Month: October 2001

Here are some lessons I learned working with categories.  Four years ago my team and I at my last company built a dynamic publishing system that supported categorization.  My initial intent was to build a large comprehensive list of categories our analysts could use to tag content when they published to the system.  We were going to provide our customers with the ability to build their own Weblog based on the categories/topics they selected.

The categorization scheme quickly got out of hand.  It became too unwieldy and complex to introduce into the analyst's workflow.  We opted instead for a system built on automated search functionality that looked for keywords in the content. 

That experience has taught me that the best way to use categorization as a means of serving the needs of specific groups of readers.  For example, a corporate K-Log may use three categories:  one for work group peers, one for the entire company, and one for friends and family.  For simplicity, the writer only deals with a few core categories.  Also, the writer still only interacts with a single Weblog home page.  As a result, the workflow needed to make this possible is simple and easy to incorporate.  The readers, however, get targeted content.  Personal content isn't included in the corporate and workgroup Weblogs.  Workgroup content isn't posted to the corporate Weblog.  Dual posts to both corporate and worlkgroup Weblogs is easily done by clicking two checkboxes. 

The benefits of this system really show when RSS headlines and search functionality is added.  As a reader I can now subscribe to a targeted Weblog via RSS headlines (Radio has this capability) that arrive on my desktop every hour.  With search (Daypop is a great example) I can find Weblogs and specific posts that are talking about topics that I think are interesting. 

It may be advantageous to post all e-mail to the Web or the Intranet.  If used in conjunction with an automated categorization scheme it could provide nice benefits.  Although I think it would quickly get out of hand.  Also, I am not sure many people would want their entire e-mail on the Web or Intranet for everyone to read.

More interesting to me is the concept of e-mail promotion.  E-mail promotion allows me to take great e-mail interactions and post them to my K-Log.  By prmoting the e-mail, I am telling my readers that I think this e-mail is worth reading.  Additionally, by posting the e-mail I introduce it into my time-organized K-Log archive.  From my perspective, my K-Log archive is a repository of everything I am thinking and doing.  It provides a context to my activities like nothing else (Doc would call it a story).  For example, I could look back a month ago to quickly find out what I was working on, what I was thinking at the time, etc.  E-mail systems don't provide me that level of context.

Perhaps, we could combine the two ideas in an innovative way using a desktop K-Log client.  In this hybrid system, I would forward all of my e-mail to my desktop K-Log client.  I would also forward all of my IM conversations.  All of this content would be searchable using a desktop search engine and viewable via a browser.  I would treat this content as background material for my K-Log.

I could promote the e-mails I think deserve it, and leave the rest in the bin.  It would remain private until I changed its status by promoting it.  I would also have the ability to sift and sort through this background material to develop interesting directories of information that deserve promotion.  For example:  a long-running conversation with a client or business partner.