In general, I think the answer is “yes”, but mostly, I have to wonder if the add-on to that is “but for how long?”.

I’m not going to pretend that organizations like the IAI (full disclosure: I am on the Board of Directors) and IxDA haven’t helped me, personally, make many of the social and professional connections that I have today.  But, that was before.

Before all this social network stuff sort of just asploded in our faces and made everything so intimate, public and NOW NOW NOW!!

I’m grateful for these organizations, actually, as long as they work.

So, to answer my questions, I’d say the answer on both parts is:  YES

But the time is critical for them, I fear.

BUT… I think both need to evolve a little in order to find the right way to keep it all under the same roof.  There’s no problem with people owning initiatives, and it’s awesome that people can, over the course of a holiday weekend (in the US, of course) crank out 110% awesome.  The world wants things RIGHT NOW, and that makes waiting even more difficult than Tom Petty ever imagined. Organizations love to talk about and hate their red tape and people love to talk about and love/hate their organizations response times and excuses of the red tape.

It kind of stinks. But, it’s also a reality.  There’s got to be a way to make things happen and get organizations and “their people” all engaged, enabled and empowered to “get stuff done” so they can meet in the middle. There’s got to be some sort of an open framework we can create where people start running as fast as they can and as fast as they want with great (or not great, half-cocked, hair-brained) ideas and make them work for both in a way where both reap the rewards.

I’ve watched as people have identified a number of reasons why events should be near them (and sadly, watched while even less than Pareto would be happy with identified themselves as those willing to take part in the preparation and organization of such things), griped and/or yelled and/or bullied about certain attitudes and approaches to different locations and even, I’m sad to say, as people have thrown up their arms and politely asked, urgently requested and all-out yelled and hollered their requests for assistance.

Unfortunately, I watched those requests get sent, and then watched forward motion get made without support.

In fact, over the course of a holiday weekend in the United States, I watched Steve Baty take his half-baked “UX Book Club” idea and start to bake the hell out of it with his peers–many he’s never met, and some he may never meet in his life.  Will Evans and Andrew Boyd jumped-in to help, without any real call for support and they helped inject more excitement and energy into the project.

They organized.

They plotted.

They schemed.

(Admittedly, I got involved, thumb-tapped away on my iPhone as furiously as I possibly could and tried to keep up from the remote reaches of the inner-midwest USA)

They found new ideas from their existing ideas.

They created new ideas–blew them up to bigger than better than any one of them had dreamed-up before.

Mountains were made out of idea molehills, and frankly the whole world looked a helluva lot better from a “wow, that’d be really kick @$$” perspective.

They used the hell out of the back-channel to get people active, excited and to make sure they were missing as few opportunities as possible while engaging as many people who could help them.

They did this without the assistance of associations, organizations, fax machines, the USPS or DHL delivery service.  The did this without worrying about whether or not the location was one that suited everyone.

They did this because they love what they do, they love being active and they have heart, soul and no real spare time to donate to their communities, but they figure they can give up an extra hour of sleep a night to make something worthwhile.

How come so few people want so much but can’t come up with the same type of inertia–if I tried to stop Steve right now, he’d plow through me like a Mack truck going over a puddle.  This thing is happening!

And it’s awesome.

But “they” own it. That is, there is no owner beyond this collective of unorganized people who decided that their locations could read books once a month.

They DO need the support of organizations–organizations can help them with (perceived?) purchasing power, greater reach, and the potential for more opportunities and growth beyond these local book clubs.

I mean, if someone has the gusto to pick up a book and read once a month, maybe they also want to sit down once a month and watch a presentation on <something> or they want to grab a beer with others and talk about <something> or they want to schedule their own “camp” type of thing.

They DO need organizations. As Marc Andreesen says (courtesy of Christina Wodtke), “Organizations are GREAT distribution channels.” (okay, so Christina clarified this below, but I think it still stands)

Hell, they’re a great place for like-minded people to get together and change the world, rattle the status quo and shake the foundation of just about anything they set their minds to.

Organizations DO need them-these people are THEIR leaders of TODAY and TOMORROW.

One can do without the other, however. One can create the other, however.

One SHOULD inspire, engage and activate the other.

My point is that I think a lot of us get frustrated–I know I have, and I do–and we forget that these things all really do have connecting points and dependencies.

