July 18, 2006
Random Thoughts
The web is what? The is unstructured, the web is volatile, the web is dynamic, undocumented, unfettered, invalid, confusing, difficult, challenging, wondrous, exciting, uncontrollable, big, amateur, monumental, the web is completely opposite to the corporation. Built by passion, built 24/7, dreams, vision, leadership, etc.
The corporation is structured, organized, limiting, documented, classified, hierarchal, professional, built by rate, built 8/5, edited, audited, quality, managed,
What we have here are two extreme environments that define out daily lives; one is chaos the other is pre-ordained. .
Posted by Todd at 6:41 PM
April 15, 2006
Semantic Web Slow Down
Ok, the initial mention of the word internet occurred in 1982. Tim Berners-Lee develops the application or framework for sharing information on the web in 1989. Within 10 years, 150 Million people are online and seeding the dot com bubble. The semantic web was first mentioned around 1999 and 7 years later we still only have a very few users and applications. One would think building off the current web would have improved the speed to market yet it seems to have slowed.
Posted by Todd at 12:52 AM
April 12, 2006
Age of Individualism
Ok I get it! I am late to the party but darn it, I finally get it. After reading Re-Imagine more times than I will admit, The World is Flat by Thomas Friedman, Funky Business by Jonas Ridderstrale and Kjelle A. Nordstrom. The Free Agent Nation by Daniel Pink, and Blue Ocean Strategy by W. Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne, I finally understand the universal message. The age of agriculture was followed by the age of industry, which was followed by the age of information. The next age will be the Age of Individualism, not the individual (Small Difference). Now, I am faced with the question, so what? What can I or the average person do to get ready, catch up, or lead this new age? Here is my list, please contribute.
1. Education: Educate yourself and your children.
2. Gain Skills and Experience in a variety of areas
3. Develop your story; Unique and Value Add Story
4. Publish: Publish in Articles, Magazines, Books, Book Chapters, Conferences, etc.
5. Blog Daily! Hourly? Create your on blog and contribute to others
6. Develop and Design Your Web Presence (Professionalism Counts)
7. Develop your content store front with a solid Information Architecture
8. Get on a Reading Program: Books, HBR, IEEE, ACM, Newsletters, Blogs
9. Go Online and Search; Learn to Search Effectively
10. Time: 24x7, Time Management, Small Rocks, Big Rocks, You know the drill
The next step is obvious; Execution.
Posted by Todd at 11:41 AM
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 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
June 26, 2005
New Content Posted
Finally got the newest slides posted for the DAMA International Symposium and Wilshire Metadata Conference, the DAMA Atlanta Spring Session, and the Inforums Marketing Science Conference.
2005 Speaking Sessions
Posted by Todd at 1:11 PM
February 4, 2005
Promotion to Obscure
According to Ed Batista, I have been promoted to an obscure blogger. Excellent!, I love it. Bloggers will take over the world and I am late to the game. How about you? And, I will repeat my rant from last month. Where the heck are all of the Data Architecture, Data Management, Dublin Core, Metadata Blogs?
http://www.edbatista.com/2005/01/
Posted by Todd at 6:11 PM | Comments (2)
January 31, 2005
Asia, Automation, and Abundance
Please take the time to read article published on wired.com by Danial Pink. While my message about the future of technology focused on India, Automation, and the Death of Demand (See Tom Osenton). It kooks like I missed the other areas of Asia in my initial thoughts. Basically, those of us that have placed long term bets on structured information better start thinking in unstructured terms. Does this mean that tomorrow we are all out of a job? Of course not, technology will take time to adapt and implement. The real question is more of the long term investment in your skills.
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/13.02/brain_pr.html
Posted by Todd at 7:25 PM
January 26, 2005
Vision for RTodd.com
In 2005, you will see many changes within the RTodd.com organization. It is easy to simply see a new design, a new template, or new pages but the reality is that change is only a small piece of what we are doing. The online environment is going to change the basic foundation of our existence. The brand is the perception of value that the web environment signifies about the organization: what we stand for, our values, and our strengths. RTodd.com needs to move beyond a personal snapshot and become a place where data professional go for information, knowledge, and understanding.
The majority of the information placed on the web is not to sell something but rather to simply be heard. The Internet allows us all to be heard, perceived, and branded by our own imagination. The Internet is dynamic, un-tethered, build with passion, unedited, governed only by technology, and available to all. The Internet works 24x7, 365 days per year, works equally well in Sharpsburg, GA as it does in Shanghai, China. The Internet is not always accurate, sometimes confusing, without management or guidance, and many times fails to deliver accurate information to the end user. The Internet is a thing of beauty that works precisely because it is uncontrolled and the sheer volume of information that is available.
Posted by Todd at 12:35 AM
January 25, 2005
DAMA-Atl Website
The new website for DAMA-Atl was rolled out over the weekend. My hope is to begin to build the online brand / community for DAMA in Atlanta. Ideally, this site won't just be the Atlanta chapter but the beginning of a community of practice for data related concetps.
Posted by Todd at 2:19 AM | Comments (1)