« July 2005 | Main | September 2005 »
August 31, 2005
Are you an Expert?
If you wanted to rate your interest or passion for a particular subject on a scale from 1 to 5, how would define the different levels. What are your thoughts based on my initial stab?
1: I am interested in the subject; enough to publicly declare my interest and when information is presented to me on my subject, I will read and try to improve my base level of knowledge and understanding. While I may or may not be actively engaged in work directly tied to my interest, I am interested in the progress.
2. I am interested in the topic and I try to read a wide variety of publications including research firm reports, journals, and books. I am considered a Subject Matter Expert within my group and I am involved either directly or indirectly with efforts within my organization.
3. I have a passion for the subject and I actively seek out research, books, authors, and any source of information about the pros and cons of my subject. I can argue both sides of the topic and I am considered one of the top experts within the company. I am actively engaged in work directly related top my topic and seek more assignments in this area. If my subject is broad enough, I have the responsibility and ownership of corporate rollout.
4. I am expanding the body of knowledge on a global scale by adding my thoughts and ideas. I not only have the ownership within, I am involved externally by publishing or presenting for others to evaluate my efforts. I am considered a player in the field from a research and experience perspective. I am involved with local and global groups dedicated to the defining standards and best practices.
5. I am in the top 5% of this subject and I have a collection of references to back up that claim. I have expanded the body of knowledge and others seek my opinion and direction. I not only have the professional experience but the rigor of research as well. I have at least 5 plus years experience and the scars to prove it; I have reached the pinnacle of this topic professional, academically, and from the corporate perspective. The expansion of the body of knowledge includes authorship in journals, books, proceedings, and professional sources of information.
Posted by Todd at 1:42 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
Survey on Search, Metadata, and Taxonomy Practices
Ron Daniel of Taxonomy Strategies and Seth Earley of Seth Earley & Associates are running an interesting series of surveys to profile contemporary enterprise search, metadata, and taxonomy practices. Even if you don't have all the answers, you'll learn a lot from just reading through the questions.
This first survey should take people less than 15 minutes to fill out. In the future we will have surveys to find out about staff roles, team structure, metrics, tools, etc. It's a way to try and get some empirical data for a metadata maturity model.
The survey is at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=855891297190.
Posted by Todd at 2:00 AM | TrackBack
August 24, 2005
The Trouble with Topic Maps
We have got to get better and communicating technology to the masses. I posted a comment about topic maps yesterday where I got some great responses with links. These links and most of the other references on topic maps work very hard to make something as simple as a book index into something complicated. HTML succeeded because it was simple, easy to use, and tools emerged where a five year old could build a web page. So let us review; HTML, simple and easy equals mass adoption while topic maps, complicated and confusing equals death. Topic maps are a great idea and I can only imagine what it would be like to have an actual index of the web available but we had better start simplifying things so that the majority of people can understand the value and utility. Still disagree? Take a look at Google interface and try to describe the recursive search algorithm in a single sentence. The interface is simple while the complexity is taken out back to the shed…
Posted by Todd at 11:56 AM | Comments (4) | TrackBack
August 23, 2005
Hello? Topic Maps, Hello?
What ever happened to Topic Maps? In June of 2000, Gartner predicted that Topic Maps would be main stream by 2003. Clearly, that did not happen and we are now in 2005. A search for Topic Maps on Google with Filetype:pdf produces nothing new for 2004 and 2005. I only see one paper within the ACM library since 2002. Did this technology die a slow and painful death?
Posted by Todd at 12:01 PM | Comments (7) | TrackBack
August 22, 2005
Metadata and the Semantic Web
Excellent Research paper on the semantic web and metadata.
From the perspective of a librarian, cataloger, publisher, or content provider, the Semantic Web is a metadata initiative; at the heart of the Semantic Web is the assumption that adding formal metadata that describes a Web resource’s content and the meaning of its links is going to substantially change the nature of the way computers and people find material and use it. Because there are a variety of metadata efforts underway – that is, the Semantic Web is a metadata initiative among many – it is important to evaluate the Semantic Web in this context (Marshall and Shipman, 2003).
