This years IA Summit was in Miami Florida from the 12th - 14th of April. Attendance was up from last year, a trend we see every year. If you want to see the papers then go to the conference website http://www.iasummit.org/2008/ where they usually take a few weeks to get submitted and posted. Check on boxes and arrows for pod casts of all talks, also search on SlideShare or email the presenters directly.

I presented for the third year running on a project we've been working on called Hotel Yeoville which ties into the Internet cafe research we've been ingaged in for the past 2 or 3 years. You can find the presentation on Slideshare here: http://www.slideshare.net/jh01/hotel-yeoville

IA & policy
While in Miami I was interviewed by Olga Howard on the topic of the relationship between or potential influence that could be made by information architecture on 'policy'. This has close ties to the Hotel Yeoville project where we hope the outcome of the online community will be an influence on policy, city planning and design of the area. This interview is available in several parts on YouTube:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8ydHFpvNLM&feature=user
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3oZNV4KHcg&feature=user
Part 3: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s7t29Q8mcso&feature=user
Part 4: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=11wQhPjNMYg&feature=related

The summit is many things: it is the excitement of being around like minded people, it is the presentations, it's the keynotes and reflecting some kind of zeitgeist, it's arguments, discoveries, chatter in the hallways, learning and making new friends. The extroadinary thing is following all this and staying in touch with friends. It seems like the IA community is finally coming out of its identity crisis post the last two conferences, post the arrival of Web 2.0 and post the rise of IXD (interaction design). Andrew Hinton's closing was great: it addressed where we are as a community (of practise), where we're hoping to go and where we've come from. My only complaint is why this didn't come sooner? Why did it take so long for us as a community to respond? Why have we been so insecure? We're fab - as a community, a practise and a discipline. Andrew seems to see UX in the same way that I do. IA is one part of a mix of desciplines and practises that can positively contribute to the design of the user experience. But it is one of several that add to it and one person can be doing more than one thing (IA, IXD, Usability) and one person can work as an IA with others doing other things (IXD, Brand, Usability, Interface, etc etc etc) to create the design of the overall experience.

With the rediscovered confidence of the community back in check post the web 2.0 drive-by the big question on many people's minds is 'where to next for IA?'. There was a lot about real world stuff coming into the sphere of IA in the form of learnings (service design, retention based tactics), there was an increasing emphasis on UX (more and more, slides didn't just say 'IA' they said 'IA / UX' meaning that either our role is broadening, the understanding of it's reach is broadening or over-all, the digital practisioner is required to become more savvy, aware and experienced in the multitude of different parts that come together to make up the UX. And we along with the user who we so vehemently protect are a big big part of it.

And lastly, although belated, Boxes and Arrows have finally put up interviews with a selection of IA's from last years Las Vegas Summit. I'm in there somewhere... http://www.boxesandarrows.com/view/meet-your-peers

So, until next year then (or perhaps sooner in Amsterdam at the EuroSummit)... Jason