[Taxonomy Bootcamp 2011 Takaway] Joseph Busch of Project Performance Corporation (PPC) delivered a practical presentation that aimed to help people understand objective criteria for evaluating the capabilities of current taxonomy software tools.  PPC is a leading management consultancy with a growing taxonomy practice.   Busch analysed editorial functionality, degrees of sophistication, database definition, import and export options, and workflow and governance.  Busch then gave detailed descriptions for four specific products and summarized the results in a product vector with two axes: ease of implementation and completeness of vision.  Microsoft Excel scored top on ease of implementation but low on vision (functionality).  While MultiTes did not score high on either scale it was selected as a notable tool because its simplicity and low price point have established it as a prominent entry-level tool.   The three tools closest to the top-right quadrant were SmartLogic, Synaptica and TopBraid.  In Busch’s assessment these three tools are very close together, with each one having some distinguishing selling points. Joseph's presentation is available online at: www.taxonomystrategies.com/presentations/2011/Taxonomy%20Tools%20Requirements%20and%20Capabilities-Busch%20and%20Wahl.pdf.

[Taxonomy Bootcamp 2011 Comment] While many organizations employ multiple software tools to perform similar functions, such as categorization, search, etc., this does not necessarily imply tool redundancy.  Particular tools have different strengths that are optimized for tackling different data sets or functional tasks within an enterprise.  There is, however, a very real need to orchestrate these tools.  Dave Clarke of Synaptica has long advocated that conceptual vocabularies combined with non-proprietary open standards are the key to unifying information that resides in disparate systems. Industry standards inform both the way vocabularies are constructed and the way they are interchanged.  Foremost among relevant norms is the brand new two-part ISO25964 standard (and its various national antecedents and implementations) and the W3C specifications SKOS and OWL.  Centralizing all controlled vocabularies into an enterprise vocabulary management tool allows different business units to maintain separate vocabularies while providing the means to 'wire' these different vocabularies together through mapping alignments.  For more information on the ISO standard visit: http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com/details.aspx?vunid=113659 and http://www.taxonomywarehouse.com/details.aspx?vunid=113662.

[Taxonomy Bootcamp 2011 Takeaway] In a witty and informative sponsored lunchtime keynote Jeremy Bentley of SmartLogic surveyed the high ground that sits above text mining, search, content, metadata and classification.  Bentley named this high ground as ‘content intelligence,’ which also happens to be the brand name for SmartLogic’s enterprise platform.  Bentley observed that many organizations have multiple software tools to perform each of the core functions (multiple auto-categorization tools, multiple CMS tools, etc.), and that coordinating these disparate tools underpins the evolution to content intelligence and the semantic web.  The presentation is not available online, for more information visit www.smartlogic.com.