“By framing the web with a particular metaphor, certain concepts are established as the main unit of currency, so to speak. Those concepts, in turn, force us to think about structure in a particular way.” (Dan Brown Greenonions)

“Using the paradigm of change architecture, IAs can become more aware of the idea that when we step onto the business stage of a project, we will first need to unfreeze aspects of the situation and the environment, and ultimately make the path from recommendation to action visible to the participants. ” (Bob Goodman – Boxes and Arrows)

“The most important issue is not whether you notice a mode of seeking information that fits into one of these categories, but that a range of modes exist. Observe how your users approach information, consider what it means, and design to allow them to achieve what they need.” (Donna Maurer – Boxes and Arrows)

“As the Web becomes both interface and infrastructure for an Internet of objects we can barely imagine, what metaphors will shape our fate? Clearly, the sea level will rise, but our children need not drown nor suffer information anxiety. These are painful analogies born in the journey from past to present. They fail to anticipate the future.” (Peter Morville – ASIS&T Bulletin Feb/Mar 2006)

“I think it’d be safe to say that the IAI has been successful. It has over 800 members in about 40 countries. It has provided the IA community with a few excellent services, like a mentoring program, a job board, and a high-quality moderated discussion list. And it’s had a hand in a number of successful events around the planet.” (Louis Rosenfeld – bloug)

Main Conference Session Details (IA Summit 2006)

“By looking at physical architecture as a case study and metaphor for organizing space into meaningful places, this paper explores the possibility of organizing Cyberspace into spatial settings that not only afford social interaction, but, like physical places, also embody and express cultural values. At the same time, because Cyberspace lacks materiality, is free from physical constraints, and because it can only be ‘inhabited’ by proxy, these ‘places’ may not necessarily resemble their physical counterparts.” (Yehuda E. Kalay and John Marx – First Monday Special Issue #5)

“Fundamental forms of information, as well as the term ‘information’ itself, are defined and developed for the purposes of information science/studies. Concepts of natural and represented information (taking an unconventional sense of representation), encoded and embodied information, as well as experienced, enacted, expressed, embedded, recorded, and trace information are elaborated. The utility of these terms for the discipline is illustrated with examples from the study of information seeking behavior and of information genres. Distinctions between the information and curatorial sciences with respect to their social (and informational) objects of study are briefly outlined.” (Marcia J. Bates)

“Sitemaps can be useful tools and are a whole lot easier when you separate the data from the visualization. After you have done these steps a few times, you will be able to update a sitemap in under a minute.” (Stephen Turbek – Boxes and Arrows)

“The reason why Microsoft Visio is a popular prototyping tool is because of its interface widgets that you can drag and drop onto pages and its ability to link pages and view them as web pages. But what distinguishes Visio from other prototyping tools is its use of layered backgrounds.” (Henrik Olsen – GUUUI)

Paper from the Euro IA Summit 2005 – “This paper will explore how IA projects can be constructed and undertaken to achieve coherence. It will review how elements such as metadata creation, document creation flows, permissions, version control, change and update management and usage patterns can be used to create a global picture of an organisation’s information creation, distribution and use, and thereby to derive the optimum patterns.” (Barry Mahon and Alan Gilchrist – TFPL)

“IA is real, it’s here and it has a history. Everything else is just hair-splitting. While deriving a definition might be really important to the academics among us, I no longer see it as essential to success of the field.” (Andrew Dillon – ASIS&T Bulletin)

Conference presentation – “(…) detailed IA issues such as specific – to vs. relevant – for audiences, org-chart-itis, faceted browsing and navigation frameworks.” (Keith Instone)

“(…) huge issue in organising this information in a way that the audience can actually find it, which, after all, should be the main goal. So I want to talk about 3 things that the BBC does centrally to try and make this easier for the end user – navigation, search, and classification.” (Martin Belam – currybetdotnet)

“I’m not sure why, but enough people have now asked me to make my Enterprise IA seminar slides available. All 251. Fine, it’s here.” – (Louis Rosenfeld – bloug)

“By popular request and with permission, Functioning Form is publishing some of Jim Leftwich’s writings on design.” – (Luke Wroblewski – Functioning Form)

“The consequent explosion of content and functionality on the Web and the new ways in which we’re making use of Web content has recast the role of the information architect. This article explores the information architect’s evolving responsibilities in light of the changes we’re experiencing on the Web.” (Dan Brown – UXmatters Preview)

One of the results of the first European IA Summit 2005 in Brussels of last weekend is available now. – “The EuroIA mailinglist is the online conversational platform for researchers and practitioners in the field of Information Architecture in an European context.” (Peter J. Bogaards) – sponsored by Webtic – Paul Jongsma

“This year’s IA Retreat – ‘New Challenges in Information Architecture’ – took place at the Edith Macy Conference Center, just north of New York City, October 7-9, 2005. Of the many themes discussed at the retreat, those that stood out revolved around the challenges of enterprise information architecture (as in very large enterprises, such as government agencies, and Fortune 100’s), cross-cultural IA issues, and designing user experiences for evermore complex, and increasingly less, web-centric systems.” (Anders Ramsay – Boxes and Arrows)

Presentation from Europe’s first information architecture summit – “This talk will take an analytical but subjective approach to the current state-of-affairs of (continental) European IA. The local IA communities of practice, knowledge and interest seem still premature, fragmented and not well-connected. Even if there is such a thing as an European IA community, it lacks a solid identity and definitely a strategy.” (Peter J. Bogaards – BogieLand)