EBAI was awesome

October 19, 2009 by Andrew | 4 comments

ebai

EBAI, The Brazilian Information Architecture Congress (basically the IA Summit or EuroIA of Brazil) was kind and generous enough to invite me to Sao Paulo as a keynote speaker, closing their first day. They gave me a huge chunk of time, so I presented a long version of my Linkosophy talk, expanded with more about designing for Context. It was a terrific experience. Here’s just a smattering of what I discovered:

  • Brazilian user-experience designers tend to use the term Information Architecture (and Architect) for their community of practice — which I think is a fine thing. (I explained we still need to agree what “IA” means in the context of a given design, but who am I to tell them “there are no information architects“?)
  • These people are brilliant. They’re doing and inventing UX design research and methods that really should be shared with the larger, non-Portuguese-speaking world.
  • I wish I knew Portuguese so I could’ve understood even more of what they were presenting about. (Hence my wish it could all be translated to English!)
  • Brazilians have the best methods of drinking beer and eating steak ever invented: small portions that keep on coming through the meal means your beer is never warm, and your steak is always fresh off the grill. Genius!

Thank you, EBAI (and in particular my gracious host, Guilhermo Reis) for an enlightening, delightful experience.

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4 comments

  1. Carlos Gustavo Xavier’s avatar

    Carlos Gustavo Xavier on October 20, 2009 at 3:48 pm

    Kinds words there Andrew. I believe these are brilliant people too. In fact, everyday I grow prouder of my community and think we have much to contribute to the ux scene around the world.
    I hope we can all give a little bit of love to translating some of our material to english to make it more spreadable. I certainly will do my best in my upcoming works, research etc.

    On behalf of all the Brazilian “Ebailers”, thank you for the clever presentation and most of all for the presence.

    Be sure to come next year.

  2. Andrew’s avatar

    Andrew on October 20, 2009 at 5:16 pm

    @carlos thanks! Please do spread the wealth of great ideas coming from Brazil!

  3. Madeline’s avatar

    Madeline on October 26, 2009 at 12:28 pm

    Hey, dad. Great post. By the way, I’m commenting from school. Shh! Don’t tell my teacher.

  4. Guilherme Marques’s avatar

    Guilherme Marques on December 3, 2009 at 2:54 pm

    Hey Andrew, thanks for coming to Brazil.
    His presentation was one of the best, thanks for sharing knowledge and ideas.

    Hugs
    Guilherme Marques – Belo Horizonte – Brazil

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