Just got back from this year’s Institutional Web Management Workshop where I gave a plenary on The Promise of Information Architecture and ran a workshop on Information Architecture in Practice.
During the plenary, I asked the audience how many institutions had at least one full-time information architect. Only three hands went up – and I suspect that most of those, if not all, were from St Andrews. So, it’s still a very small community. However, there seems to be some interest in the topic. I hear the phrase mentioned by people, and there was a good turn out for my workshop.
I had various activities planned for the workshop, but in the end, we only had time for the one on ‘what is information?’ The questions sounds easy enough, but it’s a good one. And where does knowledge fit in with the information archtecture role. Some academics argue that there is a level beyond knowledge, and that’s wisdom. Although, presumably, you have to be a professor to have wisdom 
The rest of the workshop turned into an IA surgery, and I really enjoyed the discussions which came out of the questions people brought. We discussed, amongst other things, the relationship between information architecture and usability, governance, user testing, faceted taxonomies and portals.
Hi,
Firstly I’d just like to say that this presentation was entertaining, inspiring and overall pretty damn awesome!
I’m not sure if I’ve got this correct but I felt there could be a lot of potential for collaboration here with records managers. They are beginning to discuss information in a wider sense now with regards to the introduction of web 2.0 and I thought a little joined up thinking to ensure information structures (structured or unstructured – seems to be an ongoing argument which I’ll not get into here) are correct below the user interface would go a long way to making it easier in terms of the overall information architecture. We (as web managers) could then input into the policies that are created by them and help them to understand the processes we go through to create and provide this information, giving a more joined up way of thinking.
Cheers
Andy
My job title is Web developer and usability consultant, but whilst I aspire to be an information architect, I don’t think I could call myself one yet! Just watching your IWMW presentation now, it’s very good.
OK, watched it all now – so where is this IA community of practice, and how do I join?