Most of us work in the User Experience space (if you’re reading this blog, at least I think you are)–you/we should all be connecting these boxes and we should all be wanting to solve these problems. We should be taking advantage of this “whatever-point-oh” web/world that we’re in and FIND NEW WAYS to be excited and energized and CREATE SOMETHING BETTER.

Because if we don’t, someone else will.

Will you?

I will.

In the upcoming weeks–nay, days, I will be sharing my initiatives for 2009 as a member of the Board of Directors of the Information Architecture Institute. None of these are impossible to achieve and all of them are valuable and will be worth your time if you choose to participate and/or lead these initiatives with me.

I can’t do it alone, and I want your help.

And you can make my ideas better. More awesome. More YOU. Oh. My. God. Think of how cool that is to see a seed turn into a tree right in front of your eyes and/or from the work of your own hands!

There are so many opportunities for us–from having fun to getting really dorky-technical.

It’s there. If someone hasn’t thought of it–and even if they have–pick up the idea torch and give it a try.

There are big things to be accomplished in 2009, and there are all types of leaders needed–in organizations and in the world at large.  Organizations always need more leaders and volunteers and will present you with opportunities you’d never dreamt of.  If an organization cannot or will not support you, challenge them–better yet, challenge yourself–and start building something great, and present it to them.

Don’t just BE the change you want to see…

CREATE the change you want to see.

I’ve returned from a ridiculously refreshing trip to Miami, and I am more exhausted than I’ve been in recent years. I feel like I’ve got so much ahead of me and a lot on my plate right now, but none of that is a bad thing.

The IA Summit was fantastic. There was a slight hitch in the initial giddy-up, but it did not take too long to forget about it. We moved on with the great learning, sharing, connecting and, oh dear lord the Twittering!

No, really. The Twittering was unbelievable.

The Twittering was constant; it was almost a backdrop to the entire event. Twittering was shared notes, timely jokes, a loudspeaker and an invitation system. Twittering kept pelople connected and helped in making decisions about various presentations, meals and meet-ups.

In 140 characters or less.

My New Friends

I’ve got all these new “friends” who are following @russu, and all these great people that I’m now following. I’d be lying if I didn’t say that we’re probably going through a touch of IA Summit withdrawal–but it’s very nice to hear that everyone is arriving home safely, or at least well on their way. In the time that has passed from authoring to publishing, I’m surprised to say that the twittering remains pretty active.

And that is all pretty cool stuff, right?

Right.

Really!

But it’s a “level” of cool. These followers–some mutual and some one-way–are possibly a “level” of friend/acquaintanceship that is introduced into Andrew Hinton’s preferably titled “Cyber Space”.

Huh. That all sounds like I’m new to Twitter. I’m not, but I’m a new and improved “extreme” user now, I think. I’m trying to dial it down for the folks who still have to listen–that is, I want to keep you listening, so I want my Tweets to be minimal on the worthless noise side, whenever possible.

As I was looking over my “Twitterati” (as Livia Labate coins), I was trying to figure out how many of them I have as friends on Facebook and/or LinkedIn, Instant Messenger or otherwise. I’ve also been trying to understand and evaluate the “currency” of the following/follower lists–and whether or not the currency is legit or just in/outbound popularity whoring. With someone like Guy Kawasaki, I do not believe it is the latter, but for a regular Joe like me, I think there would be a lot less value if my numbers skyrocketed for no real reason. I guess there is something to be said about selective-friending based upon your own ecosystem credibility.

Huh. Now I sound almost kind of pathetic.

Maybe I should figure out just who “Russ” is in all of this, first.

Who Am I?

If I could quote an Indigo Girls song here, I’d say this:

“I’m just a mirror of a mirror of myself” -Least Complicated (there’s some irony for you)

See that? I’ve always thought that line was really taken from Johann Wolfgang von Goethe:

“I am not who I think I am and I am not who you think I am, but I am who I think you think I am.”

That, to me, also tells me that with each Identity I create, I have the potential to become a different person to each person that I think is watching me at any particular moment. That also means that Identity (and I’m looking at you Christina and Gene) may connect to a variety of different channels that, based upon how they are used, force you to manage your multiple identities in multiple ways.

So, uh, WTF, right?

It’s bad enough that I have to figure out who I am as a husband, a father, a larger family ecosystem with its own subgroups, as an employee and/or an employer and as a client or a co-worker. That’s a lot to manage–you simply cannot just be Ward Cleaver these days.

