Design Matters

International Council of Societies of Industrial Design. World Design Congress. October 17-20. 2007. San Francisco. http://www.connecting07.org/

According to Fast Company, although demand for designers is growing, there is a shortage of qualifed designers:
http://www.fastcompany.com/resources/design/lawrence/111506.html

March 24-26, 2007. Preconference workshops March 22-23. Las Vegas, Nevada, USA. http://www.iasummit.org/2007/

March 8-9, 2007. Sydney, Australia. Led by Peter Morville, co-author of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web and Ambient Findability. http://www.keyforums.com.au

Peter Morville writes today about the past, present, and future of information architecture: “Information Architecture 3.0.”

Second Life, http://secondlife.com/ is a virtual 3D world entirely built and owned by its residents.

There is a new Info Island: http://infoisland.org/about/ (scroll down). There are opportunities to volunteer.

Today on the IA Institute list a member comments that non-profits are using Second Life to  teach, host events, hold meetings, share technologies, and reach out  to their particular audiences.

Are there possibilities for STC?

What is the role of the Enterprise Information Architect? Do we focus strictly on information infrastructure, or become change agents? http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/enterprise

To gather information for the next edition of “Information Architecture for the World Wide Web,” Lou Rosenfeld and Peter Morville have been surveying the Information Architecture community.

The newest survey “IA Education Survey, for Practitioners” is now open. The authors would greatly appreciate your input. (more…)

By Geoffrey Hart, Associate Fellow, Montreal chapter, July 2005

Though there is much to be said for living in modern times, few of us enjoy the challenges raised by an increasingly rapid pace of technological change. Indeed, many of us now lack the knowledge to make informed decisions on issues such as cloning that arise from such change. Communicators refer to the knowledge and thinking skills required for such decisions as “scientific literacy,” because they resemble the more familiar literacy required to read and understand generalized information. In both cases, literacy requires more than simply the ability to read the words; it requires the ability to think about and understand the words. In their 1996 National Education Standards, the United States National Academy defined scientific literacy as “the knowledge and understanding of scientific concepts and processes required for personal decision making, participation in civic and cultural affairs, and economic productivity.” (more…)

By Barbara J. D’Angelo, Student Member, Texas Tech. U., January 2006

When I switched professions from librarianship to technical communication two years ago, many friends and colleagues warned me that I would be leaving behind the comfort and safety of a profession in which I had been trained for one that was unknown. But despite their concerns, I was certain I was making the right decision and that I would feel right at home in my new profession both academically and in practice. I was not completely new to field; I had been teaching as an adjunct for a technical communication program for a few years and was familiar with the parallels and overlapping areas of concern and how my skills and knowledge as a librarian complemented and fit with my new field. (more…)