Inclusion, Collaboration, Iteration: an iSchool Commencement Speech

Yesterday, I gave the commencement speech to the 2023 graduating class of the University of North Carolina’s School of Information and Library Science. It was absolutely amazing to experience the historic Dean Dome, with its 21,750 person seating capacity, share in the faculty, friends, and parents’ warm, joyful glow, and feel the crackle of the graduates’ excitement.

It was also a bit humbling and even overwhelming: I couldn’t look at those graduates’ faces and not see my own from 33 years ago. In the speech (which follows), I tried to make some sense of the world they’re facing, learn a little from my own journey, and give a bit of practical advice about managing weighty expectations.

Many thanks to my warm hosts, especially Dean Gary Marchionini, who I’ve not seen since he, I, and the late Vic Rosenberg created the IA Summit back in 2000.

I’m a little nervous — I’ve never given a talk before in a house of worship — certainly not one as sacred as the Dean Dome.

Rather than give a commencement address that’s all about “when I was your age” and “when I was in your shoes,” I’d like to turn the tables a bit. I’d like you to picture yourself in about, egads, 30 or 35 years. I say this as a 1990 alum of the University of Michigan’s iSchool — I graduated almost 33 years ago today. Although back then it was called the School of Library Studies or Information Science or something like that…

Anyway, please indulge me: close your eyes. Really, close them.

Now envision that we’ve arrived in the year 2056. And who’s that you see there? Why, it’s you!

What are you doing there, with your iSchool degree? I hope you’re using it to do something productive — like working at a job.

But wait: are there actually jobs in 2056-–at least as we’d define them today? Do you even need a job, given that Universal Basic Income and AI have rendered jobs obsolete?

Assuming you are working, well, where? What does it mean to even be a workplace in 2056? Is it an office? Your couch? Maybe you’re a digital nomad in a Balinese cafe, or a Martian strip mall. Or perhaps you’ve found some cozy corner in the metaverse that’s perfect for productivity.

And when do you work? Has the three-day workweek become an accepted standard yet? With the standard 13-hour days? And are you able to complete the standard five daily productivity peaks that 2056’s employers expect?

Speaking of the boss, who do you work for? A huge multinational corporation? Or are you a gig worker? Or do you work for a huge multinational corporation run by gig workers? Do you work in the public sector? Is there a public sector? Or maybe you work for a movement? Or a robot? Or a movement of robots?

What’s going on in the world that impacts your work? Is it boom times? A recession? (I’ve now been through at least four of those cycles in my career. Fun times!) Is there a war going on? Or, better put, which war should you be especially concerned by? Is the global population growing or not? Are we aging? Migrating? How else are we changing?

Finally, who are you, exactly? This is the toughest question. So much of the answer will depend on what’s happened to you between this very moment, and that one.

OK, let’s open our eyes now.

Has our brief visioning exercise given you a clearer picture of the 2056 version of yourself? Probably not, to be honest. You probably feel even more uncertain than you did before we started. Not the sort of thing we expect from commencement speeches!

Stating the very obvious here, but predicting the future is just really, really hard. For millennia, shamans, prophets, wizards, alchemists, physicists, economists, futurists, and — yes — even designers, researchers, data scientists, and product managers keep trying. And they keep failing.

Well, I have good news of a sort: there is an absolutely can’t miss, take-it-to-the-bank, 100% certain prediction that you can count on coming true:

You are the ones the rest of us will be expecting to save the world.

And I really mean you: the kinds of people who are graduating today from this wonderful program. Let me paraphrase what it says at the very top of the UNC iSchool’s main page: “The school educates innovative and responsible thinkers… to improve the quality of life for diverse local, national and global communities.”

And that’s really true. You are the ones who care about the user. You’re the ones who humanize technology. You’re the ones who want information to be free. And we — the rest of the world — need and expect you to be successful.

Soon, there will be more expectations to navigate: your employers will expect you to perform the fast and furious information magic that will warm the hearts of customers and investors alike. They’ll expect you to hit the ground running, working your magic while navigating organizational cultures that would confound even the most expert ethnographer.

And yes, the rest of us are counting on you to slow down the march of progress, to speak sense to those who move fast and break things. We expect you to ask the annoying and uncomfortable questions that developers, product owners, marketers, and managers often wish would just go away. We expect you to make sure that all that technical magic doesn’t, well, literally destroy the planet.

Yes, you are the lucky ones expected by the rest of us to thread the needle between progress at all costs and global catastrophe. Congratulations!

