Two things going on over at AIfIA.

1. There is a new survey in the works to find out about salaries. This survey is intended to gather current information about the salary and benefits of people practicing information architecture. This is a redo of the ACIA survey done a couple of years ago and we are interested in finding out how the field has changed. The questions are identical to the original survey and the team realizes that it is highly US specific and seems to leave out California as well. BUT, that said, it will glean important information for the field to see where and how we have progressed as well as if we haven't.

2. AIfIA is launching a Job Board. Here is the description:

The AIfIA Job Board serves as a clearinghouse for position postings relating to information architecture and more broadly to information design, interaction design, and HCI. The Job Board is a service for AIfIA members. AIfIA is the only professional organization solely dedicated to information architecture professionals and our membership serves as a qualified pool of candidates in this emerging field.

So if you are looking for a job or a candidate definitely check it out.

There is a really interesting Q and A conversation with Jesse James Garrett over on the WELL.

Jim Leftwich leads the discussion and takes a look at Jesse's model of The Elements of User Experience beyond the scope of the web. In one of the comments he says to Jesse:

“So you see, your model for the Element Planes fits perfectly well with the
reality of interaction design as pertaining to product design. That's what
most amazing and satisfying to me. Your model represents a major step in
understanding not only the issues involved with website interaction design,
but for interaction design in general.”

Pretty neat. Jesse's model is specific enough without being too specific and general enough to be applied across various flavors of interaction design. That's why I think it has resonated so much with so many people across so many areas of this type of work.

This is a good read and provides some interesting answers to a lot of great questions submitted by various other WELL readers in addition to the primary discussion leader.

I just finished writing this month's Welcome column for Boxes and Arrows. I tried to kill two birds with one stone—give some thoughts to the recent DUX conference as well as impart some deep thoughts about the profession. I think I succeeded a little bit on both parts. Call me sappy and overly optimistic, but I came away from DUX feeling good about things, about the state of the industry. The biggest takeaway for me, was a feeling a subtle shift in the attitudes of the attendees. Several other conferences in the past—the AIGA Advance comes to mind as does past years IA summits—were rippling with the whining and depressive undercurrents of folks out of work or if working feelings of being extremely marginalized. I didn't get that sense here. While there were one or two outbursts of whining from a panelist or two—most notable was an audience that wasn't about to tolerate it. We came to share knowledge and to learn new things to take back to our respective organizations and not to hear folks whine about the same old thing. And we did. We conversed and shared and laughed and I for one felt optimistic again.

I have been feeling rather blase about the state of things lately, my job, the organizations I belong to, my commitments to AIFIA and Boxes and Arrows, and I know others have been feeling equally burnt by the overload. I have even unsubscribed from some of the lists because they were just too overwhelming to deal with.

The couple of days being inspired at DUX, which shortly followed a brief vacation, has done wonders for my outlook on things and I feel energized again to take on the hard problems.

In case folks are interested in why posting has been light over here for the last month—here is a bit of a clue. I have a collection of work being featured over at 28mm.org this month.

Sometimes it's all about color and shape.

Recently spending way more time with my cameras and looking at photographs than trolling the net world for new interesting design sites. So, check this out.

I'll be at DUX at the end of this week, will you? I was a reviewer of the submissions, which was quite an interesting process in itself. I believe they are going to be doing a post-mortem on that process at the AIGA Summit the couple days before DUX. Should be interesting to hear how that goes.

If you are around look me up and let's do coffee.