Information Architecture Leadership Seminar

Afterword: This seminar was a real success, generating great discussion and sparking quite a bit of networking. Thanks to everyone who participated! Please see below (Additional Resources) for the presentations and related documents.

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Sponsored by the Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture (http://www.aifia.org)

March 21, 2003 in Portland, Oregon
at the ASIS&T IA Summit.

This advanced, full-day seminar is designed for information architecture and user experience leaders who wish to engage the most important and intractable problems faced by the architects of today’s information systems. Proceeds from the seminar will go to support AIfIA.

Since the format is highly interactive, involving group discussions and break-out sessions, attendance is limited to a maximum of 50 participants.

Four seminar leaders will focus, motivate and organize the group’s activities around pressing topics. Scribes will be on hand to capture notes. The seminar will result in one or more published articles.

The seminar will begin at 9 am on Friday morning and will conclude by 5 pm.

Speakers & Topics

Peter Morville. "Strategy, Architecture and Tomorrow’s Web."
We can’t predict the future, but we shouldn’t ignore it either. Information architecture practice is being buffeted and transformed by shifts in technology and the marketplace. By analyzing trends and exploring possible futures, we can make better decisions today.
Features: scenario planning exercise (inspired by Global Business Network).

Victor Lombardi. "The (Unfulfilled) Promise of Content Management Systems."
What are the promises of CMS software and why haven’t they been kept? Victor explores how we can integrate software, metadata and content to enable smarter publishing. Bring your own CMS challenges for the group to work through interactively.
Features: CMS war stories, semantic publishing technology, and a publishing process framework.

Rashmi Sinha. "Building Bridges Between Practice and Research."
Designing effective information architecture requires an understanding of user needs and mental models. Drawing from research in cognitive psychology and information science, Rashmi will discuss how to understand the user better and how to use this information to create better metadata schemes, search/browse interfaces and recommender systems.
Features: advanced card sorting, creating personas (hands-on).

Louis Rosenfeld & Karen McGrane. "Selling Information Architecture."
How can you convincingly communicate the value of information architecture to the right people at the right time? What flies and what flops? Lou and Karen challenge us to consider new models of selling IA within and beyond our organizations.
Includes: role-playing exercise, special panel (sales successes and failures)

About the Speakers, Panelists and Facilitators

Vivian Bliss (email)
Vivian is a knowledge management expert within the Natural User Interface (NUI) group at Microsoft.

Chris Farnum (email)
Chris is an information architect at ProQuest. Previously, he practiced information architecture at Compuware and Argus Associates.

Jesse James Garrett (email)
Jesse is a co-founder of Adaptive Path and author of The Elements of User Experience.

Andrew Hinton (email)
Andrew is principal information architect at Symetri and maintains a weblog at memekitchen.com.

Victor Lombardi ()
Victor is an experience lead and information architect at Razorfish, and teaches information architecture at the Parsons School of Design.

Erin Malone (email)
Erin is a product design director at AOL's Web Properties division and an editor for Boxes and Arrows.

Karen McGrane (email)
As director of information architecture at Razorfish, Karen has led the development of the information architecture, usability, and experience design disciplines for more than five years.

Jess McMullin (email)
Jess is the founder and principal analyst for Cognissa, a usability and user experience consultancy.

Peter Morville (email)
Peter is president of Semantic Studios and co-author of the best-selling book, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web (O'Reilly, 2002).

Louis Rosenfeld (email)
Lou was co-founder and president of Argus Associates, and co-authored the polar bear book. Lou is an independent information architecture consultant and currently blogs at www.louisrosenfeld.com.

Rashmi Sinha (email)
Rashmi designs, evaluates, and studies user interfaces for a living. Her background is in cognitive psychology. Currently she works as an independent consultant. Her website is at www.rashmisinha.com.

Kirsten Swearingen (email)
Kirsten is a researcher at UC Berkeley's School of Information Management & Systems, focusing on design and evaluation of user interfaces for information-rich websites. See her home page for more.

John Zapolski (email)
John is vice president of customer experience research at Wells Fargo and serves on AIfIA's board of directors.

Registration & Logistics

This full-day seminar will be held on March 21, 2003 in Portland, Oregon as an integral component of the Information Architecture Summit. Registration is available through the ASIS&T IA Summit web site.

About AIfIA

The Asilomar Institute for Information Architecture ("AIfIA") is a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing our collective understanding of how to design and build better information systems and knowledge networks.

Additional Resources

We will be conducting surveys in advance of the seminar and publishing articles afterwards. We'll provide links to these materials as they become available.