• Stephen P. Anderson – product strategy and design consultant
• Christian Crumlish – Curator of the Yahoo! design pattern library, and co-author of the upcoming book Designing Social Interfaces
• Jeff Dachis – CEO, Dachis Group and cofounder of Razorfish
• Erin Malone – Principal, Tangible UX, and co-author of the upcoming book Designing Social Interfaces
• Leisa Reichelt – UX designer and researcher, currently working on the UX for Drupal 7
• Christina Wodtke – Principal Product Manager at LinkedIn, and co-author of the book Information Architecture: Blueprints for the Web
• Luke Wroblewski – Director, Product Ideation and Design, Yahoo!
• … and many others!

There will also be a pre-conference workshop on September 14 led by Nathan Curtis of EightShapes; this promises to be an excellent opportunity to learn how to craft effective deliverables from one of the world’s top experts in the field.

Design for the social web is one of the hottest areas in UX today. I encourage you to register today to attend IDEA 2009! (BTW, you can take advantage of special Early Bird pricing if you register before August 15. Update: early bird pricing has been extended til August 22!)

Note: because of previous personal and professional commitments, I’m unfortunately not going to be able to travel to IDEA this year. However, that doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t go! :)

This day-long workshop, which will be led by Andrew Hinton, Joe Lamantia, Livia Labate, and Matt Milan, will provide tools and techniques that will help UX designers grow as professionals in these trying times. According to Andrew, the workshop aims to…

… take your IA practice to a higher level of understanding, performance and impact. Learn about contextual models and scalable frameworks, design collaboration tactics, and how to wield more influence at the “strategy table.”

It sounds very exciting and incredibly relevant for our current context. I think it’s going to be terrific, and would sign up for it even if I weren’t part of the Institute’s leadership team. :)

The Summit will be held in Memphis, TN from March 20-22, and the workshop will be held on the 18th of March. Visit the workshop page for more info, and to register. I look forward to seeing you there!

DG is owned by an even larger label (Universal), so there is hope for the broader industry still. (I suspect that the fact that DG focuses on classical music makes them less jittery about expanding the scope of their market; classical is less likely to be passed around than pop or rock, and probably less susceptible to long tail effects. An experiment, perhaps?)

Quality classical recordings are almost impossible to come by in Panama, and this has been an endless source of frustration to me since I moved back here in 2003. I plan to spend a lot of money in the DG store over the next few years.

Apart from her awesome accomplishments, Roz’s story is particularly inspiring because she came to her calling late (at 34), after having led a successful career in the city of London. She’d become disenchanted with the routine…

Roz knew she needed to change the way she lived her life, so sat down to write two versions of her obituary. One version told the story of her life as she was living it then. Conventional, ordinary and pleasant, with occasional moments of excitement, yet always within the safe confines of normality.

The second was the obituary that she wanted to have. “I thought of the obituaries that I enjoyed reading, the people that I admired. They were the adventurers and risk-takers, the people who seemed to have lived many lifetimes in one. The people who had tried lots of things, some of them successes, some of them spectacular failures, but at least they’d had the guts to try. I realized that if I repeated today’s actions 365 times, I wouldn’t be where I wanted to be in a year – or in ten years, or at the end of my life.”

You can read the rest of her story in her website, which is the other thing that sets Roz apart as a role model: she is extensively documenting her experience online. She writes in great detail about how she trains physically and psychologically, how she plans meals, how the boat is designed, the equipment she has on board (including three iPods—she lists her favorite playlists!), emergency plans, etc. She’s even rigged the boat so that she can blog and podcast from the middle of the ocean!

In order to keep motivated, Roz keeps a little whiteboard in front of her rowing seat where she writes quotes from people who’ve inspired her. I’m doing the same, and Roz is on my list.

Photo: copyright Roz Savage

The best source I’ve found thus far is the CIA World Factbook, so that’s what I’ve been using for my yearly report over on my Spanish blog. (Here’s the latest). It’s worth noting that the data is not accurate for all countries: stats for some of them were last provided as long as six years ago. Still, it’s better than nothing. Besides, data on the larger countries is fairly recent, so overall I think it’s as good a source as any. (I’ve noted the year of the last available data in a separate column.)

