ASIS&T Information Architecture Summit Speakers

Peter is co-author (with Louis Rosenfeld) of the best-selling book on the subject, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, distinguished as the "Best Internet Book of 1998" by Amazon.com and called "The Most Useful Book on Web Design on the Market" by Jakob Nielsen.

Dan Brown
Dan Brown is the Creative Director at a small Internet consulting firm. Through interface design, Dan has helped improve enterprise communications
for many clients, including British Telecom, Fannie Mae, First USA, AOL, and The World Bank. Dan has taught interface design at Duke, Georgetown, and American Universities and currently follows the interactive television industry on his daily Weblog .

Jesse James Garrett
Jesse James Garrett is a founding partner of Adaptive Path, a user experience consultancy based in San Francisco. His contributions to the field of information architecture include the Visual Vocabulary, an open notation system for information architecture documentation that is now used by organizations around the world. Since 1995, Jesse has worked on Web projects for companies such as AT&T, Intel, Boeing, Motorola, Hewlett-Packard, and National Public Radio. Jesse's book, "The Elements of User Experience," based on his acclaimed model illustrating the relationship between strategy and design, is forthcoming from New Riders Publishing.

Louise Gruenberg
Louise Gruenberg is an educational consultant specializing in instructional design and delivery, including the Web based delivery of education and training materials. See Lighting Up the Writing Process: A Tutorial on the Effects of Psychological Preferences at http://leep.lis.uiuc.edu/seworkspace/gruenber/W_Tutorial/000_Welcome.html for a sample of her student work in online tutorial development.

Louise Gruenberg feels that her fascination with facets is a reflection of her diverse interests. Louise earned her Master's Degree in Adult and Continuing Education from National-Louis University in 1992, and will receive her MLIS this May from the award winning LEEP program of the Graduate School of Library and Information Science at UIUC. Her interest in 2D and 3D construction and creation can be traced to her BA work at Goddard College in experiential education and certification as a K-12 art instructor. Her work there included hands-on experience in architecture and design. She loves the processes of creation and transformation, and has 20 years of design and construction experience as the co-owner of a company that specializes in cabinetmaking and kitchen and bathroom remodeling. Her avocations include herbalism and aromatherapy, and she is the author of Rodale Press' Herbal Home Hints, which won the International Herb Association's Book Award for the year 2000. As an educator, she has developed programming for the Field Museum, the Chicago Botanic Gardens, and the Morton Arboretum.

Chris Farnum
Chris Farnum has more than four years of information architecture experience. He is currently working as an IA/Usability Specialist at Compuware Corp in Southfield, MI as part of an interdisciplinary Web development team. Previously he was a senior Information Architect at Argus Associates where he worked with a diverse array of intranets and public Internet sites, including AT&T, Genentech, Cathay Pacific Airlines, Egreetings.com, and Bell & Howell (UMI). He has both top-down and bottom-up information architecture skills including information modeling for dynamic sites, search interface design, and building controlled vocabularies. His IA design process regularly incorporates user research techniques such as interviewing, card sorting, and paper prototyping.

Prior to working at Argus, Chris was a librarian at the West Bloomfield Township Public Library. Chris holds a Masters in Information and Library Studies from the University of Michigan, and was a member of the original team that launched the Internet Public Library.

Chiara Fox is the information architect at PeopleSoft, Inc. Before joining PeopleSoft, Chiara was an information architect at Argus Associates, a pioneering information architecture design firm. At Argus, Chiara provided IA consulting services to a variety of clients including AT&T, Square D, L.L. Bean and Hewlett-Packard. She co-wrote the white paper "Analyzing the Analysts: An Information Architecture Analysis of Top Business Analysts' Web Sites" with Keith Instone. Chiara received her Master of Science degree in Library and Information Science from Simmons College.

Keith Instone is an information architect with the User Experience team for ibm.com. He previously worked for Argus Associates where he provided web usability and information architect consulting for clients such as American Express Financial Advisors, Egreetings.com, Ernst & Young, LookSmart and Weather.com (The Weather Channel). His professional interests include understanding the relationships between HCI, usability and IA. See what he is up to now at http://keith.instone.org/

Peter Merholz
Peter Merholz is one of the partners of Adaptive Path, a user experience consultancy based in San Francisco, where he's worked with clients such as PeopleSoft and Overture Services. Before Adaptive Path, Peter was Creative Director at Epinions.com, where his team developed a best-of-breed information resource and community site. Peter has also worked with Walmart.com, Studio Archetype, Organic, iXL, and Voyager, ensuring the incorporation of user-centered design principles that meet business needs.

Amy J. Warner , formerly Thesaurus Design Specialist at Argus Associates, Inc., is currently a freelance consultant in the areas of taxonomy and metadata design and development and information architecture. Prior to becoming a consultant, Dr. Warner was Associate Professor with tenure at the University of Michigan School of Information where her research and teaching interests were in the areas of controlled vocabularies, information architecture, information retrieval and database design.

Jason Withrow
Jason Withrow is an Internet Professional Instructor at Washtenaw Community College in Ann Arbor, Michigan. He teaches classes on information architecture, usability, and web design. Jason holds a Master's degree in Information from the University of Michigan's School of Information and a Master's degree in Psychology from the University of Akron. Prior to entering the teaching field, he worked as an Information Architect at Diamond Bullet Design, a web design firm with a focus on usability.

Christina Wodtke
Principal, Carbon IQ, a San Francisco user-experience consultancy specializing in information architecture and usability. Christina is currently writing a book on Information Architecture for New Riders, due out this fall, and founded Boxes and Arrows, a journal of architecture for information spaces, to be launched March 16th for this conference. Come bug her about why it's not usable enough and ask why there is no tagline.