I was having a nice conservation on Monday with my friend, journalist Amanda Robb, about topics that floated in interesting ways from pitching social awareness campaigns to women’s magazines to the role of Twitter and other social media in reporting. The conversation got me thinking about the two different angles that we approach our respective careers in media: she with the words and stories and publications of a journalist and me with the technology platforms, codes and administration of new media operations that bring those words to the world.
So what a treat to find out about Richard Saul Wurman’s newest venture, the WWW.WWW Conference, which will celebrate improvised conversation.
ESRI’s Jack Dangermond to Host WWW.WWW
WWW.Wow. Where else could you find TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, Yo Yo Ma, Herbie Hancock and ESRI‘s Jack Dangermond all in one place? It’s the WWW.WWW Conference, currently planned for September 18/20, 2012.
The conference website describes it as:
A unique un-conference that pairs two incredible and unique minds in a single venue. No presentations. No schedule. Just 100 interesting people and 50 conversations.
Richard Saul Wurman, who also founded TEDMED and the eg conferences, and coined the term information architect, is himself a M.Arch graduate who has been exploring the themes of design and place and livable urban environments since the sixties, so it is fitting that ESRI president and fellow mapping pioneer, Jack Dangermond should host the conference. You will recognize other great names associated with the event incuding glass artist Dale Chihuly, who will create an installation for the event and SEED Media Goup‘s Adam Bly as Science Curator. SEED was an original creator of what was to become one of my all-time favorite MOMA shows, Design and the Elastic Mind.
With conversations interlaced with threads of improvised music, I won’t want to miss WWW.WWW, so I’ve already added it to my calendar. The event will be streamed live to multiple locations and the talks will also be available via a yet-to-be-released, multi-platform tablet application.
Watch http://www.thewwwconference.com for details.
Blog migration in progress
Curiosities #1 (09/02/22): It seems that while updating my, by now back on WordPress, blog I discover and dust off this gem from eleven years ago.
I am in the process of consolidating some of my writings into the new Blogger format. As much as I love the integration, flexibility and ownership of a self-hosted WordPress blog, I have been finding it to be increasingly a chore to update my installations. So much so that I’ve lost track of my words, which I promised myself I would never do, choosing instead to leave them as guest postings and collaborations on other people’s blogs, websites and the ultimate sinkhole of discussion lists, Facebook and Twitter.
So here it is, the simplest, no-brained solution I could find, with no upgrade headaches, and a fun theme (that I might just tweak a bit here and there – I can’t help myself).
While I’m gathering my musings and reports from the various ends of the internet (seems I was quite prolific in 2004 when I took a course on blogging), please visit some of those aforementioned websites:
http://gismonyc.blogspot.com
My blog for GISMO, a New York City meetup group for geographic information system professionals in the Tri-State area. I’ve been involved with this wonderful group of people for nearly 20 years in what used to be called Virtual GISMO. Many GISMO members are the unsung mapping heroes of Pier 92 during the aftermath of 9/11. We’re developing a retrospective panel for an upcoming technology conference, which will probably mean more writing in my future.
http://iainstitute.org
I write the news, calendar items, Annual Reports and Salary Surveys for the IA Institute, an international community of people involved in the design and structure of information spaces, where I also serve as Operations Manager on a consulting basis and Mentoring Coordinator for the pure joy of it.
http://realestatevaluation.wordpress.com/
I occasionally collaborate on articles, research reports, GIS, and data visualizations with real estate valuation expert, Jim MacCrate of MacCrate Associates. I’ve worked as an editor and WordPress admin for the weblog, Real Estate Appraisal and Valuation Issues, and have served as editor and co-contributor for Straight from MacCrate, which appeared as a column on Miller Samuel’s Soapbox blog.
http://www.west104garden.org
I’m the website committee chair for the West 104th Street Community Garden and write or edit most of the news, event and research pieces.
Now to go hunting for those words.
I Joined Google+ Today
I appear to be a late joiner to Google+, if the list of people in my contact’s circles are any indication. It appears to have pulled my info from LinkedIn and has features of Facebook and a very interesting what if discussion among designers going on. I expect it will be a similar experience to LinkedIn and Facebook, perhaps with less of the silliness of Facebook but with similar features, such as Circles which lets you categorize people into groups.