I wonder if this is what Flip Filipowski meant when he said [paraphrasing here] that he would not want to be alive in the future, because even the smartest of people today would probably come across as fairly feeble-minded.

We have a lot more to contend with. A lot more social structures. A new personality for each identity and a new set of the 3 mirrors to consider, calculate and present. The layers upon layers of honeycombs that we’re forced to manage, keep up with, and continue to add to as each new Next Big Thing(tm) is introduced is only increasing.

Holy Multiple Personality Disorder Batman!

Maybe “friends” now has varying degrees of intimacy. On Twitter, my friends (people I follow/follow me) are people I can share micro-formatted quips with. Perhaps I know all of them, perhaps only some of them, but mostly, there’s some level of shared interest (with the exception of the TwitterSpam that was bound to happen). In many cases, they may be people that I find interesting enough to want to hear what they have to say and they’ve simply extended me the courtesy of returning the favor.

On LinkedIn, I’m Russ the Professional(tm). It almost sounds like it should have a theme song. But that’s who I am. I can perform a few activities that may provide a bit of whimsy around me, but I want people to see me as a resume.

On Facebook, I’m Russ the family man. Pictures of my family abound and my contacts are mostly personal or innocuous sort of connections with people that I probably would have had a difficult time saying “no” to.

On Twitter, I seem to have flocked toward connections that share the same professional passions, or people that I can learn a lot from. Watching the rapid-fire splatter of these 100 or so people pushes me more than I ever could have imagined.

Who am I everywhere else? More importantly, who do I think you think I am, right?

For some, this must feel like being in many secretive dating-like relationships, if you’re not managing your identities in the context of your “true” personality.

I Think What I Think You Think When You Don’t Tell Me How You Think

This does not imply that you are aware of my desire–or that you even care–about how I want you to think about me. It does mean that it has to be dealt with; dealing with friend/fan requests, messages, emails, tweets, etc. are all two way.

I’m crazy, right?

Think about it–barring the “email must have gotten lost in the tubes” or “caught by my SPAM filter” scenarios, in general, the emails make it through the system (and I still SWEAR I didn’t receive the Xbox emails from Microsoft!). The Tweets may not, and other “Beta” types of things may have failures, but email mostly works. Even if its usage may be declining in youth.

“You cannot not communicate.” -Erik Spiekermann

That is my point.

When you do not reply to an email, an SMS, a telephone call or even a D message or specific tweet, you run the risk of sending a message that is open to someone else’s interpretation.

If I send you an email and I don’t hear from you within a timeframe I deem to be acceptable, some little voice somewhere starts to churn out an interpretation.

“Russ hasn’t replied to my email in 2 days–he’s always online! What a jerk, he must be avoiding me…”

Ugh.

Now we’re dealing with response times that are becoming almost uncanny. Think about it–even in the mid-90s, people really weren’t using much email (but, oh, for those of us who were, Pine was simply awesome!). You still had to get a birthday card from your grandmother with a $5 bill in it. Now, your mom can send you an eCard and dump $50 into your PayPal account, and as long as it’s before midnight on your birthday, she’s cool.

This also forces us into shifts in etiquette–if not presence, right? This is where I am. This is why I’m not responding to you RIGHT NOW!

We all know how to set our statuses in Instant Messenger, but how do you handle explaining your (in)ability to not respond timely?

In Twitter, people sometimes “sign-off”:

Off to bed.
about 3 hours ago

Why? To formally announce a status and not offend anyone who is within the realm of Twitterspace that is being co-occupied. Apparently, there is some new twittettiquette going around (yeah, I just made that word up, but I own it now: twittettiquette).

That, however, just depends. Upon you. The type of person you are and/or the type of person you want to allow others to perceive you as. Sounds familiar…

My New Friends?

I’m not sure I’ve figured out exactly who I am or what I am thinking all the time just yet, but I feel like I can at least start to discuss this whole friendship thing a little better. Don’t get me wrong–I know who Russ is, I’m just not always sure that he’s being perceived the same in all places.

This exhaustive social system is sometimes hard to manage–and difficult to interpret.

How many places are we all connected today? We’re all aware of LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, Flickr, Twitter, the blogosphere and all the other variations like Bebo, Naymz, maybe Spoke and the new one that will launch tomorrow.

