendee, I’m far more interested in the assurance that speakers aren’t paying in order to have an opportunity to market their wares–or at least that it’s clear when that is the case, so that I can prepare for a sales pitch.

http://www.searchcampphilly.com/

but the focus is not anything near academic:

We’re launching the first ever, SearchCamp here in Philadelphia September 6th and 7th, 2008. Talk about an exciting time to be in the Delaware Valley and to be in online marketing!

Podcamp / SearchCamp Event GuideSince this is our first foray into a “somewhat unconference” conference (the IM-DV group came together to plan the agenda, but there’s open slots to do your own thing if you like), we’ve teamed up with PodCamp Philly to present a weekend of great information by great speakers with a whole bunch of fun. If you don’t walk away with some new ideas, and great things to implement, we’ll be thinking you might have been sleeping through the sessions.