Acting on Dreams
by Thom Haller - January 15, 2002

It's Monday afternoon. The studio is quiet except for a peculiar CD mix that alternates from Indonesian Guitar one moment to "Kings of Mambo" the next. Before me is our bay window, and I'm looking out into the branches of the 100 year old oak tree that seem to encircle the studio (I've always celebrated my perch up here in a treehouse). Nearby is Scoop Scruffy Dogg, our 11 month-old studio mascot. He's has been gnawing contentedly on a stuffed shark, but has recently found himself a sunbeam.

Today's a day I refer to as my "I have a dream day," an annual day of reflection, I guess. I look at how I have I carried my "user advocacy" ideas during the previous year, how can I set a course for action for the year ahead. This day took on a special resonance for me on MLK Day 1998.

On MLK Day four years ago, I met with a team of communication professionals who fostered my thinking and enabled me to move from my position as "guy trapped in a mauve cubicle," to one where I get to enroll others in thinking differently about information (and show strategies for structuring information with the user in mind).

I still remember the meeting. I'd built an agenda, labeled it the "Info Design I Have a Dream Meeting- January 18, 1998" (an agenda, that, looking back at it now, seems very ambitious for a holiday morning.)

I was joined in my studio that morning with communication professionals/students - Mary Jackson, Julie Roubellet, Cynthia Mariel, Steve Ritchey -- folks like me who felt there was more to our jobs and lives than we saw expressed in the 1990s business world.

At that time, I'd begun telling folks I felt like the Mother Jones of Information Architecture, that I believed in "praying for the dead or fighting like hell for the living." Unfortunately, not everyone had grown up among coal miners and populists in West Virginia, so not everyone knew Mother Jones. "Well, maybe, " I'd said. "Maybe I could think of my work as more of an evangelist - like Billy Graham, perhaps. Or Ralph Nader."

My search for a label had, in part, brought us to the meeting. We realized we were constructing a message, and we'd realized the message needed focus. I'd thought I was looking for some focus for Info.Design. But I received much more.

Mary and Julie offered me a new label --. "Big Teach." They unfurled a chart with Big Teach at the top. Under it, in the second level/org chart hierarchy, they listed three additional labels: Classroom teacher. Info.Design. Writing/Speaking.

Looking at these labels today makes me stop to reflect. Mary and Julie scored a bullseye. My passion for ideas had propelled me from the mauve cubicle. My desire to play a leading role in the way we think about information was to shape my future and the structure they provided me continues to frame my choices.

Although I didn't realize it at the time, I was looking for structure. I was trying to learn that it was OK to believe in dreams; that it was OK to believe in myself.

As I sat there seeing the labels before me, it's likely that I was bothered with the lack of parallelism (how could verbs be sitting there among those nouns?). I know, however, I felt cautiously enamored by the label, "Big Teach."

Only occasionally in my worklife/lifework have I come upon a label that said, "THIS FITS." I still recall feeling the guttural sense that the label made sense to me - and the supporting structures somehow made sense to me. And although I had to work through some immediate bickering inside my head, I believed they'd found a label that fit. They handed me a structure - a focus - I continue to rely on today.

I believe in focus. You would never have been able to hear me utter these words before I left the mauve cubicle. I prided myself in my ditziness. I was most likely to get on a subway train in the wrong direction; I was most inclined to lose all my keys at the most inopportune time. I'd felt somehow the ditziness was endearing -- perhaps in the way people might find Gilligan endearing. But in reflecting now, I'll attest that ditziness may have its charms, but clarity helps you enjoy life.

I realize life isn't joyful for everyone. But I believe we can shape our future in ways that many don't realize. We can live our lives by "participating in the unfolding." We have the opportunity to open ourselves up, look experience, and live. This requires authenticity. And authenticity is nothing more than integrity and focus.

I can say that I authentically feel like a "big teach." I wouldn't spend so much energy on crafting instruction, building the business, or formulating thoughts if I were not drawn to the label. The label carried me. The structure focused me.

That's the gift I received from Mary and Julie on that sunny, bagel-eating, MLK Day. They said, "If you want to continue on your lifework which you identified as teaching possibility, here's a structure for you to follow."

It's worked. Certainly, I've danced with the labels throughout the years. Certainly I stalled occasionally, screeching inside "what the hell do you think you are doing?" But after a couple of rounds in my head, I'd remind my screechy voice that I was becoming a "big teach." I was following a structure for responding to my dreams.

So, I have a dream … offered out of respect to Dr. King and others who followed their dreams. I have a dream that we can structure information so people can find it, use it, and appreciate the experience. I have a dream that those who craft products for others can do so, recognizing how these products can enable others. And enroll others. And respect others. It's our mandate. And it's possible.

© 2002, Info dot Design, Inc.