Marshall, C. & Shipman, F. (2003) Which Semantic Web? Proceedings of the 2003. International Conference on Hypertext. Nottingham, UK: The Association of Computing Machinery.
Posted by Todd at 4:44 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
A Beautiful Mind Revisited
One of my favorite scenes in the movie A Beautiful Mind is where the main actors are in a bar when four beautiful young ladies walk in and the gentlemen discuss their strategy. The eureka moment in Dr. Nash’s research arrives as he realizes that if all of them go after the blond they will all walk away alone. However, if none of them go after the blond they will remain friends and well you get the idea. Nash reasons, they'll devastate one another's chances while letting other, slightly less desirable, women get away. "Adam Smith needs revision!" he declares triumphantly. To his baffled classmates, he explains: Adam Smith said the best result comes from everyone in the group doing what's best for himself, right? Adam Smith was wrong! The message: Sometimes it is better to cooperate! (Yes, most folks know that Adam Smith understood the cooperative environment, but that does not make a good movie.
For the sake of argument, let us assume that the story is true and bring it to the High-Performance Work Place. Adam Smith would say that each individual should act in their own best interest and build a set of high performing skills. These skills would reflect professional, academic, corporate, and even entrepreneur dimensions of the individuals personal goals and objectives. Now, would Dr. Nash say that high performance individuals may not make a high performance work place and in fact may be counter productive in doing so? In other words, a high performing group may not be made up of a group of high performing individuals. More thoughts later…
Posted by Todd at 1:32 PM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
August 19, 2005
Taxonomy Observations
Published article in DMReview on a few best practices in taxonomy development. Ok, not really best practices but more like observations.
Organization and Classification Begins at Home
Posted by Todd at 9:53 PM | TrackBack
August 17, 2005
Can we compete with India and China?
Interesting article on the subject of competing with the emerging service providers.
Three million U.S. manufacturing jobs have been lost in the past half-decade, so by the ruler method 6 million more will go poof in the coming 10 years. The U.S. merchandise trade deficit with China has been growing 20% a year, so the ruler says it should surpass a trillion bucks by 2015. By straight-line projection, China stands to trounce Detroit in autos and Silicon Valley in infotech, while India captures software and high finance. That would leave Americans to export raw materials, colony-style, and give each other haircuts
Posted by Todd at 5:28 PM | TrackBack
August 12, 2005
Blue Ocean Strategy
Some books you can fly through and read like a Harry Potter Book while others stop you in your tracks. Recently, I read a book that had absolutely nothing to say until the seventh chapter. And even then, most of the material was repeated from other authors I have read. However, a couple of weeks ago I started reading the Blue Ocean Strategy and I have not got past the second chapter. Why? Because this book is making me think about how I am deploying metadata, collaborative services, and information technology and how it competes within the organization. Believe me, not many books stop me cold as this one has. The Eliminate-Reduce-Raise-Create Grid is awesome and the Strategy Canvas is elegantly simple. Just these first two chapters are worth the price of admission.
The book is authored by W. Chan Kim and Renee Mauborgne; Published by HBR Press.
Posted by Todd at 11:59 AM | TrackBack
August 10, 2005
Commoditization of Knowledge
Interesting Article...
What is unfolding is the commoditization of knowledge. We have seen global forces undermine autos, electronics, and other manufacturing, but the Knowledge Economy was expected to last forever and play to America's strengths: great universities, terrific labs, smart immigrants, an entrepreneurial business culture.
Oops. It turns out there are a growing number of really smart engineers and scientists "out there," too. They've learned to make assembly lines run efficiently, whether they turn out cars or code, refrigerators or legal briefs. So U.S. companies are moving on to creating consumer experiences, not just products; reconceiving entire brand categories, not merely adding a few more colors; and, above all, innovating in new and surprising arenas.
Read More, but get your crying towel out...
Posted by Todd at 6:25 PM | TrackBack
Thanks Ed...
I finally figured out how to turn TrackBack on.
Posted by Todd at 1:08 PM | TrackBack
Is the Tide Turning?
