Session type: Main Conference Talk

Working in a fast-paced environment, but instead of enjoying innovation driven transformation you're feeling trapped in daily chaos?

Make change fun! Learn how to:
- Create a safe space to express your frustrations about organizational change
- Find a way to start positive & constructive discussions
- Use new, practical strategies in order to tackle change efficiently in real life

Join us in connecting concepts such as system dynamics, pace layers and game mechanics to behavioral patterns we identified in organizations across South America and Europe.

Let us share how we tweaked card games to understand how to reach goals in a work-reality where the only constant is change. Reveal hidden agendas, work processes, collaboration models, darling-artifacts, best practices and seek to uncover how others approach the challenges you face. You will take away a broad palette of problem solving tactics from this workshop, be enabled to steer change and hopefully some laughs as a bonus.

The first generation of IAs are still out there, many of us now in leadership roles, often on product teams, or coaching up-and-coming professionals. In this panel, three veterans will reflect on what happens once you've "made it" and whether it's possible to find purposeful satisfying stable work without an overhanging sense that just one more raise, promotion, or opportunity will finally get us "there."

Digital media, and software in particular, is a very verbose, very precise incantation of how we want an information system to behave. The highest level of detail, however, is also the most perishable, with material trading off precision for durability.

The Specificity Gradient is a framework for thinking about all of the precursor material: the research, prototypes, documents, that go into product development, as well as a general process for not only prioritizing work but organizing deliverables by level of detail, so the more durable parts can be reused. Expect as well a set of demonstrations, tools and infrastructure that implement the Gradient, as this is much more than a framework for organizing thought, but actual running systems.

Are Information Architects a thing of the past? Or the only folks out there who are going to make sense of this mess? And if not them, who is best positioned to shepherd the structure of our shared information spaces into a better state? How do we ‘future proof' our discipline?

In this debate, we'll pit industry experts against each other to determine answers to these questions and more, once and for all. Or, at least, unpack some of the situations and contexts that really require dedicated IA expertise… and what we might need to ‘share' with our colleagues for great impact in the future.

Join us for this spirited live debate, hosted by Optimal Workshop.