[Sigia-l] help

Mon Nov 11 10:57:48 EST 2002

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Today's Topics:

   1. Re: Official Launch of the AIfIA (Jan Egil Hagen)
   2. Re: Official Launch of the AIfIA (Andrew Hinton)

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Message: 1
To: sigia-l at asis.org
From: "Jan Egil Hagen" <janha+sigial at ifi.uio.no>
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Official Launch of the AIfIA
Date: 10 Nov 2002 23:49:23 +0100

* Louis Rosenfeld <lou at louisrosenfeld.com>
| First, much of the content we're planning on making available will be 
| free to both members and non-members.  The AIfIA's US$30 membership 
| fee is incredibly low compared with just about every professional 
| association under the sun.  If, as Jan suggests, the field of IA has a

| "high cost of entry" (I disagree, but that's another conversation), 
| that's certainly not the case with the decidedly not-for-profit AIfIA.

My concern was not so much what AIfIA is today, but what it might evolve
to in the future.  I agree that the cost of entry is not particularly
high right now, but included in the cost of entry is both money and
other more intangible things like specific knowledge or skills.  Due to
the current very broad definition of what constitutes IA, I don't see
the requirement of specific knowledge or skills as an immediate danger.
You point out that the US$30 membership fee is incredibly low compared
to other professional associations, but it would be surprising if the
membership fees were not to grow as the activities of AIfIA expands.

| Let's remember that we have already tried an completely open, 
| non-membership based approach to developing services for the IA 
| community at http://www.info-arch.org/infrastructure/.  That 
| initiative generated many excellent ideas, but precious little in 
| terms of concrete action (beyond archiving the SIGIA-L list).  The 
| creation of the AIfIA is partly a response to the need for a more 
| formalized structure to support and manage initiatives of value to the

| *whole* information architecture community.

I appreciate that it is necessary to create a stable infrastructure that
can finish projects that until now have had to rely on the continued
motivation and interest of individuals.  But a lot of the things which
AIfIA is planning to do (library, glossary, taxonomy, tools, curriculum)
are projects that people have taken a stab at before and if these things
are done properly with the sponsorship of AIfIA there should maybe be
some sort of guarantee that it is not made available exclusively to
AIfIA members because it is almost certain that it will not be done by
anybody else afterwords.  It is sometimes better that something is
not-so-great but freely available than really good but only available to
an exclusive group.

* karl fast <karl.fast at pobox.com>
| AIfIA is interested in serving (in this order):
| 
|   1. The IA community as a whole to further the profession. Members
|      and non-members will benefit from our strategic initiatives
|      which seeks to legitimize, promote, and advance IA. These
|      benefits are directed at the discipline level, not the
|      individual level.
| 
|   2. AIfIA members. Membership has it's benefits. These are benefits
|      for individuals.
| 
|   3. Non-AIfIA members. Again, this is at the individual level. So
|      some activities may benefit individual members and the
|      community as a whole, but not necessarily individual
|      non-members.
| 
| Does that make sense?

Yea, this is the type of things which needs to be formalized quite early
on.  A lot of the work of the Institute will be based on voluntary
efforts by its members, and knowing up front who will be the
beneficiaries could help avoid problems later on.  A set of principles
like the one you have written down will have to be interpreted for each
case, but if you were to put into your statutes something like that the
content produced by individual members of AIfIA is covered by the GNU
Free Documentation License or something similar, the people giving of
their time will be insured against whatever decisions are taken by AIfIA
in the future.  It will be possible to change the licensing policies in
the future, but a policy like this right now will be reassuring for
people who want to help get the Institute of the ground but are
concerned about what happens if it becomes successful and a professional
association for professional information architects.  My point seems to
be that although people like Louis and Karl obviously are great people
with lots of integrity, and I would trust them to make good decisions in
the future, this trust should not be necessary.

Thanks for answering my concerns.  I hope people don't spend too much
energy arguing about these things, but I bring them up because I feel
they are important.  I am sure there are people out there who
understands these issues better than me, and they are probably members
already. I'm just advocating that you should take a stance on the issue.
Exactly what you decide is up to you.

Now get on with creating the damn thing! :)

-- 
   World works; done by its invalids

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Message: 2
Date: Mon, 11 Nov 2002 08:45:59 -0500
Subject: Re: [Sigia-l] Official Launch of the AIfIA
From: Andrew Hinton <groups at memekitchen.com>
To: sigia-l <sigia-l at asis.org>

Jan's points are well taken and very helpful. Let me point out that this
is exactly the kind of discussion we want to encourage on the AIFIA
members list (that's what that list is really for -- not the more
general theory & practice discussions that usually go on here).

::janha+sigial at ifi.uio.no::wrote on 11/10/02 5:49 PM:

> * Louis Rosenfeld <lou at louisrosenfeld.com>
> | First, much of the content we're planning on making available will 
> | be free to both members and non-members.  The AIfIA's US$30 
> | membership fee is incredibly low compared with just about every 
> | professional association under the sun.  If, as Jan suggests, the 
> | field of IA has a "high cost of entry" (I disagree, but that's 
> | another conversation), that's certainly not the case with the 
> | decidedly not-for-profit AIfIA.
> 
> My concern was not so much what AIfIA is today, but what it might 
> evolve to in the future.  I agree that the cost of entry is not 
> particularly high right now, but included in the cost of entry is both

> money and other more intangible things like specific knowledge or 
> skills.  Due to the current very broad definition of what (etc ...)

--
andrew
www.memekitchen.com
www.aifia.org

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