Speaker Bio

Gene Smith

By day, Gene Smith is an information architect who works with US and Canadian organizations on challenging strategic information architecture and design problems. By night, Gene writes and thinks about how people use information and technology. He’s particularly interested in how designers model systems, social technologies, and the sometimes invisible constraints introduced by the tools people use. Some of that thinking turned into “Beyond the Page”, a session at the 2005 Information Architecture Summit. Gene also organized and moderated sessions on tagging and social IA at the 2005 and 2006 IA Summits. At Webvisions 2006 he presented a session on Social Information Architecture, and a topic he’ll revisit at the IA retreat in Chile in November 2006. He gave the opening keynote at CanUX 2006 on disasters, systems thinking and user experience.

Gene is a founding member of the Information Architecture Institute, and served on the Advisory Board for 2004-05.