We all have some of the same people in all of those connection points, but most likely not all of them. We share different friends with different people in the different social locations. The Cloud that connects all of the people in the world to me–and it’s not like I’m Captain Popular (more like Æsir, I’d say)–is probably so very large at this point that even a single new connection is likely to have a very large cloud of their own that would ultimately expand both clouds… The notion is kind of daunting.

Are We Friends?

That’s the big question, right? Has the word “friend” started to become as meaningless as Disney’s use of the word “princess”? Don’t get me wrong, Disney still makes tons off of princess (and many princesses’ fathers), but the more the term is misdirected to an inaccurate source, the more it seems to lose its value.

Does that mean I should not want my new “friends” to be my friends? Heck no! I consider myself lucky to have the connections that I have. I consider it to be a requirement on my end to stay connected and to reconnect in the future as much as possible.

What it does mean, however, is that some of our friends most likely aren’t people that we’re really friends with, at least not like it was “back in the day”. Back in the day, people had high school friends that were lifelong friends and who often stayed within the same communities for generations.

Today, we can meet new people online and form lasting relationships–I’ve run a message board for several years and more than one couple have met there and gotten married. I’m not making this up, but I’m not doing Warfel-level research, either. Certainly, most of us have heard of Second Life Marriages, right?

We’re Not Friends

Sometimes, it can be as simple as that. We’re not friends, I don’t want to be friends with you and I don’t want you to be lurking around in my “trusted” circle.

But sometimes you just can’t say “No”.

How do you tell the annoying co-worker that you don’t want them lurking into your Facebook? (How do you know if you’re the annoying co-worker? I’m not arrogant about my relationships, but most of the time I don’t want to impose on “acquaintances” lives by “friending” them inappropriately. Imagine the (mis)interpretations possible) They don’t need to be looking at your Jamaican escapades or peer into your family photos or whatever–but we fear the hallway discomfort or retribution from not accepting a connection. We feel obligated to share ourselves to the point that the selected membership of our friends starts to turn into a college kegger where someone always ends up throwing up in your room–and the door was locked when the party started.

Have you ever had someone on LinkedIn ask you for a recommendation even though you barely know them? How did that make you feel?

Exactly. Even the avoidance of the request can sometimes be difficult.

The concept of “Friend” is becoming more and more watered down. Acquaintance still exists, but acquaintance doesn’t sell page views.

Let’s Keep In Touch

Never since the IA Summit have I ever even considered that the notion of a business card could change so much. I wondered, in hindsight, if it would have been useful to have linked to my blog on my business card and if my twitter account would have been acceptable as well. Is that extending an open invitation to follow me around and converse? Am I desperate for friends if I do such a crazy thing? Do I think that anything I say is that important that I other people actually care?

For that matter, what do you think about it? What if my business card linked to a single page where you could sign-up and show a pre-determined part of your “online social-ness” to me and in return, I could show you as much as I am willing to show?

The image above represents all of the social presences/identities that you have, with one interconnecting point. The grey areas are “allowed” access points that each user is providing. The blue and green display the others that are unshared/private. That doesn’t mean that they’re still unable to be found, just not unlocked to someone else, which means that there is still a potential for social fallout with people that you are not sharing certain accesses with. Even if we find a single, unified standard approach to all of this… There’s still a management issue.

This, Too, Shall Change

I’ve recently gone “Facebook Dark” in my status at (where else?) Facebook. My interest has waned. My desire to keep my status updated to the dozens of folks who are connected to me has gone away. I’m tired of worrying how someone down the hall from my office will (mis)interpret something that may have nothing to do with them or work or whatever. I’m tired of the chore it is to be Facebook Russ, with the exception of uploading a few photos for a specific set of friends. Most of the people that are connected to me are not parents and most likely won’t care that Avery smiled for the first time today.

Maybe it was the work on the Facebook Application that I did that had me playing in that sandbox a bit too long. Or maybe it’s just exactly what I stated above. Maybe I want a new walled garden and maybe I don’t want to have to hurt anyone’s feelings in order to do it. Maybe I no longer feel the need to keep count of my friends and maybe I no longer feel as connected to some people I (selectively?) added.

Maybe, as someone joked at the IA Summit, that “People You May Know” widget on the side is really just a “People You Don’t Like That Much or They’d Already Be Your Damned Friend.” Maybe I’m tired of being reminded about people that could be in my Facebook Posse. Maybe it’s just Facebook overload.

