A foundation of hope
A personal backstory to the 2020 Euro IA theme and tone of Hope: Building foundations for preferable futures
I’d been working with Martina on a new workshop for design leaders. I’ve become a bit obsessed with helping designers better understand themselves. To better direct their future. And I’ve done plenty of work on myself over the past few years. So why not develop out a Shaping workshop for design leaders?
So, after some virtual chats, out of the blue, she pinged me about co-chairing Euro IA. My instant impulse was a YES. But my tired self, thought it would be wiser to say NO.
I’ve been doing too much travel. Attending too many UX and Design conferences. I was tired. I’ve become bored of the growing narrative and stagnant conversations. I hadn’t been to Euro IA since Stockholm and my allegiance was patchy at best over the past few years.
“hmmm… When do you need to know?” — I asked
“we will be announcing co-chairs at the conference” — Martina responded
“I thought you might. Probably a NO then”
“that’s a shame! anything we could clarify to address the ‘probably?’”
And then it unravelled. I was on a call. I was sucked in.
A critical conference for my career
You see, Euro IA has a special place in my heart. In my life. Back in 2005, I attended the first one in Brussels. I had submitted a poster, and left my girlfriend (now wife, surprisingly) in hospital with a fractured hip.

She’d had an accident the day I planned to travel. I managed to get to the hospital to see her. Most poignantly when the surgeon was explaining the potential consequences for the future. “You might be in and out of surgery. You may have difficulty giving birth.” Amidst the tears, I held her hand as the surgeon told her dead pan.
My heart was with her, but my head was thinking through where I could get some printing done near the hospital.
A better partner would have stayed. I know that. But her mum was with her. There was little I could do. I travelled to Brussels and that decision laid some important foundations for my future.
Every decision we make can affect our future. This was one of the most poignant ones in my career. When I selfishly chose my career over my relationship. The gamble paid off, luckily.
At that time, I was a bit of a nobody in UX. I would attend London UPA (pre-UXPA clusterfux) and AIGA events, and I would express my opinions. But I was inspired to submit for a poster to better define who we were aiming to be. I developed the “Creating the perfect experience architect poster’, with my designer colleague, Julian Cross, and input from colleagues, clients, and peers.
Euro IA gave me a platform to share this poster with the world. It gave me my voice. I spoke out at the conference. I got recognised. I made friends. I bonded with the community. I became somebody. Somebody with a voice.
The next year, I managed to get 4 or 5 submissions accepted for the Framfab-LBi team. In Berlin 2016, we dominated. It was a little disgusting. Amongst the poster submissions (which I mostly wrote with my new found arrogance), I even had the audacity to suggest running a whole conference workshop. 150–200 people with 6–8 facilitators to do a meta workshop on ‘Wicked Workshops”. I did this with my colleague and one of my best friends, Warren Hutchinson. This was peak UX twats. In the 5 minute madness at the end, I asked the crowd what they thought LBi meant (we were newly merged). The answer resonates deeply in my soul:
‘Leave Berlin Immediately (LBi).’ I think I even know who said it.
I can’t really remember what happened after that event, but I don’t think I returned to Euro IA for a while. I definitely did Prague, with a rather infamous presentation. I even topped my previous arrogance. I managed to integrate Public Enemy’s ‘Don’t believe the hype’ as a backdrop to slides. Pouring scorn on people I respect, and industry rhetoric around mobile first and service design being all fart and no shit, amongst other sacred cows.
Despite the crassness, these things further elevated my reputation for calling out BS in the industry. Once again, Euro IA gave me a platform. A foundation for the future.
So, why talk about all this. Why, do you the reader care?
Well, I do believe I have helped people. I’ve been told as much. But Euro IA helped me build a foundation for me to share with others. It gave me a voice. Me, a nobody.
A conference for the community by the community.
For Europe. Not the dominant US narrative we are often subjected to. I felt my points and perspectives were valid. Others hopefully did too.
To quote the famous (if you like 90’s house and garage) tune by Ruffneck. ‘Everybody wants to be somebody’.
How could I say NO! to co-charing the conference? But I still had reservations.
“Who else is co-chairing?”
I found out about the other co-chairs and was incredibly pleased that Rob Scott was on the bill. Alongside Rob would be Katharina Staszkow who was someone I knew nothing about. But luckily I met her on the first night and was delighted to have someone that worked hard and was a delight to talk to with growing praise shone on her from her colleagues.

Through the conference in Riga, I tried to engage in a different way. What were the emerging themes there, and at other conferences I’d been at over the past few years? We were shouted at. Guilted. Informed. Challenged. Inspired.
Under it all, was a current of ‘this is still IA’. And IA is still valuable. I respect that.
Peak UX, but disappearing IA
We are at peak UX saturation — or so you think every year and then more events pop up. But with that is a distinct lack of IA.
You see, I’ve never been an IA. I’m more of an IA sympathiser. Over the years, I have recognised how organisation, structure, and language help us all. On strategy. Or service design. Or systems. But most of my career I sided with Interaction Design, and its’ flow, its’ dialogue. I guess I am still more IxD than IA. But I appreciate the value of the mindset, and of the skills.
And yet, the IA discipline and the roles have almost disappeared. Since mobile, interaction design took a dominant position. Visual UI design, design systems and cranking out an interactive prototype in Figma has even superseded that.
All that should be fine, as design gets seats at the table. As it gets heard. As it gets appreciated — if only at a shallow level.
Meanwhile, our democracy, our climate, and our whole value system nosedives into a mucky, messy hell hole. We start to wake up to futures thinking. Forward planning, Building strong foundations.
Old hands and decrepit designers recognise this is valuable for yourself. But also for your products and services. For our organisations.
So what’s ahead? What should Euro IA focus on?
Back to foundations
Well, here’s the thing. I see it simply. It should be about IA. Information Architecture is still valuable. Maybe more so than ever. But it’s forgotten. Few people care. Why should they come to this conference?
The answer is more simple than you might imagine. The IA mentality helps us structure, organise, prioritise, and clarify through appropriate language. No matter what we do in the future this is structure. And we’ll always need structure.
And there’s the other level. We build foundations. Much like architects plan for foundations for buildings amongst a masterplan of a neighbourhood.
We need to help plan our new information neighbourhoods. Hoods that can adapt to changing needs, content inputs and demands outwards.
IA is still important. It always was. We just need to re-impress its value in these new contexts.
Old tricks, new contexts.
How does IA help us in the new worlds of futures, service design, AI, Virtual and Augmented reality?
How are we going to create flexible foundations for the future? Ones that allow some flex, some adaptation?
How can we (re)build the value of IA?
And how can we do this with a European focus?
How can we envisage ways of working that play to Europe’s diversity, and some of the spirit that we once had prior to the horrors of Brexit.
The co-chairs are great people. We want to work hard but also smart. We need your help.
How you can help
We would appreciate your thoughts. On what we have shared. We need your submissions (to be announced soon) on how IA thinking is providing valuable, but flexible foundations for a longer term preferable future. Anticipating consequences. Promoting hope. Encouraging a slower, but not slow pace to our work, where we can reflect and consider diversity, plurality and more.
Our ask is this…
- What can you talk about, or show us that helps us answer these questions:
- How can we as a species find positive hope amongst the car crash of today?
- How can we build foundations of our future?
- How can IA mindsets, tools and approaches help us?
- How can we define our Utopia for Europe — a Eutopia even? And build foundations to support the many different directions we can go?
- How can we as Europeans (in or out of the EU), with our Information Architecture mindsets and methods — help improve the world again.
Come on. Help us build some foundations for preferable futures. To give us some hope.
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