I was fortunate to attend and present the inaugural
Taxonomy Boot Camp London conference
earlier this month. After 11 successful years in the United States (initially
in New York in 2005, then for four years in San Jose, CA, and six years in
Washington, DC), Taxonomy Boot Camp held its first overseas conference at the
Olympia Conference Centre in London, October 17-18, 2016. Although taxonomy
related topics are presented at many other conference, Taxonomy Boot Camp remains the only
conference dedicated to taxonomies.
Conference Format
The conference was very similar and comparable to
Taxonomy Boot Camp in the U.S., with respect to scope and range of topics
covered, level of detail, and quality. The only different was some more UK
examples/case studies, rather than US examples/case studies. Sessions were also a similar mix of general
topics and case studies. The format was also similar, but not identical. Whereas the U.S. conference has, in recent
years, two tracks on the first day and a combined track the second day,
Taxonomy Boot Camp London maintained two tracks on both days, except for the
keynotes and one plenary session. As a result, I had to make more decisions
about which sessions to attend. The number of speakers is about the same at
both conferences, so by holding more concurrent sessions, Taxonomy Boot Camp
London had slightly longer sessions per speaker on average. At Taxonomy Boot
Camp in the U.S., an individual speaker may speak for only 15-20 minutes in
many sessions. A half-day afternoon pre-conference workshop on “Taxonomy
Fundamentals” was also part of Taxonomy Boot Camp London, whereas Taxonomy Boot Camp in the U.S. has not had half-day pre-conference workshops, shared with KM
World, since 2009, as now the conference starts on the Monday of the KM World
pre-conference workshops. Instead, Taxonomy Boot Camp in the U.S. has a
1.5-hour taxonomy basics session on the first day, concurrent with other
sessions.
Attendance was strong for a first time specialized
conference with 173 (including 42 speakers). While not as many attendees as
Taxonomy Boot Camp in the Washington, DC, which
has about 200, this was more attendees than the U.S. Taxonomy Boot Camp
conference in its earlier years. There
was, as expected, greater international participation from throughout Europe.
There were probably slightly more whose interest in taxonomies is for internal
organization information management, rather than for published content, whether
corporate, nongovernmental organization, or government agency. While there were
some publishers, there was a noticeable lack of those involved in ecommerce. I
led the half-day pre-conference workshop, and received the list of 37 attendees
and their affiliations for the workshop, and I assume they are a representative
sample of the conference attendees.
As with Taxonomy Boot Camp in the U.S., the conference
is not held by itself, but is co-located with another conference by the same
organizer, Information Today Inc. Whereas in the U.S. Taxonomy Boot Camp is
currently co-located with KM World, Enterprise Search & Discovery, and SharePointSymposium, Taxonomy Boot Camp was co-located with Internet Librarian International (ILI), which has been taking place in London every October since
2008. Taxonomy Boot Camp London and ILI (which now has the tagline “The Library
Innovation Conference”) are not as integrated as Taxonomy Boot Camp and KM
World are. The attendees were more distinct in their professions and interest.
Whereas in the U.S. attendees may register for a “platinum” pass which allows
access to any of the co-located conference sessions, in London the
registrations for the two conferences were distinct. There were no shared
keynotes, and meals and breaks were in slightly different areas. Taxonomy Boot Camp attendees had access to
the ILI sponsor booths, but ILI attendees did not have access to the three
Taxonomy Boot Camp sponsor booths, which were located within one of the session
rooms. I imagine this might change in the future, if the number of Taxonomy
Boot Camp London sponsors grows. On the other hand, the relatively contained nature of Taxonomy Boot Camp London made it excellent networking opportunity.
Taxonomy Boot Camp
London also had an association partner, the International Society for KnowledgeOrganization (ISKO), whose UK chapter is very active. Its
chapter for Canada and the United States is not so active. It’s membership also tends to be more academic, with variations by chapter, but its vice president, Stella Dextre Clarke, who gave
a brief presentation, said that the organization hoped to broaden its
membership more beyond academia.
Specific Sessions
The two keynotes, one
on each morning, were both excellent and relevant to the audience. Mike
Atherton, a content strategist at Facebook and formerly and information
architect at the BBC for its websites, spoke on “Designing Future-Friendly
Content” as the opening keynote. He presented a case study of designing the
website for the IA Summit conference, which is redone every year. Some of his
key points were: Agree to the strategy, argue the tactics, stand up for
taxonomy for information architecture, and be a teacher.
Patrick Lambe, partner of the knowledge management
consultancy Straits Knowledge, and a frequent speaker at Taxonomy Boot Camp in
the U.S., presented the second day’s keynote: “Gathering evidence for a
taxonomy – knowledge mapping or content modellings.” He spoke of the key
issues/decision points as: purpose, constraints, principles, and scope. He said
that subject matter experts should only be engaged for feedback on specific
questions at the end of a taxonomy project. Design is based on evidence and
desired outcomes. Warrant is the evidence behind the design and includes
content warrant, user warrant, and standards warrant. There are different
approaches for building different kinds of taxonomies. For building an
internal/enterprise taxonomy, Patrick recommends undertaking knowledge auditing
and knowledge mapping, mapping both activities and assets. For building an
external-use taxonomy, or one with both internal and external sources and
scope, knowledge mapping does not work. Rather, content modeling is done with
use case scenarios and just a sampling of content.
Other informative sessions of note included “How to fast-track taxonomy projects using
linked data” by Dave Clarke, CEO of Synaptica. He explained the
difference between linked open data and linked enterprise data (behind the
firewall), and both have their uses and benefits. Mapping to linked open data
resources can be done for semantic enrichment, pulling information from outside
into an organizational system.
Ben Licciardi, Manager (consultant) at PwC, presented "Taxonomies
and the systems in which they reside: Is the technology-agnostic approach right
for you?" He presented the benefits of both scenarios. Developing a technology-agnostic
taxonomy, in addition to enabling the taxonomy to be used in different systems,
also gets you thinking outside the box and helps future-proof the taxonomy. A
system-focused taxonomy, on the other hand, keeps you grounded in reality, is designed
to the customers, and is budget-conscious.
A panel comprising two consultants and a user experience architect spoke in a session titles “Working
within multi-disciplinary teams - taxonomist tales from the trenches.” Among
other things, they discussed that more people want to be involved on the team
of developing taxonomies, and more people should be talked to, including scrum
masters, QA team, tech leaders, user experience people, software people,
content strategists, product managers, business analysts, data modelers,
enterprise architects, etc.
Congratulations to conference chair Helen Lippell for
a successful conference. The date for the next Taxonomy Boot Camp London
conference has already been set for October 17-18, 2017, at the same venue.