Some interesting highlights:

• Since I started doing this in 2006, internet penetration in the region has increased from 14.1% to 22.33%.
• Brazil, the largest country in the region, has more than 25% of its population online. (50m people.)
• The countries of Central America lag seriously behind: only 11% of the population is online; our total market of internet users is about 4.6m people. (Compare with the Caribbean islands, which have 7.6m people online, even though they have a smaller population than the Central American countries.)
  ]]> http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/12/11/how-many-internet-users-are-there-in-latin-america-and-the-caribbean-2008/feed/ 0 http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/11/25/the-global-cultural-ghetto/ http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/11/25/the-global-cultural-ghetto/#comments Tue, 25 Nov 2008 18:58:25 +0000 jarango http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/11/25/the-global-cultural-ghetto/ The Criterion Collection —the preeminent distributor of classic films on DVD—launched a beautiful new website recently. Among its many features, it allows you to watch films online for $5… but only if you live in North America. This is incredibly frustrating! All these amazing movies, available instantly… not!

  If you live in or near a major metropolitan area (or near a university) in the US or Canada, you probably already have some way to watch Au Revoir Les Enfants or The Thief of Baghdad. Those of us living in cultural backwaters can’t enjoy such luxuries. The Panama City metro area (where I am) has more than a million inhabitants, but our sole access to decent cinema consists of a single Blockbuster store with a few shelves of the usual suspects: a bit of Fellini, some Kurosawa, some Hitchcock, etc. We have no art house theaters, only mall cineplexes blasting the latest superhero fluff. And as poor as our movie selection is, it’s still much broader than the music available: basically if you don’t like merengue, plena, or 1980s discount-rack soft rock you’re shit out of luck.

  Why is Criterion shutting me out? For that matter, why can’t I legally buy MP3s or movies from Amazon’s online store, when I can order from them a slab of plastic containing the same bits and have it shipped to me, using up resources and crapping on the environment? Perhaps the argument is that not many people here are interested in this stuff. True enough, but so what? How much more can it cost these companies to open these digital distribution channels? Is it more than it costs to install and maintain the filters that keep people like me from becoming customers?

  The internet was supposed to level the playing field for those of us that live in culturally isolated regions. But now that technology has matured to the point where cultural artifacts—music, movies, TV shows, and books—can be purchased, distributed, and experienced online, companies are doing their damnedest to maintain the old structures intact. The net result: global access to culture is constrained to a bizarro long tail, a ghetto defined by corporate lawyers and accountants.

  ]]> http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/11/25/the-global-cultural-ghetto/feed/ 4 http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/10/19/steve-jobs-on-paul-rand/ http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/10/19/steve-jobs-on-paul-rand/#comments Sun, 19 Oct 2008 23:59:05 +0000 jarango http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/10/19/steve-jobs-on-paul-rand/

  Something to aspire to: “Paul’s a very interesting intertwining of a pure artist and somebody who is very astute at solving business problems.”

  ]]> http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/10/19/steve-jobs-on-paul-rand/feed/ 0 http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/09/15/the-iai-vision-project/ http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/09/15/the-iai-vision-project/#comments Mon, 15 Sep 2008 15:36:17 +0000 jarango http://www.jarango.com/en/?p=781 It’s important that we refine our definition of what IA is and what IAI does. However, it’s essential that we think about this in the context of the overall vision of the organization.

  A few months ago, I started a project within the IAI board of directors to help us hone the organization’s vision. As a longtime member of the IAI, I was missing some of the verve of the early days when it felt like a new field was being born?one that would change the world?and our organization would be its midwife. I felt that somewhere along the line we’d lost track of why we were doing things to focus on what we were doing, and that re-stating our vision could help bring us back on track.

  We have a natural resistance to pinning this down because the word “vision” evokes tacky posters wallpapered over gray and tan cubicles. However, it doesn’t have to be like that! Some visions are incredibly energizing and can lead to great things (e.g. “A computer on every desk and in every home.”) The objective of this project is to develop such a vision for the IAI. The “how” is something that we’ve struggled with; we started by having a series of discussions with our board of advisors, and then surveying them to get their individual hopes and expectations for the profession. It was a good start, but clearly not enough.

  The impact we can achieve using online tools and conference calls is limited. Creating a powerful vision is an activity that requires the special mind meld that can only occur when people meet face to face in an isolated setting. Inspired by the prospects of such a meeting (being discussed now in the IAI mailing list), and in the hopes that this will help spark a broader discussion, I share with you here the initial “call to action” posted on the internal IAI board’s Basecamp site earlier this year. Your thoughts are most welcome.

  The IAI Vision

  What is this project about?
  This project aims to develop a compelling vision statement for the IAI, and a strategy (and roadmap) for the implementation of this vision.

  That previous sentence makes this exercise sound much more bureaucratic than it is — this is an incredibly exciting opportunity for us to grow the IAI and have a more meaningful impact!

  Why do we need to do this?
  Because most of us are passionate about IA, and believe that it will change the world for the better. Unfortunately that passion is not being accurately conveyed, represented or harnessed by the Institute.

