March 26, 2006

IA Summit 2006: Day Two

More interesting thoughts than I can capture right now, but here are a few for starters:

“Electric chairs are less chair-y”

Donna Maurer gave a good overview of George Lakoff’s Women, Fire, and Dangerous Things (David Weinberger posted his notes). I think what’s really needed is a children’s book version. If you are a publisher who can give me a substantial advance on such a project, please get in touch. (I may have already been beaten to the punch.)

Personal information workflow

Thomas Vander Wal opened his session on information use and resue with this reality check:

“Most people do not live their lives on the web, they live in the real world.”

The central point of his talk was about making information available in ways that people can make use of in various contexts. Having your phone number, event information, or address on your website is good, but being able to send it from there to my phone, calendar, or GPS navigation system would be even better.

The content factory

Dan Brown explored some interesting ideas about the future directions that content management systems should take, working against the metaphor of business as a factory with workers producing a product. His theoretical system allows greater flexibility and collaboration amongst content creators by removing much of the rigidity of current systems. His slides [PDF] may explain it more clearly.

Podcasts

AOL’s Mountain View podcast has interviews with a few people from the summit available.