connecting*the*dots

Conferences often resemble a living, breathing, talking gallery exhibit… with bad food; an expensive, explicit exhibit, which usually fails to inspire me (not as an artist’s juxtaposed take on light and mass might).

That being said, I’d pretty much do anything to make it to the TED conference; the annual gathering of the world’s top philosophers, technologists and intellectuals created by the father of information architecture, Richard Saul Wurman and now run by Chris Anderson.

Well, thanks to Ethan, we can now all sit in on the experience via his live-blogging of this year’s event.

You know, he’s bound to get more than a three minute spot in the future.

My career as an IA started with a lecture from Moses himself.

Richard Saul Wurman came to the Fashion Institute of Technology in 1998 to give a presentation on the past, present and future of information architecture. After the lecture, me and my newly acquainted crew from Organic-NY headed back to the office with a passionate drive to better our work in the interactive space.

I mention this because I find it extremely interesting to see Wurman’s vision of IA evolving before our very eyes. Yes, Wurman did proclaim that (paraphrasing):

"A new breed of workers called information architects would take on the challenge of handling the tsunami of information crashing upon our shores."

But Wurman himself was, and still is, much more than what our community has tried so desperately to establish over the past few years as the definition of ‘information architect’ proper (i.e. one who improves search/findability, through labeling, categorization, thesauri development; a librarian extraordinaire).

Wurman envisioned information architecture as a design solution in the information age; an intrinsic quality of the design process itself. Sure, that can be translated into the library science model of IA that we accept now, but is that definition due to the evolution of the work or to the ‘leadership’ of our community?

It’s not an easy question to answer, but a valid one to ask none the less.

So what will be the agenda of AIfIA moving forward concerning the role/responsibilities of IA’s in the workplace? How will IA be positioned regarding return on investment? Where will the line be drawn in reference to IA’s estranged cousins (UX and the ID’s)? Should there really be one professional stance as IA/ID graduate programs come to fruition?

If Wurman really is the father of IA, as Christina suggested by quoting him, let’s respect his vision (pre-internet/hyperlink), build upon our evolution and seriously think about the future of our profession. I do hope AIfIA provides an open and collaborative think tank and doesn’t turn into Derek’s worst nightmare.