Donna Maurer is well known as an Information Architect,
Interaction Designer and much more in the field of IA. She is a
Marketing and Communications Director on the board of the IA Institute, holds a leading position at ASIS&T, has delivered significant speeches at IA conferences, and this year, she was in the planning committee for the IA Summit, where she gave
the welcoming speech. With her very charming Australian accent, she gave me some answers to questions about her IA background, the intention of her conference speeches (book summary: “Women, Fire and Dangerous Things”) and workshops ( e.g., Introduction to IA). We also had the chance to talk about her role in the IA Institute and what she thinks are the challenges for us IAs over the next two years. Let’s listen to her valuable thoughts right here:

Quick Jump in Audio (18min/6,4 MB):
women_in_ia_donna_maurer.mp3

01:07 Minute - Donna’s activites in the field of IA
04:55 Minute - Some words about her conference speeches
08:25 Minute - Her role in the IA Institute
11:26 Minute - The challenges of IAs

 

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Many IAs and others that are responsible for information systems worldwide try to develop application strategies - with more or less success. In this interview, we talk about a great IA and UX method of doing this very efficiently. It was developed by Indi Young, who is also one of the founders of Adaptive Path, a renowned IA and User Experience group in San Francisco. After attending her seminar during the PreCon of the IA Summit 2007, where visitors learned how to create a Mental Model (during the teamwork that needs to take place between IAs and their clients), I had the chance to interview her.

One of the things I really like about her is her great ability to describe complex things in an understandable way, using metaphors such as “the hallway test” to help communicate methods like the Mental Model to the business world.

Indi is currently writing a book on creating Mental Models and she has a blog at Rosenfeld Media. Does this grab your attention? Then let’s listen to the interview.

Quick Jump in Audio (40min/13,3 MB):
women_in_ia_indi_young.mp3

01:10 Minute - The beginning of Adaptive Path and Indi’s amazing IA background
13:25 Minute - Indi explains the idea and development of Mental Models
35:22 Minute - A quick look with Indi into the future of IA

 

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In this episode about “Women in the Field of Information Architecture”, I was happy to talk with Stacy Surla at the IA Summit in Las Vegas, after she spoke in a panel discussion about “IA in Second Life”.

Stacy isn’t just the Treasurer on the Board of the IA Institute, she’s also a force behind some important initiatives, such as the Local Groups initiative. We talked about Stacy’s IA background, her IA Institute role, her IA conference speeches and many other topics, including some very interesting ideas about ambient findability in virtual worlds like Second Life.

Quick Jump in Audio (17,25min/6 MB):
women_in_ia_stacy_surla.mp3

01:07 Minute - Stacy’s IA Bio and background
04:32 Minute - Her role in the IA Institute
10:20 Minute - Stacy’s conference speeches

 

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Jared Folkmann - Speech about Customer Experience Framework

- His speech:
speech_recording_jared_folkmann.mp3
- In the conference programme

 

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Andrea Resmini, Emanuele Quintarelli, Luca Rosati - Speech about Bottom Up - Top Down Classificatiton - The FaceTag

- The speech:
speech_recording_bottom_up_top_down_classification.mp3
- View the slides from the Euro IA together with the recording
- The FaceTag white paper
- The FaceTag website
(Sorry, about the quality of this recording. We apologise and plan to broadcast an interview about “facetags” in early 2007.)

 

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Steven Pemberton - Closing Keynote

- His speech about XHTML, XForms:

speech_recording_steven_pemberton.mp3

 

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Violà - this month IA Voice the first speech recordings from the EURO IA 2006 in Berlin. Thank’s very much to the speakers for their permissions to present their presentation slides together with their speech recording. The speech recordings(and upcoming ones) are in chronological order of the conference program. View the images from the conference here at Flickr (search “euroia2006″ for all images on the conference).

