The Understanding Group (TUG)

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Welcome Video and Reflections On The 3rd Annual World Information Architecture Day

Summary: TUG has been a global sponsor of World IA Day since its inception, and our staff & alum have served in volunteer capacities at the local and global levels. This video welcomes global WIAD 2014 attendees and introduces some information architecture concepts.

I’m running out of fingers on which to count the marvelous inter-connections that I’ve personally enjoyed on account of World IA Day observance for the past three years. And then, looking around at others at TUG, I have to kick my shoes off to continue counting the ways that vocation and community and geography collude and combine to enrich each-other at local and global scale.

TUG has been a global sponsor of World IA Day since its inception, and our beloved staff and alums have served in volunteer capacities at the local and global levels in roles that include coming up with the idea (Abby Covert), global-level executive production (Jessica DuVerneay, Kaarin Hoff, yours truly), local-level production (Abby Covert, Kaarin Hoff, Somesh Rahul), curation (Somesh Rahul, Kaarin Hoff, Abby Covert), technical direction (James Sweeney, Joe Elmendorf), speaking (Andrew Hinton, Dan Cooney, me again), catering (Paul Metler)… and this year I added videography to the list.

I’m glad that when Seth Herman and I were shooting this on a dark and snowy night in Grand Rapids I was thinking about the upcoming local event in Ann Arbor, and not remembering that it would be shown places like Athens and Tehran, where I suspect they needed to array all manner of curtains and blinds and air conditioning to make their events comfortable.

Bob and I are proud to continue sponsoring World IA Day, and proud of our team’s continuing volunteer work to make this one global day for IA continue to be a thing all around the world. Together with sponsors, IAI members and volunteers worldwide we’re making it possible for more people everywhere to understand one another through information architecture.