Taxonomy Lessons for Strategy and Planning in the Semantic Web

1. Strategy, Planning, Stakeholders & the Semantic Web Joseph A Busch, Founder & Principal Ron Daniel Jr, Principal

2. Taxonomy lessons from Web 1.0 • Lesson from shopping websites – a few small taxonomies, rather than one large one. • Easier to tag • Easier to build services • Easier to maintain

3. Taxonomy lessons from Web 2.0 • Customize metadata scheme from Dublin Core • The heartbeat of the semantic web. • Handle non-product content in the same way as products • Identify the key attributes • Type, Location, Function, Topic (instead of Type, Size, Fabric, Color) • Then filter on them. • Narrow collection to a few relevant items in 3-5 clicks • aka Facet navigation. • Provide almost instantaneous feedback • Show end user tagging with tag clouds. • Use ratings—don’t just ask for a rating. • Show comments—don’t just ask for a comment. • A little bit of tagging can go a long way • Got metadata—Do mash-ups.

4. Dublin Core Other attributes You Tube metadata Channel Audience Creator Title Description Date Category Subject Identifier Format Rating Relations Comments

5. You Tube taxonomies Channel Audience Category Rating All Comedians Directors Gurus Musicians Non-Profit Partners Sponsors YouChoose 08 Autos & Vehicles Comedy Education Entertainment Film & Animation Howto & Style Music News & Politics Nonprofits & Activism People & Blogs Pets & Animals Science & Technology Sports Travel & Events Autos & Vehicles Comedy Education Entertainment Film & Animation Howto & Style Music News & Politics Nonprofits & Activism People & Blogs Pets & Animals Science & Technology Sports Travel & Events Featured Most Subscribed Most Viewed Most Discussions Most Members Most Videos Most Active Most Discussed Most Recent Most Members Most Responded Most Viewed Previously Popular Top Favorites Top Rated Audience & Category use the same controlled vocabulary

6. You Tube services: From just a little bit of tagging • Populate all Video, Channel & Community pages. • Automatic RSS subscriber based on tags for any page. • Identify more videos from the same creator. • Identify related videos. • Create, publish & monetize (place ads) your playlists & favorites.

7. Agenda • Taxonomy business case and use scenarios. • Taxonomy project start-up tasks. • Business stakeholders participation. • Early taxonomy tasks and deliverables.

8. What is a Taxonomy? • A categorization framework agreed upon by business and content owners (with the help of subject matter experts) that will be used to tag content. • 6 broad, discrete divisions (called facets) • 2-3 levels deep. • Up to 15 terms at each level. • 1200 terms total. • With some logic—hierarchical, equivalent and associative relationships between terms.

9. What uses must a Taxonomy support? • Primary categorization • Navigation • Content Management • Secondary categorization • Search • Tagging “ When we talk about a taxonomy, we are not only talking about a website navigation scheme. Websites change frequently, we are looking at a more durable way to deal with content so that different navigation schemes can be used over time.” – R. Daniel “Taxonomy FAQs”

10. Main Ingredients Meal Type Cuisines Cooking Methods • Chocolate • Dairy • Fruits • Grains • Meat & Seafood • Nuts • Olives • Pasta • Spices & Seasonings • Vegetables • Breakfast • Brunch • Lunch • Supper • Dinner • Snack • African • American • Asian • Caribbean • Continental • Eclectic/ Fusion/ International • Jewish • Latin American • Mediterranean • Middle Eastern • Vegetarian • Advanced • Bake • Broil • Fry • Grill • Marinade • Microwave • No Cooking • Poach • Quick • Roast • Sauté • Slow Cooking • Steam • Stir-fry Effectiveness of taxonomies • Categorize in multiple, independent, categories. • Allow combinations of categories to narrow the choice of items. • 4 independent categories of 10 nodes each have the same discriminatory power as one hierarchy of 10,000 nodes (104) • Easier to maintain. • Easier to reuse existing material. • Can be easier to navigate, if software supports it. 42 values to maintain (10+6+11+15) 9900 combinations (10x6x11x15)

11. Why build and apply a Taxonomy? Taxonomy enables usability and re-usability • The presentation of relevant related content provides users with a “scent” or context. • Googlers are oriented—even when they land on a page fifteen layers deep. • Tagging content enables content re-use and dynamic web publishing. • Tagged content exponentially increases the ability to aggregate related content, making it easier to present users with relevant content. • Readily offering content-related web services—RSS feeds, bookmarking, user tagging—provide a more rewarding experience.

