enterprise navigation (km world 2007)

Enterprise NavigationEnterprise NavigationEnterprise NavigationEnterprise Navigation

Bradley P. AllenFounder & CTOSiderean Software, Inc.

KMWorld & Intranets 2007

November 7th, 2007

Bradley P. AllenFounder & CTOSiderean Software, Inc.

KMWorld & Intranets 2007

November 7th, 2007

Copyright © 2001-2007 Siderean Software, Inc. All rights reserved.

Siderean Software: Helping People Master Discovery

• Founded 2001• Venture funded 2004

– Clearstone, Innocal, Red Rock

• Headquarters in LA, offices in NYC, Boston, Chicago and Menlo Park– 25 employees– 35 customers

• Visionary status in 2007 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Information Access

• One of the 2007 KMWorld “100 Companies That Matter in Knowledge Management”


When Search Fails

RAWLSTON

Here's a man who might have been President. He's been loved and hated and talked about as much as any man in our time - but when he comes to die, he's got something on his mind called "Rosebud." What does that mean?

GIRL

What about Rosebud? Don't you think that explains anything?

THOMPSON

No, I don't. Not much anyway. Charles Foster Kane was a man who got everything he wanted, and then lost it. Maybe Rosebud was something he couldn't get or lost. No, I don't think it explains anything. I don't think any word explains a man's life. No - I guess Rosebud is just a piece in a jigsaw puzzle - a missing piece.

RAYMOND

Throw that junk in, too.

Camera travels to the pile that he has indicated. It is mostly bits of broken packing cases, excelsior, etc. The sled is on top of the pile. As camera comes close, it shows the faded rosebud and, though the letters are faded, unmistakably the word "ROSEBUD" across it. The laborer drops his shovel, takes the sled in his hand and throws it into the furnace. The flames start to devour it.


When Search Fails


vs.

Meanwhile, The Problem is Changing

• Search is no longer sufficient to meet people’s needs for findability

• People don’t know what’s available to them, much less what to type into the text box


The New Requirements

• A shared, unified view of the scope of available information

• Zero in on relevant information quickly

• Find and follow relationships

• Share and organize findings with others


From Search to Navigation

KeywordKeyword

KeywordKeyword

KeywordKeyword

Search Relational Navigation

ConceptConcept

Faceted Navigation

Querying “bags of words”

Slicing and dicing homogeneous objects

guided by trees of concepts

Navigating through a network of related

heterogeneous objects


The Ascendant Role of Metadata

• The convergence of data and content means “everything is metadata” (David Weinberger)

– Coming from database records, documents, user-generated content, etc.

• Metadata brings relationships, and therefore meaning, to the fore

– Traditional text search throws relationships away

• Taxonomies are a key special case of metadata


The Semantic Web: A Web Of Metadata

• An architecture for capturing meaning and organizing information using metadata on the Web– “a universal medium for information exchange …

giving computer-understandable meaning (semantics) to the content of documents on the World Wide Web.” (Tim Berners-Lee)

• A great notion, poorly marketed and fitfully adopted– Until now


The Practical Value of the Semantic Web

• By using SW technology to:– Stitch information from separate silos into a unified information

architecture– Make relationships between pieces of information formally

explicit using standard vocabularies

• We can get information access and discovery solutions with:– Increased differentiation (and hence traffic) through greater

findability– Faster implementation times through leverage of standards– Lower total cost of ownership through the ease of modification

and extension


Semantic Web Standards in the Library CoP

• Emerging standards for bibliographical data are moving to adopt SW approaches– Example: RDA in

DCAM/RDF

• This will be a historic transition in cataloging and resource discovery

“Re-expressing our data so they can be read by the Semantic Web is an avenue for retaining that which is good about our view of data … leaving behind the weak, antiquated, solipsistic characteristics of our encoding practices.”

