The episodic “oh, woe is topic maps! We aren’t as successful as ..(insert some semantic technology)..” posts are back on topicmapmail@infoloom.com. I don’t dispute that topic maps could improve its market share. I remember the “we’re #2, so we try harder” advertising campaign and take our present position as a reason to try harder, not to bewail our fate as ordained.
Let’s talk about how to market something closely related to topic maps, indexing.
I come to you with this great new idea, indexing. Instead of starting on page 1 and going through page n every time a reader wants to find information, the index points right to it. A real time saver.
You get excited and so we discuss two different marketing approaches:
1) We can do presentations, paper, demos, etc., on the theory of indexing, models of indexing, write software that does indexing, with a lot of effort, etc.
or,
2) We present a publisher/reviewer/reader with a book without an index and we have a copy of the same book with an index, plus a list of ten subjects to find in the book.
Show of hands. Which one do you think would be more effective?