12. What’s going on behind the screen? … as well as what’s going on in front of the screen.

13. Behind the screen: Taxonomy enables … • Find all content related to … • Replace or update all instances of … • Restrict access by … • Create a new website or content package for … • Enable a new RSS feed for … • Provide relevant links from … to … • Support a service for … • Find an item you created in the past. • Archive or purge old content.

14. Agenda • Taxonomy business case and use scenarios. • Taxonomy project start-up tasks. • Business stakeholders participation. • Early taxonomy tasks and deliverables.

15. Taxonomy start-up tasks • Identify target content to be focused on. • Provide a list of websites (and/or other target content file stores) • Prioritize this list for the purposes of the taxonomy project. • Gather any query logs, usage statistics and usability surveys. • Collect any existing documentation related to audience personas, content organization, metadata, keywords, and any other guidelines or standards.

16. Taxonomy start-up tasks (2) • Designate who will be the project manager / single-point of contact. • Develop a list of stakeholders and interview candidates • Minimum of 6 and usually less than 12 interview sessions. • One-on one interviews, or focus groups. • Schedule stakeholders briefing • Schedule interviews to start immediately after the briefing.

17. Agenda • Taxonomy business case and use scenarios. • Taxonomy project start-up tasks. • Business stakeholders participation. • Early taxonomy tasks and deliverables.

18. Taxonomy development overview • Any taxonomy development process needs to engage key stakeholders such as: • End users • Content managers • Engaging busy professionals and bureaucrats so that they have the maximum impact with the minimum effort is a tricky business.

19. Stakeholder screening considerations • Breadth: Does the candidate uniquely represent a business-critical function? • Business-critical functions are marketing, public relations, product marketing, legal, etc. • Depth: Is the candidate a subject matter expert (SME)? • Subject matter experts include: • Customer-facing (e.g., support, maintenance, etc.) • Product and service (e.g., product marketing, sales, etc.) • IT (e.g., CMS systems administrator, usability expert, etc.)

20. Stakeholder screening considerations (2) • Credibility: Does the candidate have credibility in the organization? • Senior managers and decision-makers need to be engaged. • Priority: Is the candidate an early adopter, large content holder, squeaky wheel or fan? • Early adopters - will or would participate in a pilot or proof of concept project. • Large content holder. • Squeaky wheels - Tough customers and skeptics such as financial or business analysts, technical gurus (i.e., IT as well as industry-specific gurus) • Fans - Librarians, information architects, planners, etc.

21. Stakeholder selection scorecard 1 is high and 3 is low Based on Marcia Morante’s candidate screening scorecard

22. Tiered participation • If the project is likely to have a large reach, such as an enterprise taxonomy, consider multiple rounds of interviews and workshops. • Scenario: • Brief everyone. • Interview a small group. • Report back and refine results in workshops with larger groups.

23. Agenda • Taxonomy business case and use scenarios. • Taxonomy project start-up tasks. • Business stakeholders participation. • Early taxonomy tasks and deliverables.

24. Early taxonomy deliverables: Kick-off presentation Who we are Goals High level plan Resources

25. Early taxonomy deliverables: Interview questionnaire • What do you do? What kinds of digital assets are being produced? For what audiences? • What is the business process for submitting, selecting, editing, maintaining digital assets? • How many digital assets are there? How fast is this growing? • Are there particular industry or other standards that are important? • What types of assets are hard to search for (that should be easier to find)? • What tools would be helpful in locating assets? Acronyms? Abbreviations? Nick names? Glossary? Thesaurus? Taxonomy? • Who else should we be talking to?

