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February 24, 2006
Passion and Metadata
I am passionate about design and all of the aspects that surround the process of design. The neurons begin to stir when I see excellent design in web pages, document templates, power points, search results, computer equipment, house decorations, and customer service. That was Cool is not said nearly enough in our world and thats a shame. I spend untold hours learning, applying and failing to deliver design value. Design isnt about runway models or building architecture, design is the essence of all things. Repositories, registries, business processes, and systems can have wonderful designs. I am willing to take this passion to the highest level and compete with the very best in the world. In most cases, get bruised, battered, and totally embarrassed from the experience; but I get better. I am willing to apply this passion with enthusiasm when it is invited and when its not; trying to bend the rules of engagement.
Information Design is my Passion!
What is yours? How are you applying that passion beyond the imaginary boundaries within the organization and creating demonstrable value from it? Are you waiting on permission, acknowledgement, or validation?
Fast Company published their 10th Anniversary this week and discussed a wide variety of visions of the future. The single most important theme that I walked away with is this. If you are not getting better then you are getting worse. We are entering into a global world where the skills of our trade can be found in India, China, Russia. Being the best is not good enough, you must be world class and that can only be obtained with passion.
Posted by Todd at 3:06 PM
February 21, 2006
Metadata's Value
I have been reading an interesting book by Ray Kurzweil on the convergence of nanotechnology, AI, robotics, computing technology, etc. The Singularity Is Near : When Humans Transcend Biology discusses the changes required to manipulate atoms and molecules. The book isn’t for the faint at heart but does make a fascinating statement about the future. When we can manipulate molecules, then the value of the physical will be limited and the value of information will be limitless. Wow! When I said Metadata Rules, I did not realize by how much…
Posted by Todd at 11:12 AM
February 20, 2006
Online Article: Metadata Strategies
During the past six years, our organization has focused on delivering enterprise metadata under a strategy that has served us well. This month I want to do the "Full Monty" and provide a deep dive into the specifics of our strategy. For many years, I struggled with just how to describe our model and many times failed to communicate it appropriately. In the December 2005 issue of Harvard Business Review, Geoffrey Moore describes two compelling business strategies that businesses such as IBM, Intel, Amazon, and many others perform. The complex solution model creates value by providing a custom solution while the standardized model creates value by serving a large population of users. Figure 1 provides a view of these two strategies with several modifications from the author's original article that make it easier to apply to the metadata world.
Two Compelling Metadata Strategies
Posted by Todd at 10:34 PM
February 8, 2006
Metadata Trash
I was recalling a story about Michael Eisner (CEO, Disney) where he was providing a tour of Disney World. On several occasions, the author described Mr. Eisner stopping to pick up trash. Should the CEO of a major corporation stop and pick up trash or is that someone elses job? Picking up trash does not show up on the balance sheet, yearly objectives, or commitments. Yet, the importance of this cannot be overstated. The details matter and what would happen if each of us made small incremental improvements in data quality, Intranet environment, documentation, metadata, etc. If we picked up the trash everyday, then we could make over 2,000 enhancements to our environment. Trash on the ground speaks loudly on the quality and expectations of the park. In our world the broken links, poor help text, poor metadata, poor usability, poor customer service, slow response, does the same thing. Any thoughts?
Posted by Todd at 1:49 PM
February 6, 2006
The MetaWeb
Interesting concepts developed by Nova Spivak (2004). The Metaweb will connect everything as opposed to the Internet that connects information, social software that connects people, and the semantic web that connects everything. For a picture of this do a search on google for the authors name and filetype:ppt.
Posted by Todd at 5:21 PM
February 4, 2006
Metadata Article: ACM Magazine
The current issue of The Communications of the ACM has a nice article on Metadata. More from the traditional perspective of database metadata, but it is still well written.
Posted by Todd at 3:23 PM