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The future of information architecture

In my not so resent comment on the Euro IA Summit comment, I prommised to return with an other comment on Eric Reiss’ presentation, “Seven Trends In IA”, which I think was one of the better presentations at the summit in Berlin.

The seven trends were, as Eric sees it are:

• Websites no longer live in business isolation
• Websites are becoming more focused
• Websites are now truly multimedia
• A) Sitemaps are dying… as traditional deliverable
• B) Sitemaps are alive and well… as supplementary navigation
• Customization is dead/personalization lives
• Site search is maturing… slowly
• IA is not always part of the job title

It struck me that the trends are mostly about how the field of IA is developing, and not so much about tactical tendencies. Sure, some of his thoughts are about applied IA. E.g. how sites are becoming more focused, more multimedia, and sitemap navigation. But with all respect, I find that it’s trivial observations, compared to the more interesting observations Eric has on the development of the trade. This is proven by the fact, that what generated debate and discussions was his statement about IA as a job title, and the information architect’s role in the high level or strategic part of the development process.

As I recall it, Eric described the IA as sort of en encyclopaedist. Some of us, like me, are doing high level strategic consulting, focusing on e.g. user and business needs, and the consequences these have for the final solution. Others may do more tactical IA, be it with a focus on interaction design, information handling within a system, etc. I completely agree. (Though my representation here are simplified). Now, Eric predicted, as a trend, that strategic, high-level IA is being “taken over” by other people, who do not have a background in IA. Also, some of the other trends hinted at, that strategic IA is becoming a still more important part of the IA’s job, and that we should strengthen our skills in this area. But also, that we should exert our influence so that we are not being run down by the non-IA strategic consultants, or forget where we came from. Here I have to disagree. Nowadays the development of digital information environments, be it various kinds of websites, intranets, or other information systems that IAs may be working on, are so complex, that we have to find a way to work with people with different backgrounds. The days where the IA, as an omnipotent spider in the web, could optimize her or his skills to understand the complex business and consumerism marketplace of the 21^st century, the complex technologies handling information in still more complex IT architectures, as well as have at least a superficial understanding of “little IA” is gone. Like we have learned (hopefully) to accept, that we have colleagues who know web design better than we do, we should learn to accept, that there are people who understand change management, business, enterprise, and strategic management, as well as IT architecture better than we will ever be able to do.

The trend, as I see it, is that the development of digital information environments will become more complex. And that we will have to learn to let go of the role as the mastermind, and find a new and more collaborative role.

EuroIA 2006 Berlin revisited

I finally find the time to share my view on the EuroIA Summit 2006 which was held in Berlin a few weeks ago.

This was the second summit EuroIA summit for me, and like the first one, I think it was a great success. 

There are different reasons for going to a conference. Some will go to learn and get inspired by the speakers, some will go to get input and a kick from meeting other IA’s or folks working with information, and yet others will go for the networking. I went mostly for the networking, meet new people from other countries, and perhaps get a new angle on my work as consultant. To be frank, I hadn’t checked the programme before I registered.

And I did get what I came for. I did meet a lot of nice and clever folks. People I hadn’t met before from Italy, Germany, Ireland, and Poland, and I got to met people from the UK, Norway, Belgium, whom I spoke with last year. I could ask questions, which I can use directly in ongoing projects, and discuss topics I’ve had on my mind lately. A great opportunity, not available elsewhere.

Regarding the programme; well, as I said, that wasn’t all that important to me. Fortunately I must say. I think there was room for improvement for a number of the presenters. Let me say, that there have been complaints about the form of the Summit (more on that in a future posting). I think the Summit was great in that respect. But some of the speakers were not very well prepared, considering they have had quite a lot of time, and that a presentation at such a summit is not just an average presentation. To mention a few:

Olly Wright was to talk about the connection between IA and strategy. Very interesting from my point of view. I’d expect him to talk about just that, but with an outset in the field of IA. Rather he gave us a quick introduction to the business consultant’s tool box. Without going into detail or offering any usable hands-on advise. I was like a turbo skimming of any introduction book to the trade of consulting. But the connection to the field of IA lacked. I can understand why. When you get deep into business consulting, you loose the connection to “traditional” IA. I know I have, to some extent. Perhaps that’s Olly’s problem.

Later that day there was a presentation by Almar van der Krogt on “Virreal Architecture”. I will not even comment on that presentation. I have the greatest respect for the committee, who have picked out the presenters. But what ever happened when they let him on the podium?! I think it’s great with a strange, novel, and new angle on things. Stewart Brand offered that when he was key note speaker at the US IA summit in 2003. But you got to have some calibre, novel ideas, and keep that helicopter view to offer just that. van der Krogt had none of that. A petty, as his ideas may be interesting.

The next day there was a special kind of presentation; “Wicked Workshop”, hosted by Jason Mesut and Warren Hutchinson. They wanted to discuss how we, as consultants, can use workshops engage the clients. However the choose to illustrate this by turning the room, with 120+ listeners into several workshops. And that just didn’t work. A key premise for success for any workshop is, that the participants know, that they contribute to some sort of relevant project, which was not the case here. I guess that was one of the reasons, that people was only semi-engaged. Therefore the message didn’t come across; they picked a format not suitable for the audience.

But – several of the presentations were excellent. I think Jared Folkmann’s talk on “Customer Experience Framework” was brilliant. Also Andrea Resmini, Emanuele Quintarelli, Luca Rosati’s presentation on social tagging was very interesting (in spite of some obvious “challenges” regarding presentation and language skills). And as always, Eric Reiss had some great input on the trends in IA. I’ll comment on that in a future post.

I’ll wrap up before I run out of power on my brand new Toshiba Tecra M5 laptop. Summing up: EuroIA 2006 was a great success. I've dwelled a bit on the not-so-good presentations, but I'll get back with details on the great stuff too.

I think those of us who didbother to mingle had the best EuroIA Summit. I was a bit disappointed with some of my friends from Denmark, who would sit for themselves most of the time. Come on folks! We meet once a month. Get out - live a little.