New York, United States

World Information Architecture Day NYC, Sponsored by Bloomberg 

Thanks to everyone who made World IA Day in NYC and engaging and thoughtful experience. We were happy to see so many turn out despite the weather. If you were not able to attend, please look for links to speaker slides and Amanda Lyons’ sketchnotes below in the Schedule section.

World IA Day 2013 brings an international community of academics, practitioners, technologists and business leaders together for a global conversation about “the architecture part” of information architecture.

In New York City on February 9, 2013 you can learn from world-class IA minds, network with your peers, showcase new ideas and attend events tailored specifically to your community. Expect a full day of talks, panels, town hall activities and other networking opportunities. This event is free, although we do hope you’ll consider paying for a membership to the Information Architecture Institute because you love IA so much.This event is being sponsored by Bloomberg. If you’ve never experienced Bloomberg’s hospitality before, now’s your chance. Their generous support makes this event possible.

(Video is not available for this event. Links to presentation slides and additional features provided by the speakers are available in line with each talk in the agenda below).

WHEN

Saturday February 9th, 2013
9:30 am – 6:00 pm

WHERE

Bloomberg LP
731 Lexington Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Map

SCHEDULE

Amanda Lyons provided Sketchnotes. View Amanda’s sketchnotes and audience tweets at Storify. Full sketch notes are available at Amanda’s Visuals for Change blog.

09:00 – 9:45 Security Check-in & Continental Breakfast provided by Bloomberg

9:45 – 10:00 Welcome & Announcements

10:00 – 10:30 Where Did “The Architecture Part” of IA Come From? (Dan Klyn - The Understanding Group)

See Dan’s Presentation on Slideshare

10:30 – 11:00 IA for the Web: Original Intent (Lou Rosenfeld - Rosenfeld Media)

11:00 – 11:30 Putting the Architecture Back Into Information Architecture (Christina Wodtke - Boxes and Arrows)

See Christina’s Presentation on Slideshare

11:30 – 12:00   Panel Discussion with Dan Klyn, Lou Rosenfeld and Christina Wodtke

12:00 – 01:00 Topic Tables & Lunch provided by Bloomberg

01:00 – 02:30 The State of IA Education: A Town Hall (Moderators and Sketch-noters TBA)

02:30 – 02:45 Coffee Break

02:45 – 03:30 How Data Becomes Information (Rick Smolan - Author of ‘The Human Face of Big Data‘and Andreas Gebhard - Getty Images)

See Rick Smolan’s Presentation at YouTube (video from his keynote at Strata + Hadoop World in October 2012 – this is the same presentation he gave at World IA Day)

03:30 – 04:45 Real Life Information Architecture: A Panel of Unexpected Uses (Panelists List below)

• Andrew Nicklin, Director of Research and Development, NYC Department of Technology and Telecommunication (Noreen Whysel filled in for Andrew who was unable to attend). See Noreen’s presentation on Slideshare
• Clark Holmes, Analyst, Bloomberg Open Symbology – See Clark’s Presentation
• Rhonda Ranney, Instructional Designer, Insurance Industry – See Rhonda’s Presentation
• Bruce Esrig, Design for Wellness project lead, IxDA Northern NJ – See Bruce’s Presentation on Slideshare

04:45 – 05:00 Closing Remarks

05:00 – 06:00 Networking & Refreshments provided by Bloomberg

Presentation descriptions below

ABOUT OUR SPONSOR

The Bloomberg Financial Products UX Team

Bloomberg’s flagship professional software, ‘The Terminal’, is an ecosystem of tens of thousands of apps. It is a massive stream of data, news, and analysis, all delivered in milliseconds. This premier service has more than 300,000 paid subscribers in 174 countries who can’t get their job done without it. Literally.

We’re designing innovative and elegant solutions and we need some smart thinkers for our New York headquarters. Join us:

Mobile UX Designer – Experienced
Interaction Designer
Interaction Designer – Experienced
Visual Designer – Experienced
HTML5 UX/UI Developer
UX Summer Internship
To learn more about UX at Bloomberg: www.bloomberg.com/ux

ABOUT THE PRESENTATIONS

Where Did “The Architecture Part” of IA Come From? (Dan Klyn - The Understanding Group)

This year we will celebrate 15 years since the publication of the seminal, “touchstone” work of Rosenfeld and Morville. Their venerable Polar Bear Book provides crucial understanding of “the information part” of users’ experiences with digital products and services. What about “the architecture part”? One particularly compelling set of answers come from a body of work developed over the course of three decades by Richard Saul Wurman, FAIA. The majority of this work pre-dates the Web and personal computers, and using a combination of photographs and authentic artifacts, @UMSI lecturer Dan Klyn unpacks 30 years of IA treasure from RSW’s Architecture of Information in 30 minutes.

IA for the Web: Original Intent (Lou Rosenfeld - Rosenfeld Media)

Lou Rosenfeld, co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, will regale us with stories of where the field was when the book first debuted in 1996, how things have changed since, and what might happen next.

Putting the Architecture Back Into Information Architecture (Christina Wodtke - Boxes and Arrows)

What can we learn from dancing buildings, giant bowler hats, and purposely obscured views? More than you’d suspect… architecture has been struggling with how buildings create human places where we can fall in love, discover the divine, and even buy clean socks for centuries. It doesn’t matter if your medium is bricks or bits, humans just don’t change that much. In this 30 minute talk, Christina Wodtke will walk you through highlights of architectural thinking from Vitruvius to Gehry, and along the way perhaps we’ll find a clue for the future of digital products.

The State of IA Education: A Town Hall (featuring instructors and students from General Assembly, Parsons, Pratt and The School for the Visual Arts)

Although its roots may be in Library and Information Science, members of the IA community come from a diverse array of educational and professional backgrounds. While its interdisciplinary nature is one of the field’s greatest assets, it also creates significant challenges for IA education. In this Town Hall session, we will convene IA practitioners, researchers, and educators to discuss the question of how to best prepare future IA professionals. Is there a “best” path to becoming an IA? Are certain disciplinary backgrounds more or less valuable than others? Can and should formal education play a role in preparing students for IA careers? This town hall will provide an open forum to address these questions.

How Data Becomes Information (Rick Smolan - Author of ‘The Human Face of Big Data‘ and Andreas Gebhard - Getty Images)

Collection of data within most technical projects is no longer a pipe dream, but instead a best practice. A core tenet of information architecture is that data must be turned into information in order to be understandable by people. This tenet applied to today’s world of data overload leaves a few big questions that we believe should be discussed:

▪ What is the process by which data is turned into information that is able to be understood and can information architects help?

▪ How is this process expected to change as data becomes more available and the collection of data across multiple channels becomes more reliable?

During this conversation we have invited someone focused in Big Data to compare notes with someone whose focus is in small data.

Real Life Information Architecture: A Panel of Unexpected Uses

The skills of information architects are much more common than the job title itself. In this panel conversation we will be inviting people without the title information architect to share with us their experiences in architecting information.

Panelists:

• Andrew Nicklin,Director of Research and Development, NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (Noreen Whysel filled in for Andrew who was unable to attend)
• Clark Holmes, Analyst, Bloomberg Open Symbology
• Rhonda Ranney, Instructional Designer, Insurance Industry
• Bruce Esrig, Design for Wellness project lead, IxDA Northern NJ
• Moderator: Kate Wilhelm, Information Architect, BlackBerry

Special Thanks to:

The School of the Visual Arts for hosting our instructors and students for a free sketchnoting workshop in prep for the education town hall that will be held at World IA Day NYC.