Do you even talk to everyone you’ve Facebooked? Have you ever felt like typing the URL for (insert social networking site here) is just too heavy of a task? Undoubtedly, someone you haven’t spoken to in years is trying to bite you with their zombie or someone has sent you the latest kitty photo that you’ve yet to see in one of your 20 email accounts. When it becomes a chore to keep up with an identity, it can be difficult to figure out what has changed.

Most likely, the change is in you.

The Nail in the Coffin

Death and the Social Networks: It’s kind of a grim thought, and no one really talks about it. I’ve had loose discussions with others about how companies simply do not think about death. Companies never really consider that someday, we’re all going to die. We’ve yet to lose an entire generation of emailers, if you think about it.

Sure, people have died, and Yahoo! has had to be taken to court to be forced to give up private information, but people and companies do not think about the mortality of their connections.

What happens when I die? Where do my social networks go? Who gets to see them? Who gets to tell them?

I don’t even know how obituaries work anymore! The new connections that I’ve been making are very rarely geographically close enough to read about my death in a newspaper. My wife wouldn’t know how to track down anyone and let them know. My “local” or “in real life” friends wouldn’t know about this type of thing; half of them are just barely getting into LinkedIn (although most of them now seem to have a Blackberry Pearl–I’m not sure what that means).

In the future, probably not long after we start seeing a generation of emailers begin to die, companies will have to face the morbid task of requesting users to select a “proxy” or some other designated person who can have access to their accounts and handle any affairs that may need to be wrapped up.

The social implications can be huge. The more global, the more connected, the more we are not required to pick up the phone to hear a voice or walk into another room and physically see someone in order to communicate together, the more it will seem as if a voice just fades, and then ceases altogether.

This Brand New Era of Communications can be awesome in its unending methods of connectivity.

But, it might even be kind of sad.

How do I show samples of my work / my portfolio?

Almost anyone who is going to be interested in engaging you will want to see a portfolio of work in some form. The challenge lies not only in how to show that work, but when and where.  I happen to be pretty particular about these sorts of things and I have ideas about an approach that works best for everyone invloved. 

First and foremost is the how.  How do you show this work?  I can’t imagine that someone actually wants to receive the 26mb zip file with everything you’ve ever done. Full disclosure: I’ve sent that file out before and as I type this, I’m feeling more than a little embarassed by it. 

I like to have control over the situation. If samples of work are going to make or break the situation, then it is best to be present when the samples are being reviewed.  If that is not an option, you have to make a judgment call, and that’s never fun to do.  You have to also ask yourself some questions about the party asking you to do this–what is their motivation? Why do they need to see samples of work before they’ll discuss an opportunity with you? Will they send you samples of their work so that you can determine whether or not their work product is at the same level as yours?

That last question is a doozy, but it’s also a fair question to consider. The interview process is two-way, that should never be forgotten, and if you bring more to the table than the company can currently provide to its own clients or you will offer a significant improvement to an internal workflow and/or process, that’s a negotiation point that could be the difference between being hired as a Senior Information Architect and a Director of User Experience.

Not so much of a doozy now, is it?

The when and where aspects come next.  You’ve got to figure out what works best for you and what you’re willing to provide. I’m not the only person who has sent off nice samples of work only to never get another call back. I’m sure I’m not the only one who was seen their work product (or at least a very close cousin of it) show up from a previous prospective employer later in their career.

The ideal situation is to be present, in-person with whomever is going to review your work.  There is always more to the story than any particular piece of work is going to show. Many not-so-great decisions are made regardless of the recommendation of a good UX designer and you should be given the opportunity to explain it.  Plus, you need to allow the other party to ask the I-swear-if-I-get-asked-it-one-more-time-I’ll-scream-instead-of-simply-fake-laugh-and-answer-it question of, “When does the UX process end?”.

In the unfortunate event that you are not allowed to be present, you should present your work product in a fashion that shows your skill, provides some insight and doesn’t give away the whole magilla. This is why it makes sense to take a step back and analyze what your various work product is, organize it and prepare it to be seen by the right people and with enough information to move you along to the next phase of whatever (interview, sales) process that you are in.

Enough of this palaver. On with the show!

I started talking with peers in the IA/UX community about this dilemma. The general response was similar to what I’ve already discussed. The other response was that none of us really want to read someone else’s white paper about how involved they were in a project–those things serve a purpose that is generally not in an interview or sales pitch. Save the tree.

