Author Archives: Louis Rosenfeld

We’re hiring a Marketing Manager! It’s a full-time gig—here in Brooklyn, NY, USA—with benefits, flexible work hours, lovely co-workers, and incredibly interesting challenges. Please peruse/share the posting.

Happy day; our newest book, Jorge Arango’s Living in Information: Responsible Design for Digital Places, just launched! You might already be familiar with Jorge’s writing; he co-authored the 4th edition of the polar bear book with Peter Morville and me.

Jorge’s background is in architecture and—not surprisingly—his book is structured around the concept of designing places, rather than products and services. As an information architecture guy, I’m really excited by this metaphor; it opens up whole new possibilities in how we understand what we’re designing. We already have a whole vocabulary around place; it’s time we applied it to our design process and saw ourselves as placemakers. Really, we have no choice—as Jorge points out, we are already literally living in information. And i’s up to us to own that responsibility, as recent events make clear.

I hope you’ll enjoy Living in Information. It’s our latest book on our Two Waves imprint and—like all of our books—is available in PDF, ePUB, MOBI, DAISY, and a lovely color-illustrated paperback printed on high-quality paper in the USA.

We’ve been hard at work changing our conference curation process to create more diverse speaker rosters—for Enterprise UX 2018 (June 13-15, San Francisco), and soon for the second DesignOps Summit (New York City). Guess what? It all comes down to user research.

If you’re interested in what we’re considering for future books — as a potential author or just because—you might want to check Lou’s short piece on our editorial agenda.

You might know that, last November, Rosenfeld Media hosted the first conference dedicated to discussing design operations. The DesignOps Summit sold out, and we’re now planning a second edition for this fall in the US northeast.

You might not know that we’ve organized a free monthly conference call to keep the DesignOps discussion going. We’ve held two, and our last one had 60 participants. Next one is February 15, 4-5pm ET. We’d love to have you join us too; email info@rosenfeldmedia.com to request an invitation.

Update—November 29, 2017: thanks to you, we sold 77 books on Giving Tuesday—and raised US$385 for the Electronic Frontier Foundation! Thank you very much!

Back in the late 1980s, when I was a student in library school, we debated what the dawning “information superhighway” should be. Some classmates saw it as a huge boon to the global economy. Others argued that “information wants to be free,” and money shouldn’t taint public access to the Internet’s information bounty.

I’ve worked at both ends of the spectrum—as a librarian and as a publisher—and have always taken the middle road: “Information doesn’t want to be free–it just wants to be used.” Although the pendulum has swung back and forth, we’ve managed to find a middle road that works well enough for most of us.

Until now.

It all may change in the US if the FCC’s proposed changes to Net Neutrality are approved.

Companies like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T would likely transform their policies from customer-unfriendly to completely hostile to the free and open exchange of information. It could jeopardize your career, your kids’ education, free speech, independent journalism, and just about every aspect of contemporary life.

That’s why this Giving Tuesday—Rosenfeld Media is donating US$5 for every book purchased to the Electronic Frontier Foundation. Please consider making a purchase—or simply donate to the EFF directly.

I’ll leave you with links to learn about Net Neutrality and the FCC’s proposed order from two of our great nation’s most trusted and respected sources: the American Library Association and The Oatmeal. Please read them and spread the word. Thank you.

It’s hard for me to believe that Rosenfeld Media turns 12 today. To celebrate, I thought about ordering brownies from Zingerman’s (my favorite bakery in the world). But hey, it’s more fun to share your birthday with friends.

Here are two sweet ways to celebrate the day from wherever you are…

Enter to win a free library pack. Yup, that’s literally the complete set of Rosenfeld Media ebooks (over 30 books) for your personal or team library. Here’s how:

1. Tweet your answer to this question:  What one book do you wish someone would write for you, right now?

2. Tag @RosenfeldMedia and add hashtag #Happy12thRM

3. Tweet it out before midnight PST today, October 31st

4. We’ll announce the results on hashtag #Happy12thRM

Get 12% off all books in our stores today. Use the Happy12thRM code to stock up on classic design and UX titles, learn how to select the right technologies for your team, or boost your business and leadership skills.

We’re so thankful for your support over the years. And hope our books, trainings, conferences continue to help you grow and succeed.

The upcoming DesignOps Summit isn’t just a conference—we’re looking at it as a way to help define what design operations means. Read all about it (Lou Rosenfeld in Medium). And learn more with this lovely resource list compiled by Melissa McGrath.

If you work in Enterprise UX, would you take our 3-minute user research survey below? We’re gathering an industry look into what pressing topics and trends impact your UX work in the enterprise.

Your Input Will Shape the Next EUX Conference. Literally.

If you check out the programs for past Enterprise UX conferences (here’s 2017’s, 2016’s, and 2015’s), you’ll see that we invest a hell of lot of effort in designing it. Dave Malouf, Uday Gajendar, Lada Gorlenko, and I will use the survey results to tailor the 2018 conference to the topics that you want most.

One out of every ten respondents will be randomly selected to receive a free Rosenfeld Media ebook. To enter, please respond below by September 29.

We’ll share the results in a later post so that you can see what top topics are trending right now. Thanks in advance for helping!

I quit my career as a IA consultant because I got tired. It wore me out to hear clients gripe about their technology. How, say, SharePoint made it impossible for them to improve the customer experience. I felt bad for them. And even worse for their customers. Because once company picks its software, good bloody luck changing it.

That’s why I’m so happy to get our newest book—The Right Way To Select Technology—out into the world. Organizations must stop falling for marketing pitches and buying the wrong technology. And stop wasting time and money. And I can’t think of better authors to tackle this than Tony Byrne and Jarrod Gingras. Their firm, Real Story Group, has been evaluating software for 16 years. They’re renowned for being technology-agnostic and fiercely independent.

If you’re helping to choose technology for your organization, Tony and Jarrod’s book will help you make good choices. You’ll also negotiate better deals and make your users happy. It’s short, witty, and available today here at Rosenfeld Media or via Amazon. I hope you enjoy it!