78. Abby Covert

The Iowa Idea: Abby Covert

“Maybe we don’t know.”

In this episode of The Iowa Idea Podcast, I’m joined by Abby Covert. Abby is an information architect, writer, community organizer, and all-around awesome human. Abby served as President of IA Institute, co-chair of IA Summit, and Executive Producer of IDEA. She is a founding faculty member of SVA’s Products of Design program, Design Operations Summit and Advancing Research Conference. She invented World IA Day, bringing IA education to thousands in local communities annually. Abby wrote “How to Make Sense of Any Mess” a book teaching IA to everybody.

I first met Abby in 2018 at The IA Summit in Chicago, when she was the curator of the poster session, and I was lucky enough to be one of the presenters. Ever since she published “How to Make Sense of Any Mess,” I’ve always been impressed by Abby’s intelligence, caring, and commitment to community.

Abby shares her journey about becoming an IA, starting with the early influence of her grandfather, her teaching at Parsons, and creating and curating some phenomenal IA conferences, including creating Word IA Day. We also explore Abby’s process and approach for her next book focused on diagrammatic technique.

We mix it up on the importance of admitting we don’t know and how we can make sense of information messes and dig deep into how we might confront the mind monsters that emerge from the fertile grounds of human and information messes. I appreciate Abby’s perspective on time and how to better manage time and task. For those keeping track, this is the third episode to reference Richard Saul Wurman.

It was an honor having Abby join me on the show. When you’re done with this episode, please check out Abby’s World IA Day talk, which is linked in the show description.  I’d like to thank Abby for her time, perspective, and contributions to the IA community. I hope you enjoy the episode.

About Abby

Abby Covert is an information architect, writer and community organizer. Abby served as President of IA Institute, co-chair of IA Summit, and Executive Producer of IDEA. She is a founding faculty member of SVA’s Products of Design program, Design Operations Summit and Advancing Research Conference. She invented World IA Day, bringing IA education to thousands in local communities annually. Abby wrote “How to Make Sense of Any Mess” a book teaching IA to everybody.

Links

www.etsy.com/shop/abbytheia

www.abbycovert.com

www.abbycovert.com/make-sense

Abby’s talk from WIAD21: https://abbycovert.com/speaking/make-more-sense/

Credits

Episode produced by Spark Consulting Group (www.inspiredbyspark.com) in Iowa City, with support from Executive Podcast Solutions (https://www.executivepodcastsolutions.com/).

The Iowa Idea Podcast theme music written and performed by Paisley Bible (https://paisleybible.bandcamp.com/).