It looks like IxDA Lansing is in trouble. Their web presence was diffuse, so it’s hard to track down the authoritative place for information, but it looks like their page on the IxDA website hasn’t been updated in a long time, their own domain name has expired, their Twitter account is highly inactive, and their Meetup group no longer has an organizer.
This is a shame, because even when Michigan’s state-wide UX organizations were a lot more active, they never served Lansing (and Grand Rapids) as well as Metro Detroit and the Ypsilanti area. It’s good to have a way for local professionals to meet up on a regular basis, although the downside of a proliferation of groups is that the few people that will volunteer time get spread more and more thinly (like butter over too much bread).
I can see (what looks like) IxDA Lansing shutting down as part of a pretty broad trend away from organized professional groups in our field. We have a lot of alternatives for professional development, and a lot of ways to stay in touch with other people in the field. And asking people to do stuff after work, in their free time, to further their career is a hard thing to ask (and kind of exploitative, but that’s just the nature of the system we live in).
(Also, the decline of professional organizations ties into a question that interests me greatly: What is a profession, and are we one?)
IxDA Lansing, it was good to have you around.