My approach, based upon previous experience as a mediocre designer, my desire to not give anyone else a free ride on my sweat and to gain control over how work product is displayed. The solution: Password-protected samples, with screenshots and summaries.

Pretty simple, pretty straight-forward and pretty well-received by a number of peers and other UX/IA managers.

First, I created a login screen. Sounds pretty simple–and it was:

As I went through the process and had a couple of people reviewing it, I decided to add a “Samples” tab in the top-right corner of the screen. This only appears if in the samples section and not on the rest of the site. To the rest of the world, it simply does not exist–and I’m okay with that. You’ll need to make that decision for yourself, obviously.

After much deliberation (see all that rambling above), I decided that my best approach was to categorize the work product that I have into logical sections, mostly based upon the types of deliverables I’ve been asked to provide samples of. The sections that I ended up with are:

Presentations
Personas
Site Maps
Wireframes
Other Documentation & Deliverables (Content Matrix, Annotations, Functional Requirements and Prototypes)

Once logged-in, a user would see a single-page listing of all of the deliverable types, a sampling of key deliverables and, for posterity, the ability to download resume versions. Each deliverable displays a thumbnail image, a title and 2-3 descriptive sentences about the project.

Additional peer review provided me with unanimous feedback: The amount and the voice of the content were perfect for what I set out to achieve. No one felt as if they were being overwhelmed–a couple of people even said that they enjoyed reviewing the samples because they felt they were in an easy, conversational review that was painless to get through.

I’d pay for that kind of feedback. That’s a beauty of the IA/UX community–I’ve never met a more willing, insightful and generous group of people.

When a user selects a specific deliverable from the main page, they are displayed the corresponding detail page. The detail pages display a recant of the overview of the project, 1-3 screenshots of the deliverable and a caption for each of the screenshots. I also provided navigation at the bottom of the page to allow users to view the page and quickly move on to the next sample.

I still have a page that links to full deliverables available–but that’s available for me. I don’t feel like it’s fair to anyone I’ve worked with / for to freely expose the work product that I’ve done while working with them. How you choose to manage this is up to you; I feel as if this solution works best–for me.  This allows me to  maintain control over who is seeing what, and when.

As always, your mileage may vary, and “it depends” on what will work for you.

What About That Login Page?
Great question! I’m glad you asked.

I spent a fair amount of time searching for the right solution–there are many, many out there and they range from “Wow, you really need to be an expert” to the equivalent of trying to translate hieroglyphics.

Then, I found what may have been the easiest solution to meet my needs. The only catch is that you will need to have access to your PHPMyAdmin / MySQL database so you can add usernames and passwords, but if you’re able to build this out, building out the ability to manage users should not be too difficult.

I found the PHP Loging Script Tutorial at PHP Easy Step. I found that building my pages took me less than an hour and that the only thing extra I needed to do was to make sure that you re checking for an active session on each page so that users cannot deep link to any of your samples without you being aware of it. That code is:

< ?
session_start();
if(!session_is_registered(myusername)){
header(“YOUR LOGIN PAGE HERE”);
}
?>

Of course, you do not need to use your login page upon a failure, you can just throw users to any page or other website that you’d like.

This concludes my lessons learned–hopefully you are able to find these useful. I’m more than willing to help you put together a login/password page in the event you find yourself hitting brick walls.

Through all of this planning and reflection, one thing that bubbled up to the top was that, well, my resume kind of looks like crap. Not just the run of the mill sort of crap, but the type of crap that, when I look at it–and even worse, when I’ve seen it on someone else’s desk with a staple trying to hold the many pages of it together–I can only cringe.  While I am not actively pursuing new career opportunities, it does not mean that I should rest on my laurels.  In fact, this is probably the best time that I can imagine putting a new resume together–when I don’t feel the pressure of being in the hot seat to find different employment for one reason or another.

I thought it would be a good idea to hire an outside consultant to work with me toward achieving this goal, but had some trepidation. Thanks to a previous and somewhat costly experience in the past. I wanted to get other opinions on the subject, because that experience led me to the crap resume that I have today. That resume does a fantastic job of showing up in nearly everyone’s keyword searches across the board–”pipe designer” being the most recent oddity, so I decided to ask a different group of people for referrals this time around.

As a member of the IA Institute, I have access to the IAI Members Mailing List and I sent out a note explaining my situation and my goals. I was hoping that some of my peers in the field might have some insight as to identifying a professional Resume Magic Maker.

I was wrong.

