This brief, optional pre-conference session is for novices who want to learn the step-by-step fundamentals of how to build a taxonomy. Taxonomy Boot Camp sessions assume a basic familiarity with taxonomy construction.

The digitizing of information resources allows us to reinvent the basic principles by which we manage and organize knowledge, thereby transforming the shape and authority of knowledge. Debunking linear information models, Weinberger explores how we can get more value from organizational knowledge and expertise by treating knowledge as a miscellaneous collection of data and metadata to be sorted and ordered by users. This approach wrings the maximum potential from what an organization knows — improving information flows, increasing innovation, enabling the power of social knowing to emerge — but it changes the role of experts and knowledge and information managers.

It is clear that categorization is a necessary part of a good information access system.  What is less clear is what kind of categorization technology or approach is best. Does everyone need a taxonomy?  What about clustering engines, rule based classifiers, automatic classifiers?  This session will demystify the types of categorization and discuss the pros and cons, and tradeoffs of each.

One of the biggest challenges of any taxonomy project is actually “getting” the taxonomy. Can you buy an existing taxonomy? Do you have to build one from the ground up? Or can you use an automatic categorizer to create one for you? This lively debate explores what you need to make the decision to buy or build your taxonomy, or if automatic taxonomy generation will work for you, as each of the speakers presents and defends an option.

While having their own complexities beyond fielded metadata, taxonomies need to be approached as part of your full metadata set. This session will focus on how taxonomies fit into an overall metadata strategy, including how to identify different types of metadata for your organization, how to manage content and data modeling issues for fielded metadata, and how to identify and implement work flow to handle both standard metadata and taxonomies.

Building your taxonomy team and defining expected contributions from each team member is crucial to the success of your project. How to build your team and then creating a work plan, refining the processes, managing the technologies, and pushing the deliverables into production are the focus for this practical presentation by a consultant who manages large-scale, long-term taxonomy projects.

Often taxonomy development and its integration are seen as part of expensive and complex enterprise toolsets and suites. There are, however, a number of free open source and low-cost commercial tools that enable full taxonomy development and maintenance for more modest budgets. This session covers the availability of existing open source taxonomies, a variety of taxonomy tools for modest budgets, comparisons of their capabilities, and an analysis of their applicability for integration to portal and search applications.

Learn how automatic metadata generation solutions can be used cost-efficiently and effectively for large-scale projects without a major investment in human resources. In this case study, Wolters Kluwer, a major publisher, will illustrate how it has applied Teragram’s automatic metadata solution to its vast repositories of published materials.

Taxonomy experts at four companies share real operational experiences in deploying a taxonomy strategy at the enterprise level. The tire hits the pavement in this dynamic panel as practitioners reveal the truth about what it takes to keep current, maintain compliance, ensure data integrity, support structural expansion, and still keep your job.

Continue the day’s discussions with new colleagues and old friends over drinks and hors d’oeuvres. Meet and talk with the speakers and the conference sponsors. Then wrap up the day, if you wish, by joining a Networking Dinner Group for a fun and casual evening at a nearby restaurant. (Watch the Taxonomy Boot Camp Web site for signup forms for these Dutch-treat dinners.)