What’s the Big IDEA?

I’ve been remiss in pimping IDEA 2007, the conference I’ve programmed, taking place 4-5 October in New York City.

Last year’s IDEA was a remarkable experience for me, establishing a new event and catalyzing, I hope, a new community. This year continues that with a selection of speakers addressing a wide range of approaches within the subject of designing complex information spaces.

Due to our setting, there’s definitely a strong New York City theme: Rachel Abrams talking about the Taxi Project; Jake Barton talking about a New York City-based project; Chenda Fruchter showing us behind the scenes at 311 (the remarkable New York City information service); Sylvia Harris, who’s worked in information design in New York City for 25 years; and Kevin Slavin, renowned for such Big Urban Games as Pac-Manhattan.

But wait, there’s more! For a slightly more theoretical and academic bent, I’m thrilled that we have Michael Wesch, professor from Kansas State University, who took the web by storm with his The Machine is Us/ing Us video. And Alex Wright, author of the recently published GLUT, sharing historical case studies on remarkable information systems. And finishing off with David Weinberger, author of Everything is Miscellaneous, and general all-around smart man.

But wait, there’s more! David Rose from Ambient Devices and Mike Kuniavsky from ThingM (formerly of Adaptive Path) will be sharing their experiences bridging complex information and physical devices. Mike will be sharing his experiences designing WineM, the intelligent wine rack, which you can see here.

And we’re bringing back Fernanda Viegas, who will be joined by her inestimable colleague Martin Wattenberg, to talk about Many Eyes, their social information visualization tool.

This conference is going to totally unscrew your skull and scramble your brain. In a good way.