You don’t need a knowledge graph (yet): building taxonomy that actually works

From content writer to knowledge steward: when a personal quest met an industry need

Interest in complex semantic models has ballooned in recent years, meaning that working from firm foundations and clear thinking are more important than ever before. Carol uses a healthcare case study to give insights (applicable to any sector) on building a taxonomy that can support multiple use cases, including knowledge management and search. Teodora describes her fascinating journey from being a content writer to thinking deeply about semantics and knowledge management. Content was never just “words on a page”, it is part of a continuous dialogue between text, audience and meaning.

Case Study: The transformative controlled vocabulary - how one image library made mountains of messy metadata more manageable

The secret formula: how to go from a taxonomy refresh to 100k+ tag assignments in the Coca-Cola archives

Tagging and metadata are sometimes seen as the poor relations of a semantic ecosystem, but they are essential to success. Clemency’s case study is of an image library that needed to end chaos and apply metadata that would actually drive business value. Her case study is relevant for anyone dealing with large repositories of any kind of stuff. Ed and Natalie deep-dive into a project they inherited where they had to apply a newly-refactored taxonomy to 175,000 archive records; they cover taxonomy design choices and working through tricky concept label and definition issues.

What would you like me to do next? How taxonomy-related roles and job titles are adapting in the face of AI

Semantics in the age of AI

There’s no getting away from the noise around AI and, as a profession, anyone working with semantics should be naturally keen to make the most of new opportunities. Fran presents her take on the skills, job titles, and ways of working that she believes will continue to rise in prominence. Jobs such as ‘knowledge architect’ and ‘context engineer’ sound brand new but have a lineage back to established roles and practices that have always been promoted in the profession. Bob discusses the specific ways in which taxonomies interact with, and are vital to, AI, such as guardrails, training sets, decision and context models for agents, RAG, showing the huge value of structured knowledge.