When I went to Pittsburgh in October for Carnegie Mellon Homecoming to see the reunion of my friend Joanna‘s band, I had the pleasure of finally meeting my Twitter pal G. Jason Head. Jason is a front-end web developer and runs Refresh Pittsburgh. He’s also putting together the first-ever Pittsburgh Web Design Day — “a [Keep Reading…]
Maimonides’ Eight Levels of Charity Applied to Building Your Personal Brand
I’ve been thinking a lot about acts of giving lately. It’s been an incredible year for me and so many people have given me so much. It seems impossible to give back. In Judaism, it’s common to follow Maimonides’ Eight Levels of Tzedakah (the Hebrew word for charity or justice). The aim is to give [Keep Reading…]
I’ll be speaking at IA Summit 2009 in Memphis
Another wildly overdue announcement (well I mentioned it on Twitter, but not here on the blog): My submission to the business/strategy/management track of IA Summit 2009 was accepted! I’m scared shitless and never expected it to be accepted, but I can’t wait to make it happen. The talk is titled, “Evangelizing Yourself: You can’t change [Keep Reading…]
I have joined the UXnet board of directors
In mid-December, the venerable Lou Rosenfeld asked me if I would join the UXnet board of directors. Saying no to Lou would have been wildly foolish. After all, he literally wrote the book on information architecture. Initially published in February 1998, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, co-written with Peter Morville, is one of [Keep Reading…]
Happy Cog and Happy Whitney
Shortly after I quit my full-time job in late August to become an independent consultant, the ubiquitous Liz Danzico kindly referred me to Jeffrey Zeldman for a short-term gig with Happy Cog. If you haven’t heard of Happy Cog, they are an internationally-recognized web design consultancy responsible for the design of Ma.gnolia, Advertising Age, Housing [Keep Reading…]
I was asked to join the IAI Board of Advisors
You may remember that I ran for the Information Architecture Institute‘s board of directors in September, but wasn’t elected. Though I couldn’t announce it until recently, three weeks ago I was asked by the new Board of Directors — Jorge Arango, Peter Boersma, Christian Crumlish, Andrew Hinton, Livia Labate, Stacy Surla, and Russ Unger — [Keep Reading…]
Reader E-mail: “Follow your dreams while you can”
I just wanted to post an amazing e-mail that I received from Martha Mihaly in response to my post on going solo. It really made me sit up straight and take stock of what I’m doing here — getting involved in the community, making my own rules and exploring my passion. This e-mail, from one [Keep Reading…]
From the Archive: Changing Majors
The Google 2001 search engine inspired me to use the Internet Archive to find my old Carnegie Mellon student website. The furthest instance back had links to my Fall 2001 class schedule (first semester sophomore year), my “résumé in its entirety” and a real gem — a manifesto I wrote on why I had decided [Keep Reading…]
I’m running for the 2008 Information Architecture Institute board of directors
The Information Architecture Institute has four open spots on its Board of Directors and the 2008 election process is underway. A few weeks ago, my friend Livia Labate encouraged me to nominate myself, and while I was apprehensive at first, I decided to throw my hat into the ring. I believe I can help to [Keep Reading…]
Week 1 of independence
I just finished my first week of independent consulting with 33.25 billable hours. I’m pretty proud of that. Before I decided to make this leap, I had calculated that I need at minimum 26 hours per week in order to comfortably pay my bills, pay taxes and put some cash away in my IRA. I [Keep Reading…]