Bob Kasenchak

Bob Kasenchak is an expert on taxonomy for web publishers. He's one of a handful of information architects who focuses on this powerful practice.

A good taxonomy helps people find and navigate your content. It helps search engines index and list your content. It helps connect your content to similar content on the web.

The process of building a taxonomy can help align different business units in your organization around a central knowledge model that can power a number of different information systems.

People like Bob devote their careers to the practice of taxonomy. But you don't have become a professional to benefit from well-organized content.

Bob and I talked about:

his role at Synaptica, a company that sells taxonomy and ontology software

what taxonomy is, and its origins in the worlds of science and librarianship

the differences between taxonomy use in the analog and digital worlds

the inferiority of simple text search and how taxonomy can help deliver better search results

how the concept of social media hashtags illustrates the benefits of creating controlled taxonomies

how taxonomy creation can help align stakeholders across an organization

how taxonomists can use an enterprise's content to create a central knowledge model to power a number of internal information systems

how to embed taxonomy practices in your organization

how "a taxonomy is a living document or data structure that has to be fed and watered" to account for change - Pluto as a planet, or COVID-19 as a disease, e.g.

how the differences between structured content in a format like XML versus content stored in a database affect your ability to retrieve certain kinds of content information

taxonomies that show organizational structure

the difference between a content tagging taxonomy and web navigation taxonomy

how taxonomies often exist in many different places and formats in an organization - "taxonomies are like teapots - everyone has a couple of them lying around, even if you're not sure where they are or how you got them"

some of the tools available for taxonomists

how to use existing taxonomies to jump-start your taxonomy project

how to enlist taxonomy fans in your organization to support ongoing taxonomy work

the natural human propensity to categorize things, and how taxonomy can help

Bob's Bio

Bob Kasenchak is a taxonomist and Senior Manager of Client Solutions at Synaptica living in Albuquerque, New Mexico. After early training in philosophy and a decade studying and teaching music, Bob spent eight years designing and developing information projects at a leading taxonomy firm before joining Synaptica in 2019. His current interests include knowledge graphs, gamelan, and soup.

Connect with Bob on Social Media

Twitter

Links to Resources Mentioned in the Podcast

The Accidental Taxonomist

list of taxonomy tools

TemaTres

Video

Here’s the video version of our conversation:

https://youtu.be/x7ty-51N8jQ

Podcast Intro Transcript

Whether you're classifying biological organisms, organizing books in a library, or categorizing your company's website content, you need a taxonomy. A good taxonomy makes your content accessible to people, findable by search engines, and connectable to other content. People like Bob Kasenchak devote their careers to the practice of taxonomy. But you don't have become a professional like Bob to benefit from well-organized content. Keep listening to learn more about this powerful information architecture practice.

Interview Transcript

Larry:

Hi, everyone. Welcome to episode number 77 of the Content Strategy Insights podca...