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Home / Sessions / The Value of IA – The 9th Academics & Practitioners Roundtable at the 2021 Information Architecture Conference

The Value of IA – The 9th Academics & Practitioners Roundtable at the 2021 Information Architecture Conference

IAC 2021 / 2021 IAC
Multiple Session (Virtual)

Cost

$200 USD

Time(s)

April 19, 2021
11:00 AM to 1:00 PM EDT

April 21  11:00 AM to 1:00 PM local time
April 22 11:00 AM to 1:00 PM local time
(various groups around the globe on 21st or 22nd depending on their location/timezone)

April 23 at 7:00 AM EDT

Description

Roundtable framing: The 9th Academics & Practitioners Roundtable welcomes information architecture practitioners and academics of all levels of experience as well as anyone from IA-adjacent or IA-overlapping fields. The Roundtable’s unique value proposition lies in its diversity of its participants and how it drives discussions of how information architecture continues to evolve as a discipline and profession.

2021 Theme: The Value of IA.

Information architecture has evolved to think broadly about designing information ecosystems. IAs play a vast and pervasive role in daily life, social structure, and the organization of economic and political power. And yet we still need, and struggle to be able to explain what information architecture is and what its value is.

If IA practitioners and academics aim to demonstrate the value of their work and improve the wellbeing of human beings surrounded by and immersed in information systems, there are critical questions they must answer:

  • What is the value of IA in society, present and future? Specifically, what is the value of IA as a discipline?
  • What narratives do we share in our IA communities about our origins, purpose, and value? What are the limitations of those narratives?
  • How can we redirect conversations about economic value or “return on investment” (ROI) toward a broader, more meaningful range of human values?
  • What concepts or vocabulary can we use in order to explain the value of information architecture to our colleagues, clients, and communities?

This workshop sets out to address these questions and to clarify the ‘Value of IA’. The multi-day Roundtable is open to anyone with an interest in IA and continues the Roundtable’s tradition of gathering practitioners, researchers, and educators of all levels of expertise and from around the world to discuss critical aspects of our discipline and share what is discussed with the broader IA community.

Day 1 consists of framing presentations, a series of lightning talks, group activities and discussion. Day 2 consists of asynchronous group make-a-thons aimed at developing artifacts capturing, summarizing, or developing the outputs of Day 1. Day 3 concludes with group presentations of their outputs and synthesis.

To learn more about the Information Architecture Roundtable and the themes for the previous eight roundtables, visit https://www.iaroundtable.org/.

About the speakers

Jeffrey Ryan Pass
Jeff Pass made his first website in 1997 and has been involved in digital communications, design, usability, and, especially, information architecture ever since. For the past 20+ years, Jeff has been a federal contractor and has worked as IA or UX lead on high-profile digital properties including HealthCare.gov, CFTC.gov, USPS.gov, and dozens more. He also helps lead the UX Community of Practice for Booz Allen Hamilton. Jeff has helped organize numerous industry events like World IA Day DC, UXDC, DCUX, GoodGov UX, IA Conference, IA Summit, and UXPA DC programming. Jeff attended the first IA Roundtable in Chicago (2013) and, following a 2-year gap, has attended every IA Roundtable since Atlanta (2016), presenting at the Roundtables in 2017, 2018, and 2019.
Andrea Resmini

An architect, teacher, and researcher, Andrea Resmini is the author of Pervasive Information Architecture and Reframing Information Architecture, and a two-times past president of the Information Architecture Institute. He co-founded the Journal of Information Architecture, Architecta, the Italian Society for Information Architecture, the Academic / Practitioner Roundtable, and World IA Day.

Andrea is a compulsive reader of WWII submarine warfare trivia, Tolkien drafts, and Jack the Ripper case studies. He is also one of the regular hosts of Acoustic Jam Night!

Sarah Rice
Sarah Rice

Sarah Rice is an information architect with over two decades of strategy and consulting experience, designing and executing excellent user experiences for companies such as Google, Sony, Sun Microsystems, Microsoft, eBay, Princess Cruises and Yahoo!

She has a master’s degree in Information Science and consults with a number of user experience firms under Seneb Consulting. She served on the Board of Directors of the Information Architecture Institute, is active in the American Society for Information Science and Technology’s Information Architecture Summit. She also speaks regularly at industry conferences.

Dan Zollman

Dan Zollman is an information architect and UX strategist living in Boston, MA. His interests in responsible, ethical, and systemic design have evolved through his experiences practicing IA and UX in complex organizations including Vanguard, Tufts University, and Massachusetts Digital Service. Dan is an organizer of the IA Roundtable (iaroundtable.org) at the IA Conference; World IA Day Boston; and an international online community for ethics in design and technology (ethicsofdesign.org), which was founded at the IA Summit in 2017.

Asha Singh
Asha Singh

Asha Singh has organized professional development events since 2007, including DCUX, WIAD DC, and UXPA DC. She works as a project manager supporting U.S. Federal agencies, nonprofits, and commercial clients since 2010; and currently serves on the boards for UXPA DC and Global WIAD. Ms. Singh holds an MA from The George Washington University, a BA from the University of South Florida, and a Project Management Professional certification from Project Management Institute.

Stacy Merrill Surla

Stacy Surla has created and led workshops for government, industry, and the UX community for over 20 years. Drawing on her experiences as a performance artist, UX practitioner, and teacher, Stacy helps people transform meetings into more engaging and effective ways to get work done. Recent workshops include a bootcamp-style training for Lean UX delivery managers, a team-driven workshop for integrating UX into Agile, co-planning the annual IA Academic and Practitioners Roundtable, and a workshop on designing and facilitating workshops. As with all her work, she integrates design thinking, Lean UX, and user-centered methods to put people at the heart of each effort. Stacy is Vice President of MetaMetrics Inc., an adjunct professor at the University of Maryland iSchool, and was a twice-elected officer of the Information Architecture Institute.

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