The word that came to mind as I left the event was ‘refreshing‘. Brian Solis is smart in understanding what he knows and that it’s a constant to continue to learn. He is also humble in proposing that we all need to be our own experts.

I haven’t seen much modesty out there around this topic. Mr. Solis came to teach us. That’s what attracted me to this kind of engagement when I started participating years ago. The chance to share with others, learn from them and grow together.

I first got actively involved in the participation age when I worked at Sun Microsystems and became an internal advocate for blogging at Sun. It was hard to quantify the benefits, but it felt like the future to me. I participated and saw the things that came back to me through reaching out to others in this way. So much potential!

A couple of insights that struck me from the presentation:

Introverts are the new extroverts.

Mr. Solis discussed the fact that this way of engaging is the future. It shifts the power structures that are currently in play. This is a different way of reaching out than what we are normally faced with in today’s meatspace. Extroverts most definitely rule traditional networking but there is subtlety and longevity to the way a person needs to interact and exist in a virtual space. I think this gives introverts an advantage.

You have an audience.

If you are out there engaging, it’s likely someone is listening. What are you saying to them? He challenged us to give this some more thought.

Curation, curation, curation

Packaged experiences are coming to save us from the firehose that is twitter, facebook, the internet and more. If you are able to cull through information and put it together in a way that helps people understand it, you can find success in this new world.

If it can’t be found it does not exist

People don’t spend time digging for content. You need to do everything you can to make if findable. Tag it, add meta data, put it in multiple places, tell your audience about it and ask them to tell others too. If nobody sees your brilliant content and engages with it, is it really there?

The web was only the beginning

I’ve been around awhile. I’ve worked on creating online experiences going on 14 years. One of the key things I’ve seen from marketing teams is that they are used to the way they’ve been trained. ‘Launch and Leave’ is something I’ve heard before. But this kind of marketing is getting less effective. The onset of the internet started this evolution and this need. The rise of the participation age is forcing an evolution from campaigns to a continuum. You need to KEEP engaging. You also need to provide a place for your audience to go once you get them. Is your web site ready to take on the interested parties you are culling for your business or your art? We have to think about the ways in which customers want to engage and support those models.

Your Business Models and Structures May Need to Change

Customers are evolving and requiring completely different ways of interacting with your company. The picture below shows how a very hierarchical company has shifted and evolved their structure in order to be successful in responding to customers. According to Mr. Solis, it’s been 2 years in the making and it’s still in progress. It’s not easy, but it’s necessary to be successful into the future. As the saying goes, business must evolve or die.

Thanks to Jen Kane and Kary Delaria for a great evening. I enjoyed listening to Brian Solis share his knowledge and encourage everyone in the room to get as good at this as him and to keep learning and keep engaging.

• They got the email address sort of right but missed the boat
• They forgot key punctuation (always a clue)
• They are using inconsistent bolding, coloring, and font sizes (another clue)
• I can log into Google to check on this and Google doesn’t say my account is full

So the message is to be careful out there and the best way to do that is to start by being smart. Use your critical thinking cap when people ask you for sensitive information.

Here’s what they sent me:

• Nice clear call to action
• Brightly colored – impossible to not notice
• No banner blindness here
• Love the disclaimer

And I think to myself – why can’t we all just get along?

Yes, this was nicely communicated, however, the fundamental need for the communication is the real message.

CHOICES TO BE MADE

As the chair, I was empowered to make decisions. These are the some of the things I decided:

1) Most of the conference speakers are amongst us. They are our colleagues and they are sharing to help all of us grow.

There has been much talk about how the conference needs to be one track. Well, I remember the days when it was one track and the thing is it’s not TED. This is a practitioner conference.

That does not mean we shouldn’t try it. But consider this…Isn’t thinking about how many tracks first sort of backwards? Content first. Forms follows content. (Maybe this is what the content strategists are trying to tell us….)

An example from the planning this year –  the conference was originally 3 tracks. We got so many great submissions, I made a game time call to add a track. We had the content. Why restrict it based on a notion of the format?

2) Keynotes & Plenaries

I outlined goals for the keynote and the closing speakers. I had an archetype in my mind of how I wanted the keynotes to impact the event. I then searched for people who met my criteria. I sought out lots of advice as well and got assistance from past IA Summit conference chairs and advisors.

Dan Roam

On day 1, Dan Roam painted the picture.

For the first day keynote, I wanted the kind of person that would lift the attendees up and provide a combination of forward thinking and orthogonally related value.

One person I was really excited about getting to speak was robotics professor Cynthia Breazeal but she was not available.

Many lists were shared with the advisors – and then Dan Roam‘s name came up……that clicked. I knew he would be very engaging and he would relate to the audience in a way that would fit within the framework of the event and provide value to the attendees.

Listen to Dan’s talk.

Richard Saul Wurman

Richard Saul Wurman – Where the heck did he come from?

RSW came to us through the people in the community. Dan Klyn submitted a proposal to have a session with RSW. When I saw it I contacted Dan right away to find out more about this. Through several conversations a plan was hatched and RSW was coming to speak on the second day of the three day event. Symbollically this was important to me because one of the things he always talks about is “the spaces in between”. The opinions of his appearance at the event were varied. He caused much discussion and people were either very happy or very upset about the things he said and the manner in which he delivered those messages. BUT-he is ‘the guy’ who wrote the INFORMATION ARCHITECTURE book. So there’s that. You know, history? As the event chair, I didn’t think that kind of serendipity should be ignored. So we made it happen.

Listen to RSW’s talk.

Whitney Hess

How and why I chose Whitney Hess as the closing speaker.

