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July 22, 2005
Job Cuts 2006
Have you noticed all of the job cuts in the last 30 days? The number of job cuts announced by U.S. employers in June rose to the highest monthly level since January 2004, according to a survey by outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc.
HP: 15,000
Kodak: 10,000
Ford: 10,000
Kimberly-Clark: 12,000
Has the Free Agent Nation Movement kicked into overdrive?
Posted by Todd at 7:57 PM
July 20, 2005
Fast Company Article
Marcus Buckingham provides some interesting observations on building ones skills and career in the August issue of Fast Company. He points out that we should focus on our strengths and not our weaknesses which goes against the grain of most organizations that manage by things done wrong. I like idea of enhancing ones strengths, focusing on the successes, managing by things done right, and the glass if half full. The main issue with this theory is not that it isn’t a good idea but it takes much more effort and commitment from the employee and manager. How difficult is it to go into an employee review and preach from the same hymnal used 25 years ago. You need to improve X, enhance your skills in Y, and gain more exposure in Z. In this article, Marcus points out that 41% of people work on their strengths, I wish the percentage was that good but from my experience it is not. How about yours?
Posted by Todd at 2:45 AM
July 15, 2005
DMReview Monthly Column
Published article n DMReview on implementing a three tiered engagement model for metadata services based on the three modes of check in the grocery store.
Posted by Todd at 8:08 PM
July 11, 2005
FileType Searching
Over the past few months, I have noticed a recent change in my search behavior. Instead of searching for Collaborative Computing as a simple text based search, I have been adding the FileType to the text field (Collaborative Computing filetype:pdf). This returns only those Adobe PDF documents that are related to collaborative computing in the result list. My thinking is that content that is worthy of conversions to PDF has a higher probability of being valid content. This is also true for Power Point (filetype:ppt); people willing to place their content in front of others as a presentation will be more valid than content in standard of html. While not scientific, my experience has changed my behavior.
FileType search is available from google.
Posted by Todd at 7:22 PM
July 8, 2005
They Get It
Tom Peters and Marshall Goldsmith get it. Linus Torvalds and Tim Berners-Lee get it too. What they get is the understanding that we do not live in a world where value is derived by the scarcity of the product but rather the abundance. Open Source and 10 millionth download of FireFox remind us what the internet is and should continue to be. Free of obstructions from corporations and governments. That sharing information so that everyone benefits is really the secret of the coming business environment. Unfortunately, many of our organizations still dont understand the new equation of success. Bill Gates once commented that in the Gold Rush, the majority of the riches was made by the people that sold blue jeans, pick axes, and maps. In fact, I believe that the man that first discovered Gold in California dies dirt poor due to conflicts of land ownership
Posted by Todd at 2:58 PM
July 7, 2005
Never Hire a Metadata Architect
Guy Kawasaki (author of Rules For Revolutionaries) once quipped Never buy a computer from a company where the president can’t do the demo. Hmmmm. Never hire a Metadata Architecture that:
- doesnt understand the foundations of information architecture or design
- doesnt know the base PageRank formula used by Google
- doesnt know who Melvil Dewey is
- doesnt know the difference between registry and repository thinks that the Dublin Core is from Ireland
- thinks Topics Maps are silly
- thinks that Metadata is data about data
- thinks that Meta-Tags are dead
- fear ontologies, semantics, semantic web, and taxonomies
:-}
Posted by Todd at 8:07 PM
July 5, 2005
Nobel Prize for Metadata
Ever wonder how they would classify a unifying Information Architecture theory or the Metadata Theory of Relativity within the Nobel Prize classification of Physics, Economics, Chemistry, Literature, Medicine, or Peace. Not sure why this thought has any relevance in our environment except that as they world moves away from the classic definitions of work, perhaps we should rethink our award categories. In the new world, information will be the foundation for economics, peace, and every other category defined above.
Posted by Todd at 6:59 PM
Cognitive Explanations of Learning
This sample chapter provides some exceptional thought provoking concepts for us as information workers, information architects, and information designers. The process and models for learning could and should have a tremendous impact to our day by day activities.
The concept map on the first page is really nice.
Posted by Todd at 5:23 PM
New TDAN Article on Globalization
Title: Globalization is Just the Tip of the Iceberg
Recently, I had the opportunity to provide a metadata tutorial to an academic conference where the welcome speech touched on the impact of globalization. The speaker indicated that the erosion of jobs within the Information Technology community could be fixed by simply increasing the supply and quality of students within computer science or any related field. Fueling this perception are article after article telling us the same thing.
