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Description
Why would two taxonomists interrogate the limitations of hierarchical thinking and information organization? Graphs offer more specific and flexible structures to model relationships between objects. This basic change of frame reflects more accurately the way humans understand information, provides flexible and extensible modeling options, and usurps existing (tree-based, or arboreal) power and information structures in favor of a decentralized, democratized information environment with no beginning and no end.
About the speakers
Bob Kasenchak is a taxonomist and ontologist at Factor. For over 10 years, he has designed and implemented vocabulary projects for clients in the publishing, e-commerce, technology, and other sectors in the semantic software space. Bob earned a BA in Liberal Arts from St. John’s College, Santa Fe, an MM in Theoretical Studies from the New England Conservatory of Music, and put in 5 years towards a PhD in Music Theory at the University of Texas before abandoning academia for the information industry. His current research interests include ontologies, knowledge graphs, and text classification. Still active teaching and playing music, Bob has been a member of the local ensemble Gamelan Encantada for the past several years. He lives in Albuquerque with his wife and elderly cat.
Ahren E. Lehnert is an information and knowledge management professional with twenty years’ experience in taxonomy, text analytics, search, and content and records management. Ahren has developed enterprise taxonomies and knowledge development and retrieval strategies as a consultant and full-time employee in a broad range of industries. He writes about and is a frequent speaker on industry topics in company-sponsored webinars, large conferences like KMWorld, and a host of other venues. Ahren is Senior Manager, Graph Solutions at Synaptica, LLC, a provider of taxonomy, ontology, and text analytics products and services. He lives and works in Oakland, California. If you don’t find him swimming in information, you will find him swimming laps.