World IA Day Announces 14 Locations

World IA Day has just announced 14 locations for February 11, 2012

1 DAY. 14 CITIES.
World IA Day 2012 is about bringing the Information Architecture community together. We’re fostering links within local communities and on a global scale. We’re sharing information, ideas and research. And we’re doing it through unconventional, exciting and engaging IA events this February.

The first ever World IA Day focuses on Designing Structures for Understanding. On February 11, 2012, we’re hosting WIAD events in 14 cities across all corners of the globe. Learn from world-class IA minds, network, showcase new ideas and attend events tailored specifically to your community. We hope you’ll join us at an event near you this February!

Local Connections. Global Impact. World IA Day 2012

WIAD2012 Locations:

Bogota, Colombia
Vancouver, Canada
Sao Paulo, Brazil
Los Angeles, CA, USA
Ghent, Belgium
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Italy (Milan, Rome, Sardegna)
Panama City, Panama
Bucharest, Romania
Paris, France
Sydney, Australia
Malmo, Sweden
Johannesburg, South Africa
Tokyo, Japan
Ann Arbor, MI, USA

Visit http://worldiaday.org/ for details.

IA Institute Newsletter #6.05 Released

I am almost finished with the NYC Digital Roadmap and will have a blog post coming soon. In the meantime, there is a lot of new publications on Information Architecture. Put this on your nightstand, bring it to the beach or carry it on the metro, cause we've got reading to do:

IA Institute just released Newsletter #6.05 with Part Two of Finding IA at the Enterprise Search Summit by Shari Thurow, a follow up to my article from the previous newsletter.

http://iainstitute.org/news/001263.php

The Journal of Information Architecture released Issue 1, Volume 3 with a focus on the unique way of seeing what Jorge Arango terms "Environments for Understanding" and how they persist across channels and media.

http://journalofia.org

Also the long awaited IA issue of the ASIS%T Bulletin is out:

http://www.asis.org/bulletin.html

And if that's not enough, here's an inspiring blog post on "Information Architecture," building bridges and making maps from Peter Morville:

http://semanticstudios.com/publications/semantics/000647.php

I've got a lot of reading to do....

IA Institute - A New Framework

At the IA Institute Annual Members' Meeting held in Denver on April 2, the Board of Directors presented a new framework for characterizing the relationships that the Institute will mediate going forward.  The framework came out of a board strategy meeting that I attended in Iceland back in February.



Read more in the April newsletter and see some very cool (OK, cold) Iceland pictures in my Facebook album:

IA Institute Newsletter #6.04
Reykjavic Photos

The IA Institute released its 2010 IA Institute Salary and Benefits Survey.

Highlights of the 2010 Salary Survey include:

Median Salary:

The highest salary range was a tie between the USD$80,000-90,000 and USD$90,000-100,000 ranges, each representing 12.8% of the total responses.

The average salary was estimated to be USD$95,252, up $5,252 from 2009.
 
Freelance Rates:

Excluding outliers, the average freelance rate was USD$88.65, up USD$3.65 over 2009. The median rate was USD$85.00 and the modal rate was USD$100.00, with eight people indicating that rate.
 

Code of Conduct

The IA Institute is discussing a Code of Conduct for members of the Board of Directors. Board member, Jeff Parks, suggested basing the document on Google's corporate Code of Conduct, which begins with the mantra, "Don't Be Evil."

From the IA Institute Minutes blog:

* Code of Conduct

In order to show our desire to keep the Board of Directors accountable to the highest possible ethical and professional standard, it was agreed that Jeff will work on re-shaping the Code of Conduct he took from Google’s to reflect specifically the needs of the IAI.

This is a great idea and calls to mind some previous discussions about professional codes of conduct for UX practitioners. (See Lou Rosenfeld's Bloug post, "Shame and Disgust," on working for the Veterans' Administration.) Shouldn't we, as practitioners, not just board members, of information architecture, also hold ourselves to a higher standard of ethics for serving the goals of the users?

Here are some resources from the UPA code of conduct and other initiatives around ethics:

Code of Conduct:
http://www.upassoc.org/about_upa/leadership/code_of_conduct.html

Designing Voting Systems:
http://www.upassoc.org/civiclife/voting/ethics.html

The 2009 IA Institute Salary and Benefits Survey Opens

The 2009 IA Institute Salary and Benefits Survey is now open at:

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=rnk5PuDVMuIRC1QwwS9PtA_3d_3d

The survey takes only a minute or two to complete, so we hope you'll stop by and contribute.

We have made slight edits from last year including a much simpler matrix of responses for IA related tasks, a more normalized breakdown of salary ranges and a further refinement of job titles and experience levels. I enjoyed reviewing last year's comments regarding medical benefits especially in light of current debate over US healthcare, but because we are an international organization, we went for simple this year and made only a few minor changes.

As in previous years, the survey will remain open through October, and we will post the results on the IAI website in late November/early December.

Questions for Prospective IAs

Anders Ramsay, User Experience Designer and a long-time mentor in the IA Institute's mentoring program, wrote down some great questions to think about before you approach a prospective mentor. See his list here:

Questions for Prospective IAs

IA/UX Salary Surveys

Based on a recent request on the IA Institute Job Board, I have compiled some IA/UX salary information resources. As soon as the IAI salary survey comes out, I'll post a link here.

Very few of the postings I receive on the IA Institute Job Board have salary information, but a typical salary/rate conversion is:

salary = 2/3 rate times 2080 (40 hours per week for a year)

The 1/3 reduction represents the cost of your medical, vacation and other benefits plus social security taxes that the company pays.

For $75/hour, this equals $104,000/year, which appears to be on the high end for those jobs where I do have salary data. Salary.com shows salary+bonus capping around 110K for most experienced IA/UX type jobs, although their job titles don't conform perfectly to the industry yet.

The IA Institute is supposed to publish the results of the 2005 survey this month. They are a bit behind schedule, but keep looking for the survey at http://www.iainstitute.org.

Some other surveys:

2004 UX Salary Survey
http://www.spiritsoftworks.com/resources/2004-salary-survey.htm

2003 AIfIA Salary Survey
http://iainstitute.org/pg/salary_survey_2003.php

IA Wiki - links to more salary surveys
http://www.iawiki.net/SalarySurveys

Salary.com Salary Wizard
http://www.salary.com/salary/layoutscripts/sall_display.asp

Since Salary.com job titles don't appear to reflect titles used in the IA industry, here are some equivalent job titles:

Interface Designer = User Experience & HCI
Content Engineer = Information Architect