Noise Between Stations

I’m so glad Christina wrote what I was thinking: “dudes, can we collectively move on now? …read businessweek instead of alertbox for a change.“

Since the 1703 Treaty of Methuen giving mutual trade advantages to Portuguese wines and English woolens, countries have recognized their own expertise and costs and opted to trade rather than compete in particular markets. So regardless of what our re-elected president tells us, the facts of economic life in the modern world will not change: [...]

The Future of Information Architecture retreat was simply amazing, one of the top three professional events I’ve ever attended. Wonderful people, setting, format, discussion… everything. There’s already plans for more.

Lou Rosenfeld requests your participation in a short survey to “detect past and future trends regarding where information architects work, and how much of their work is dedicated to IA.” I’m going to guess that after the crash when a lot of consultants went in-house they have yet to go back to consulting, considering myself [...]

I’ll be on a NYC CHI panel this Thursday about The State of Information Architecture in NYC. Co-panelists are my friend Elliott Trice from Avenue A/Razorfish and Organic’s IA leader, Laurence Lipkin.

My man Anders started a NYC IA Meetup, first meeting tomorrow night.

Michael lays out the advice very nicely.

The AIfIA Education Initiative is surveying IA practitioners to get a better picture of our skills and what skills we think today’s students will need. We will use this information to help form a recommended educational curriculum. The survey only takes a few minutes to complete; help out if you have a chance. The survey [...]

Brett proposes the idea of worker-to-worker offshoring: Just imagine: you get assigned to do two days of … competitive site audits for a pitch. Ugh. Why not sub-shore the work, W2W-style and take the day[s] off? It costs $15-20/hour… I think PeterV has done this before, offshoring some personal programming work to a PHP programmer [...]

A friend at Deloitte Consulting needs and IA for wireframe development for 1-2 weeks in NYC. The start date is next week (6/2) or as soon as possible. Send me an email (link in the nav) if you’re interested.

If, years in the future, information architects are successful, machines will make it very easy to find things. All the rules will be established, most challenges will be conquered. All that will remain for us to address is serendipity, arranging things to encourage chance and new connections only the reader’s imagination can form.

With the 2003 IA Summit only weeks away, I’m remembering Peterme’s Future of Information Architecture piece penned following the 2001 Summit. Looking back on his ideas is fascinating to compare them to where we are now. (I hasten to add that I’m not embarking on some hair-brained analysis of the accuracy of these predictions. Since [...]

…seems to be text organization, and so every problem looks like a challenge to get the right text in front of people. It may ultimately limit us if we don’t also consider the impact of social interaction, communication, etc.

Frank Lloyd Wright spent three months ‘doing nothing’ (I would imagine he was thinking) before sketching for three hours to produce the drawings for Falling Water. He could imagine the entire structure, and subsequently furnish the details. With each work he was allowed to experiment and push the boundaries. And clients came to him for [...]

Lou Rosenfeld posted his recent presentation to the AIGA Experience Design conference, titled Getting Established: ED for the Enterprise (Powerpoint). He writes, setting our expectations of results, ‘Timing: 3-6 years, not months…Remember: You’re turning an aircraft carrier with your foot as the rudder.‘ Yes Yes Yes. This is half my job, sticking my feet in [...]