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Yesterday's GeoTec opening keynote was given by Peter Morville. Here's some notes I took during his great speech revolving around information architecture and ambient findability (which is also the names of Peter's books). The main concepts when it comes to information, of course including geospatial information, form Peter's honeycomb: usable, useful, desirable, valuable, findable, credible, accessible. Peter quoted Herbert Simon, nobel prize of economy, who said "A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention". He told us the most important and visited page on a website, after the actual homepage, is the search results page, which generally receives little attention from the site's designers/managers. He also discussed the revenge of librarians, claiming librarians are key players not only to archive information, but to propel information into our future. The concept of pace layering was also discussed: some elements evolves faster than others and this has a direct impact on information management ((quicker) fashion, commerce, art, ..., governance, culture, nature (slower)). Above everything, Peter's speech was to the point, clear and supported with adequate explanations and examples. Hear Peter Morville interviewed a few months ago by Very Spatial or read Ambient findability's review. There's also the Cartography blog covering his first day at GeoTec.

I recently read Ambient Findability by Peter Morville. I want to encourage anybody with interests in geospatial technologies to read the book. Here's a previous review from Directions Mag and let's not forget the Very Spatial interview with Peter Morville. He also gave the keynote speech at GeoTec ealier this year. There was also this other interview along with Mike Liebhold. You can see also Peter's wikipedia entry and the findability.org website. The book is short and to the point, but very pertinent and even brilliant. From the O'Reilly description: "How do you find your way in an age of information overload? How can you filter streams of complex information to pull out only what you want? Why does it matter how information is structured when Google seems to magically bring up the right answer to your questions? What does it mean to be "findable" in this day and age? This eye-opening new book examines the convergence of information and connectivity."

The third edition of O'Reilly's Information Architecture is now available for order. From Peter Morville's blog: "And yet, unlearn we must, for technology relentlessly transforms the playing field, changing not just the answers but the questions as well. In a post-Ajaxian Web 2.0 world of wikis, folksonomies, and mashups, how do we structure for co-creation? How do we document the rich interfaces of web applications? How do we design for multiple platforms and mobile devices? What has changed, and what remains the same?" Update: 11/29 22:43 GMT by S :There's now a full discussion on the third edition by Peter.