Information Revolution

Taxonomies with Helen Lippell

In our last episode before we take an end of year break, we had the pleasure of talking with taxonomy consultant Helen Lippell, editor of the book Taxonomies and programme chair of the Taxonomy Boot Camp. We talked about the value of semantic work, the cost-effectiveness of keeping a taxonomy fed and watered, and, of course, how well these tools support the use of AI. 
Somehow we collectively hallucinated the existence of "Canada Airlines" - and in the context of discussing the relative accuracy of people and technologies! Perfect.With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Building a library or knowledge service with Alison Jones

What does it take to bring together a library of your organisation's valued information? Alison Jones tells her story with a focus on her current role at Atlassian.
Go back to episode 43 to hear the conversation sparked by Alison's LinkedIn posts, which Karl refers to in this episode.
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Ask a solution architect II: Attack of the Kearns

Welcome back to our guest Adrian Kearns! We thought last episode was fruitful enough that we should go another round. Testable strategy, learning how to influence, and more.
A couple of bonus blog posts from Adrian you should definitely read:
How to influence at work: https://morphological.wordpress.com/2024/11/21/how-to-influence-at-work/
Four traps experienced solution architects fall into and how to mitigate them: https://morphological.wordpress.com/2021/01/27/four-traps-experienced-solution-architects-fall-into-and-how-to-mitigate-them/
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Ask a solution architect with Adrian Kearns

As part of an occasional series trying to join some dots between information management, information architecture, and other professions, we invited Adrian Kearns to come in and talk about what he does, the kinds of problems architects try and solve, and some of the ways he tries to go about it.
While Michael battles with a touch of the laggy video, we have some good discussion about throwing technology at something that isn't a technology problem, the good ol' Five Whys technique, loose coupling, and more!
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Libraries, knowledge bases and records

A free-ranging* conversation about the value of establishing a library or knowledge base of authoritative information than people want to access and can trust!
We touch on everything from shifting the focus of our practice towards getting people the right info, through Conway's Law and the DMBOK, to the persistent value of knowing what problems we're even trying to solve.
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton
* No, that's not a euphemism for completely without focus!

Can we scale?

If we've got a thousand records to manage, what do we do? How about a million? How about a billion? We talk about the problem that records and information management practices don't seem to change in the face of scale, some of the implications of that, and what we might try.
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Three things about how SharePoint in Microsoft 365 works

This episode Michael share three things he wishes he'd known sooner about how information is structured in Microsoft 365, compared to in an EDRMS:
Microsoft 365 Groups change the way you manage access;
there is no folder structure, a site just sits there on its own; and
using content types are key to managing metadata when there's almost no inheritance.
Some links to learn more:
A surprisingly good visual of all the things connected to a Microsoft 365 Group: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/office-365-groups
Thinking about sites as standalone things, these pages might be helpful: "Guiding principle: the world is flat" https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/sharepoint/information-architecture-modern-experience
Introducing content types: https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/office/introduction-to-content-types-and-content-type-publishing-e1277a2e-a1e8-4473-9126-91a0647766e5
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

They've gone feral

Episode 40! Wow! Thank you to all who have been listening. For this one, we're back on the people stuff, thinking about when folks at work won't stick to the script.
A couple of things that come up:
Fundamental Attribution Bias https://www.simplypsychology.org/fundamental-attribution.html
Five Whys https://www.masterclass.com/articles/how-to-use-the-5-whys-technique-for-a-root-cause-analysis
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Information governance

It's been a minute! Is "information governance" just a rebrand, a way to get people to listen to us? Is it a thing you can get from a piece of software? Surely not. So, what is it?
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton

Custodial hangovers

In the era of paper, records management hinged on a custodial model: get the things of value, describe them in order to take care of them, and help people to access them if they ask. How much is this still our practice in 2024? And what does it mean?
Karl mentions Edgar Schein's definition of organisational culture, here's an open access PDF of Schein's Coming to a New Awareness of Organizational Culture.
With your hosts:
Karl Melrose
Judi Vernau
Michael Upton