Thursday October 1, 2009

1:00 – 2:30 p.m. EDT

Register here for free.

In this session, we will hear a case study from the Hartford Insurance Group about how taxonomy was applied to improving findability of Underwriting content.  We’ll also learn about the state of the insurance industry with regard to adoption of metadata standards and taxonomy practices. This is based on our research into how insurance companies are addressing challenges around content and document management efficiency and search effectiveness by applying taxonomies and metadata.

Join us to hear Seth Maislin, Senior Consultant at Earley & Associates, and Jeff Auker, Assistant Vice President at the insurance company The Hartford, discuss an enterprise taxonomy initiative for managing over 200 million documents in support of underwriting and claims processing. They will address best practices for organizing a taxonomy project, methods for gaining support from stakeholders, and operationalizing a taxonomy program for ongoing success.

Paul Wlodarczyk, Director of Solutions Consulting for Earley & Associates, will review findings of our benchmark metadata survey updated with new results specifically for the insurance industry. The goal of the study is to measure industry progress on a Metadata Maturity Model scale, a road map designed to help get practitioners started – and continuously improve – content tagging within organizations.

Topics include:

• Applying taxonomy to improving findability of information
• Case study – The Hartford
• The role of metadata and taxonomies in content reuse
• Trends in metadata maturity for the insurance industry

Register here for free.

September 24, 2009
1:00-2:30 p.m. EDT

John Greene, Managing Director, Guy Carpenter & Company, LLC
Seth Earley, President & CEO , Earley & Associates
Mike Axelrod, Senior Consultant , Earley & Associates

What is the role of Web 2.0 and Social Media in the insurance industry? How do these new technologies and approaches for creating content fit in with more structured content processes?

In this first session we’ll survey the core processes of insurance operations, show what types of content typically supports such processes, and talk about how some of the newer approaches to collaboration and user generated content fit in to the big picture. Learn how Guy Carpenter & Company, LLC, the world’s leading risk and reinsurance specialist, utilizes social media from John Green, Managing Director in Global Marketing & Communications.

We’ll provide tangible examples of how improvements can provide bottom line benefits and how services can be better performed, products can be more accurately priced, and customer experiences can be improved by well designed content management approaches. We’ll discuss types of challenges in each of these areas and approaches for remediation.

Topics include:

• Overview of content intensive processes
• The use of social media in insurance
• How well architected content can improve knowledge flow
• Classes of content technology in support of insurance processes

Visit earley.com for more information or to register

Speakers
Robert Berry, Information Developer, IBM
Michael Harris, Information Architect, IBM
Erik Hennum, Information Model Architect, IBM
Paul Wlodarczyk, Director Solutions Consulting, Earley & Associates

Many organizations have turned to component-oriented content to create more sophisticated knowledge products, in more languages, at lower cost. For most organizations these days, component content is achieved by using DITA, the Darwin Information Typing Architecture. Finding content in your file system or content repository is hard enough when you’ve got simple text documents to deal with. When you’re using DITA and other component-oriented methods, you increase the difficulty by two or three orders of magnitude, because you’re looking for smaller needles in bigger haystacks. It’s logical that DITA users would turn to taxonomy and metadata to improve findability of their reusable content.

Our research confirms that organizations that use XML authoring are more mature than their peers with respect to the adoption of best practices for search and metadata. However, the use of native DITA metadata capabilities is rare, and many are also missing out on opportunities to use taxonomy for reuse and improved findability. We will explore the metadata capabilities within DITA and component content management systems, discuss two major benefits that can be achieved by using descriptive metadata and taxonomy, and recommend some best practices for getting started with metadata for component-oriented content.

Check out the preview on SlideShare:

Date: Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Time: 1:00 – 2:00 Eastern Time
Cost: $50 (Survey respondents need not register and will receive an invitation to this call at no cost)

Register here.

Four years ago, a benchmark survey was conducted to understand how organizations understood and applied metadata to content assets and what business benefits they were realizing. Earley & Associates along with Taxonomy Strategies, launched a project to update this research. The goal of the study was to measure industry progress on a Metadata Maturity Model scale, a road map designed to help practitioners get started – and continuously improve – content tagging within organizations.

Preliminary results have shown that organizations that are more mature in metadata and taxonomy best practices outperform less mature organizations, with more mature organizations reporting findability and content management problems 10-15% less often. In addition to presenting results around maturity levels, this call will benchmark current search, taxonomy, and metadata practices against the 2005 survey and report on some surprising key findings around information access and best practices adoption.

Register here.

Free.  Register here

This session will cover issues in implementing an effective search experience and the range of available add-ons and compatible tools for extending SharePoint search functionality.

As the volume of information creeps steadily up in your SharePoint portal, so does the importance of sound navigation and metadata that can be leveraged for search. There are challenges around implementing hierarchical metadata and faceted search in SharePoint.

Lars Farstrup will discuss various options for creating an effective navigation and faceted search experience in Sharepoint. Paul Wlodarczyk will cover the range of available SharePoint add-ons and compatible tools to help you manage metadata, taxonomies and provide more robust search and tagging.

Topics include:

• Navigation pain points in SharePoint search
• Using faceted search for better navigation
• Build vs. buy scenarios for custom taxonomy & faceted search
• Taxonomy/Metadata/Search vendor landscape overview
• Specific tool features and limitations

The Content Guy is pleased to have been invited by Earley & Associates to present in their Semantic Technologies Jumpstart series this fall.  This free series runs every Thursday, from October 30th – November 20th, between 11:30 am – 1:00 pm ET. 

Join us November 6, 2008:

Implementing Semantic Search
Presented by Paul Wlodarczyk and Amber Swope
Semantic search helps business people find answers to pressing questions by wading through oceans of information to find nuggets of meaningful information.  In this presentation we’ll discuss how semantic search and content analysis technologies are starting to appear in the marketplace today.  We’ll provide a recap of what semantic search is and what the key benefits are, then we’ll answer the following questions:
• Is semantic search a feature, an application, or enterprise system?
• How can I add semantic search to my existing work processes?
• Will I need to replace my existing content technologies?
• What will I need to do to prepare my content for semantic search?
• Is semantic search just for documents or can I search my data too?
• Can I use semantic search to find information on the internet and other public data sources?
• Are there standards to consider?

This conference call is for implementers and decision makers of all technical levels including those new to semantic technologies.  We will introduce technical concepts in terms everyone can understand.

For more information on the other presentations in the Semantic Technologies Jumpstart series or to register click here.