- Karen Schneider, CCLA


The Role of Taxonomies

• Taxonomies provide the navigational “glue” that binds information objects of different types by subject facets– Taxonomies (thesauri, controlled vocabularies) are represented

using a standard ontology (SKOS)

• Other facets come from asset, relational and usage metadata– Other ontologies (DC, FRBR, etc.) come into play here

• Together the provide the basis for zeroing in on and pivoting across information resources


LuceneLucene

Documentum

Sharepoint

RSS/Atom

Ontologies &Taxonomies

Oracle

XRBRInformation

View

XRBRInformation

View

Web 2.0NavigationExperience

Web 2.0NavigationExperience

Keyword SearchKeyword Search

Seamark Navigator 4.5

MetadataPipeline

MetadataPipeline

Intranet/KM

Internet

• Out-of-the-box• Secure

• Brandable• Scalable

RDFStore

RDFStore

Nstein

Inxight

Lexalytics

OracleSES

OracleSES

GoogleEnterprise

GoogleEnterprise


“I, for one, think this is the coolest app ever to appear with an Oracle.com header on it - by far.”

- Justin Kestelyn, Editor in Chief, Oracle Technology Network

Case Study: Oracle

• Oracle.com suffered from limited, static navigation– A problem for customers,

partners and press

• Solution: add Seamark-powered discovery applications

• Result: lower costs, enhanced revenue opportunity and thought leadership

• Link: http://events.oracle.com


Case study: Environmental Health News (EHN)

• Aggregating content from hundreds of Web pages daily

• Adding value at the metadata level to the Web at large for a focused community of interest– Policy makers– Activists– Researchers

• Link: http:/environmentalhealthnews.org


Case Study: Pharmaceuticals

Medical terms, test events, reports, study authors, compounds,

protocols

Content repositories of pre-clinical and clinical trials, clinical test DB

Navigate over clinical documents and

records


Case study: NASA JPL

• Aggregating multiple content repositories and structured trouble ticket databases

• Using corporate vocabulary for high precision access

• Providing access and discovery across all project information for managers and engineers

• Implemented in weeks


Case Study: Financial Services

People, services, products,

organizations, responsibilities

People directory DB, IT services DB, HW/SW

product DB

Navigate over products and services


The Integration of Folksonomies and Taxonomies

• Folksonomies can make taxonomies more responsive– To individuals and groups

• Taxonomies can make folksonomies more responsible– To organizations and institutions

• The two can be represented using the same ontology (SKOS) and themselves be tagged in editorial workflow


PublishersContributor

s

Advertisers

Consumers

Tags, attention

Ads and links

Tags and leads

Tags

Digital assets, taxonomies

Tags

Tags, attention

Digital assets, taxonomies

The Folkso-Taxo Value Chain

• Publishers– User-generated metadata increases

the value of core content and data offerings

• Contributors (enthusiasts, editors, remixers, librarians, customers)

– Tools for remixing, tagging, annotating and playlisting content and data enhance value at the metadata level

• Consumers– More navigable rich data and content

• Advertisers– Higher-yield ads higher precision


Case Study: News Media

Topics, people, organizations, sources

RSS/Atom feeds from multiple Web sources, proprietary premium

content

Navigate over aggregated news stream filtered by editorial tagging


Summary

• People are looking beyond traditional search solutions to meet emerging requirements for information access and discovery

• Metadata, through its expression through Semantic Web standards, can yield cheaper, more powerful solutions to address these requirements than traditional approaches

Siderean Software, Inc.390 North Sepulveda Blvd.Suite 2070El Segundo, CA 90245-4475 USA

+1 310 647-4266

http://www.siderean.com

[email protected]

Siderean Software, Inc.390 North Sepulveda Blvd.Suite 2070El Segundo, CA 90245-4475 USA

+1 310 647-4266

http://www.siderean.com

[email protected]

enterprise navigation (km world 2007)

Technology

web of metadata

information exchange

pieces of information

stitch information

relevant information

information resources

scope of available information

semantic web standards