So there you have it: all you can expect of the future are expectations that are a bit… unrealistic. Doesn’t seem quite fair!

But don’t feel bad, people. Because while your struggle ping pongs back and forth between expectations that are uncertain and unreasonable, there actually is something you can control. And that is how you show up, what you bring, and how you advocate for the things you care about.

Call these things principles, values, whatever. Either way, only you can control what they are. And they are truly yours.

So let’s do another short exercise. Close your eyes, again, and ask yourself this question: “As I embark on my career, what exactly is it that’s important to me?”

Got it? Great! Make a mental note or write it down, because I’ll be asking you again in 2056. Oh, and you can open your eyes now.

Maybe it’s not a question you can answer today. I doubt I could have 33 years ago. Not that anyone asked me at commencement. I wish someone had!

The good news is that, while I may not have been able to successfully articulate what was important to me back then, it was right there under my nose–and it’s not really changed in 33 years.

And nowadays, with the benefit of experience, I can boil what’s important to me down to three words: inclusion, collaboration, and iteration. That’s it!

Let me briefly run through them for you so you have an example that, if nothing else, is a good straw man for your own ruminations about what’s important for you.

I’ll start with inclusion. I’ve always been someone who was uncomfortable very in large groups, and hurt when the others — say, fellow students, co-workers, other conference attendees — didn’t bother to include me. I found it very hard to break into those conversations. I’m sure some of you know exactly what I’m talking about. So I started looking for the other awkward, uncomfortable-looking singletons floating around in social situations, and inviting them into my circle. It’s such a simple, easy thing to do. (In fact, try it later at your graduation party.)

Now that I’m in the business of convening people professionally — for conferences, for helping book authors, and much more — I’ve been able to build inclusion into whatever we do. Even looking for those singletons at conferences and literally dragging them into whatever circle I’m in. That’s especially important in a world where so many people have been systematically excluded from professions such as our own.

My second value is collaboration. When I was an iSchool student, the projects that I enjoyed the most were the group projects. Right away, it became clear that different people gravitated to different roles that drew on their varying experiences, interests, and innate skills. Some were natural visionaries, others doers of different types, and if we were lucky enough, some poor schmuck would be able to handle project management. So much difference, and so amazing when it came together! We would create something far more compelling than what we’d have done on our own! It’s like the fable of the elephant, which I’m sure many of you know, but I’ll repeat it for those who don’t:

A bunch of blind people happen to be out for a stroll in the jungle. (Of course they are.) Anyway, they encounter an elephant. One touches its trunk. “Oh, I’ve found a snake!” Another feels around and finds a leg. “No, it’s not a snake — it’s obviously a tree!” And so on. It’s not until they collaborate — hearing each other out, synthesizing what they’ve learned — that they reach the greater insight that none could have achieved on their own: it’s an elephant!

BTW, elephants are much better than unicorns. The world needs insight more than ever. Besides, unicorns don’t even exist.

Our profession is that group of blind people — a tossed salad of tools, techniques, perspectives, and experiences. We’re in the best position to work together to find the insights that users, companies, and increasingly, the world thirst for. And we’ll do even better if we invite our peers in adjacent lines of work to join us (and ask them to invite us into their circles as well).

Lastly, let’s talk about iteration. Why is it important? Because accomplishing hard things, like coming up with earth-shattering insights or, better yet earth-saving insights, doesn’t just take different kinds of perspectives — it takes structured, repeated effort over time. And it means failing, learning, and pivoting along the way. That’s exactly what iteration is. You have to get people to collaborate again and again and again before they understand each other and their shared challenge well enough for their ideas to come together and take shape as insights and ultimately actions. I hope you’ll be able to argue for iteration in the impatient work environments you’re about to enter, ones which often seem guided more by quarterly financial reporting than slowing down and taking the time required to make actual progress.

So that’s what’s been important to me: inclusion, collaboration, and iteration. And so my question to you, once more: what’s important to you?

Is it three punchy words, like mine? A verse from a sacred book? A maxim from your favorite philosopher or wit? Maybe a Dean Smith quote?

Doesn’t matter, really — as long as you remember that your values are the one thing that you truly own. They are your future. They will anchor your career and, really, your entire life. Bring them, live them, own them. Protect them as you would your babies. Because your real babies will depend upon them. Ours too.

Congratulations to you, University of North Carolina iSchool class of ‘23! On behalf of a world which desperately needs you: welcome, and our best hopes and wishes for your success in all things. We’re rooting for you.

Thank you.