Board of Directors Biographies
Eric Reiss, President
Copenhagen, Denmark
Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1954, and raised in St. Louis and Chicago, Eric holds degrees in Political Science and Performing Arts from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri. In 1976, He moved to Denmark to accept a position as a stage director at the Danish Royal Theatre in Copenhagen.
Eric has been a full-time writer and business strategist since 1984. The past decade, he has conducted workshops and lectured on a range of web issues for colleagues, client companies, and at teaching institutions, including the Copenhagen Business School and the National School of Journalism. He is also one of the instigators of the IA Slam and author of Web Dogma ’06.
In November, 2000, Eric's book, Practical Information Architecture was published by Pearson Education. In 2002, it became available in Japanese and Korean. In 2004, it became available on eBay.
Today, Eric heads FatDUX in Copenhagen, Denmark. Much more info at www.fatdux.com.
Donna Maurer, Treasurer
Murrumbateman, NSW, Australia
Donna is a freelance interaction designer and information architect who specializes in making complex systems simple for people to use. She has more than 6 years experience in senior consulting and in-house roles. She has designed huge intranets & websites, e-commerce & search systems, business applications and a content management system. She continually surprises her colleagues by talking to people rather than computers and designing the old-fashioned way with pencil, markers and reams of coloured paper.
Donna keeps starting then stopping Masters programs, preferring to follow her own path through an increasingly large pile of books. She is an experienced speaker http://maadmob.com.au/maadmob_id/speaking.html who has presented sessions and workshops at many local and international conferences. She spends her spare time playing in her orchard, spending (not enough) time with her family, working as program chair for next year's Information Architecture Summit http://iasummit.org/, and writing a book on card sorting http://www.rosenfeldmedia.com/books/cardsorting/ to be published by Rosenfeld Media in early 2007.
For more on Donna, visit http://maadmob.com.au/maadmob_id/.
Stacy Surla, Secretary
McLean, Virginia, USA
Stacy is focused on strengthening the organizational infrastructure of the IAI so it can support bold initiatives, like the development of Local Groups across the world. She is a co-founder of the DCIA local group in Washington, DC, edits the IA Column in the ASIS&T Bulletin, served as chair for the 2005 Information Architecture Summit, co-founded the Rosebud independent film and video festival, managed fundraising for the DC Arts Center, co-chaired the Foundation for Mid-East Communication, served as briefing leader for the Hunger Project, started a crimewatchers program in Haight-Asbury, and organized a neighborhood circus. She has made numerous public speaking, TV, and radio appearances on topics ranging from arts programming to Y2K readiness.
Stacy is an Information Architect for the MITRE Corporation (www.mitre.org).
Jorge Arango, Director of Events
Panama City, Panama
Jorge is an information architect and web designer from Central America. In 1995 he dropped out of what could have been a promising, "safe" career in (brick and mortar) architecture to devote himself fully to this newfangled web thing. He founded and led BootStudio, one of the first agencies in his part of the world. During the intervening years, he's led web development teams in my home country of Panama, as well as the US and the UK. He has been able to help clients from a variety of industries and backgrounds make better use of web technologies to help their organizations succeed.
He has grown much by being part of the IAI, and by interacting with peers from around the world. He's also been able to give back to the IA/UX community, by being an early volunteer for the IAI (IA Translation Initiative, Spanish language lead), an editor for Boxes and Arrows (now managing editor), and most recently as a member of the IAI Board of Advisors.
For more about Jorge, please visit www.jarango.com.
Peter Boersma, Director of Membership/Local Groups
Amsterdam, The Netherlands
At university, Peter combined computer science with ergonomics and since then aims to create information environments where people can work and play without having to adapt too much. He has been working in the field of user experience since 1995 as a user interface designer, project manager, concept designer, consultant, information architect, and manager. Currently, he is the senior interaction designer of the user experience department at Info.nl where he designs online environments, mostly for financial institutions.
Peter loves design processes and has published and spoken about the topic at local, national and international conferences. He has been involved in the organization of those conferences since 1997, including CHI conferences, IA Summits and all three Euro IA conferences. He has also been organizing local IA/UX Cocktail Hours since 2001.
For more about Peter, please visit http://www.peterboersma.com/blog.
Christian Crumlish, Director of Technology
Oakland, California, USA
Christian Crumlish has been developing and writing about shared information spaces since 1994. He is the curator of the Yahoo! pattern library. He has consulted with startups and Fortune 500 companies, including FedEx, Kodak, Visa, Sprint, Charles Schwab,
Safeway, Sun, SanDisk, BEA, HTC, Aramark, MediaMelon, Syklist, and
GoFish. He is the author of, most recently, The Power of Many: How the Living Web is Transforming Politics, Business, and Everday Life. He is currently researching a book on digital identity, presence, attention, and trust with the working title Presence of Mind.
Christian is most intrigued these days by the challenges inherent in emerging interfaces and the design of social experiences.
For more on Christian, see http://christiancrumlish.com.
Sarah Rice, Director of Marketing/Communications
Sunnyvale, California, USA
Sarah has 11 years experience in the field of Information Architecture, practicing IA before there was an agreed-upon name for it, and before there were organizations that assisted us in our field. She has a master's degree in Library and Information Science and her own consulting firm, Seneb Consulting (www.seneb.com). In the past, She has helped to organize events sponsored by the IA Institute, including the 2005 IAI-sponsored pre-conference workshop at the IA Summit, an IA retreat held at Asilomar in California, and the IDEA 2006 conference in Seattle, WA. She has also participated in the mentorship program and contributed to the collection of tools available to other IAs.
For more about Sarah, please visit www.seneb.com.
This page was last modified on January 14, 2007 09:10 PM.