Thomas,

I’m thankful that you brought up the “friends and family” piece. One of the ideas I’ve tried to champion, from an information architecture perspective, is that not all “information” is available electronically.

For example, there is a great dish that my mom makes and whenever I get the itch to make it myself, I can never remember the exact method to prepare it. However, I call up my mom and she tells me over the phone. So, where is this information located? In an email? No. Instead, the information is readily available in my mother’s head, and I know I can get to it rather easily (assuming she is in good health).

The ideal would be that she sends me the recipe via email so I can save it, or that I take the time to move the recipe from some chicken-scratched napkin into some electronic format, but that doesn’t always happen.

My point is that the local infocloud must include information that is not readily available in an electronic format. Sure, the ideal is to think about how “information” and “knowledge” can be captured in some electronic format, but there will always be information that is readily available to us, just not electronically. Let’s not overlook this rich resource-type.

Now, I know my example points more to the personal infocloud, but I’m sure similar examples can be made for the local infocloud.