Open Government Forum at Internet Week NYC

Over the next couple of days I am going to post summaries of Internet Week sessions that I attended last month. Here is the first, a panel on open government in NYC:

In June, I attended a panel on Open Goverment in NYC, hosted by Time Warner as part of Internet Week NYC. I joined my friend, Queens Community Board 3 member, Tom Lowenhaupt, who has been advocating for a .NYC top level domain for over ten years. Given some of the road blocks he has faced in his campaign, I knew attending an Open Government forum with him would be interesting.

Presented in a panel format, the event focused on Setting the Digital Standard for open government. NYC Deputy Mayor for Operations Stephen Goldsmith introduced Jesse Hempel, a senior writer for Fortune Magazine, who moderated a panel of experts in government information technology including:

• Adam Sharp, CEO, Twitter
• Carol Post, Commissioner, NYC Department of Information Technology and Telecommunications (DoITT)
• Rachel Sterne, Chief Digital Officer, NYC
• Seth Pinsky, President, NYC Economic Development Corporation

Commissioner Post opened with a brief description of the city's plans for a digital roadmap, including a range of web 2.0 tools that allows the City to to communicate and join with citizens to make a better city, break through hardened boundaries between people, neighborhoods, agencies, etc. "The fundamental responsibility of government being to allow access to information," she said.

Conversations with Richard Saul Wurman

I was having a nice conservation on Monday with my friend, journalist Amanda Robb, about topics that floated in interesting ways from pitching social awareness campaigns to women's magazines to the role of Twitter and other social media in reporting. The conversation got me thinking about the two different angles that we approach our respective careers in media: she with the words and stories and publications of a journalist and me with the technology platforms, codes and administration of new media operations that bring those words to the world.

So what a treat to find out about Richard Saul Wurman's newest venture, the WWW.WWW Conference, which will celebrate improvised conversation.

Simply pairings of amazingly interesting individuals prompted by a question, generating a conversation. For 10 minutes to 50 minutes. And so it will go – conversations interlaced with threads of improvised music. An astrophysicist & a microbiologist. An actor & a playwright. A jazz musician & a classical one. An energetic exploration of the lost art of conversing.

WWW.Wow. Where else could you find TED founder Richard Saul Wurman, Yo Yo Ma, Herbie Hancock and ESRI's Jack Dangermond all in one place? It's the WWW.WWW Conference, currently planned for September 18/20, 2012.

WWW.WWW will be a gathering of the greatest, most interesting & curious minds in the world engaged in immersive & improvised conversation. It will celebrate the 21st century while drawing attention to the new patterns & convergences effecting our health & that of our planet.

A unique un-conference that pairs up incredible minds for brief chats in a single venue. No presentations. No schedule. Just 100 interesting people and 50 conversations.

Richard Saul Wurman, who also founded TEDMED and the eg conferences, and coined the term "information architect" in 1976, is himself a M.Arch graduate who has been exploring the themes of design and place and livable urban environments since the sixties, so it is fitting that ESRI president and fellow mapping pioneer, Jack Dangermond should host the conference. You will recognize other great names associated with the event incuding glass artist Dale Chihuly, who will create an installation for the event and SEED Media Goup's Adam Bly as Science Curator. SEED was an original creator of what was to become my all-time favorite MOMA show, Design and the Elastic Mind.

The event will be streamed live to multiple locations and the talks will also be available via a yet-to-be-released, multi-platform tablet application.

Watch http://www.thewwwconference.com for details.

I won't want to miss the conversation, so I've already added it to my calendar.

Blog migration in progress

I am in the process of consolidating some of my writings into this new Blogger format. As much as I love the integration, flexibility and ownership of a self-hosted WordPress blog, I have been finding it to be increasingly a chore to update my installations. So much so that I've lost track of my words, which I promised myself I would never do, choosing instead to leave them as guest postings and collaborations on other people's blogs, websites and the ultimate sinkhole of discussion lists, Facebook and Twitter.

So here it is, the simplest, no-brained solution I could find, with no upgrade headaches, and a fun theme (that I might just tweak a bit here and there - I can't help myself).

