Two years ago I began a quest to find a platform that would support a network of academic professionals online. I had been working with an educational inventory group made up of clinicians, librarians and educators with links to university faculty. The challenge was to find a web application that offered social networking capabilities with the functions of cross-profiling and file-sharing in a collaborative environment.

Right from the beginning I thought, Facebook-like, Myspace-like. The features I was looking for were already tried and tested in online social networking. We have all been using these great tools and with add-ons like RSS feeds, del.icio.us, blogs, podcasts and a host of widgets it was a simple matter of finding a software vendor that offered a solution or an open-source platform that would support these functions.

It was important that it was not too rigid, something that we could manage and grow as an organic, flexible application. I searched and searched – most of what I found was either geared towards online dating or was just pure social networking with no real academic component. Sure, we could probably redevelop something to somehow fit the purpose. After all, the tools are out there and they are becoming more and more prevalent in business applications. Nevertheless, I was dismayed at the fact that a platform that leveraged these tools for educational purposes was not available. GULP! Would we have to patch this together ourselves?

I came across many vendor-provided products that fit maybe one or two of the components we were looking for but I was constantly let down by the gaps that we would have to inevitably fill. The biggest let down was that many vendors just haven’t made it to web 2.0 and what they are selling is fast becoming outdated.

I had almost given up when I came across Elgg. There it was – a free, open source platform with all the features we wanted and integration with an open source wiki engine to-boot. Developed as part of the Curverider project, Elgg is custom designed for academic communities. Even better, it leverages all the great web 2.0 tools that users are already familiar with. I still have to further explore how much customization needs to happen but I don’t think we could have found a better starting point.

Check out ELGG

This year we were introduced to a new Xbox 360 experience that just might lead the way to breaking us out of the web 2.0 doldrums.

Project Natal will change the way we use the World Wide Web forever. Microsoft made a smart move investing in the advanced motion sensor, voice recognition and facial recognition technology.  Add to this the ability to scan real world objects and incorporate them into the experience and you have a very powerful Xbox Live that makes the Nintendo Wii look like a calculator.

The applications for anything from gaming to online shopping in a virtual store will make what we currently call websites all-but-obsolete.  It will be interesting to watch how fast this will spread through the tech world and how quickly other consoles try to bang out their own version of this technology.

In typical Microsoft fashion, the Xbox is now poised to be the device of choice for all things online. I can only imagine how this might be licensed for a multitude of purposes as the largest brands with the biggest budgets line up to be the first to take advantage of Project Natal.  Of course, also in true Microsoft fashion, there are bound to be plenty of bugs for the early adopters to deal with.  Even with that, I am still very encouraged by what I see in Project Natal as this is will be a big step in evolution for Information Architects who want to break out of the box.

Check out Project Natal for yourself:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oACt9R9z37U

I learned all my IA basics in Kindergarten, where we weren’t afraid of getting to the chalk board and putting ideas up on the wall. They were the concepts and ideas of a 5 year old kid. Nonetheless, it demonstrates the essential building blocks of how a 5 year old kid communicates the interactions of his world.

I learned a more complex understanding of interaction and how things can be explained from building WW 2 model airplanes in grade 4. Besides building a cool to-scale fighter plane or bomber, my favourite part was looking at the schematics and understanding how all the pieces fit from the engine and fuselage to the tail fins.

Most people received the kindergarten and grade 4 education that I had but somehow as we get older, we become afraid of the wall and the white space. Only once declaring ourselves with a special title do we feel worthy of approaching the board to map and depict the flow of our thoughts and perceptions. Maybe because we were programmed not to write on the wall or maybe because graffiti is illegal and we feel a society-pressured guilt not to think visually out loud. Are we afraid that what we put on the board might be wrong? We certainly had no fear when we were 5 years old.

I have been lucky enough to find those rare people to work with who don’t care and are fully prepared to have their thoughts and planning on the white board. It enriches the planning process and it’s much more malleable and constructive than PowerPoint presentations.

Recently I came across some old model airplane plans for assembling the P-61 Black Widow bomber that I built when I was a kid. I was inspired and impressed with how the smallest details were covered for the assembly of parts no larger than the tip of a pen with simple clarity and precision. Each piece carefully planned in small phases. We should all plan a client’s project as seriously as building a model airplane.