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September 22, 2005
Metadata Dashboard
I have enjoyed reading the Harry Potter books to my son, who is now six years old. In truth, I think I get more enjoyment out of them than he does. Twenty five years ago, my childhood was consumed at night reading the Three Investigators”. The three investigators were three young boys (Jupiter Jones, Pete Crenshaw, and Bob Andrews) that got involved in many mystery adventures. The adventures of the Three Investigators were unique in that they had a real-life mentor with a national and international reputation already. Alfred Hitchcock was widely known for suspense and storytelling in his movies and other books; so a built-in audience of fans was just waiting for something else to read. One added bonus of having Hitchcock as a mentor was that it gave a good opportunity for the authors to tie up loose ends at the end of each story in a way that did not seem too out of place. In many mystery stories, the resolution at the end of the story can be awkward because all the clues have to be explained, and their relevance to the solution has to be justified. It can be quite a challenge. By giving the boys an opportunity to talk to Hitchcock, Robert Arthur (Author) set up an excellent vehicle to end each story with all the information we readers needed to understand how things were pieced together. What really got me was that every 30-50 pages they included a visual image of the action, which provided a foundation for the story and allowed us logical thinkers to see the scene.
In the world of metadata, we must also provide this form of visual support of the impact that the repository collection is having on the community at large. This impact or value has been one of the most difficult items to accomplish. The reason is that we have an implementation team that tends to focus on the qualitative value measures and not stay away from the quantitative. However, like the Three Investigator book series, a combination is really required. A metadata dashboard can provide the name of the repository, description, content type, owner, contact information, date, and a status of the growth and trends. The content metrics can describe what assets are loaded, additions, updates, and percentage change. Usage has a very similar meta-model. The key is to get these high level metrics on a single slide which can be presented to management on a regular basis.
Posted by Todd at 1:38 AM
September 16, 2005
Metadata Metrics
This month we take a look at the various metrics that metadata should focus on within the enterprise. Metric management is like financial accounting for the technology asset inventory. Read why content and usage are key to the long term growth of the effort.
Metrics and the Source of all Knowledge
Posted by Todd at 1:49 AM
September 14, 2005
Valid Use of Metadata
Interesting business model that seems to be cropping up on the web. I was surfing the web looking for metadata information and came across a reference to some of my work that did not seem to fit the title. The basic search result described a site where you could find step-by-step instructions on how to write an executive summary. But why would my stuff show up on this site, since I am maybe the worse writer in the history. Well it turns out they are nothing but a search result aggregator that wraps a web site around a result set and my research showed because I had used the keywords Executive Summary. So the question is this a viable business model? Is this a valid use of Metadata?
Posted by Todd at 12:38 PM
TrackBack Turned Off
I have turned off the trackback function due to the enormous amount of spam and bad people doing bad things here. Sorry for any inconvenience. If anyone knows how to turn this functionality back on without getting the crap from businesses that have no business here, please let me know.
Posted by Todd at 3:07 AM
September 12, 2005
Web Page Metadata Does Matter
So metadata no longer matters within the web page environment? Admittedly, I am a nobody in the giant arena of Information Technology. But with well managed metadata and information content, I have placed myself into an interesting position. In yahoo, here is where this site (http://www.rtodd.com) ranks based on the enclosed metadata keywords:
information technology author speaker: 9th
information technology speaker author: 184th
information technology author ph.d.: 5th
information technology speaker ph.d.: 3rd
One can argue that I am picking my keywords strategically and this is true. But the point is that Metadata still does matter. Oh yes, in Google I am so far down the list that you would get tired looking for it but Google utilizes links. So the next step form me is to increase linkage, any takers?
Posted by Todd at 6:45 PM | TrackBack
September 6, 2005
Semantic Technology Conference
For those interested in Semantics, this conference is a very good one that I hope to attend next year.
By Semantic Technologies we are including technologies and methodologies that have been used within leading enterprises over the last decade that leverage Semantics, such as Semantic Brokers, Semantic Modeling, Model Based Warehousing, Business Rules and many more. We are also including the Semantic Web and the technologies that make it possible, such as OWL, RDF/RDFS, DAML+OIL and XML.