Just like Facebook, only better.
I’ve always liked that Facebook lets you group people. It’s so natural. I tend to get frustrated by LinkedIn’s degrees of separation – you are either in someone’s network or you have someone or a chain of people between you and the other person. In a way this is nice because you are still able to contact people in your second network while preserving how you know that person (so and so’s friend). Without a grouping feature, once you accept a person to your network on LinkedIn, you lose information about how you are connected to your new contact, unless you go to their page to see shared contacts.
Circles makes Google+ more personal and organized than LinkedIn. It is also more spare, sort of like the defunct Facebook Lite, but I’m witholding judgement for now. Facebook ended up dropping its Lite feature, and I suspect Google will eventually add in Facebook-like distractions and ads, since advertising is their ballywick.
If you are interested in learning more, let me know and I’ll invite you to my Circle.
Finding IA at the Enterprise Search Summit
(this article originally appeared at iainstitute.org on June 20, 2011)
Last month in May, I had the pleasure of attending the Enterprise Search Summit East in New York City with IA Institute board member, Shari Thurow. Shari and I were on a quest to discover the role of information architecture in Enterprise Search. We didn’t have to look too far, as both days were keynoted by IA Institute veterans: former IA Institute president and CEO of FatDux, Eric Reiss, on Day 1 and IA Institute founder and Principal and Senior Consultant at InfoCloud Solutions, Inc., Thomas Vander Wal, on Day 2 . Institute founder Bev Corwin was also in attendance and I quite was pleased to make a personal connection with a former coworker from PricewaterhouseCoopers, whom I hadn’t seen in ten years.
In Reiss’s keynote, “The Dumbing Down of Intelligent Search,” he challenged search professionals to have the user, not the application, serve as the frame of reference for search. Using Google as an example, Eric showed how the algorithm may not provide the correct context. Those who build the algorithm need to ensure that contextual metadata is available in the CMS. Eric also challenged implementers to understand the business and educate the content providers of those needs. “Matching patterns is not the same as matching needs,” he explained. And lest the users themselves forget their own power, Eric encourages all users to be critical and experiment, learn basic strategies and not to take for granted that the search solution is intelligent.
Thomas Vander Wal’s keynote on Day 2, “The Search for Social,” was a fitting bookend, showing how to deal with all the input once your Enterprise Search team has embraced the user. VanderWal described tools that go beyond searching for artifacts such as documents, emails and image/video content to searching for human resources, knowledge and expertise within the enterprise. Many presenters demonstrated social search tools for finding user profiles, activity streams and Yahoo! Answers-style knowledgebases.
IA/UX was a prominent theme. Throughout the conference we noted terminology from the information architecture/user experience umbrella nestled within discussion of ECM, SEO, text mining, predictive analytics, policy and governance. Terms like information glut, findability, folksonomy, facets, and rich semantics, as well as a big focus on the user experience.
A major concern in the Enterprise Search community is the question of what exactly is new in search these days? Reiss noted that there has been no major new search engine since Google launched in 1998. Google Search Appliance and Microsoft Sharepoint are still dominant. According to a panel of experts moderated by Martin White, called “The Renaissance of Search,” Enterprise Search has been running on autopilot for a long time and is only now finding innovation coming from places like mobile and social technologies. Panelist Alan Pelz-Sharp of Real Story Group said that consolidation around a product (Google, for example) does not equal maturity of a discipline. Panelist Hadley Reynolds of IDC, pointing to the now established mobile platform, said that the Google model is not ideal for mobile apps. For example, “A playlist model would work better for mobile search applications,” he said. Innovative thinking around search for mobile should be a growth area.
As stated above, user experience was a huge theme at the conference. Panelist Lynda Moulton of The Gilbane Group highlighted improvement in user experience as a major new effort in Enterprise Search. She said that semantic technologies have been built on artificial intelligence platforms and wondered if it will “disappear like AI” or if they just need better UX packaging.
