At the recent IA Summit, I was surprised and delighted to see how many talks there were about the Semantic Web. Before this emerging technology can really catch on, we will need more Information Architects and Interaction Designers who understand the potential and can design elegant solutions to real problems (both user problems and business problems). In some ways, I wish the conversation were further along, but I realize that it has to start somewhere. The fact that the subject exploded onto the scene in such a big way is a good indication that Web 3.0 is on a lot of people’s minds.
These are the talks I saw: (more…)
Over on scatter/gather I wrote a post summing up my experience of last week’s Content Strategy Consortium at the IA Summit. It was a very inspiring experience and there’s a lot more to say about it. This event is bound to inspire many posts – here, on scatter/gather, and on the blogs of my cohorts. Stay tuned.
In the meantime, here’s some additional coverage of the event:
Jeff Pollock has just released a book called Semantic Web for Dummies. Over at Semantic Universe you can download a free chapter (registration required), order the book, or read Jeff’s blog posts. I haven’t read the book yet, but Jeff is a really smart person with the ability to speak plainly and compellingly. This book is bound to be useful for people who are trying to understand the Semantic Web, or are still struggling with how to explain it to others. I just put my copy on order.
My department at Razorfish launched a blog today called Scatter/Gather. All of the contributors are Content Strategists (or Information Architects with some experience and interest in content strategy), and we’ll be covering a wide range of subjects relating to the use of content and language in the digital realms.
My first post is called “Don’t Shoot the Messager” and it’s about a conversation I had about the discrepency between the words message and messenger. It even features a celebrity appearance! Go check it out, and then read all the posts by my brilliant coworkers.
