Deadline: June 15, 2006 – “The Second European Information Architecture (IA) Summit’s focus is building our practice in Europe. The objective of the event is to bring together a number of disciplines and practitioner communities by providing a stimulating environment for debate and an opportunity for establishing cooperation. This community is not just limited to language or region, but all encompasses our specialisations like designing for mobile devices, and multilingual solutions. We are calling for papers that reflect those communities of practice, language and location.” (Euro IA 2006)

“In December 2001 the Italian haute couturier Prada opened its groundbreaking new “epicenter” store in New York City, designed by the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas. IDEO, working with Koolhaas and his architecture and research firm OMA/AMO, created the invisible technology that allows Prada staff members to choreograph the in-store sales experience. IDEO Human Factors specialists interviewed store staff and observed the technology currently in use. The results of this research were incorporated into the design of the store’s information architecture, as well as the interactive dressing rooms and the in-store devices that allow the staff to focus completely on the customers, such as the Staff Device, the Recharging Trolley, the Staff Clip, and the Customer Card.” (IDEO)

“(…) how can we create better shared references to reframe conversations? Design games is one option, but there are a lot of others.” (Jess McMullin – bplusd)

“(…) the dividing line among information architects is real. One group tends more toward control and using expertise to create a structure that should work the same way for every user. The other tends more toward flexibility and enabling user interaction to determine the structure of the site and the content of the answers. (…) I would think it’s a good time to proudly state ‘I am an information architect, dammit!'” (David Weinberger – KMWorld)

“Card sorting is a technique that is used to gather user input to design the information architecture of a site. The technique is easy to prepare and run, and great fun. But sometimes the results can be hard to interpret and it is not always clear how to use them to design the IA.” (Donna Maurer – Rosenfeld Media)

“(…) before you all go berko and abuse me for sterotyping your ‘species’ I don’t think that anyone who works as an IA for any period of time can actually remain strictly within the confines of their species. I think you’re always coloured by it, but I think the more you do and the better you get, the more you respect the other species and what they bring to the collective table. And the more you tend to extend your skills and refine your approach to take in some of these traits and build them into your personal repertoire.” (Leisa Reichelt – disambiguity) – courtesy of webword

Overview and Pre-conference sessions, Saturday, Sunday, and Monday – “(…) IAs adore long conversations about ideas. Perhaps that’s why the Summit continues to be one of the most intellectually challenging of the practitioners’ conferences.” (Boxes and Arrows)

“(…) a toolset that allows information architects to create an integrated and interactive deliverable from standard Visio files.” (About swipr) – congrats jacco!

“During March 23-28, 2006, over 500 people gathered in Vancouver, Canada, for the seventh Information Architecture Summit sponsored by ASIS&T (American Society for Information Science and Technology). The delightfully diverse attendees included not just people with the job title information architect, but also librarians, Web developers, business analysts, user experience designers, and others.” (Laurie Lamar – UXmatters)

“The seventh annual ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit—IA Summit 2006 for short—was held at the Hyatt® Regency in beautiful Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada, shown in Figure 1, from March 23 through 27, 2006. Its theme was Learning • Doing • Selling. While I attended the IA Summit Redux in San Francisco at Adaptive Path last year, this was my first IA Summit.” (Pabini Gabriel-Petit – UXmatters)

“Document Engineering helps us specify, design, and implement these documents and the processes that create and consume them. It synthesizes complementary ideas from information and systems analysis, electronic publishing, business process analysis, and business informatics to ensure that the documents and processes make sense to the people and applications that need them. A document-centric philosophy unifies these different analysis and modeling perspectives.” (Robert J. Glushko – Document Engineering)

“(…) the site has become an increasingly important resource for federal writers and managers. The concepts of clarity and structure in text that are outlined on the site have served as the foundation for federal writing guidelines – especially guidelines for crafting federal Web content.” (Thomas Haller – ASIS&T Bulletin April 2006)

“(…) this will keep you going for a while.” (ASIS&T 2006 Information Architecture Summit) – Thanks Donna.

“Here are my raw notes from Rashmi Sinha’s talk at the IA Summit, ‘Sorting, Tagging and Social Information Architecture’ or The Missing Chapter in the Polar Bear Book.” (Christian Crumlish – You’re It!)

“Giving a closing plenary is a nerve-wracking experience. I realized I had a hard time relaxing and enjoying myself at the summit, because in the back of my mind, I was continually tweaking my talk.” (Peter Merholz) – congrats!

“By studying several dozen design teams, the UIE research team has spent the last few years looking at how different compositions lead to the most effective results. How do you build a team to produce the best possible designs?” (Jared Spool – UIE Brain Sparks)

“(…) my talk explored the question of how pre-literate cultures manage their collective intellectual capital. In particular, I focused on the use of folk taxonomies (not to be confused with ‘folksonomies’), visual symbol systems, and the cultural effects of the transition from oral to literate cultures. Finally, I tried to probe the relevance of these systems to present-day problems in information architecture.” (Alex Wright)

“Here is an overview of my points, with links to background information I compiled in prepration for the panel, as well as some of my notes.” (Keith Instone)

“This, our third eventful year, was marked by significantly increased visibility in the community and a more focused range of initiatives and services. Between 1 September 2004 and 31 August 2005 our membership grew 51%; as of 31 August 2005, the Institute had 845 members from over 55 countries. Our cash flow is positive, our volunteer rate is up, and our administrative activities have been streamlined. And clearly, the economic recovery experienced over the past year is having a positive effect on our industry.” (IAinstitute)

Building Our Community – Document as handed out to all participants. October 15-16, 2005 – Brussels Belgium (Eric Reiss) – The Euro IA Summit 2006 will be in Berlin.