Join me on Saturday, March 5, 2022 for World Information Architecture Day, a one-day annual event to encourage conversations about information architecture.
From its beginnings in 2012, a celebration of the 14th anniversary of the polar bear book, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web held in 14 cities around the world, World Information Architecture (IA) Day has grown to a global event to teach, learn, and shape the future of information architecture.
This year people around the world will attend online events with presentations, panel discussions, and other celebrations to discuss IA.
I proudly attended the first World IA Day in 2012, where over 150 information architects, user experience professionals, developers, and students gathered at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor.
And have attended multiple World IA Days in Ann Arbor and online since then.
The theme for this year’s event is A Connected World.
In a world where we’re connected yet distanced, a number of questions arise:
- How do you facilitate connectedness?
- How do you help make sense of connections?
- What new connections have you made recently?
- How did you support others to discover new connections?
Get Involved
Dozens of World IA Day 2022 online events are happening on March 5, 2022, here are a few of my favorites:
1. World IA Day Pittsburgh
With their kickoff at 11:00AM Eastern Time, World IA Day Pittsburgh‘s event offers workshops, lightning talks, panels and group activities.
From their website:
We connect with each other in digital, physical, and blended spaces. We connect with people, products, services, content, and the world in general.
This connectedness can be wondrous and yet challenging, and our speakers will be shedding light on topics of interest with this theme in mind.
A few of the sessions include:
- The IA of a Team: Architecting Collaboration keynote by Wendy Johansson
- Be a Firefighter, Inspector, and Navigator in an Enterprise UX team lightning talk by Ying Wang
- Emergency Instruction While Avoiding Pandemic Despair: Usability and Accessibility as Student Care webinar by Jessica Knott
-
Productivity During the Pandemic webinar by Josh Sager
Pre-registration is required; tickets are available on Eventbrite.
2. World IA Day Phoenix
Celebrating all things IA in Phoenix, join World IA Day Phoenix for an afternoon of insightful talks and conversations.
Featured talks include:
- Fireside chat on domain modeling and structured content with Andy Fitzgerald
- Connecting her personal/professional journey into information architecture with the resurgence of the field with Jenn Marie
The event is free, but you need to pre-register for World IA Day Phoenix.
3. World IA Day Global Program
A change this year is the World IA Day Global Program, where organizers have coordinated many local events in one place for an online event using Vito, a privacy-first community hub platform.
More than 30 World IA Day events around the world will livestream to the World IA Day Global Hub.
Which means no matter what your timezone is, you’ll have many opportunities to join a session, chat with speakers, and discuss information architecture.
Learn how to participate in World IA Day Global.
The global keynote, Architecting a Connected World, will be presented by Stephanie Hughes in three live Q&A sessions. Hughes will be taking questions in Arabic, English, French and German, answering questions.
While I admire that the organizing team decided to coordinate online events in one place, there’s no one place to look for the schedule for the day.
Which is frustrating. You’ll need to view each of the 30 participating locations to find their event schedule.
In my opinion, that’s a lot of work for an attendee.
Register online now for the free World IA Day Global event.
Summary
World IA Day is open to everyone, it’s a great opportunity to learn about and discuss what a connected world means in terms of information architecture.
I invite you to join any of the events I’ve included in this post.
Which World IA Day events do you plan to attend?
Thank you for sharing this!! Yes, it is a lot of work for an attendee.
We’ve been able to get a bit more info available. Hope this helps!
https://vi.to/hubs/wiad22/schedule
Hi Grace,
Thank you for stopping by and sharing the link, Grace. I’m excited about the event.
But I wish Vito provided the option, similar to the “Global Partners” section in the left side panel on desktop, to list individual locations separately under “Participating Locations.”
Would make it easier for attendees to navigate to each location’s events, without having to return to the group event page.