Well, phooey. I went to the IA Summit, met some amazing people, had some inspiring conversations, saw some excellent presentations (along with, admittedly, a few fairly mundane ones), and came back feeling revitalized and glad to be doing what I do for a living, which was especially refreshing after the spate of “Information Architecture Is Dead” posts in recent months. But then I came back and found that there are more cranky IA Is Imperiled posts floating around, and reading them took away my enthusiasm for blogging about the Summit. It didn’t take away the sense of renewed energy that I’m still feeling, nor is my overwhelmingly positive impression of the event itself diminished, but I’m going to need to take a little extra time to marshal my thoughts and write something about the experience.
A few quick thoughts, though:
- The trading cards were incredibly cool. Seriously, best ice-breaker/conversation starter ever, and as a bonus, they’ll be a great quick way to educate account and client teams. The NForm folks deserve tremendous credit for coming up with them.
- Some sort of organized newbie event would have been nice. The first-timers table at the Saturday lunch was a good idea, but one table wasn’t adequate, and since I arrived late to lunch that day, I couldn’t even get near the table. Of course, newbies need to take initiative and meet people on their own, and I did, but a dinner or a reception or even something less formal would have been welcome, especially because there were (I think) an unusual number of first-timers this year. (Then again, next year I won’t be a first-timer, so maybe I shouldn’t worry about it!)
- I would like to respectfully ask ASIS&T and the Summit committee to never, ever have the conference in Las Vegas again.
No one I spoke to was happy about it being in Vegas, and the, er, charms of the city and the Vegas experience seemed mostly lost on the attendees. Plus the hotel, with its absurdly inflated prices and its appalling lack of reliable Net access, was a real disappointment.
Okay, now it sounds like I’m griping, and really I’m not. As I said, the experience was amazingly positive. I was so impressed by the energy and creativity and intelligence of everyone I met, and I learned more than I would have expected to. It was a true pleasure to meet so many people whose blogs I read regularly* and find that they were down-to-earth and approachable and more than willing to share ideas and experiences—even the big names in the field. Despite joking with a fellow IA Institute member about IA rock stars and the cult of personality, I was genuinely impressed with the fact that those “rock stars” sat and listened to other people’s presentations and came to the lunches and just generally didn’t act like they were above it all. I’m not at all sure that that’s the case in a lot of other professions.
And in case it’s not clear, I really, really didn’t like Las Vegas. This surprised me a little, because I have no moral or philosophical issues with gambling,** and though I am very much not into kitsch (I’ll save that particular rant for another day), I thought I might half-enjoy the over-the-topness of the place. But no. As soon as the overpriced airport shuttle (with GRATUITIES NOT INCLUDED printed in large type at the bottom of the ticket) hit the Strip, I knew I wasn’t going to enjoy Vegas. I knew everything would be tacky and ephemeral-looking, but I didn’t know it would all be that tacky. “New York, New York” didn’t impress me at all; it looked like it would topple over if you sneezed on it. Ditto the “Eiffel Tower” at the Paris. (Okay, I’ll grant that the Pyramid at the Luxor was sort of cool. Sort of.) And the larger-than-life scantily clad Toni Braxton that covered the façade of the conference hotel was not an encouraging greeting. I will not be going back. But hey, at least the weather was nice.
*(I’m disappointed, though, that I didn’t work up the nerve to talk to Lou Rosenfeld and didn’t even see Peter Morville. Both were extremely gracious and helpful to me via e-mail when I was applying to LEEP, and both are (along with my friend Sarah) the main reasons I got into IA in the first place. Maybe next year.)
**To state that more precisely, I have no problem with the act of gambling. I’m not exactly a fan of the gaming industry, though I’m also not convinced that it’s inherently worse than other money-hungry industries, just more blatantly sleazy, I guess. And I think our (the US’s, that is) collective ambivalence about gambling is goofy, much like our ambivalence and double-talk about sex. But I don’t think there’s anything fundamentally immoral about betting on stuff. Plus I like to play slot machines every once in a great while, even if I do quit as soon as I lose $5.00.)