Cognitive Friction

I just came across a great site called IT Conversations, which provides access to audio recordings of the presentations at IT conferences. They have some great material there from such events as the Web 2.0 Conference or the O’Reilly Emerging Technology Conference. These events attract an impressive list of speakers, including:

• Dave Winer, inventor of such technologies as RSS and the father of blogging and podcasting.
• Jason Fried, of 37 Signals, who talks about his approach to product development and how Basecamp was built.
• Steve Wozniak, cofounder of Apple Computer, who talks about how he became an engineer and the early days of Silicon Valley.
• Clay Shirky, who gives a fascinating talk on why ontology, the design of categorisation schemes, is overrated as a way to organise digital content.

This last talk is especially interesting if you do any form of information architecture work, such as designing the structure and navigation system for websites. I promise that you will never approach this work in the same way again after you hear this presentation. I’ve listened to it three times now and I still learn something new each time. Expect more posts on this topic as the implications of Shirky’s talk start to sink in.

All of this content is available for free download in MP3 format. You can pick up an RSS news feed from the website or subscribe through the iTunes Music Store if you are an iTunes user. So if you, like me, don’t have the time or money to nip across the Atlantic to attend these conferences, you may appreciate the chance to listen to some of the thought leaders in the IT world during the commute to the office.