[Sigia-l] RE: Taxonomy/Classification IA and Enterprise IA [warning: Ramble Follows, Will Robinson]

[Listera]

"joe" wrote:

> Despite my attempts to introduce SIGIA-L knowledge and discussions, despite my
> bibliographic mails espousing Wodtke and Reiss and Rosenfeld and Moorville and
> Krebs and Kahn and Norman and Nielsen and Garrett and so on, and despite my
> attempts to brign my experiences to them through the back door, the door
> remains closed. Metadata activities center around identifying which servers a
> piece of content resides on, who has access, and so on. Comments about
> taxonomy devolve into discussion about org charts. Mentions about controlled
> vocabularies receive dull-eyed and empty-faced stares (nod to the Boss).

I don't blame them. I know you're doing God's work, but I'm not sure why the
bosses/others need to be exposed to high falutin' stuff like metadata,
controlled vocabulary, taxonomy, etc. Aren't those are for the
book/lecture/seminar industry? :-)

You need to go up the ladder of abstraction and take a sharp turn left
towards efficiency, workflow, profitability, competitiveness, etc., and open
the third door with the big sign that says "Department of Relevancy."

Otherwise, it'd be like asking patients to take a mini course on medical
terms/concepts before they go on a visit, just because the doctor couldn't
be bothered with taking domain-specific notions, making them understandable
and putting them in context of the specific patient-illness case at hand.

Just as a 3D model of the heart or the ear canal or the reproductive organs
in the hands of a willing and capable doctor suddenly turn the lights on, so
will a prototype.

Don't *talk* about these concepts, make them relevant to *specific* problems
the organizations may be having by demonstrating how they can solve them.
Pretty much nothing else will do the job better or faster.

Ziya
Nullius in Verba