A few UX peeps got invited by Lou Rosenfeld in late 2001 to chat about a bigger picture for something - at the time, the something was info-arch.org. That group, with unofficial but senior representatives from UPA, CHI, AIGA ED, STC, ASIS&T had lots of conversations about cooperation, direction, reservations, and didn’t get that far with the info-arch.org effort. Which was fine, since many of that initial advisory council aren’t IAs. Two things were spawned from that group - what would become AIfIA, and a smaller group that continued the UX umbrella/network theme.

Today, UXnet has a public soft launch. Congratulations to all involved! It’s not the same world that the project started in, with AIfIA, Clement Mok’s American Design Council, and other cross disciplinary initiatives like Stanford’s D-school happening or lists like [experiencedesign]. But there’s still plenty of work to be done, and as long as user experience has specialties like IA and interaction design, then UXnet or something similar will be invaluable.