About identifying a professional resume writer, at least.

And the end result of being wrong is not something that I am all displeased about.

The overall theme of the responses was that relying on someone else to author your resume seems to be a bad idea. I couldn’t disagree with that less given my previous experience with a recommended professional. I was only provided with a resume that I eventually had to rewrite (and maybe it was just the timing of it all, but the difference in the “paid for” versus “authored-by-Russ” versions was substantial enough just from the contacts made to me via the job boards alone).

Olga Howard was one of the first to respond, and apparently I had missed out on a UXnet panel and workshop in DC about the issue. (The Boxes and Arrows article “Getting Hired – What Employers Really Want” is here, also by Olga)

The problem with resumes was identified pretty clearly, and it rings true to part of the problem I see–and what I was lazily hoping someone else could help me with:

There are two main reasons why Information Architects and their potential employers may not find the right match: 1) the terms used by the IA and the employer sometimes mean different things 2) the IAs’ resumes and portfolios may not sufficiently explain what the IA was doing, or there are not enough samples of work—wireframes, taxonomies etc. So employers cannot easily determine whether the IA is a good fit for the team.

This clearly describes part of the hell that comes with authoring a resume. So many terms with so many different meanings to so many people–and how can I overlook any of them if I want my resume to look good and get noticed?

Oy.

Dilemma-ville… Population: Russ.

It was also pointed out that people apparently share another problem with me: They’ve also got too much crap in their resume. I look at my resume from time to time and notice small disconnects with consistency in message, style and presentation. The part that gets to me the most are the areas of content where I really, truly feel like I have not articulated what my role and accomplishments were within the organization. Not everyone understands that Personas, Content Maps, Site Maps, Wireframes, etc. aren’t simply documents thrown together, but instead they are the work product that comes from vast amounts of researching, reviewing, revising and that other stuff that really makes the difference: critical thinking.

The next paragraph really put things into perspective for me:

After the panel discussion, while we were reviewing each other’s resumes, several people suggested that we ruthlessly pare the content in our resumes. Start with everything we think needs to be in the resume, and then remove what is not imperative. Then, what does remain will be rewritten to stand on its own. Like magic you’ll end up with the perfect resume. This will most definitely help you keep the resume weight down to 3 megs.

I claim to my friends and family that I desire less clutter in my life. I strive to throw out 1 more shirt in my closet because I really won’t wear it–even if it is in great shape and has a slimming effect on me. Less is more, by gosh, and we all strive to figure out how to place 10 lbs. of “stuff” into a 5 lb. bag on a daily basis in our projects.

The resume project is no different, and though I fought diligently against taking the time to manage this project myself, it has become very clear to me that this is exactly how I have to adjust my thinking if I want to work to be done correctly.

Jonathan Lane chimed in with some outstanding advice that he has picked-up from a recent layoff experience. In summary, the advice is simple, sound and it’s going to be pure hell to try and fit my career–several contract gigs included–into the set of “rules” that Jonathan picked up from Lee Hecht Harrison.

1. No more than two pages. Period.
2. List your education last.
3. Don’t spend too long describing your job role in each position.
4. List your accomplishments.

These instruction are simple enough. Simple enough to read, that is.

When you’ve worked half a dozen contracts that all have had varying shades of IA/UXD this task starts to feel daunting. I know I’m not the only person in the world who has a resume with full time and contract experience on it, and I’m pretty sure that a 6pt font won’t be too acceptable, either. Meeting this challenge is going to require a little flexibility on the rules and a lot of effort on my part to pare things down and still keep it all meaningful to an audience that will take meaning from different keywords.

The ever-generous Peter Boersma shared his online resume with us–an act that scares the bejezus out of me. (Peter was also kind enough to sign-off on his email letting us all know that he’d *never* use a resume-writing service–another point that, while I believe it was good natured, I took to heart) Mark Schraad pointed out that part of my hesitation around publicly posted resumes comes from wanting a degree of control over the interviewing situations that I may get into:

Just like marketing a product (which is exactly what you are doing with job interviews and resumes) YOU want to control the flow of information – and if possible the conversation. You want to develop a relationship and have the opportunity to add dialog as needed to make ‘the sale’. You also want to have the opportunity to say, ‘this is not the right fit’.

Bingo! That was a big part of what I was feeling (all of the “someone’s going to steal my identity…again” stuff aside, of course), and he did a much better job of articulating many of my internal emotions about it all.