  We see signs of this in our members’ confusion about our role vis-a-vis other professional organizations, comments made by our advisors in our last meeting, comments made by Glenn Harvey [1] in his report to the board, the low turnout during our last annual members meeting, and the (relatively) low posting frequency in the IAI Members mailing list.

  We all want the IAI to grow. The vision will help us grow in a coherent way, and will make it clear to all of us why we must grow. It is a critical part of our growth strategy.

  But don’t we have a vision already?
  Our current business plan has a section titled Mission and Vision, which defines the IAI’s current mission: “The IAI is a global organization that supports individuals and organizations specializing in the design and construction of shared information environments.”

  The business plan also presents a 2-year goal of making “Information Architecture” a household term, and details our positioning, strengths, and opportunities.

  I suspect these statements contain the seeds of our vision, but they are not the vision per se.

  What is a “vision”, after all?
  It is our shared understanding of how Information Architecture — and the IAI — will change the world, and what we’re willing to do to achieve that change. In other words, the vision provides an answer to the question “Why does the IAI exist at all?”

  What are the outcomes of this project?
  Like the word implies, visions are nebulous things. The primary outcome of this exercise is a vision statement, which is another term that sounds more bureaucratic than it should be. (I personally prefer “elevator pitch” or “mantra”.) The vision statement captures the vision in a form that can be easily transmitted from one mind to another. It should be clear, memorable, and exciting/energizing. We should also strive to make it infectious.

  WE ARE CHANGING THE WORLD — IT SHOULD BE EXCITING!

  Litmus test: if at the end of the process we are squirmy about printing out the vision statement and posting it in our cubes for the world to see, we haven’t done a good job.

  Litmus test: if you tell it to your sister/brother/father/etc., and receive a puzzled look, we haven’t done a good job.

  Litmus test: if you tell it to a neophyte IA, and s/he doesn’t ask you where s/he can sign up, we haven’t done a good job.

  (more litmus tests?)

  Once we’ve captured our vision in a statement, we need to convey it to the world (or at least, to our constituency). This doesn’t mean we put up a traditional “mission/vision” page in the website — it means that we make tangible changes to what we are doing and how we are doing it. In other words, the vision should help us make decisions about which projects to pursue, how to pursue them, and how we communicate about what we’re doing. We need to plan out how we’re going to do this.

  “We communicate with passion — and passion persuades.” – Anita Roddick

  Found a great example of a corporate vision in today’s NY Times:

  Volvo’s 2020 Vision: The Injury – Proof Car

  http://www.nytimes.com/reuters/technology/tech-volvo-safety.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

  Seven words! And they reveal so much: what they stand for/care about, what they believe they can achieve, the timeframe, etc. It’s a futuristic concept, yet totally grounded in the needs of their clients. I bet it’s also very energizing to Volvo designers and engineers.

  Notes:
  [1] Glenn Harvey was the first candidate we engaged for the role of Executive Director. He prepared a report for the board on his perceptions of the current state of the organization from the perspective of someone outside the field.

  ]]> http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/09/15/the-iai-vision-project/feed/ 3 http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/09/14/defining-the-damn-thing-using-crowd-wisdom/ http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/09/14/defining-the-damn-thing-using-crowd-wisdom/#comments Sun, 14 Sep 2008 06:04:53 +0000 jarango http://www.jarango.com/en/?p=775 As tends to happen every so often, the IA Institute’s mailing list is abuzz with yet another round of “define the damn thing” discussions. I’m somewhat annoyed because we keep having these conversations, but don’t capture the proposed definitions anywhere we can compare and contrast them. There’s no way for me to remember what was said by whom and how the definitions relate (or not) to each other.

  With that in mind, I went looking for a site that would allow anyone to propose alternative definitions to a word, comment on them, and vote for (or against) any of them. I couldn’t find anything like this, so I slapped together a small web app:

  http://thatword.net/word/is/information_architecture

  I’ve primed the well with four “classic” definitions of the term information architecture. You are welcome to add more, and to comment and vote on the ones already there.

  By the way, the platform is abstracted so that anyone can propose and define any word, not just IA. To get started, visit thatword.net and search for a word or term, if it’s not already been defined you’ll be prompted to propose a definition.

  For what it’s worth, I’m not really sure we can come up with the “best” definition solely by voting for it, so this goes out to the world with tongue planted in cheek. I hope you have fun with it—it’s meant to be more a diversion than anything serious.

  (The app probably has bugs lurking, given that it was slapped together with duct tape and chewing gum over a few days. Please email me if you have any trouble with it.)

  ]]> http://www.jarango.com/en/blog/2008/09/14/defining-the-damn-thing-using-crowd-wisdom/feed/ 6