Speaker Bio

Eric Reiss

Eric Reiss has been meddling with multimedia and web projects for longer than he cares to remember.

Born in San Antonio, Texas, in 1954, he created a revolutionary organizational concept for his baseball card collection (by players' cap size) that was voted the year's most idiotic innovation by the 1962 Flynn Park School third-grade class. Despite this temporary setback, (and two completely irrelevant degrees from Washington University in St. Louis), he moved to Copenhagen, Denmark, in 1976, to accept a position as a stage director at the Danish Royal Theatre. Here, he brought user experience to new heights by actually cooking food on the stage of this venerable institution, which won critical acclaim and caused tummies to rumble throughout the audience. Snack sales during the intermission rose dramatically, which makes this one of the earliest documented examples of how UX can be used to positively affect the business model.

In November 2000, his book, Practical Information Architecture, was published by Addison-Wesley/Pearson Education. In 2002, it became available in both Japanese and Korean. In 2005, it became available on eBay. Eric is also responsible for Web Dogma '06 and is one of the instigators of the IA Slam. He currently serves as President of the Information Architecture Institute and is Chair of the EuroIA Summit—to the utter amazement of friends and family alike.