Minutes

The Information Architecture Institute
Monday, April 25, 2011
10pm CEST, 9pm GMT, 4pm ET, 3pm CST, 1pm PST

Attendees:
Board: Dan Klyn, Andrea Resmini, Shari Thurow, Dorian Taylor
Staff: Noreen Whysel, Tim Bruns
Absent: Jeff Parks 

Meeting opened at 4:09pm.

Agenda:

Administration Matters to discuss /cc Noreen and Tim

• Noreen preparing AGM writeup for the newsletter.
• Dan presented an item Re: IA Summit: Nothing new to report; we told Jess and Samantha that we will wait a couple weeks to begin talking about it. Lou Rosenfeld’s post speculating on the IAI’s role with IA Summit came out after discussion had already started between IA Institute and ASIS&T.
• Library database broken:  Noreen noted that the IA Library does not appear to be listing content properly.  Norren and Dorian to correct the error.

 Architect Role

• Dorian spoke to Jeff last week.  Summary: Conceptual model went well. Have someone serve as residual generator of language for framing the kinds of things the Institute does. Create manageable chunks, generative artifacts that people can pick up and use separately. Residual style/form.

Setting milestones for implementation of framework and launch of new site

Andrea feels it is premature to set milestones for the IAInstitute.org. Our most important priority should be the IDEA website.

• First we need to get the content onto one hard drive, organize it.
• Define format for prospective features. “World IA Day” format
• Second, invite speakers to submit videos, slide decks.
• Revise sponsorship package.
• Build transitional website, feed content from library.
• Leverage IDEA project as pilot for new library structure.
• Discovery and decision making on platform. JSTOR is a possibility.
• Update list of facets/controlled vocabulary 

Other issues / matters

• Noreen’s idea for architecting the site navigation around Join – Connect – Demonstrate.  Dan likes it. Andrea sees it as a way to tie the website into Dorian’s framework. Dorian asked to get consensus as to whether it makes sense to take this direction to incrementally update the website. Andrea cautions that since we are fundamentally changing how the website is structured (Drupal) it may be premature to edit the content. Shari suggests producing a style guide so we have consistency.
• Wikipedia entry: Andrea is going through other organizations’ pages and drafting a more accurate entry. Planned to deliver for next meeting.

ACTION:

• Shari is locating and cataloging all IDEA Conference materials and media. Dan will ask Abby to send her a list of materials.
• Dan and Abby are setting up weekly planning call, separate from board call.  Abby is on board as conference chair. Setup basecamp project for planning.
• Dorian will use his Architect role to think about content model.
• Noreen to set up a google spreadsheet of content and proposed structure. Dorian will send his RDF file of the website to Noreen.

VOTE: 

• Unanimous decision to transition library platform negotiating from Dan to Andrea for library repository platform will remove possible conflict of interest since Dan is working on a project involving JSTOR.
• Unanimous vote to give $1500 to U of Mich student for UN Japanese relief committee project involving Information Architecture. 

Meeting adjourned at 5:05pm.

Board of Directors Meeting
The Information Architecture Institute
Monday, April 11, 2011
10pm CEST, 9pm GMT, 4pm ET, 3pm CST, 1pm PST

Attendees:
Board: Jeff Parks, Dan Klyn, Andrea Resmini, Dorian Taylor, Shari Thurow
Staff: Noreen Whysel, Tim Bruns

Agenda:

* Wrap-up from IA Summit. Comments and Feedback

Welcome feeling. Need to balance academic and hands-on and personal experience.

* IAI / ASIS&T relationship and the IAS

Working on ways that the IAI could partner with/support the IA Summit in the future – looking to engage Jess and Samantha in the discussions.

* IDEA conference – Abbey Covert has agreed to take the lead for the conference.

Looking at creating World IA Day – (take off from World Usability Day)

* Verifying who will be working on each part of the IAI framework developed by Dorian

Jeff: Mentoring
Dan/Andrea: Researchers/practitioners: education and training
Dorian: Project teams/volunteers
Shari: Library

* Purpose of the framework artifact is to generate more artifacts.

Build off the framework (original artifact) and create personas, inventories, etc and then map the specifics of the site and future services.

* Setting milestones to make framework come to life

The idea is to draft personas for each relationship. Dorian will outline process, start building personas with one relationship to start. Noreen can send him old personas from the 2003 web design.

This will be discussed further at our next meeting as we ran out of time and needed to discuss other pressing matters that needed addressing.

* Any Administrative issues / matters to be addressed

Everyone to send Jeff an overview of the AGM and he will consolidate and send to Noreen.
Volunteers looking to help develop the directory and build on networking tool that is based on the framework that Dorian shared at the Summit.

* Other stuff…

Wikipedia page for IAI is outdated, incorrect. Update number of members, etc.

Dan looking for funding for an IA intern working on a UN relief project in Japan. Put to vote next week?

Annual Members Meeting Report

The IA Institute Annual Members Meeting was held in Denver on April 2, concurrently with the IA Summit. Over 100 people attended the event, held at the Wynkoop Brewing Company, making it our best annual meeting turnout yet. (Surprisingly, only a handful claimed to be there just for the karaoke: Big thanks to Kevin Hoffman for serving as our DJ).

At the meeting the Board presented a new framework for characterizing the relationships that the Institute will mediate going forward, which board member Dorian Taylor describes below. In future newsletters, we will present board updates on specific relationships within the framework and related resources including the IDEA conference, the IA Library, mentoring and more.

Characterizing the Information Architecture Institute, by Dorian Taylor

We began serving on the board of the Information Architecture Institute on October 2, 2010. Week after week, we did very little but bicker. We had little if any experience working together, and at least in my case, no experience whatsoever directing a non-profit organization.

Everybody involved had a flurry of ideas and initiatives for what they wanted to do with their board tenure. Most conspicuously, everybody had pet priorities couched in private understanding.

It was clear that in order to collaborate we needed a common language, and it was ultimately convenient that manufacturing common language is kind of what I do.

On one of our weekly conference calls in late January 2011, we invited Thomas Vander Wal to talk to us about the original purpose and objectives of the institute. Immediately afterward, I sketched out this:

A week or two later, we took this image to Iceland where we put it on the wall for the purpose of focusing our attention while we sat in a hotel basement for (most of) two days.

We did get out a little bit, though.

Photo credits: Jeff Parks and Noreen Whysel
The fundamental relationships in the diagram didn’t change much, though some of the wording did and so did the positions of the relationships. There is some significance to the left and right panels but we’re not quite sure what it is yet.

In addition to the relationships in which the Institute serves as a mediator, we also added two direct relationships: one to business leaders and one to other service organizations. The only thing left to do was formalize the image, which I did in time for the IA Summit, to be printed onto a card.

Of course, the back of the card was a little barren, so I wrote some copy for it. This was probably the easiest copy I’ve ever written. A single draft, started as a text file and subedited directly in Illustrator, which I’ll reproduce here:

In my admittedly biased opinion, this artifact is an excellent start under the aegis of the Institute’s new working motto:

Demonstrate the damn thing.

Dorian Taylor, IA Institute Board of Directors