The next South Bay cocktail hour will be next Thursday, April 11th at Kanisa. Anyone who went to the IA Summit in Baltimore is encouraged to join us and share your thoughts from the summit. We will also take a look at the role of research in the UCD process.

Let me know if you want to be added to the mailing list. Hopefully I got everyone who let me know last time.

Had a great time at the ASIST IA Summit this weekend - I met and talked with so many great people - including tons who I have been reading on the web and the list for quite awhile. It is always nice to put faces to names. I took tons of pics and a complete write up will be up on Boxes and Arrows next week.

In the meantime, if you were interested in my presentation - I have uploaded it. Please feel free to view it but please do not use it without prior permission first.

we are live...i am tired

You are invited to the first South Bay IA/UE Cocktail Hour at 6:30 PM on
February 4th on the Netscape campus in Mountain View!

South Bay IA/UE Cocktail hours are coming soon to a South Bay destination near you. If you love the IA/UE cocktails in SF but can't find the energy or time to drive up to the city - join us down here.

A few of us are planning the events - to begin in February - and look forward to having you join us. If you are interested in attending or hearing about it - drop me an email [erin at emdezine dot com] and I will have you added to the announcement list.

Article about what looks like an interesting exhibit at the London Design Museum. The exhibition focuses solely on Web Designers.

The article features Joshua Davis and his opinions about Nielsen, which are not positive. He says "I once sent him an e-mail - that he probably still has - saying that I'd beat him up if I saw him. " He goes on to say that ..."His ideas don't promote growth, they stifle creativity. We are at opposite ends of the spectrum."

Hear, hear - I think that in the appropriate context, Nielsen's thoughts may be good guidance, but when blanketly applied to the whole of the internet and all web sites they are totally stifling and bad for the future of innovation and new ways of looking at things. I think that his rules are dangerous as a one size fits all way to approach things - which I am sure is not how he means it to come across, but that is the way his punditness (is that a real word?) is percieved.

Anyway - check out the article and the museum site - specifically the DigitalDesignMuseum section.

For those of you who are into typography and have an appreciation for the classics, Robert Bringhurst - author of The Elements of Typographic Style - is speaking in San Francisco this coming Saturday, October 27. This lecture is one of the last lectures of the Zapfest series that was put on in honor of Hermann Zapf.

The Bringhurst book is one of my favorites for learning about classic page construction and use of grids in design. The concepts apply equally as well in print as they do for content pages online. The ideas of using a grid to separate and define content as well as bring a sense of hierarchy and structure are timeless.

This lecture definitely should not be missed.

Lecture will begin at 2:00 p.m.

San Francisco Public Library • Koret Auditorium, Lower Level

100 Larkin Street at Grove • San Francisco, California

If you are in the bay area, I will be at the September IA/UE cocktail next Tuesday. I will be speaking about the pleasures and not so fun parts of being an in-house IA. Should be an interesting discussion. Gabe of CarbonIQ is talking from the consultant perspective.

If you are an inhouse person - I would love to hear your thoughts on why you like what you do and where you are as opposed to being at a consultant firm. I would be interested to know if they are similar to mine.