While I'm gathering my musings and reports from the various ends of the internet (seems I was quite prolific in 2004 when I took a course on blogging), please visit some of those aforementioned websites:

http://gismonyc.blogspot.com
My blog for GISMO, a New York City meetup group for geographic information system professionals in the Tri-State area. I've been involved with this wonderful group of people for nearly 20 years in what used to be called Virtual GISMO. Many GISMO members are the unsung mapping heroes of Pier 92 during the aftermath of 9/11. We're developing a retrospective panel for an upcoming technology conference, which will probably mean more writing in my future.

http://iainstitute.org
I write the news, calendar items, Annual Reports and Salary Surveys for the IA Institute, an international community of people involved in the design and structure of information spaces, where I also serve as Operations Manager on a consulting basis and Mentoring Coordinator for the pure joy of it.

http://realestatevaluation.wordpress.com/
I occasionally collaborate on articles, research reports, GIS, and data visualizations with real estate valuation expert, Jim MacCrate of MacCrate Associates. I've worked as an editor and WordPress admin for the weblog, Real Estate Appraisal and Valuation Issues, and have served as editor and co-contributor for Straight from MacCrate, which appeared as a column on Miller Samuel's Soapbox blog.

http://www.west104garden.org
I'm the website committee chair for the West 104th Street Community Garden and write or edit most of the news, event and research pieces.

Now to go hunting for those words.

I Joined Google+ Today

I appear to be a late joiner to Google+, if the list of people in my contact's circles are any indication. It appears to have pulled my info from LinkedIn and has features of Facebook and a very interesting what if discussion among designers going on. I expect it will be a similar experience to LinkedIn and Facebook, perhaps with less of the silliness of Facebook but with similar features, such as Circles which lets you categorize people into groups. 

Just like Facebook, only better.

I've always liked that Facebook lets you group people. It's so natural. I tend to get frustrated by LinkedIn's degrees of separation - you are either in someone's network or you have someone or a chain of people between you and the other person. In a way this is nice because you are still able to contact people in your second network while preserving how you know that person (so and so's friend). Without a grouping feature, once you accept a person to your network on LinkedIn, you lose information about how you are connected to your new contact, unless you go to their page to see shared contacts.

Circles makes Google+ more personal and organized than LinkedIn. It is also more spare, sort of like the defunct Facebook Lite, but I'm witholding judgement for now. Facebook ended up dropping its Lite feature, and I suspect Google will eventually add in Facebook-like distractions and ads, since advertising is their ballywick.

If you are interested in learning more, let me know and I'll invite you to my Circle.

Finding IA at the Enterprise Search Summit

(this article originally appeared at iainstitute.org on June 20, 2011)

Last month in May, I had the pleasure of attending the Enterprise Search Summit East in New York City with IA Institute board member, Shari Thurow. Shari and I were on a quest to discover the role of information architecture in Enterprise Search. We didn't have to look too far, as both days were keynoted by IA Institute veterans: former IA Institute president and CEO of FatDux, Eric Reiss, on Day 1 and IA Institute founder and Principal and Senior Consultant at InfoCloud Solutions, Inc., Thomas Vander Wal, on Day 2 . Institute founder Bev Corwin was also in attendance and I quite was pleased to make a personal connection with a former coworker from PricewaterhouseCoopers, whom I hadn't seen in ten years.

In Reiss's keynote, "The Dumbing Down of Intelligent Search," he challenged search professionals to have the user, not the application, serve as the frame of reference for search. Using Google as an example, Eric showed how the algorithm may not provide the correct context. Those who build the algorithm need to ensure that contextual metadata is available in the CMS. Eric also challenged implementers to understand the business and educate the content providers of those needs. "Matching patterns is not the same as matching needs," he explained. And lest the users themselves forget their own power, Eric encourages all users to be critical and experiment, learn basic strategies and not to take for granted that the search solution is intelligent.

Thomas Vander Wal's keynote on Day 2, "The Search for Social," was a fitting bookend, showing how to deal with all the input once your Enterprise Search team has embraced the user. VanderWal described tools that go beyond searching for artifacts such as documents, emails and image/video content to searching for human resources, knowledge and expertise within the enterprise. Many presenters demonstrated social search tools for finding user profiles, activity streams and Yahoo! Answers-style knowledgebases.

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

NY Times: Japan Interactive Earthquake Map

The New York Times' Interactive Map of the Damage from the Earthquake in Japan:

http://www.nytimes.com/packages/flash/newsgraphics/2011/0311-japan-earthquake-map/index.html?hp

I was able to locate the town where my friend Pia's brother is teaching English (center of quake zone but far from the nuclear plants, very little structural damage, no casualties) and where my daughter's camp friend's family lives (quite a bit south of Tokyo, out of quake zone).

