IA for the V&A
Last week I was invited to the V&A to talk about IA. The forward thinking web team had organised an afternoon of V&A staff and industry figures to discuss their web strategy, all in the presence of the V&A director.
In some ways this was much like any other web event I had attend. The food was, admittedly, better than usual and the building much more striking (the most ornate doorknob I’ve ever seen in a toilet cubicle and a highly intricate carved conference room table).
We discussed many, many ideas and possible paths but the real challenge remains; choosing the ideas to pursue and what order to tackle them in. And of course, the actual implementation. I left optimistic about the future of the V&A website. Not least because of how smart and pragmatic the V&A web team were but also because of the initiatives we heard about that are already live.
These include RSS feeds, V&A blogs, a Facebook presence and a beautiful Flickr group. Also interesting was the blogger outreach that they had undertaken to promote their knitting and dress patterns. Have a look at Things to Do to get a different view of the museum. There are no gradients or rounded corners but there are definite forays into the web 2.0 world.
The afternoon was wrapped up with drinks on a beautiful balcony with views across Kensington on a lovely autumn evening. Quite an inspirational place to work!