The economic rise of Asias giants is the most important story of our age. It heralds the end, in the not too distant future, of as much as five centuries of domination by the Europeans and their colonial offshoots - Martin Wolf (Financial Times)
There is no job that is Americas God-given right anymore. - Carly Fiorina (HP)
Currently, India is becoming the back office of the world. Everest estimates companies all over the globe are sending as much as $5 billion in work to Indian outsourcing service providers. But all the headlines about the Indian success story are obscuring a development that can have just as much impact. I predict China will be the next big wave in offshore outsourcing. – Todd Furnis
Income Confers No Immunity as Jobs Migrate – USA Today
The world has arrived at a rare strategic inflection point where nearly half its population—living in China, India and Russia—have been integrated into the global market economy, many of them highly educated workers, who can do just about any job in the world. We’re talking about three billion people. – Craig Barrett (Intel)
Posted by Todd at 5:09 PM
Eye on TDWI Baltimore May 2005
Nice Review of my Keynote Address at TDWI this year.
R. Todd Stephens kicked off the second keynote of the conference. He titled it, An Information Odyssey: The Future of Business Intelligence. I have heard several analysts and consultants talk about the future of BI in the past. They had focused on the challenges of really big data, real-time delivery, and outsourcing so I wasnt expecting much new. However, Stephens is the Director of Metadata Services for BellSouth. As somebody on the ground, he did bring an unique perspective to the subject.
Stephens started out by reviewing the work of other futurists. He quoted Peter Druckers Ages of Civilization which points out that the information age may be already drawing to a close and that we are on the brink of the age of knowledge. He then extended Druckers ideas to the BI/ data warehousing arena. Stephens suggested that the hub-and-spoke model and other current data warehousing architectures are artifacts of the information age. In the age of knowledge, such frameworks would give way to service oriented architectures. I thought about Sunday nights hospitality suite hosted by Informatica and Gary Reichers presentation on integration competency centers. Stephens had a good point.
Stephens then went on to confirm that integration is at the heart of a services oriented architecture. He suggested that integration will be needed for data as well as governance and various business and technical initiatives. He also saw BI as being embedded within the fabric of service oriented architectures. Like other futurists, Stephens saw technical jobs going to other economies. At home, successful BI workers will be knowledge workers.
Posted by Todd at 2:39 PM
July 1, 2005
Govern by the Metrics
Are you managing your web site through the captured metrics? In the old days, you needed to pay your ASP extra for add-on products like Web Trends in order to track and manage your web environment. Today, most ASP vendors offer some form of metrics and I am going to encourage you to review yours on a monthly basis. Why? Metrics are a form of measurement that over an extended period of time will reflect where your online brand is heading. A few of the ones that interest me include:
Unique Visitors, Page Views, and Visits: This metrics provide you an idea of usage within the site itself. I didn’t include hits since that number is more dependent of objects than actual usage of information. Yes, some of your visits will be from search spiders but hopefully that would remain consistent month after month. My personal goal is to increase that usage by 10% across the board per month. So if my monthly average for June was 250 unique visitors, then I would like to have 275 in July.
Keyword Searches: Keywords or phrases are important to review in order to determine what people are searching for to locate your site. For my site, metadata, data architecture, and information architecture lead the way month after month. Therefore, I need to be sure to use these phrases in my titles, paragraphs, and headers to ensure that I stay at the top of the list. I do from time to time get some strange ones like Stu Leonards which is a small grocery chain up north but I have mentioned them in an article I wrote back in 2003. Still about every other month that search phrase shows up.
Referrers: Where do people come from to locate my site? Above and beyond search engines and URL typing, what other web sites link to my site? For me, my monthly column, publications, interviews, and blogging effort generates most of my referrers.
Page Popularity: When people actually get to your site, where do they go? Those pages or documents need to be moved to the home page and you should pay special attention to these artifacts and ensure they are updated frequently.
Metrics provide a sense of score and motivation. Recently, my Unique Visitors, Page Views, and Visits doubled which I thought was a result of a couple of keynotes and tutorials I was giving within the same time period. However, in the following month the metrics did not return to their normal trend; they have held steady. I believe they increase is due to the linkages of this blog and a few kind words from IASlash.org. Either way, steady progress is being made to spread the metadata gospel.
Posted by Todd at 11:57 AM