Guest post by Andrea Ames and Alyson Riley
In preparing for our pre-conference, two-day certificate course in information architecture—Strategic Information Architecture Bootcamp—we were very excited to see connections between the way that we think about information architecture (IA) and the themes visible across the regular Summit sessions. There’s a trend afoot—dare we call it a sea-change?—in the world of technical communication, and we’re proud to be a part of it!
While we are heavily focused on building information architecture skills, our philosophical bent is toward the strategic business value of content and the overarching information experience. Yes, we will be teaching classic IA techniques such as gathering and analyzing requirements, building a vision for the future, and modeling—but we’re doing so with an eye toward ensuring that information architects prove the business value of their work by delivering information experiences that make a difference in the marketplace. We’re excited about the ways in which information professionals—no matter if they self-identify as information experience designers, content strategists, information architects, content marketers, or technical communicators—are getting savvy about speaking the language of business and using business processes to build a vision for the future, ensure the vision is the right one, prove the value of the vision, sell the vision to stakeholders, and keep the content ecosystem team on track as they progress toward the strategic end goal.
We took a moment to scan through the very exciting list of sessions at the 2013 Summit, and put together a list of information architecture-related sessions for those interested in the discipline (particularly those intrepid souls who have signed up for our pre-conference certificate course). If you scan through the list below, perhaps you’ll see the themes that we see:
- The strong evidence of common interests between information architecture and content strategy—a shared focus on balancing business requirements with user advocacy, and thinking not only about the value of content to a user today, but the value of content to a business tomorrow
- The importance of a strong, metrics-driven process to effective information architecture—from Agile methodologies to heuristic evaluations, a robust IA process ensures high-quality, consistent, and repeatable results
- The value of business processes and artifacts, such as creating strong business cases—it’s all about telling the right story to the right audience
- The enthusiasm for new kinds of high-value experiences made possible by “mobile first” thinking and social collaboration
- The continued focus on building client-centered (and by using the term client, we span the spectrum from buyer to end user) information experiences
- The foundation of a strong, data-driven argument that technical product information is no longer a cost center, but rather a revenue-generator—woo hoo!
All of this points to a phenomenon that thrills us: a groundswell of technical communicators who are passionate about proving the business value of content. And this is not an idle pursuit or casual exploration—on the contrary, we see this as a transformation that is key to our survival in the marketplace of the future. As company budgets get leaner and workers of every stripe must justify their reason for existence, this dialogue in our industry about the business value of content will equip us to win (keep?) a seat at the table and to drive future value. There are many great sessions at the 2013 Summit, but the list below get us especially excited from an information architecture and business-value-of-content point of view. This is really good stuff, and we’re excited to be a part of the conversation. See you at the Summit.
User Assistance, Tech Comm, and Learning
Nicky Bleiel, Matt Sullivan, Kevin Siegel and Saul Carliner
8:30am to 9:30am, Monday
Grand Hall D
Bending Without Breaking: Info Dev Flexibility in Agile
Alyssa Fox
8:30am to 9:30am, Monday
Hanover FG
Big Content: Content Strategy as a Design Framework
Rahel Bailie
10:00am to 11:00am Monday
Grand Hall B
Storytelling the Results of Heuristic Evaluation
Carol Barnum
10:00am to 11:00am, Monday
Hanover AB
Every Page is Page One
Mark Baker
10:00am to 11:00am, Monday
Hanover FG
Social Media and Your Documentation: Why Should You Care?
Jennifer White
2:00pm to 3:00pm, Monday
Hanover CD
Flexible Content Demands Future-Ready Organizations
Sarah Wachter-Boettcher
2:00pm to 3:00pm, Monday
Grand Hall B-D
How to Build a Business Case and Influence
Lisa Pietrangeli
3:30pm to 4:30pm, Monday
Regency V
Formalizing the Technical Communication and User Experience Relationship
Lori Fisher
3:30pm to 4:30pm, Monday
Hanover FG
Customer Journey Maps: Visualizing an Engaging Customer Experience
Donn DeBoard
8:30am to 9:30am, Tuesday
Hanover CD
Defining and Evaluating Success: Metrics for Information Architects
Andrea Ames
Alyson Riley
10:00am to 11:00am, Tuesday
Grand Hall B
Information Mapping: What Is It? How Can It Help Me? (Vendor Showcase)
Information Mapping
1:00pm to 2:00pm, Tuesday
Grand Hall A
Purposes, Personas, Conversations
Ginny Redish
1:00pm to 2:00pm, Tuesday
Grand Hall D
Embedded User Assistance 101
Scott DeLoach
1:00pm to 2:00pm, Tuesday
Grand Hall B
Game On! Creating User Experience for Gamified Products
Marta Rauch
2:30pm to 3:30pm, Tuesday
Hanover E
Solving Problems Before They Happen: Putting Personalized Tech Docs on the Front Line of Customer Support
Andrew Thomas
2:30pm to 3:30pm, Tuesday
Grand Hall B
Staking Your Claim in the Social Media Frontier
Laura Palmer
2:30pm to 3:30pm, Tuesday
Grand Hall D
Content Strategy for Mobile Devices
Ann Rockley
Charles Cooper
2:30pm to 3:30pm, Tuesday
Grand Hall C
How to Build a Referral Machine
Donte Ormsby
4:00pm to 5:00pm, Tuesday
Hanover CD
From Technical Writer to Content Strategist
Alan J. Porter
4:00pm to 5:00pm, Tuesday
Grand Hall B
Documentation: It's Not a Business Expense, It's a Revenue Generation Tool
Christopher Ward
4:00pm to 5:00pm, Tuesday
Hanover FG
Addicted to Meaning: Mental Models for Technical Communicators
Kai Weber
4:00pm to 5:00pm, Tuesday
Hanover AB
Building Effective IA Teams in Resource-Challenged Times
Alyson Riley
8:30am to 9:30am, Wednesday
Hanover AB
The Content Life Cycle: A Strategic Compass
Mollye Barrett
10:00am to 11:00am, Wednesday
Grand Hall B
Transforming Technical Content into a Business Asset
Sarah O’Keefe
11:30am to 12:30pm, Wednesday
Grand Hall B