Yesterday, a colleague and I stopped for a conversation which turned toward the difference between an employee and consultant within the large corporation. My belief is that:
Consultants are hired for their experience, assumed to be knowledgeable, and must prove otherwise. Employees are hired for their potential, assumed to lack knowledge, and must prove otherwise.
As an example, a couple of weeks ago I walked into a meetings where the discussion was on enterprise architecture governance and knowledge management. Clearly, we have over 6 years experience in this area but the business person continued to turn to a visiting consultant to answer the questions first. They were armed with great high level theory but had no knowledge or understanding in the actually process of implementation. They had talked about the subject but never really did anything. Just about every issue they discussed could be found in books by Firestone, McElroy, or Drucker. They provided little or no value add that could be gathered for $24.99.
This colleague said that the tide is turning on this observation and that the value of the employee is changing. With out sourcing, over seas sourcing, job cuts, and the transformation that most organizations are going through, I can’t see this actually happening. Do you?
Posted by Todd at 12:58 PM | TrackBack
August 8, 2005
Missed Search Opportunity
Wow, another search engine stock takes off and I sit on the side lines. I emailed a co-worker early Friday that this stock looked promising. Little did I know what would happen.
Shares of Chinas largest Web search company, Baidu.com Inc., more than quadrupled in value in their U.S. market debut on Friday in the most spectacular entry ever by a foreign company, overshadowing world search leader Google Inc.s float last year.
So again, where do we go from here? Will a new search algorithm replace Google and Baidu in the coming years? Is the semantic web the only thing that can derail these organizations?
Posted by Todd at 3:02 AM
August 4, 2005
Collaboration Success or Failure
Today, most organizations are implementing some form collaborative applications. These applications include shared documents, shared content management, groupware, corporate blogs, etc. What factors impact the success and failure of these efforts? More importantly, are these factors correlated? While I have not performed an extensive research program, I can draw on a couple of years of experience.
Failure will be related to the infrastructure. More specifically, the capacity and performance of the application will dictate the failure. Assuming the system selected has the basic business functions required, failure will occur when the system destroys the trust by not excelling in the operations and infrastructure areas. However, successful applications built over a solid infrastructure does not guarantee success. In fact, a solid infrastructure is only important when the need is not fulfilled.
Success is much more related to the client support and the business community acceptance of the technology. Therefore success in collaboration is related to the training, engagement processes, branding, best practices, user manuals, communities of practice, communications, and providing customer service.
So where does the vast majority of funding in this area go toward? You guessed it, the software, hardware, vendor relationships, capacity, etc. More importantly try to find a best practice document, vendor user guide, or a research firm review of the implementation of collaborative applications, you will find a rather large vacuum. Our community is obviously more concerned with collaborative failure than collaborative success.
Posted by Todd at 6:06 PM | Comments (1)
August 3, 2005
New Search Methodology
Who or what will derail Google from the top spot in the internet search arena? Some will say no one, but you don’t have to look far to see that the vast majority of businesses on the Fortune 100 did not exist a 100 years ago. Change and the basic business model continue to change at an alarming speed. The two obvious directions include the semantic web and a search engine based on the actual usage data. Since I have been a negative –nanny on the semantic web, I had better not say that they will be the next phase or solution. So, perhaps it will be an actual usage data algorithm versus a recursive link algorithm. But the data does not exist, you say for a large scale deployment or application. True, or is it? Today, most sites come with open source applications that provide insight into your traffic patterns: most viewed, access duration, entry pages, path analysis, etc. Other products like Web Trends provide the service for purchase so the not only does the exist but the applications are already in place. The issue is simply access, consolidation of data, and algorithmic indexing. So, do you want to be a zillionaire? Then build a business model, an application, and go forth and conquer.
