On my way back home from the 6th IA Summit. I’ll be posting on thoughts originated in the Summit over the next few days; there is just too much info to go through immediately. As I had expected, the Summit was a reinvigorating experience—much like last year’s IA Retreat, but on a massive scale.
Liv, Peter and I spoke about Global Information Architecture. There seems to be a great deal of interest in the IA community for this topic; expect more from us in the future on these matters. (We are starting a mailing list for folks interested in these issues; I will post details here as soon as I have them.)
We addressed the issue of multiculturalism during our Leadership Seminar session. No one belongs exclusively to one single culture—individual humans are a patchwork of different cultures overlaid onto each other. For example, although I am primarily “Panamanian”, I also have traces of other cultures: having lived in the US for 8+ years, I am in tune with American culture. Cultures are not defined exclusively by geographic boundaries; there is such a thing as an “IA Culture”, which has its own language (“taxonomy”, “controlled vocabulary”, etc.), rituals (“IA Summit”), etc.
The IA Summit is an opportunity for members of the IA tribe to gather around the campfire and tell stories, share experiences, and clarify and expand each other’s understanding of the hunting grounds. To all the good friends who made it such an amazing experience: thank you. I hope to be able to repeat the journey next year.
Photos of the tribe on Flickr, tagged iasummit.