Slides from Taxonomy Boot Camp London 2016. Original abstract: In taxonomy for information management or web publishing, you are limited by the shape of the content. However granular your terms, most CMSs are only designed to apply them to whole documents or pages. Yet some organizations have more complex content management needs. Regulated industries need legal approval for individual chunks of text. Technology or manufacturing companies with complex product families must support users by filtering and displaying only the relevant information. Any organization with significant amounts of web copy must link to and from that copy effectively to meet the goals of the site. Structured content technologies are designed to meet these needs by managing and recombining smaller, templated chunks of content, typically stored as XML. Metadata is embedded in the content itself — from the whole document or page level to blocks within a page, and even to individual terms in a sentence. While these technologies are mature, the metadata that is used in them is often surprisingly unsystematic. Timely input from a professional taxonomist can provide enormous benefit in terms of content management and user experience. This talk shows how taxonomies can be applied effectively to structured content authoring and delivery environments. An end-to-end use case will be demonstrated, including templated XML authoring, smart page-level and inline tagging, and personalized delivery to end users, tying together content from different teams in an organization. The audience will learn how the business benefits of taxonomy can be multiplied when applied to granular, structured content.

1. Multiplying
the Power of Taxonomy
with Granular, Structured Content
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Joe Pairman
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2. Taxonomies
themselves are
often very granular…

3. …the objects that taxonomies
label are often less granular
(pages, sections, and
documents)

4. Benefits of applying taxonomy to
granular, structured content
~ Easier to manage variants & personalization
~ Improved content
coverage & quality
~ In-context relevant links
(improved UX)
~ Easy publishing of
search-engine friendly
Linked Data

5. How I cut my teeth in
structured content…

6. …in HTC’s User Education team

7. We needed multichannel output

8. ”Show Me” app on phone
Support content on desktop
PDF user guide
We needed multichannel output

9. PDF
Enriched XTHML for
mobile app
author
interface
CCMS
topics
build maps
text and media
Publishing
engine: based
on DITA Open
Toolkit
DITA XML
• re-use/re-assembly
• cascade changes
Enriched XTHML for
corporate site &
internal KB
Component content management
— multichannel publishing

10. Many product variations to
document, for different models…

11. …regional variants…

12. …and customizations.

13. PDF
Enriched XTHML for
mobile app
author
interface
CCMS
topics
build maps
text and media
Publishing
engine: based
on DITA Open
Toolkit
DITA XML
• re-use/re-assembly
• cascade changes
Enriched XTHML for
corporate site &
internal KB
Component content management
— managing variability

14. In-topic variation handled with a
combination of techniques

15. In-topic variation handled with a
combination of techniques

16. Structured content approaches
encourage ad-hoc, local practices
Structured content tends to separate:
~ Profiling condition values
~ Variable IDs & values
~ Metadata terms stored in the content directly
~ CMS-level metadata
Markup often describes what should happen
to the content, not what it signifies!

17. Structured content approaches
encourage ad-hoc, local practices
Structured content tends to separate:
~ Profiling condition values
~ Variable IDs & values
~ Metadata terms stored in the content directly
~ CMS-level metadata
Markup often describes what should happen
to the content, not what it signifies!

19. “There are no tools that pay attention to this sort of stuff today,
and until there is a strong driver to do markup in this way,
it won’t become popular”

20. Since then,
several things
have come
together…

21. My work on XML consulting/integration/dev.
— incl. taxonomy dev & application to
structured content at the section level
Partners, providing dynamic web
delivery for DITA XML
— incl. linking key terms to
glossaries & related content
intuitive, reliable XML authoring tool
— now, easy inline term tagging too,
powered by PoolParty concept
extraction API
Partners: I started playing with their
concept extraction tech & then moved
into the other features
— clients are integrating structured
content tech & other systems

22. Next:
Mekon’s demo
to illustrate the
power of
structured
content /
semantic tech
combined

23. Content Marketing case study

25. Appealing
recipes…

26. Link to related
products

27. But the link is
out of context,
and not
obvious

28. By using structured content +
taxonomy, we could do better

29. Starting with a recipe taxonomy

30. Tech writers create tech docs

31. Marcom creates recipes

32. In FontoXML

33. Connecting key inline terms…

34. To the taxonomy concepts.

35. When we
publish the
recipes &
blender docs
to DITAweb…

36. Users
can select a
preparation
method
or ingredient

37. …to
see the
attachment
that makes the
method easier

38. To
learn
more about
the attachment,
select the button

39. From here, you
can buy the
product
directly

40. The doc automatically links back
to the recipe, and the recipe
relates to “shave” and “blend”

41. Why this approach to links?
Why ask authors to identify concepts instead of
enriching automatically later?
~ Disambiguation
~ Correct usage

42. Why this approach to links?
Why ask authors to identify concepts instead of
enriching automatically later?
~ Disambiguation
~ Correct usage
Why not simply create direct hyperlinks to the
target page?
~ Fragile
~ Application-specific

43. More use cases for connecting
structured content + taxonomy
Area Example/s
Easier management of
content variability
Pharma or any other situation where a product
has multiple concurrent names
Improved content quality Technical content referring to parts of a machine:
• Are all parts covered?
• Do the parts that users enquire about most
often have sufficient coverage?
In-context relevant links • Glossary info defined in taxonomy
• Integration with PLM, where a click on a part
name brings up the relevant drawing/animation
Easy publishing of search-
engine friendly Linked Data

47. Benefits to connecting granular,
structured content + taxonomy
Area Example/s
Easier management of
content variability
Pharma or any other situation where a product
has multiple concurrent names
Improved content coverage
quality
Technical content referring to parts of a machine:
• Are all parts covered?
• Do the parts that users enquire about most
often have sufficient coverage & effort spent?
In-context relevant links • Glossary info defined in taxonomy
• Integration with PLM, where a click on a part
name brings up the relevant drawing/animation
Easy publishing of search-
engine friendly Linked Data
• SEO for answers about products
• Aggregation to allow doctors the ability to see
drug info straight from manufacturers alongside
national guidelines on those drugs

48. Thoughts? Questions?
Get in touch:
~ joe.pairman@mekon.com
~ @joepairman on Twitter