Posted by Todd at 10:26 PM
August 2, 2005
RSS: The Future of the Metadata Repository
Really Simple Syndication (RSS) is a lightweight XML format designed for sharing headlines and other Web content. Think of it as a distributable Whats New for your site. Originated by UserLand in 1997 and subsequently used by Netscape to fill channels for Netcenter, RSS has evolved into a popular means of sharing content between sites (including the BBC, CNET, CNN, Disney, Forbes, Motley Fool, Wired, Red Herring, Salon, Slashdot, ZDNet, and more). RSS solves myriad problems webmasters commonly face, such as increasing traffic, and gathering and distributing news. RSS can also be the basis for additional content distribution services (Web Reference, 2005). The typical use of the RSS feed is within the WebLog (blog) environment. Once the author updates their blog with an entry, the system will update the RSS file and send a 'ping' message to the 'Aggregation Ping Server' indicating that his site has updated. Several organizations like Feedster and Technorati will monitor the feeds and publish in a centralized location the content. The other option is that end users can simply purchase or download a news aggregator application (reader) which allows the user to subscribe to any blog that supports the RDF/XML feed. The application can check the blog for updates once an hour or once a day depending on the configuration of the reader. This eliminates the need to visit search engines or news collection sites in order to read the content of the blog.
The implications for the metadata environment are enormous. Taking a closer look at the RSS standard reveals that the standard is fairly simply and consistent irregardless of the context. This indicates that a simple meta-model such as the Dublin Core could be easily exchanged by the use of RSS technology and that news readers could replace the majority of the functionality within the centralized metadata repository. The section will argue that publishing new content is very similar to the information required for publishing technology asset metadata or will be in the future. Advancements in the RSS technology will allow development, modeling, and other system development lifecycle products to publish information about their assets which will eliminate the extraction of information by hand or forcing integration into a single methodology. RSS already has search functionality and personal taxonomies where the end user can catalog their own content which may prove to be much more valuable than the traditional IT based taxonomies and onotologies. Assuming that vendor organizations can convert their product lines to the XML based standards then a whole new world will open up to the possibilities of the semantic web-enabled applications. W3C (2001) defines the semantic web as:
The Semantic Web is an extension of the current web in which information is given well-defined meaning, better enabling computers and people to work in cooperation. The mix of content on the web has been shifting from exclusively human-oriented content to more and more data content. The Semantic Web brings to the web the idea of having data defined and linked in a way that it can be used for more effective discovery, automation, integration, and reuse across various applications. For the web to reach its full potential, it must evolve into a Semantic Web, providing a universally accessible platform that allows data to be shared and processed by automated tools as well as by people.
By definition the semantic web will integrate the different technologies like XML, RDF, RSS, namespaces, ontologies, etc. These technologies will come together to radically change the way in which we collect information. McComb (2004) defines the killer application in the semantic web as a radical improvement over search and agent. An agent is a program to which an individual delegates some authority to act on the individual’s behalf and then releases to act autonomously. Clearly, RSS technology moves us in that direction. More importantly, inside the corporation the semantic environment can be controlled and dictated which might be impossible on the World Wide Web (WWW). The semantic web and accompanying technologies will produce an environment where a universal repository is possible and should be on the market.
Posted by Todd at 5:55 PM | Comments (4)
August Book Reviews
Excellent Globalization Books...
Three Billion New Capitalists - Clyde Prestowitz
A couple of great books on the impact of globalization. Mr. Prestowitz does an excellent job of describing our world and how the global economy will take shape. The author focuses on China and India and spends a great deal of time on their strengths without too much attention on the weaknesses or negative possibilities. His key point, that I cannot argue with is the lack of a universal strategy by the United States. More importantly, the lack of a strategy by individuals. The author is very credible and most of his points are backed up with fact and data. Perhaps my favorite paragraph was where the author describes the tax incentives, funding, and education grants provided by China. Ironically, Dell got a similar deal in one of the Carolinas this year.
The World is Flat - Thomas Friedman
As if I didn't have enough bad news with the prior book, Mr. Friedman describes a world with very few borders. I purchased this book on tape and am on my third listen / read. The initial parts review technology and the advancements over the past several years and the savings by different organizations due to outsourcing. A trend that will not only continue but get far more aggressive in the future. The author even discusses the impact of terrorism and how this too is an example of a flat world.
Posted by Todd at 2:28 AM | Comments (1)