archive.Joe Lamantia.com

Several weeks ago, I was invited to speak to an audience of IT and business leaders at Walmart about the Language of Discovery.   Every presentation is a feedback opportunity as much as a chance to broadcast our latest thinking (a tenet of what I call lean strategy practice – musicians call it trying out new material), so I make a point to share evolving ideas and synthesize what we’ve learned since the last instance of public dialog.

For the audience at Walmart, as part of the broader framing for the Age of Insight, I took the opportunity to share findings from some of the recent research we’ve done on Data Science (that’s right, we’re studying data science).  We’ve engaged consistently with data science practitioners for several years now (some of the field’s leaders are alumni of Endeca), as part of our ongoing effort to understand the changing nature of analytical and sense making activities, the people undertaking them, and the contexts in which they take place.  We’ve seen the discipline emerge from an esoteric specialty into full mainstream visibility for the business community.  Interpreting what we’ve learned about data science through a structural and historic perspective lead me to draw a broad parallel between data science now and natural philosophy at its early stages of evolution.

We also shared some exciting new models for enterprise information engagement; crafting scenarios using the language of discovery to describe information needs and activity at the level of discovery architecture, IT portfolio planning,  and knowledge management (which correspond to UX, technology, and business perspectives as applied to larger scales and via business dialog) – demonstrating the versatility of the language as a source of linkage across separate disciplines.

But the primary message I wanted to share is that discovery is the most important organizational capability for the era.  More on this in follow up postings that focus on smaller chunks of the thinking encapsulated in the full deck of slides.

Slides from my talk Big Data Is Not the Insight: The Language of Discovery at Enterprise Search Europe in London last week are available for viewing and download from slideshare. The conference was a good gathering of leading perspectives on search in Europe, definitely one I’d look forward to attending again. And of course London is lovely in May, even when it feels more like winter than spring…

Big Data Is Not the Insight: The Language Of Discovery: from Joe Lamantia

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I did a modest ‘meet the speaker’ interview with the organizers of next month’s Enterprise Search Europe conference in London – it’s published here:

http://www.enterprisesearcheurope.com/2013/LatestNews.aspx?id=151

Here’s an excerpt:

It turns out that you can use a very simple vocabulary to spot and describe complex patterns in searching and sense making behaviour, patterns that transcend typical boundaries like domain of use. You can also design solutions using the vocabulary; from the interaction design of workspaces, to the various data models and information structures that underlie your system. This combination of analytical and generative uses is unusual, and I wanted to share it.

And if you’re in the neighborhood of London May 13 – 17, and would like to connect to talk about search, discovery, or related topics, ping me – I’d like to meet up with some new folks for my first visit to London in a few years.

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The audio recording of my presentation Designing Big Data Interactions in the Age of Insight from UX Australia 2012 was just published.

It’s available for direct download from the session page, in the iTunes store, and as part of the podcast series for all the sessions at UX Australia.

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I’ll be presenting recent work around the evolving Language of Discovery at the Enterprise Search Europe conference in London this May. Tyler Tate — co-author of Designing the Search Experience — and I are sharing a session on ‘creating effective interfaces’.

In addition to the regular sessions, Tony Russell-Rose is presenting a workshop titled Search Interface Optimisation (to use the British spelling) on Tuesday that promises to inform and enhance your understanding of how people search, and your toolkit for designing good search experiences.

ESS is the premier gathering of industry practitioners active in the search and discovery spaces, and the roster of speakers looks strong; if you need to engage with or learn something from the community, this is the place to do so.

And London is wonderful in the spring – hope to see some of you there!

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Designing the Search Experience: The Information Architecture of Discovery is officially available for purchase from Amazon – congratulations to authors Tony Russell-Rose and Tyler Tate. As I mentioned in July, I was invited to contribute a piece. You can read my contribution in chapter four, “Modes of Search and Discovery”.

Now, go buy the book!

I’ve posted slides from my presentation at Strata to slideshare; they’re available for both viewing and download. I shared quite a bit of new material with the audience at Strata: most notably a new collection of mode chains and example scenarios capturing patterns in discovery activity in the consumer domain, to complement our understanding of and descriptive patterns for enterprise-centered sense making.

O’Reilly recorded the talk, so I’ll post the video as soon as they make it available.

Thanks to all who attended.

Big data types, visualization wonks, analytical savants, and all those interested in the discovery space as the leading category of interaction in the Age Of Insight should join me in NY next week for Strata. I’m super excited to be sharing the Language of Discovery: A Toolkit For Designing Big Data Experiences at this East Coast edition of Strata.  If travel and time allow, I’m going to take in some of the NYC Data Week events scheduled for the same week.

Slides and video will be available after the conference, but there’s no substitute for being there.  And besides, New York is beautiful in October, so what more reason do you need to join?

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Not one but two sets of sketch notes are available from my UX Australia talk Designing Big Data Interactions with the Language of Discovery!

This set is courtesy of flickr user uxmastery – a complete set of sketch notes from UX Australia is available here.

And this set is courtesy of flickr user CannedTuna — you’ll find the complete set of Gary’s sketch notes from UX Australia here.

Thanks to both note takers for crafting and sharing these notes!

The lanyard page gathers all the published resources for this talk: http://lanyrd.com/2012/ux-australia/sxbtz/

Slides from my talk at UX Australia are posted now.