On the road again
In between running an IA agency and launching a publishing house, I spent a few happy-go-lucky years as an independent information architecture consultant/teacher. No payroll to meet, no rent to pay, flexible hours, challenging projects... Best of all, I got to travel. A lot.
I spent much of my time on the road with Steve Krug. During those years, Steve and I taught our full-day workshops (his on usability, mine on information architecture) in pairs. We barnstormed our way to as many as six cities annually, across the USA, Canada, and the UK. Self-produced and self-promoted all the way, with a stop at a great steakhouse the night in-between our workshops.
We been everywhere, man.
I really miss those days, and dream about going back on a footloose and fancy-free tour with Steve. Sadly, I’m a bit rusty when it comes to teaching IA. So I’m going to do the very next best thing: send Steve on tour without me! Rosenfeld Media is partnering him with a great crew of expert instructors—Dave Malouf, Indi Young, Kate Rutter, Nathan Curtis, and Steve Portigal—as part of a new series of six public workshops.
The first batch will take place at WeWork’s amazing new event space in New York City’s Financial District (just down the street from Rosenfeld Media HQ, so we can keep an eye on things) in May, June, and July of 2019. Hard to tell from this photo, but the view of New York’s Upper Harbor is amazing. Here’s the schedule:
May 20: Fundamentals of Interviewing Users with Steve Portigal
May 21: Mental Models for Better Decision-Making with Indi Young
June 20: Design Operations Essentials with Dave Malouf
June 21: Scalable Design Systems with Nathan Curtis
July 11: Do It Yourself Usability Testing with Steve Krug
July 12: Crafting Metrics for UX Success with Kate Rutter
That’s quite a roster! I hope you’ll consider taking one of these day-long courses. Why?
- The topics for each workshop are a great combination of “classics” (e.g., Steve Portigal’s workshop on interviewing users) and critical cutting edge (Nathan Curtis’s workshop on design systems).
- There really aren’t better teachers for these topics.
- There aren’t many opportunities to take a such deep dive into a critical topic and only miss one day of work.
- Steak. Or maybe a happy hour. Or yoga? Regardless, we’ll organize something the night in between each pair of workshops.
Assuming all goes well, we’re looking into bringing this gang to other cities later in the year, as well as bringing other smart teachers to New York City down the road. Because I’m always looking for an excuse to dine on steak with Steve.
