Eric - I think the director analogy is rather apt.

Matt - I like a lot of what you posted. I agree that the IA needs to be part of the formal process and not just a person, as the people are hard to find. Those individuals that have a good breadth of understanding for IA (through my tinted lenses) all have at least 4 years experience. These individuals have also worn many hats in the development/design process so to have an understanding and appreciation of how everything meshes and how every component impacts the user's experience.

In watching information applications over time, they definitely respond like buildings as they age. As users find functionality that helps them get to the information they want, they share their experience with others and the application becomes used more often. This requires the application to scale and possibly add functionality to better accommodate some of the new users, while not disturbing what the initial user-base found worthy.

Jeffery Zeldman states in his Daily Report(http://www.zeldman.com/daily/com0501c.html#samerantdifferentday): "Yesterday we spent three and a half hours making the case for standards compliance to the web developers and coordinators of the New York Public Library's website. Standards advocacy is not about crying into one's beer. It's about working to promote a web that works for everyone."

I think this approach of "making a case" is a good reflection of Peter's marketing stance that IA folks may consider adopting.