Information overload.

We cope but it isn't getting much better.

And sometimes finding what we're looking for is like a needle in a field of haystacks. Or a leaf in forest of trees.

Search alone is rarely enough to find what you need in very large data spaces. For example, Google search results and Monster candidate listings often return thousands of close hits. Matching engines efficiently apply criteria to a two-sided search (both employer and worker have demands to be met and supply ways to meet the others' demands).

Taxonomies are another approach. Yahoo! and Open Directory show the value of navigating through clumps and clusters of related sites. But you have your own data to mine. And creating a taxonomy by hand is expensive and slow. 

Enter taxonomy helpers. They do several things:

• Analyze source files: Suck metadata from your diverse resources (documents, web pages, emails, news feeds, etc.) into a common and comparable format
• Define clusters: Help define your topics and how the topics are related. This is compute and storage intense, so it is often done bit by bit. Starting with broad categories and refining and splitting them as they fill up.
• Categorize: Assign each resource into one or more categories in the taxonomy, typically using metadata.
• Serve: Manage a user experience for surfing or flying through the taxonomy.

Here's a roundup on some shipping categorizers.

First, I noted Quiver, a tool that recommends topics for human review and approval.

Back in April, eContent Magazine wrote a piece on Taxonomy's Role in Content Management.

Taxonomy technology greatly assists the sharing of enterprise knowledge. But don't expect to sit back and watch it go. Experts agree that those searching for an out-of-the-box solution shouldn't hold their breath. Count on adding a little elbow grease, but the results will be worth it.

They mentioned taxonomy vendors:

Autonomy creates and maintains outlines using pattern and cluster analysis. Separate components analyze documents for their content and categorize them to taxonomy branches and leaves.

Inxight Software's Categorizer filters, classifies and delivers content to users and corporate knowledge bases. It scales to millions of documents and thousands of topics in multiple languages. A sister product, MetaText Server elicits structured data from unstructured sources.   

Lotus Discovery Server extracts, analyzes, and categorizes structured and unstructured content to reveal the relationships between the information as well as the people, topics, and user activity in an organization.

Microsoft's SharePoint Portal Server has manual content categorization features.

Semio's SemioTagger autocategorizes content.

Sopheon autocategorizes content from multiple sources, including sources external to the enterprise.

They also pointed out taxonomy visualization sites.

Antarcti.ca uses cartography to map clusters of information spatially.

Inxight VizServer's Star Tree (shown here) and Table Lens help you to meaningfully surf large dataspaces.

TheBrain Technologies
www.thebrain.com

Now eWeek reviews three more products in this space:

• Applied Semantics' Auto-Categorizer 1.1
• Interwoven's Metatagger 3.0
• Thunderstone Software's Texis Categorizer 4.1.

eWeek's overview of the comparison findings is worth reading as is their eVal Scorecard: Content Categorization. Note they used very small record sets, the low thousands. Even a small company will organize hundreds of thousands of records, if not millions.

One last note. Standards in this area are few and rarely implemented. These few are RDF (Resource Description Framework), DAML (DARPA Agent Markup Language), and DAML+ OIL (Ontology Inference Layer).

Now where should I categorize this post?

I miss StrategyWeek.com so much I'm going to try my own hand at this. Where they interviewed CEOs, I want to focus on Chief People Officers. 20-30 minute interviews with thought and execution leaders.

Themes:

• Strategy.
• Alignment.
• Competition for Talent.
• Planning.
• Optimization. 
• Joining the CXO team.
• Core technologies.
• M&A and alliances.
• Measurement.

I'm investing in some of the gear and relationships to make this happen. I'll keep you posted.

50 percent to 70 percent of mergers and acquisitions fail. 74-83 percent fail to create shareholder value. At least in the private sector.

What makes anyone think that moving dozens of diverse agencies under one headquarters is the right path for synergy?

If you can't make them work together now, what makes you think you can make them work together after?

Boards would fire a CEO asking for this. "I want to acquire 140,000 workers in more than 20 firms with different missions and business strategies, cultures that serve those strategies, physically scattered, incompatible information systems, and conflicting compensation structures. In six months. Without losing customers, revenue, or profits." Off to the looney bin.

Seven reasons mergers fail in the banking industry (according to M&A lawyers):

1. Culture Clash
2. Premium Too High
3. Poor Business Fit
4. Management's Failure to Integrate "A well-conceived plan for business integration, without disruptive culture clash, is the single most important element of a successful merger."
5. Overleverage
6. Boardroom Schisms
7. Regulatory Delay

Culture may be the biggest factor here:

Organizational culture is a blend of an organization's values, traditions, beliefs and priorities. Also, it helps determine and legitimize what sort of behavior is rewarded in an organization.

You can just see the conflicts building.

President of EDS Energy looks to IT factors:

IT is an often-overlooked element of acquisition and merger strategies. Getting it wrong can be expensive in ways that are obvious: business disruption and the delayed achievement of benefits, or less obvious: a missed opportunity to capitalize on a key intangible asset. Reducing the risk to acceptable levels isn't easy, but it is worth doing. The starting point is the recognition of IT's value in markets that are changing rapidly, and many organizations just aren't there yet.

PricewaterhouseCoopers agrees: "Nearly three out of four companies reported problems integrating information systems after a merger."

Action Items:

1. Watch these agencies launch an IT upgrade and integration program by March 2003.
    
2. Web service folks: Play a part in the integration by building web services to bridge these enterprises. Web services and M&A.
    
3. Recruiters: Now is a good time to raid the federal ranks for talent who won't want to be part of this change.
    
4. UserLand: Help these agencies communicate by registering manila and Radio on the GSA list of approved products. Maybe partner with their lead IT consultants.

Sleep well.

Al Macintyre wrote:

Unfortunately some old favorite links that I have used a lot in the past must have been moved, and are now broken.

I think the Radio Community needs some kind of transfer service. When a body moves to a new site, a directory could be created with the old address and the new address, so that someone else's site that had saved the old address, can find the replacement one. Or perhaps a plug-in that does the updates for us.

For every old rendered page, replace using a template with:

1. The name of the site and, where possible, the page title.
2. "This page has a new home. Click here to continue there or wait five seconds to be see it automatically."
3. A metatag redirection.
4. Referral logging, with a simple tool to notify webmasters via email of linkrot on their sites.
5. Link to the new home page.
6. Optional: site search form.

[aka Blue Sky Radio]