Services
Interview with Seth Earley, CEO of Earley & Associates by Judy Reveal
I keep a close eye on the various indexing discussion lists for topics that I think would be of both interest and value to our members, and earlier this spring I saw a notice for a series of teleconferences on taxonomy. I contacted the sender, Sachie Kelly Hayashi of Earley & Associates, to discuss the possibility of doing a report on these conferences. As a result I had the opportunity to interview Seth Earley, CEO of Earley & Associates about his company and its educational series and I’d like to share the results of that interview with you.
About 15 yeas ago, Seth founded Earley & Associates, a consulting firm whose initial focus was on Lotus technologies that were popular at that time. Their work concentrated on developing applications for organizations that needed to gain an understanding of knowledge processes and educate these organizations regarding new ways of working and organizing information. As technology developed and progressed, it became important to educate organizations on how new technology was different from other types of computer paradigms with which they were familiar. At the time Earley & Associates was doing what eventually became taxonomy work. The company looked at organizing principles and developing metadata for content as a precursor to web technologies and intranets.
Teleconferences:
After IBM bought Lotus and relegated the program to a “legacy” status, Earley & Associates evolved into working less with Lotus and concentrating more on strategy work. From that point, the business continued to change its focus, helping companies with content strategies and content management systems, organizing mechanisms and doing taxonomy work. Seth realized that most organizations did not understand what they needed to do to be successful with information processes and unstructured information, and that they needed to look at their content from a library sciences standpoint. Old principles don’t apply with new technology and it was at this point that Seth recognized there was a need to educate the markets. This set into motion the development of a conference call series.
Initially, they began with a Taxonomy and JumpStart program; a four-part series that brought together different speakers to discuss specific topics – walking people through the beginning concepts and eventually moving to more advanced programs and speakers. As a result of the success of the program, and due to the ongoing interest, Earley & Associates developed the program into a monthly series. One of the positive results that emerged was that key people in participating organizations were able to make the case within their own companies to begin certain types of programs that would benefit the business.
Since the beginning of the teleconference system, hundreds of organizations have participated in the series. The grassroots education process has been successful with participants discovering the programs through word of mouth and research on the web. Attendees range from representatives of large companies to individual sole proprietors and freelancers; there is a good mix of technical people, decision makers, and even other consulting firms.
Indexing is applying skills of information architecture, search, taxonomy, and metadata. Whether back-of-the-book or web indexers, it’s important to understand the principles of organization in order to speak with a broad knowledge base. Indexers must be able to show clients the different approaches to organization and explain how one’s work fits in with a client’s needs and this is the goal of the teleconference series.
Earley & Associates presents a 4-part conference call series on Semantic Technology. The Semantic Technology JumpStart Call Series will be continuing every Thursday, from October 30th – November 20th, from 11:30 – 1:00 EST. Call dates and general topics are: Call 1 - October 30th: Broad historical picture; Call 2 - November 6th: Details; Call 3 - November 13th: Technical Details; and Call 4 - November 20th: Roadmap
For more details and to register: www.earley.com/jumpstarts.asp