Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Paul Chato as Guest Speaker at My Information Architecture Class
Tonight I had a real treat for the students in my Information Architecture class (and for myself as well): former Frantic Paul Chato – who is also the CEO of Web development firm Electramedia – came in as a guest speaker.

While I first heard of Paul on the radio when he was a member of The Frantics comedy troupe years ago, I also got to know him on a more professional basis. His firm was literally just up the street from where I used to work at KL Group, and it was his firm that handled my company's Web site when I and the graphic design left for richer pastures during the heyday of the Internet boom. (It always made me smile to think that it cost my old firm considerably more to hire Paul's firm to do the work I and the graphic designer used to do, and that's in addition to a full-time Webmaster they hired after me).

Paul's firm not only does Web site development for major firms, but more significantly for the purposes of the class his firm has created a Content Management System (CMS), which we had talked about in general terms the week before. So I asked Paul if he would be interested in doing a presentation for the Information Architecture class, and I felt I had scored a real coup when he agreed to do so.

In preparation for the presentation, I brought our digital video camera, a couple blank tapes and some fully charged battery packs along. I also brought the new digital camera along as well, just for fun and in the hope of getting some "action shots".

No surprise that the lecture he gave was great, really wowing the class (and me). His talk focused on the practicalities of IA, and how "brochureware" sites don't serve the business needs of their users. Some key phrases that struck a chord with everybody in the class included things like how Flash intro pages kill the Google rankings for a page, how the concept of homepages are over-rated in terms of landing pages (i.e. pages where people are likely to "land" on your site after Google-ing for keywords and how your Web pages should imbed a "call to action" from the user. Essentially, if it isn't clear what services/information you are providing and inviting the user to click through, more likely than not you will loose them. He also talked extensively on how CMS systems, looking at the basics of how they work and how they can tie into business practices and create more customizable Web sites. He sites his firm's work with a major car company as an example, where individual dealerships through Canadian have a presence on the Web, and how a dealership in Toronto or Ottawa might put up information on how they are helping to sponsor local community programs to the distant branch office in Northern Ontario that put up a piece celebrating getting a new coffee machine in their office. ;-)

I also liked Paul's throwaway line about his management style: "The best way to manage people to hire people you don't have to manage". Not applicable to all situations, but I knew exactly what he was talking about. I bet his firm is a good place to work.

Paul was a great guest speaker who really jazzed up the class. My short film of his presentation isn't likely to win an awards at Sundance, but I am hoping it'll be useful for future sessions of this class. My plan is to digitize it into an MPEG file and make a copy of it available on the resource CD I plan on handing out to all of the students in this course.