Jakob loves IA (a bit late)

Jakob Nielsen just published his latest Alertbox, this week on Intranet Information Architecture. I feel he is slightly behind the curve of IA's big wave, but he says some interesting things nevertheless.

Why do I say he's behind the curve? Well, IA is a bit 2005, 2006-ish. These days it's all about interaction design and especially user experience. Of course, I may be wrong, and in fact, there is some evidence that IA is still on the rise. The recent UPA Salary Survey results show (although I can't find them; maybe it was the-list-that-shall-not-be-named where this was discussed?) that IAs make the most money of all the professions in the UX field. Then again, our own IAI Salary Survey (results to be posted soon) indicated that in 2007 less people called themselves Information Architect than in 2006 (30% vs. 50%) but that may also be a sign of the distribution of IA responsibilities over more people. Ugh, now I'm confused.
This all may sound strange coming from someone who just got elected to the Board of Directors of the Information Architecture Institute, I realize that. Let's say I am trying hard to bring back those fine IA days...

And why is Jakob's article still interesting?
Well, because:

• where he says "Given a little training in the most important IA principles [..] teams can certainly achieve great IA results without full-time, dedicated information architects" he copies my idea of Guerilla IA which nicely completes the circle, because I stole that term from him.
• like I proposed at EuroIA this year, he combines processes with patterns in his research, if I go by the sentence "We initiated an effort to document intranet IA processes and the resulting designs".
• he takes Information Architecture serious, and doesn't call it 99% bad.

So, if Jakob loves IA, I love Jakob!

Help end world hunger

Increase your (English) vocabulary in this game-for-the-good-cause.

For each word you get right, FreeRice.com donates 10 grains of rice through the United Nations to help end world hunger. I played until I reached 1000 grains of rice and tried to keep my vocabulary level at 30. I want to know how you did! (thanks Mark Hurst)

And if you have a blog, consider adding a message like this too...

"Hello World" from The Web And Beyond: Mobility

I just got of the phone with the committee-chair of next year's Chi-Netherlands conference "The Web And Beyond: Mobility" (for which I am the Program Chair) and he mentioned that our initial website is live!

For now it's still a bare bone structure in need of more content and some tweaks, but it feels good to see something!

In the months until May 22nd 2008 I will try to post updates on the progress we are making as a team.