[Sigia-l] summit thoughts and thanks

[Thom Haller]

Thanks to all who put together the recent summit.
I wanted to offer some thoughts and thanks.

Thoughts

One story in particular provided an opportunity for reflection:  Thomas
Vanderwal  (in a particularly interesting presentation) spoke of the
information cloud that surrounds us. He offered some personal experience
(which I like).

In his story, he told us that he had visited Powell's Bookstore and seen a
book by an author on his WishList and wondered, "is this the book I want?"
He described how he places downloads he wants to buy onto an Amazon WishList
that he then downloads into his PalmPilot.  So, in Powell's, he then tapped
into the PalmPilot and learned that it was not the book he wanted.

I thought of this today as I linked to a publisher I found via a one-inch ad
at the back of a magazine. I learned about the book, found the publisher's
cost , and wondered if Amazon carried the book.  It does.  Amazon told me I
could find cheaper books in their used section. The cheapest used book comes
from Powell's Bookstore.  "Well shoot." I thought..  "I wish I had this
information when I went to Portland."

Ha!

I then recalled that I live life as a blobhead.  In other words: my
information cloud is probably a cirrus (thin, fleety, scattered) cloud.

For example, I did try a Palm Pilot.  Briefly, it helped me keep track of
names and telephone numbers (a task that has begrudged me for years and
accounts for a good portion of the 450 hours a year I've determined that I
spend lost in information).  Then the HotSync port on my computer died.
According to the popup window that I get every time I boot my system, my
last HotSync operation was complete 11/27/2001 02:22:17 PM.

I have never connected a Palm Pilot to the Internet. I can't imagine how.

I briefly had Wireless Connection on my Laptop - a thoughtful gift from
Adaptive Path's Bryan Mason; but then my Laptop was eaten by an Anna
Kournikova virus I had received from one of my University Students... during
a wireless download.  (It had never occurred to me to install virus
protection because I was not connected to a wall .. but I consider it all a
part of the hell of going wireless.) Now I'm laptopless.

For a few years I felt really grumpy and disappointed as I tried to make
sense of technological descriptions and problems - so I could just move
through the technological glitch and get on with the rest of my life.  I
tried to combine the sense of feeling completely demoralized by technology
with the belief that it's possible to structure information so others can
find it and use it. "There has to be some relief," I thought, "for people
like me."

I had the opportunity in Portland to present a prototype draft of my journey
into the field of information architecture and my challenges to avoid (and
then embrace) the fear of being "slow" in the fast-paced world, where most
information leaders have full-figured cumulus information clouds.

So, Thanks

I want to thank each of you who attended my performance piece, "Information
Overload: A Love Story."

As those of you who attended, know .. the story is evolving - and I'd like
to use it as another strategy for presenting the story of information
challenges and human solutions.  I intend to buy a case of Play-Doh (ok...
you had to be there) and hope to find ways to improve (and finance) the
narrative. I look forward to the word or thoughts of any of you who attended
the prototype (or those of you who can relate to blobhead stories). You can
contact me directly (thom at infodn.com) or via this listserv.

I will try to follow or respond to this listserv (which I find tremendously
challenging ...but that's probably a different blobhead story).

One other thing I learned about cirrus clouds:  they are so thin; sunlight
can pass right through them. Seems like a useful metaphor for the energy
teachers and artists can provide ... I'll have to ponder that one.


--------

Thom Haller
Teacher | Information Architect | User Advocate
Info.Design, Inc.  www.infodn.com  |  202.328.8466