Mark also brought up a point that totally makes this resume writing experience head down a completely new path–and a greater level of “stink” for me:

…there is a solid strategy for three different resumes. The first you might hand to someone on the occasion of meeting them (outside of the interview), the second you would send them upon application (this is the 2-3 pager) and possibly the longer, more indepth version that you take with you on the interview.

I only wanted to write 1 resume, dammit. Right after I formally (finally?) launched UserGlue, the website, my friend and recruiter Anotei Baatz mentioned to me that I would get more interest if I had an online version of my resume and portfolio (and Olga supported this, but my feelings are more in tune with Mark Schraad’s on the topic). I’m not exactly trying to land new business at this point in time, but I saw the validity in the requests. I started to find the best way to describe some of the work and some of the companies that I’ve worked for without exactly creating a brand new stinking resume. I took the easy way out and just sort of fluffed enough bulleted items on a couple of pages in order to get content live. I’m not saying this is correct, but it is what it is, and will need to be re-addressed when I get through this resume re-writing exercise that I’m getting mixed-up in.

Now, however, I see the value in this line of thinking, but I am not certain that 3 is the magic number. This will be determined eventually, and I believe that the best approach on this is to look at it from your own perspective of how many ways you need to present yourself in a resume-like format.

Theresa Putkey brought up that it’s the personality more often than the resume that gets you the job–and she is absolutely correct. However, it’s that resume–or at least one of the 3 or so that you decide to create–that opens the door. Right now, my resume could most likely open a door, and if you set the stack of papers down next to the corner, it could probably hold the door open during a good sized wind storm.

Michael Micheletti made the point that the excessive statistics may cause more harm than good if you aren’t taking care in how you present them. It’s one thing to mention that your efforts ultimately effected the end result, but quite another if you’re making claims of “Improved usability by XX%”. I’ve been on enough interviews and conducted enough to know that these types of claims are the ones that can get you into hot water with the wrong type of personality on the other end of the desk–and one untimely misstep and you can be instantly dead in the water. As Michael says:

Because we all know that 43.7% of all statistics are made up on the spot.

Except for mine, which happen to be 100% factual and accurate, most of the time. Right. Stick to the day job. I know, I know.

Through a bit more online digging–particularly through Olga Howard’s already existing efforts, I found a few more resources that I think are good starting points. Livia Labate has a great article, “What I Want To See In A Resume” that provides a lot of insight and additional considerations. Her online sample resume provides a really great kick-off for what that I would consider to be the resume that you would most want to put up on a job board (and now that I’m categorizing resumes, will 3 be enough? Insert Tootsie Roll Lollipop “Licks to the center” joke here):

First Last
123 Name St City, ST (000) 000-0000
first.last@firstlast.com | http://firstlast.com/portfolio

Month YY to Month YY: My Title, Company Name, Location – Two or three sentences describing responsibilities go here.
 Your favorite, proudest accomplishment goes here
 Your second greatest accomplishment goes here
 Your third relevant accomplishment goes here

Repeat for as many relevant jobs as you want to show.

Degree Title, YYY, Institution
Degree Title, YYY, Institution

I’m not going to get all worked-up over the presentation layer just yet–start with a simple, basic font. I really just want to be able to easily cut and paste this one into the various job boards that I use, and I will most likely want to have this one saved as a text resume as well, so I can easily cut and paste it into some other company’s far-too-involved application site.

This will be the first resume that I need to create. This is the resume that it should all evolve from. This is the resume that I will want to test with my peer group, revise and then spend a little bit of time cleaning it up, making it pretty and formatted and PDF-able. I’ll want to add a little personality, perhaps just in the layout so that it is memorable enough to be easy to find in a stack of resumes on a desk–even if it has a 3rd party’s logo and contact information stamped on the top of it.

And that is the place that I plan on starting for the next Resume of Russ. I owe a debt of gratitude to the IAI members that participated in the discussion and to those who contacted me off-list offering their support in one fashion or another. Active participation has some pretty nice benefits, and if you are at all interested in learning more about the IA/UXD space, you really cannot go wrong with the IA Institute as a great starting place–even if you just sit back and lurk on the email list for awhile. The experience and resources are vast, and the willingness to assist another member is invaluable.

My next step is to tear down my current resume and get it right down to the barebones version that I need to start with in order to make my next resume(s) the right kind of resume(s).

More on that later, I suspect.