26. 1. Identify target asset file path/URL. 2. Automatically generate inventory metadata by spidering file stores. 3. Audit assets using inventory. 4. Enhance metadata with new facets. Spider-generated New facets Path/URL Audit process Early taxonomy deliverables: Content inventory

27. Early taxonomy deliverables: Business benefits

28. Early taxonomy deliverables: Intranet use cases and use scenarios • Content related to business areas or facilities • By geographic location, by type, by specific facility, by access restrictions, by audience, etc. • Company-wide content • By business function, by topic, by access rights, etc. • Use Case:Create a safety policies and procedures website for facilities organized by State. • Use Scenario:Find all safety policies and procedures related to a facilities located in Oregon. • Use Case: Locate any content that has policies and procedures around a particular topic. • Use Scenario: A policy regarding smoking company-wide has changed and references to outdated policies should be removed. Find official policies, as well as newsletters related to the smoking policy company-wide.

29. Early taxonomy deliverables: .com use cases and use scenarios • Web content managers • By content type, by topic, by location, etc. • Public users seeking information • by topic, by location, etc. • Use Case: Find and recall all public-facing pages that describe a specific safety tip. • Use Scenario: Find and recall all public-facing pages that discuss child safety. • Use Case: Provide search for dividend schedules, earnings statements and stock splits; and the corresponding press releases for a specific time period. • Use Scenario: An investor who recently sold stock is preparing taxes and would like to do a concise .com search so that they can find historical information about their holdings.

30. Primary Secondary Early taxonomy deliverables: Typology of use cases

31. Content Types Orgs Business Functions Products Geo Locations Topics Job Types Audience Access Rights Use for types of content created and published by business areas. Use to specify the primary organizational units that the content is about or related to. Use to specify the specific business function that the content is about or related to. Use to specify the product that the content is about or related to. Use to specify the Acme geographic location that the content is about or related to. Use to specify any topics that the content is about or related to that is not specified in the other facets. Use to specify the type of job that the content is about or related to. Use to tag training materials that are intended for a particular job type. Use to specify the primary audience segments for whom the content is intended. Use to specify which user category can access the content, or whether it can be accessed by all employees or the public. Early taxonomy deliverables: High-level taxonomy Acme Taxonomy

32. Early taxonomy deliverables: Tagging Example: Investor Connection

33. Early taxonomy deliverables: Tagging Example: Directions to Headquarters

34. Early taxonomy deliverables: Tagging Example: Travel Approval Form

35. Questions? Joseph A. Busch, +1-415-377-7912, jbusch@taxonomystrategies.com Ron Daniel Jr, +1-925-368-8371, rdaniel@taxonomystrategies.com www.taxonomystrategies.com

36. Strategy, Planning, Stakeholders & the Semantic Web • There's no question that the technologies surrounding a taxonomy effort are very different than they were even 18 months ago, and the world keeps changing the starting point.  Perhaps the greatest difference is that business managers now expect that information on an organization’s public and internal websites be findable, and that web services such as RSS feeds and alerts, guided navigation and search result filtering, mashups and visualization, and others be available. The Semantic Web offers the potential of several additional new technologies in the future. But these technological possibilities are simply new means to achieve the traditional ends of a return on the investment. Developing the business case, setting strategy, getting stakeholders on board, and engaging in the collaborative process of developing a content organization framework is just as important as before. This means that project scoping, start-up, on-boarding, education and high-level taxonomy remain critical factors in the success of a taxonomy effort. This talk will focus on making the business case and starting up a taxonomy project. The talk will answer the following questions: • What are the most the typical and most compelling use cases and use scenarios for developing a taxonomy? • What are the critical start-up tasks in a taxonomy project? • What are the best criteria for identifying business stakeholders to participate in the project, how do you get them involved, and what should be their role in the taxonomy development process? • What do business managers need to know about taxonomy and why it’s important? • What are the best practices for early tasks and deliverables such as the high-level taxonomy design?