Focus on the user was refreshing but also pointed to a challenge. A theme I found running through many presentations was the sense that after 15 years, the Enterprise Search field is not marketing itself well as a discipline, both to business management and to the users themselves who benefit from search. Search managers feel they have to continually explain the value of search to users, which ”
2nd Annual NYCArc User Group Symposium
Please join us at the 2nd Annual NYC Arc User Symposium on Friday, June17th, 2011 at the 26 Federal Plaza Conference Center!
There is no cost to attend but registration is required.
Please register at: NYCArc User Group Symposium – ESRI Registration
http://events.esri.com/info/index.cfm?fuseaction=seminarRegForm&shownumber=14674
Registration is filling rapidly so please register soon! Doors will open at 8am. Symposium will begin at 9 am.
Speakers include:
* Keynote: Matthew Ericson, Deputy Graphics Director at The New York Times
* Dave Kraiker, US Census Bureau
* Mark Christiano, National Park Service – Gateway National Recreation Area
* Jim Hall, NYC Department of Education
* Brenden Duffy, MTA Long Island Railroad
* Jarlath O’Neil-Dunne, University of Vermont, Spatial Analysis Laboratory
Lightning Talks by:
* Chris Goranson, NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene
* Sam Wear, Westchester County GIS
* Matt Knutzen, New York Public Library
* Liz Barry co-founder, TreeKIT; director urban environments, Public Laboratory; adjunct faculty Columbia, Parsons, Pratt
NYS GeoSpatial Summit website and online registration now open!
From Michael Crino:
Hi Folks,
Details on the upcoming NYS GeoSpatial Summit, to be held June 16th, 2011 at the Welch-Allyn Lodge in Skaneateles, NY are now posted on the Summit website at www.nygeosummit.org. Register online today to reserve your attendance at this very special event. Registrations will be limited to the first 200 people. Thanks to a grant from the US Geospatial Intelligence Foundation, we have been able to roll back the registration fee to the 2008 level. Early registration (until June 1st) is just $85 and includes outstanding food service prepared by the Lodge’s in-house chef for the day. A special student rate is also available for the first 20 students to register. You won’t want to miss the evening reception on June 15th at the Lodge where you can mingle with our speakers and enjoy world-class acoustic guitar music, wine tasting, hors d’oevres, cooked-to-order pasta, and a special screening of the GeoSpatial Revolution videos with introductions and background stories by Adena Schutzberg.
Don’t miss out
IA Institute – A New Framework
At the IA Institute Annual Members’ Meeting held in Denver on April 2, the Board of Directors presented a new framework for characterizing the relationships that the Institute will mediate going forward. The framework came out of a board strategy meeting that I attended in Iceland back in February.
Read more in the April newsletter and see some very cool (OK, cold) Iceland pictures in my Facebook album:
Mercator Society Lecture, April 26
Matt Knudson invites you to attend an upcoming lecture of the Mercator Society.
For details and to RSVP, email Matt at
Toward a National Cartography:American Mapmaking, 1782-1800
Michael Buehler, of Boston Rare Maps, will address the development of mapmaking in the United States in the years immediately after the American Revolution. That period saw the emergence of a cartography that was distinctly American, different in goals, subject matter, methods, iconography and aesthetics. Michael will focus on core features of this new American cartography, particularly how American maps reflected the ambition and optimism characteristic of the early Republic, as Americans sought to transform the landscape in the service of their economic and political goals. The talk will be illustrated with examples and vivid stories from his “Toward a National Cartography” exhibit now on view at the Harvard Map Collection.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
5:30-6:00 Reception
6:00-7:30 Lecture
Margaret Liebman Berger Forum, Room 227
The New York Public Library
Stephen A. Schwarzman Building
Fifth Avenue and 42nd Street
By the City/For the City Map Application
http://urbandesignweek.org/by-the-city/reports/submit
By the City/For the City invites you to partipate in design for a better New York City. The Institute for Urban Design presents an application that maps ideas for the City submitted by individual website users. By the City/For the City is a “digital placemaking app” designed by PPS: Project for Public Spaces as part of Urban Design Week to be held on September 15-20.