For the Semantic Technology Conference 2008, I’ll be evaluating several tools that can be used for building taxonomies. My assessment will be based more on usability and usefulness than for technical considerations. After I give the presentation (May 21st), I’ll start posting individual tool evaluations here on the blog.
Come back and check it out later. Or better yet, come out to the conference and see me present!
About a month ago (was it really that long? tsk, tsk!) I went to London to speak at a one-day conference held by Henry Stewart Events. The event was organized by Madi Welend Solomon, who I met a couple years ago at the Semantic Technology Conference. There were some excellent people speaking, and I was really happy to be in their company.
It was really amazing to participate in a complete day of discussion about metadata and taxonomy. Each speaker took a different angle and addressed a different aspect of the issues and the work. The individual presentations complemented each other and came together to tell a whole story.
Here’s what some of the other participants had to say about it:
On March 10 I’ll be participating as a speaker at a one-day Henry Stewart conference called The Essentials of Metadata and Taxonomy. If you’re going to be in London that week, I highly recommend it. I know several of the other speakers, and I have to say that I feel honored to be in their company.
SXSW Interactive lets the public decide what they want to see at the conference. All you have to do is go to the Panel Picker, sign up for an account, and then start rating your interest in the 683 proposed topics. Vote before midnight on Friday, September 21st.
These are the proposals I submitted:
I’ve been meaning to write about my presentation at the Semantic Technology Conference last month. It was called Representing Taxonomy: What Am I Looking At Here? The idea I was trying to convey is that, as semantic technologies become more widely adopted, we’re (sometimes) going to have to come up with data to drive our semantic applications. We’re also going to need processes for documenting that data and communicating about it to our clients and stakeholders.
I added a few things to the Resources page.
A few new tools, like Piggy Bank – an open source tool for gathering data. I haven’t tried it, but I heard a couple people mention it at the Semantic Technology Conference. Sounds like a good way to gather data for prototypes and proof-of-concept projects.
A couple Semantic Wikis (Visual Knowledge and Knoodl.com). I’m very interested in this approach because it seems like a manageable entry into the world of building semantic content. People are already kind of familiar with the way to interact with a wiki, and this overlays a powerful layer of functionality. People will be building semantic content and applications without even realizing it. Unfortunately I think that both of these products have a little way to go before they are fully presenatble, but it’s great to be able to go in and play around with them. Alice in MetaLand is a budding semantic community built on the Visual Knowledge platform.
I also stumbled across this Semantic Web FAQ, which seems to be a work in progress, but has some potential. Check it out and add some things, if you feel so inclined.
My colleague Seth Earley wrote an interesting post on a topic I’ve been thinking about lately, the relative merits of Folksonomy versus Taxonomy. I agree with the points he’s making, though I think there’s room to go a little deeper into the appropriate uses of each. I’ve seen some great applications of user-generated tagging, and I’ve also seen some poor applications that were clearly designed to save time and resources, with no real thought as to why people would be motivated to contribute meaningful information (I’m looking at you, Amazon.com!).
Meaningful Data 