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.
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 ”
Notes on Geospatial Summit 2010
Steve Romalewski posted notes on NYC GIS Summit 2010 at:
http://spatialityblog.com/2010/05/24/notes-from-nysgissummit2010/
Feel free to post any comments, different opinions, more detailed feedback if you attended.
Also check out Steve’s post about a new feature in Google Maps
IA/UX events listings
Mini Conference on Human Factors in Complex Sociotechnical Systems
The South Jersey Chapter of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society
will be hosting a mini-conference on April 28 & 29, 2005, entitled
“Mini-Conference on Human Factors in Complex Sociotechnical Systems.”
This event will be held at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)
William J. Hughes Technical Center (WJHTC), located near the Atlantic
City International Airport, New Jersey.
The mini-conference is an opportunity for researchers and
practitioners in human factors, human-computer interaction, and
related fields, who work with complex sociotechnical systems, to share
their research, designs, techniques, and lessons learned with each
other. This is also a good medium for researchers to communicate
their ongoing research as well as students to get a chance to present
at a conference. This will be the first year of the conference and we
hope the quality of the program will make it a regular event.
The mini-conference committee is seeking submissions for presentations
and posters that would be of interest to human factors researchers and
practitioners, as well as others interested in behavioral science,
engineering, and management. Papers should focus on domains that
involve multiple users with different knowledge levels, abilities, and
task needs, who interact with complex tools and with one another. We
are especially interested in papers related to, but not limited to,
domains with substantial safety, security, or economic implications.
Some examples of these domains are Aviation, Air Traffic Control,
Military, Law Enforcement, Homeland Security, Emergency Management,
Medical Process Control, and Finance and Securities Trading. We
encourage submissions discussing works in progress as well as
submissions from students seeking an opportunity to present their work.
The deadline for submitting to the conference is February 14, 2005 and
the committee has already started accepting submissions. Proceedings
for the conference will be published in a CD ROM format and
distributed to the conference attendees.
For more information please visit www.sjhfes.org
For any questions, please contact: miniconference@sjhfes.org
Send submissions to: submissions@sjhfes.org
AIfIA sponsors metadata practices conference
From aifia.org:
AIfIA sponsors conferences and events helping to build the practice of
information architecture. Learn more about AIfIA’s sponsorship program
at http://aifia.org/pg/ia_events_sponsorship.php#000247
***********
September 30, 2004 — AIfIA will sponsor Metadata for Interoperability
in the Global Corporate Environment, a pre-conference for the DC-2004
International Conference on Dublin Core and Metadata Applications.
The one-day pre-conference program takes place on October 10, 2004 in
Shanghai, China, and is expected to attract around 100 people. The
pre-conference workshop addresses the metadata lifecycle — creation,
management, and use — as it applies to enterprise applications and
activities, with focus on interoperability enabling international
business. Experts will present case studies about interesting
applications of metadata, and then discuss issues related to metadata
creation, management, and use in the enterprise.
“This pre-conference program will help participants learn how to
optimize the early stages of a metadata program for international and
cross-cultural deployments,”said Makx Dekkers, DCMI Managing Director.
“Support from AIfIA underscores the vital role of information
architecture in developing a metadata program.”
“We are pleased to support this important initiative,” said AIfIA
President Victor Lombardi. “We believe that information architecture
can help inform the process for aligning business goals to a metadata
initiative.”
More details about this event are available at the DCMI conference
website at http://dc2004.library.sh.cn/.
GISMO Meeting Tomorrow
The next GISMO meeting is tomorrow, May 11th from 12:00pm-2:30pm at the Fund for the City of New York, 121 Sixth Avenue, 6th Floor, New York, NY. Michael Schill of the NYU Furman (Real Estate) Center will discuss the NY Times 2/6 Exposure of New Web site www.nychanis.com. Anyone interested in geographic information systems software is welcome to attend. No need to RSVP. Lunch is provided by the Fund.
The next meeting is Thursday, July 15: Discussion on future of GIS/GISMO/NYC/NYS.
For additional details please see the GISMO website at http://www.geo.hunter.cuny.edu/gismo.
GIS: upcoming meetings
I just posted a bunch of upcoming meetings to the GISMO website. Additional details are in the GISMO calendar.
Events through May:
Thursday, April 29, 5:00pm: GGSA Spring Lecture Series
Hunter College, North Building in room 1022, New York, NY
“Lost Geographies and Failed Globalization: From Versailles to Iraq”
Neil Smith, Distinguished Professor of Anthropology, CUNY Graduate Center
Wed, May 5, 5:00pm: GGSA Spring Lecture Series
Hunter College, North Building in room 1022, New York, NY
“Tips and Tools for Color Symbolization for Mapping and Visualization”
Cynthia Brewer, Associate Professor of Geography, The Pennsylvania State University
Tuesday, May 6 at 9:00am: LIGIS: Long Island GIS Spring Meeting
Brookhaven National Laboratory, Brookhaven, NY
See www.ligis.org for details.
Tuesday, May 11 at 12:00pm: GISMO General Meeting
Fund for the City of New York
Michael Schill, NYU Furman (Real Estate) Center will discuss the NY Times 2/6 Exposure of New Web site www.nychanis.com
Friday, May 21, 2004 at 3:30 PM: Landmarks Preservation Commission
Public Hearing Room, Municipal Building at 1 Centre Street (at the corner of Centre Street and Chambers Street), 9th Floor, New York, NY.
The Archaeology Department will be hosting a guest lecture titled, “Recreating the Historical Topography of Manhattan Island.” Use the north entrance. Please bring photo ID for entrance to the Municipal Building.