May 17
Google Finally Comes Out of the Closet on Taxonomies
So for the longest while, Google has been the boogie bear of taxonomists, with senior executives lying in wait to pounce on innocent taxonomy projects with the battle cry “why do we need a taxonomy, let’s just get Google!”.
We’ve known for years that Google uses classification in its search algorithms and in its ancillary services but today Google finally came clean with its new Knowledge Graph service “With the Knowledge Graph, Google can better understand your query, so we can summarize relevant content around that topic, including key facts you’re likely to need for that particular thing. For example, if you’re looking for Marie Curie, you’ll see when she was born and died, but you’ll also get details on her education and scientific discoveries.” Is that taxonomy work or is that taxonomy work?
Sitting behind Knowledge Graph is a 500 million entity ontology, with 3.5 billion defined relationships and attributes – though the words ontology or taxonomy are never used. Exciting in itself, as it evidently exploits the growing maturity of the semantic web and linked data, and the intelligence you can extract from billions of search patterns, to enhance taxonomy work in unprecedented ways. But also a major vindication for the faithful few who have remained steadfast in their belief in taxonomy over magic. BTW, I’m hoping to explore some of these “taxonomy beyond the enterprise” themes in a keynote at Taxonomy Bootcamp later this year. The times they are a changing!
May 14
Orchestrating the Intranet for Knowledge Management
Patrick’s taxonomy development infographic has sparked off a little friendly competition in the office. The infographic you see above is my attempt at explaining the different pieces of an intranet puzzle that KM practitioners may have to deal with, and how they all fit together.
This is the link to the pdf version – Intranet_Poster.pdf. Note that it is formatted for A2 size and you will need to set your printer to print within paper size for smaller sizes.
I would like to commend Patrick for his sportsmanship, for even though my poster is evidently better than his, it did not hold him back from providing some of the explanations that you see on the poster.
May 02
A Prezi on the Taxonomy Development Poster
Here’s an interactive version of the Taxonomy Development Poster I posted yesterday:
May 01
Taxonomy Development Infographic
Here is a poster design I’ve been working on for a while – it summarises the empirical, evidence based taxonomy development process we recommend.
This is the link to an A4 pdf version.
This is the link to an A3 pdf version.
We’re going to look at costs/prices for printing this on high quality poster paper and shipping it if there’s a demand. Let us know!
Apr 17
Visual Collections for Sharing and Collaboration
Since a few months there is a big trend on the web: visualisation of data and information. It is definitely not a new trend, though it is accelerating fast; new tools like visua.ly have been launched and Pinterest has developed to the third most popular social sharing tool in 2012. Why is this the trend happening, and what can we learn from it in the context of knowledge sharing and social collaboration?
In our current world two things are happening: we are exposed to much more data and information; and we are overwhelmed with these with an increasing speed. Pictures, photos, illustrations, visualisations are not only eye-catching but also help us to grasp the content much faster. In the past, overviews of news have been a simple list of headlines. Illustrations help readers to make quick (not necessarily right) decisions to jump to an article or not. Many tools take advantage of that and two show-cases are Pulse News and Google Currents.
What does this mean for knowledge management and social collaboration?
Apr 03
Fads, Knowledge Management and Identity Angst
Venkatesh Rao over at Forbes has a perceptive article on the recent trend of the enthusiasm for “big data” resulting in everybody laying claim to the title “Data Scientist”. But his comments have strong resonances with all sorts of hype-responses – KM suffered from this in the early years and every claim for a replacement therapy/technology for KM ever since has done so too. Here’s the relevant section of Venkatesh’s post – sound familiar?
“At any given technology conference, you will find the following types:
- People with chips on their shoulders about being marginalized by the new trend.
- Long-ignored people who suddenly find that they’ve turned into stars, blinking in the spotlight.
- People who feel under-appreciated and powerless.
- People who cannot believe how much power they suddenly have.
- People who secretly feel like fakes and are feeling either gleeful or ashamed about it.
- People who are cleverly switching out their titles from the last hyped fad for the closest one they can find in the new one.
- People upset that other people are taking credit for their old wine by putting it into new bottles.
- Older people insisting nothing has changed (read: “therefore I am still the expert” ).
- Younger people insisting everything has changed (read “the old fogeys know nothing; hire me instead” ).
- People excited by anything new and shiny, whether or not they understand it.
- Jaded people on paid-for junkets.
- Uber-sociable types for whom it is all one big party.”
Mar 30
Storytelling and Ignorance
In this TED talk, filmwriter Andrew Stanton has an interesting turn of phrase about what makes stories compelling: “A well organized absence of information draws us in.”
Mar 26
Social Media, Empowerment and Serious Research
I had a fantastic time at the AIIM conference in San Francisco last week, and Clay Shirky’s keynote was one of the highlights. This video of a TEDx talk by Ben Heywood of social media sharing site Patientslikeme.com gives a moving example, quoted by Shirky, of the power of social media as a platform for gathering data, and with a research back-end, creating near real-time insight into treatment possibilities as well as empowering patients to deal more effectively with their own conditions. What I think nobody has noticed is the powerful role that a faceted taxonomy plays in this story. Visit the site and see if you can spot what facets are being used to pull data together for deep analysis as well as sharing and self-empowerment.
Underneath this is another emerging trend. We know that social media is being leveraged as a source of data for marketing and market analysis. This case illustrates how powerful it can be in the use of large scale data for new knowledge creation. Crucially, it cannot do this on its own – the formal world of research and the informal world of social media exchanges need to connect. Helping to span these boundaries is where knowledge organization tools like taxonomies play an essential role.
Mar 06
Call for Papers in Technology, Entrepreneurship, Management and Innovation
I’m honoured to be on the Editorial Board for the Journal of Technology, Entrepreneurship and Management published by National-Louis University in Poland. There’s a call for papers now out for three special issues in 2012 – on Technology Entrepreneurship, New Concepts of Management (including KM) and Innovations. If you have some interesting work on the boil, take a look and consider submitting!
Feb 04
Social Internet is the new KM
With great interest I have read Roan Yong’s “Knowledge Management in 2012? Probably Dead”. And yes, I agree to what he has stated: KM got too academic - or always was? And the social web will be what will replace it. Roan’s article triggered more thoughts which are too long to just pack in the article’s comments: there are more problems of today’s KM than to be blown up; and why the social web is KM at it’s core.
