This makes my 1,000th post to Another Word For It.
I wanted to take a moment to think about where I would like to go next with the next 1,000 posts.
First, I want to become more systematic with the academic literature that is relevant to topic maps. As you have seen, it is spread from bioinformatics and computer science to library science and semiotics.
One of the things that makes articles/books/presentations slow to add is that I read/view all of them before actually posting them to the blog.
I suppose I could go just on titles/abstracts but then you would have to duplicate my wading through stuff that never makes it onto the blog. That doesn’t seem like a value-add.
Second, along with that, I want to provide more in the way of assistance in that jump between, “ok, topic maps sound great,” and having an operational topic map that provides a meaningful result.
Being more systematic about the literature isn’t going to be easy and providing generalized assistance for topic map authoring is going to be even harder.
My proposal, subject to your comments and suggestions, is to create what I am calling starter maps that have a lot of the basic infrastructure topics, types, etc., plus topics, associations, etc., for a particular domain.
For example, I might want to offer a starter map for say NASCAR racing, that has all the usual structural topics but also all the racetracks, races and competitors for the last decade. Plus relevant associations. Not everything someone would want but enough that getting visible results would not be all that hard.
A boost over the topic map fence as it were.
At least initially, those are mostly going to be in topic map format type data resources. Doesn’t really scale for semantically diverse resources but everyone has to start using topic maps somewhere.
Third, in addition to bare bones starter maps, I would like to create outlines of data sources that look particularly interesting.
Not nearly as easy to use as the starter maps but easier for me to author.
The sort of thing that points out subjects and relationships with subjects in other data sets that may not be readily apparent.
Fourth, I want to continue to discover interesting approaches and resources to bring to your attention.
Those will range from new technologies, such as NoSQL and graph databases, to new algorithms for data processing, to new ways to think about subjects and their identifications, etc. Some of them will prove to be very useful in connection with topic maps and others will prove to be less so, if useful at all.
The key criteria for that last item being that it is interesting material. It is impossible (IMHO) to say what information will or will not spark the next great idea about topic maps in my readers.
Finally, in order to devote the cycles necessary to make all of the foregoing happen, I need donations/sponsorships for these activities.
If you like what you see here on a daily basis and this sounds like a good plan, please use the donate button.
Sponsors welcome as well, please inquire. patrick@durusau.net
PS: Topic map consulting/teaching/training also available.
1000th post? Wow!
Congratulations! This makes you the Topic Maps IronMan in my book.
\rho
Comment by Robert Barta — February 9, 2011 @ 3:37 pm
Congratulations Patrick! It’s been a pleasure to follow your blog. Thank you. –Aki
Comment by Aki — February 10, 2011 @ 2:40 am
Congrats! 🙂
If WordPress increments the post ids by 1 you must have 6519 unpublished posts! 😉
Comment by Lars Heuer — February 10, 2011 @ 10:16 am
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