I saw Whitney speak at the IA Summit in Memphis. I was never more inspired by someone at an Information Architecture related event than her. She made me want to do better work. She inspired me to think more deeply about it each day. That was the person I wanted speaking to everyone just before they left the conference that I led. The goal was inspiration. Sure it’s esoteric, but I think energy is essential to push us through challenges. Isn’t that part of what these conferences should provide? She brought that to the event in a way that nobody else could have.

Listen to Whitney’s talk.

3) The Theme

Once the keynote speakers were in place and the proposals were chosen, we had a schedule. I felt the keynotes presented a trifecta of varied and appropriate personalities to frame the event. This trifecta was part of a whole story about my thinking around the theme.

It was a two part theme:

I believe what I said to open the event sums up why I chose the theme.

“Why “This one Goes to 11?” It’s a cultural reference and it aides us in building connections. Connections to each other strengthen our community. These connections are strengthened even further when we come together and meet in person to share, listen, collaborate and hopefully disagree.  When we come together we inevitably have those hallway conversations. Every year that I have attended the IA Summit, I’ve heard people say that exact phrase, ‘the best conversations happen in the hall.’ But those hallway conversations have context when we gather, they are fueled by the input we experience and a continuation of the discussion.”

• Dan Roam helped us think about communicating visually.
• RSW spoke to us about getting out of the notion of thinking about the ‘modality’ so much.
• Whitney reminded us that anyone can at anytime be a hero for the user and that great ideas are just that – ideas. We need to work with the people that build the ideas to make them real.

THE PERSONAL TOLL

I was a volunteer. Since I helped Samantha with the 2009 IA Summit, I was at it for 20 months. It took many hours every week to make sure things were pushing ahead. Events like this tend to have lots of opinions without manpower behind them. When people offered advice, I did what I could to balance the value of the idea and the lack of resources. In the end, I’m pretty happy with all that we got done.

I started getting help from Abby Covert around October 2009. Her contribution was essential. We would not have gotten across the finish line without her. We reached out to people through Twitter and got more help. Lots of people contributed to the event and it would not have been the same without those contributions. I am grateful for every single person who helped.

NEXT YEAR

The thing that excites me the most about what happened this year is the fact that Livia Labate, the 2011 chair, is getting help. People are reaching out and sharing great ideas. I think that’s a remarkable outcome. Who could ask for more.

MY VOICE

Somehow in the process of all of this, I have felt oddly silenced by the experience. It might be due to the fact that I was focused on performing the role of conference chair as a way of exercising leadership and I have not yet identified a new goal. It might be related to something else. For two years, I didn’t feel it was appropriate for me to give a talk at the event because I was the chair and it would be inappropriate for the chair to take that opportunity from someone else. So even though I was able to orchestrate it, I was really only viewed as the person giving the announcements. It put me in a position that took me by surprise and I had an interesting revelation. Organizers are not seen as thought leaders but rather administrators. And in general administrators don’t have a voice because they are busy doing things behind the scenes.

I think that’s where my voice went. I started to respond to others because they had an assumption about me. As I’m slowly recovering from this, I’ve begun to get my voice back. One of the first things I felt should be shared out loud were the reasons behind my choices which were intentional not accidental or administrative.

SOME ADVICE

I learned so much working on the event. Here are some of the most valuable lessons that came out of it for me:

• When you take on something bigger than you, understand it will consume you
• Let it guide you as much as you intend to guide it
• Leave room for serendipity
• Have a plan, but be willing to adjust
• Great ideas are plentiful, dependable volunteers are rare – discern the difference quickly
• Grow a thick skin

I want to thank the American Society for Information Science and Technology (ASIS&T) for presenting the IA Summit throughout the years. They are the sponsoring organization and the people there do all they can to support us. I enjoyed my time working with them as a volunteer.

And on to IA Summit 2011 in Denver.

View my photos from the IA Summit on Flickr.

This is an event sponsored by the American Society for the Information Age (ASISI&T). The event occurs April 7-11th in Phoenix, AZ.

In honor of Ada Lovelace Day I wanted to thank the women that will be speaking at the event. The willingness of each of them to share knowledge at this event is a generous and valuable act. We grow in our profession by showing up at events like this conference, sharing and taking that knowledge back to our work.

Thanks to all the people willing to do this. They are my heroes this Ada Lovelace Day.

• Erin Malone
• Cindy Chastain
• Donna Spencer
• 
• Erin Liman
• Samantha Starmer
• Christina Wodtke
• Dana Chisnell
• 
• Tanya Raybourn
• 
• Cindy Blue
• Colleen Jones
• 
• Kejun Xu
• Kate Rutter
• Candy Bernhardt
• Debra Levin Gelman
• Laura McFadden
• Kyle Soucy
• Johanna Kollmann
• Gabrielle Hon
• Jill Christ
• Manya Kapikian
• Vera Rhoads
• Amy Cueva
• Megan Grocki
• 
• Whitney Hess
• 

In addition to the speakers, I want to send out a special thank you to the following women who volunteered their time to make the conference program and web site a reality:

• Abby Covert
• Livia Labate
• Larisa Brandt
• Mollie Clancy
• Mags Hanley
• Lori Baker
• Sue Fensore
• Dimple Mohan

What I didn’t know then, I know now.

Read the Terms of Use.

It’s like a roach motel in there. You can get in but you can’t get out.

The thing is – in the end – they have to make money. They know so much about me already that I wish I could take back. However, I can’t. Every single connection that I confirmed, every photo I’m tagged in, all of it is captured. I just wanted it to stop. It takes people like me standing up and saying that the practices are not OK. So here I go again.

If they open it up, I’ll be back in a flash. They can advertise to me if they share with me the info that they know. Google in contrast does share that info.

I’m not actually up in arms about privacy as much as everyone else. It’s more about the fact that I know what Google knows. That leaves the power in my hands. Where do you want the power to be? You should ask yourself.