Eric Reiss - Welcome and Logistics

>> Start Speech Recording(1,8 MB):
eric_reiss_welcome_and_logistics.mp3

- Over 200 Information Architects from all over Europe
- Eight time zones away, Austrailian IA Event(little Phone conference)

 

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Eric Reiss - Seven Trends in IA (Highly recommended)
-> Presentation(view this parallel to the Audio) Reiss_trends_in_ia_berlin_2006.pdf

Quick Jump in Audio(11,3 MB):

seven_trends_in_ia.mp3
01:55 Minute - New IA Trends in Europe - coming from the users (compared to USA)
04:35 Minute - Websites have become part of the business plan
04:33 Minute - Trend #1 - Now we’re going to make them part of the business
07:25 Minute - Customer Relation Management
08:04 Minute - Trend #2 - Websites have become more focused
11:58 Minute - Trend #3 - Websites are now truly multimedia
13:42 Minute - Trend #4 - Sitemaps are dying
16:38 Minute - Trend #5a - Customization is dead
17:38 Minute - Trend #5b - Two exceptions - Personalization lives
20:15 Minute - Trend #6 - Site search is maturing
21:30 Minute - Trend #7 - IA is not always part of the job title

Eric Reiss wrote the following book:

 

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Peter Morville - Keynote Speech (Highly recommended)
-> Presentation-Ambient Findability (view this parallel to the Audio)

Quick Jump in Audio(22,9 MB):

keynote_speech_peter_morville.mp3
00:40 Minute - Intro Eric Reiss (Eric has some fun with the Austrailians)
04:48 Minute - Start Speech Peter Morville (Ambient Findability)

 

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Are Halland - Information Architect from Norway

“We all need to blog” was one message from Are during his speech at the first european IA conference, the EURO IA 2005. What he ment to say to the european Information Architects was that we all need to speak out in a clear, strong voice. Also there is a strong need to communicate, network and to work in projects together.

One year later, at the second EURO IA 2006, I had a chance to talk to Are in the Lobby of the Maritime conference hotel. He gave me some interesting answers on my questions about the IA situation in his country, how he thinks about IA in Europe and where he see’s the nexts upcoming IA trends. Among these he thinks for example that Topic Maps will become more important in the future. Let’s hear what else he says…

Podcast of this Interview - 25:41 minutes

ia_voice_interview_are_halland.mp3

 

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Eris Reiss - Information Architect from US and Denmark

The European IA szene had a great time at the EURO IA conference 2006 in Berlin. And one man who’s responsible, with his team of country embassadors, for the great success is Eric Reiss.
Eric is a great supporter of the Euro IA community which is strongly growing within the last years. My name is Wolf and it was an honore for me that I had a chance to talk to him. Let’s hear what he says…

Podcast of this Interview - 33:31 minutes

ia_voice_interview_eric_reiss.mp3

Eric Reiss wrote the following book:

 

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Tomy Lorsch - Information Architect from Spain

Here’s a well known european IA Voice from Spain. It’s Tomy Lorsch who I also met at the EURO IA conference in Berlin. You can basically meet Tomy at any IA conference in the world. Let’s listen to him right here…

Podcast of this Interview - 18:47 minutes

ia_voice_interview_tomy_lorsch.mp3

 

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Jacco Nieuwland - Information Architect from Netherlands/Holland

At the EURO IA in Berlin I also had the pleasure to talk to Jacco Nieuwland who’s an Information Architect from the Netherlands. Jacco and I had a quick talk right at his booth during the poster session. What he introduced me to was Swipr, a very interesting IA tool or better be said IA deliverable which he and his company user intelligence developed to communicate their concepts with their clients. It sounds very interesting since it merges flow charts and wireframes.

I have to admit there was a little too much background noise and I hope you excuse this.

Podcast of this Interview - 14:13 minutes

ia_voice_interview_jacco_nieuwland.mp3

 

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Stig Anders - Information Architect from Denmark

Stig Anders is a well known Information Architect and active in the IA Society since a long time. It’s always interesting to hear form his european point of view, how he think’s the profession of IA is developing. On the other hand as an IA consultant he has convincing thoughts about communicating the value of IA to his clients. At the beginning of our talk he told me how he grew into the this exiting business and also gave me his answers on the next trends of IA. Let’s hear this interview with Stig Anders…

Podcast of this Interview - 31:02 minutes

ia_voice_interview_stig_anders.mp3

 

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Interview with Information Architect Thomas Vander Val

In this new episode you hear an interview with Thomas Vander Val, also from the IA Summit in Vancouver. Thomas was holding an interesting speech about “Tagging” and new trends in information architecture. At the end of the Summit I had a chance to talk to Thomas. Here it is…

Podcast of this Interview - 44:16 minutes

ia_voice_interview_thomas_vander_wal.mp3

 

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