Blogging IDEA 2006
I'm breaking just about every rule about sucessful blogging today, as I'm (1) blogging from a conference, which may be of limited interest to others and (2) posting directly to my site, without concern for spelling or grammatical errors. Apologies to the blog gods.
ANYWAY, I'm at the Seattle Public Library (free wifi, whoohoo!), attending IDEA 2006. Peter Merholz (of Adaptive Path) is the conference organizer and has arranged an interesting collection of folks tasked with structuring large information spaces working in a variety of contexts (museums, libraries, etc.).
I can't believe that I've lived and worked in Seattle for eight-ish years, and I'm at a conference in a field I've worked in since 1997, and I don't know anyone here! How is this possible?
This the first IDEA conference, so I'm curious to see how it goes. I like that the focus of the conference is not just Web-based. It's like people are finally getting the sense that IA can be applied to multiple contexts and that the advent of ubitquitous/ebedded computing requires consideration on an IA level.
Wikipedia entry suggests that "IA" is simply a synonym for "taxonomies" of Web site. Merholz suggests that IA has been constricted by the LIS folks. He mentions RSW's Information Architects book - and argues that there should be "broader application" to real-world information spaces. RSW did a lot to pioneer navigational IA like the Access guides.
One definition of IA: "Organization, categorization, and navigation (maybe that should be wayfinding)" - David Fiorito.
Another inspiration is the IA Institute's rewrite of its business plan, including virtual, physical, and procedural IA.
The library's IA doesn't always succeed "but where it fails, it fails interestingly." I can't believe that Peter just suggested that book spiral is great. Having actually used it, I found it incredibly frustrating and irritating.
Haha... Peter just had to explain where the restrooms are, because everybody has been having difficulty finding them.
Conference resources:
Wiki
Blog
Flickr set