February 16, 2021
As the current location organizer for World IA Day Boston, I would like to share some notes on WIAD Boston’s values regarding racial justice and its relevance to equity and inclusion at our annual event. The events of 2020, including ongoing discourses around violence toward Black people and other people of color in the U.S., racism in the U.S., and the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic, have prompted many individuals and organizations to clarify their stance on these issues. As this relates to WIAD, I have not spoken or written about this publicly since our last event in February 2020. Therefore, I want to clearly state that World IA Day Boston is committed to the following: building an inclusive, equitable professional community that welcomes and elevates diverse perspectives; supporting the participation, learning, and professional activities of community members of all identities, especially those impacted by systems of racism and exclusion in our society; and directly challenging injustice both around us and within our own community and events.
Such a statement risks piling on to the long series of similar gestures you’ve seen over the past year—it is empty unless the people making the statements examine why such statements are necessary in the first place and how they are following through on these commitments while challenging the power structures they are part of. So I would like to share a few thoughts on why and how in order to make space for both criticism and constructive planning within the WIAD Boston community. In addition, I am writing this because I hope to step down from the lead organizer role in the near future and pass it on to a new group of leaders who, with ongoing support from me and previous teams, I hope will bring more diverse and progressive approaches than ever before.
Why? It is no secret that many conferences, events, and organizations in the IA, UX, design, and technology fields are not inclusive or representative of the practitioners and communities they serve. As a white, cisgender man who organizes an event with an incredibly diverse group of attendees, I know there is a glaring disparity between the people entering these fields today and the extent to which they are represented among speakers, employers, and other leaders, and I know that I have unintentionally played a role in excluding some people from having a voice equal to others in our professional community. And more is at stake than having a diverse event. IA, UX, and design professionals work on products and technologies for healthcare, education, government, retail, advertising, entertainment, social media, and so much more. These institutions and industries are the same ones that serve to maintain or widen social and economic disparities--and we have tremendous influence over the daily experiences of users around the world as they interact with these institutions. How can we challenge systems of inequality and injustice in our society if marginalized perspectives are not represented in our own practice? As a professional community that espouses human-centeredness in our work, we must start by examining our own limitations and seeking out diverse perspectives on what it means to practice design and information architecture today.
How? For WIAD Boston, the other organizers and I since 2016 have focused on the inclusiveness of our annual event by setting specific priorities for each aspect of event planning. In the speaker lineup, we have attempted to curate speaker rosters that are increasingly representative of our community. In the program, speakers have chosen their own content and directly addressed social and political issues within the content of many WIAD talks. At the attendee level, we have marketed the event widely, provided a free registration option for every event, and planned for physical accessibility at each venue. At the planning level, we have made public calls for organizers and volunteers. At the same time, we have failed in many ways. For example, as an organizer, I don’t believe I succeeded in welcoming or supporting the full participation of volunteers as much as I had hoped to, and I failed to ensure that aspects of our 2019 program stayed true to the theme for that year, Design for Difference. These successes and failures are only a few examples of steps taken over the past few years, and they do not represent all of the areas in which WIAD Boston can follow through on our commitments in the future. Also, they focus mostly on what we are doing internally, not (for example) how we might step up regarding issues many of us care about beyond the scope of WIAD events themselves.
World IA Day’s driving principles are to build community, empower [new] leaders, grow together, and organize from the bottom up. World IA Day Boston belongs to you to define who we are as a community, what kinds of events we plan, and how we will organize and grow. With this in mind, members of the community must drive the conversation about how WIAD Boston can support a diverse, inclusive, and responsible information architecture profession while addressing systemic issues like racism, sexism, and ableism. As we approach our 6th annual event, I want to invite you into a conversation about the next steps for World IA Day Boston as a community.
Written by Dan Zollman
Signed by Dan Zollman and Jason Reynolds
Contact: boston@worldiaday.org
Related links: