Leisa, I didn’t take offense from your feedback either. If the board is being perceived as not doing much, or being closed, or whatever, it is because we haven’t done a good enough job communicating. We now have the opportunity to change that, so please stay engaged—your experience is very valuable. (I’m especially keen to hear about your project with the Drupal folks, there’s lots for us to learn there.)

Firstly, let me say that my criticism of my experience of being on the Board of Advisors comes as much from frustration with myself as with the Board or the IAI in general. Being on the Board of Advisors basically involves a monthly conference call – for various reasons (not the least of which being that it fell at 9pm and 10pm local time, and also a issues with the conference line itself), I wasn’t able to participate in many of these calls.

Mass conference calls are also probably my worst medium for engagement – I’m just not very good at them at all. I don’t think I’m the only one though – although there were probably regularly more than a dozen people on that call, at least half of us routinely contributed only a few sentences throughout the course of the conference call. I’m sure there are others on the BOA who also feel that after 12 months, we’ve contributed virtually nothing. This has been frustrating – particularly when there are areas that I’m particularly interested in – local groups and how IAI engages social media being the two key topics I had hoped to engage in. Neither of these topics made it onto the agenda of the BOA meetings during the past 12 months. Instead, we talked a lot about ‘our mission.’

Better minds than mine have tried to define what on earth Information Architecture is and what the role of the Information Architecture Institute might be – it seems a shame to me that so much of our limited time together was spent re-hashing this. It was my experience that we didn’t really move the discussion forward much at all.

To me the mission of the IAI should be defined by the grassroots – what do the members want the IAI to be – and this is where openness could be extremely valuable. I had suggested that perhaps developing some (researched) personas of IAI members could be useful in helping focus the activities and mission of the IAI

It was probably v impolitic of me to be as critical as I was of the IAI in our recent discussion, and I really don’t mean to suggest that IAI Board Members are not incredibly busy – the events that the IAI is responsible for are particularly valuable (and I’m not just trying to win favours now!) I know that both you and Christian felt that I was devaluing the work that the Board has put into the Institute in my criticism and I don’t mean for that to be the case. Only that perhaps there are better ways to engage the IA community in helping move the IAI forward.

I have little time for fighting over the definition of Information Architecture. To my mind there are so many things that we could be doing now that would benefit (and increase) the membership of the IAI. I don’t know if London is unique, but I think there is a big opportunity for an organisation like the IAI to actively pull the local community together to increase the profile of the work we do, to help local IA’s learn from each others, and to help with the development of new talent in the field.

The work that we, who practice Information Architecture, are undertaking these days is becoming more and more interesting – there is much to be shared and much to be learned. I feel as though while they are doing a of important work, no doubt, other than the events they organise, the IAI seems to have taken their eye off what is going on in the grassroots.

I hope that my criticism can be used as a positive motivation – it was certainly intended in that way. We/I spent too much time talking about problems the other evening and not enough talking about solutions. I’d be more than happy to participate in some solutions when we next meet! (Assuming I’m still invited! :) )

I also think that you are right—most people do not understand the efforts (and often the stress) involved on being on a Board of Directors of any shape or form. I’ve been filling a similar role for nearly 15 years for an organization (and my involvement became monumentally reduced by an event—it was college organization that no longer has an on-campus presence which means that I no longer had to be a landlord, liason and fill board member roles all at once!), and I was naively under-prepared for the task when I first took it on.

I don’t approach the IAI with this same naivete; I approach with a bit of experience—albeit different—that has me a little more cautiously aware of what road lies ahead and what the involvement means. But, that’s just a little about me, and a little of me agreeing with you about the required involvement.

Beyond that, I think that the “radical transparency” is also meant to be within reason. I think our membership understands that not everything has to—or needs to—be entirely public. Some initiatives do require a bit of private exploration and preparation prior to going live, but at the same time, as an organization there is plenty of room for improvement.

And none of that is to say that our existing BoD and previous BoDs haven’t had their plates full.

But if more of us knew, more of us c/w/should be able to help. And that’s important, especially when many people chimed-in to say how valuable (if not under-valued) their membership is to them.

Thank you, again. I’m really happy you were able to make it (and we weren’t under the time-crunch of an IDEA call!)