Coincidentally enough, Brett and I were attending a New York Red Cross breakfast the morning the tsunami was announced, and while the content of the morning's presentation was focused on what the Red Cross does for New Yorkers, it certainly added some urgency to the obligatory donation appeal at the end of the breakfast. (Brett is a volunteer photographer for the Red Cross and my friend Sonia's husband, Nick Malik, sits on the NYC board).

On a cheerier note, a friend pointed me to this T-shirt on Treadless.com combining Eisenlohr's projection with an image of a radio broadcast signal. This is an entry for Oceanic Preservation Society T-shirt Challenge. Theme: Singing Planet. Really neat design.

http://atrium.threadless.com/singingplanet/submission/1009/

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

Notes on Geospatial Summit 2010

Steve Romalewski posted notes on NYC GIS Summit 2010 at:

http://spatialityblog.com/2010/05/24/notes-from-nysgissummit2010/

Feel free to post any comments, different opinions, more detailed feedback if you attended.

Also check out Steve's post about a new feature in Google Maps – the ability to modify the cartographic styles used in Google’s basemap. He's interested in thoughts about how this might impact online cartography.

http://spatialityblog.com/2010/05/21/thoughts-about-google-map-styles/

Be a GeoMentor!

Amy Jeu sent me this announcement. If you love mapping and love mentoring kids, don't miss this opportunity:

The Geographic Information Sciences (GIS) software company ESRI has partnered with National Geographic to recruit GIS professionals to mentor students. In true GIS form, they present a map of who is mentoring where. So far, no one has volunteered in NYC (as of Nov. 5). Participation is a great way to kick off GIS Day, which is November 18, just a few days away. Also, see details on Geography Awareness Week, which begins next week.

Please use the http://www.geomentor.org/ website to sign up for the GeoMentor program.

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.

Re: Mentors and Heroes

(Originally posted in comments to Whitney Hess' blog, Pleasure & Pain)

My favorite mentor story is about a psychology professor I worked for during my senior year at Columbia. He ran the Vision Science Laboratory with three or four graduate students. I showed up on my first day and he threw me a small red book, called Programming in C, and told me to learn it so I can help "reprogram the stimulus on the Techtronix monitor and rewire the input box" for his latest experiments. Oh and then write a script or two to analyze the results.

I sort of freaked, because I had no idea what he was talking about. There were wires and metal button boxes and a huge TV monitor with several computer components connected to it. Behind was a box loaded with little switches and more wires. Somehow I was supposed to write a program that would make it all work. I hadn't taken a programming course since Apple Basic in 10th grade. The graduate students laughed at me a lot, but I read the book, got the hang of it and ended up having the most fun that year.

Second semester, the same professor challenged me to take another semester of Calculus. I hadn't taken the first semester Calculus since freshman year but he said I could do it. Well, I failed the first test, which was basically, “name the formula you use to solve the following problems.” But because I had that initial push and a lot of encouragement from a professor who showed me how to teach myself, I realized that I could get through it, though it was indeed a struggle. I ultimately took the pass/fail option and passed.

I always thought mentors and heroes had to be superstars. I admit that I have had my own little quiet conversations with Mozart & Washington a la HClinton & ERoosevelt, but if you do that too much, you end up finding yourself falling way too short in comparison. I don't need to write a symphony or win a country. Knowing I challenged myself and figured out how to get through it by myself was one of the best lessons I've ever learned.

How Did the Internet Change Networking?

In response to a LinkedIn discussion thread about how the internet changed networking, I had the following to say:

I'll state up front that I'm in a field (information architecture) that is heavy user of social media and I have been involved in internet technology since I was at the College in the 80s. I have been networking frequently on the internet since 1997. Starting with AOL and Compuserv chat rooms, then Usenet and Yahoo! group type affiliations and then virtual meetups on Fast Company and other social networking pioneers.

The impact of the internet on networking is immediate, cheap and global.

The internet makes it easier to connect, increasingly in real time with tools like IM, Skype and Twitter and related apps built directly within the social networking site. I'm in NYC and with AOL Instant Messenger, I know when a colleague is away from his computer in Panama City. With Twitter, I know what a friend in London had for lunch and whether a group is meeting at a Thai restaurant in Tribeca later this evening. TripIt tells me if a certain user experience blogger I like is planning on attending the IA Summit in Memphis, and if I want I can send her an In-message via LinkedIn to see if she plans to attend a particular conference session.

The internet also makes it cheaper. There has never been so many free ways to contact people. I had a year long project with a colleague in Stuttgart. We connected exclusively on Skype and used online groupware software and FTP to manage the project. If I wanted to bring in another person for the project, I have access to several email lists and social networks.

The internet also makes time disappear in a way that is disconcerting. There is so much online to read, and in my field the most interesting stuff is published online, linked from Twitter or the IAI-members discussion list. It's hard to keep up. And with immediate the feedback of social networking sites, it's hard to pull away.

I do go to conferences and meetups, but I find myself choosing my F2F networking opportunities very carefully, because there are so many interesting opportunities in my field. Sometimes, it's the social networking sites where I find out about a workshop or lecture of interest. At one recent lecture, the speaker made a joke about how we are so tied up with Facebook that we need subway ads for Dentyne chewing gum to remind us how to be friends. But at this same meeting I could point to several dozen people whom I had followed via blogs and twitter, with whom I've had IM conversations very recently. and with whom I could essentially carry on an already ongoing conversation.

It's kind of bizarre. I met my German colleague in person at the IA Summit in Las Vegas, after we had been working together for many months. It was my first IA Summit and I didn't know many people well, so I mused that he was already my best friend in the room and we hadn't even met. It really changes your perspective on the big room full of people. If I'm feeling shy and can't find someone to chat with, I could conceivably twitter my whereabouts and get a response from someone over by the crudité table.

CCW Mentoring Kickoff

From the January/February Columbia College Today alumni magazine:

Columbia College Women held a Mentoring Program launch reception on November 27 in the President’s Room at Faculty House, with about 100 alumnae and students in attendance. Noreen Whysel ’90, who co-coordinates CCW with Alumni Affairs Assistant Director Stella Miele-Zanedis, welcomed the attendees and explained the evening’s program, which included discussions designed for alumnae and students to interact during dinner. Attendees were seated according to alumnae profession/student professional interest.

The 2007 program has matched more than 100 junior and senior women with mentors, who share with the students professional as well as personal advice. Spring 2008 programs will feature "A Women’s Consortium," partnered with Columbia Athletics and the Center for Career Education, as well as "Women in Business," "Women in Sciences" and "Women in the Arts" workshops plus a social networking event.

For more information on CCW or any of the programs, or to join CCW, contact Miele-Zanedis: mf2413@columbia.edu.

Appraisal Reviews and Their Importance

An article on appraisal reviews that I wrote with Jim MacCrate is now available at ssrn.com:

Appraisal Reviews and Their Importance
by James R. MacCrate, MacCrate Associates LLC and Noreen Whysel

Abstract:
Many articles have been written on the art of reviewing appraisal reports by professional real estate appraisers for bank lending and litigation purposes. This article explains why attorneys, Judges, IRS, assessors and other individuals that obtain appraisal reports from third parties should have the reports reviewed by qualified individuals who are professional real estate appraisers. This article explains the review process, the guidelines that should be followed, and the conclusions that can be drawn from an appraisal review. Some of the reasons for divergencies between appraisal reports are discussed, such as fraud, incompetency, human error, and client pressure. The authors introduce some methods that might be employed in order to minimize conflicts, to promote justice and fairness in the appraisal and legal process.

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

The Information Architecture Survey for the third edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web by Peter Morville and Louis Rosenfeld has been released. View at http://findability.org/archives/000131.php

Taxonomy at The Economist

I am always on the lookout for good articles on taxonomy, because of my interest in the taxonomies of Information Architecture and classic linnean classification of birds. Here are a couple of features from Feb 9 Economist:

Names for sale
Feb 9th 2006
From The Economist print edition
The ancient science of taxonomy might benefit from a little modern marketing
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5494618

Today we have naming of parts
Feb 9th 2006
From The Economist print edition
A global registry of animal species could shake up taxonomy
http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=5492016

Biomechanics of Way Finding

The March 2006 issue of Natural History Magazine (the magazine of the American Museum of Natural History) has a cover feature called "Learning to Find Your Way," studying the biological pathways of spatial memory.

Not yet available online, but available at newstands:
http://www.naturalhistorymag.com/0306/0306_toc.html