ISKO UK Meetups
ISKO UK Meetups are dedicated to discussing broad range of topics related to knowledge organization and building bridges between academics and practitioners. Whether in-person or online, ISKO UK Meetups provide an informal and friendly atmosphere and encourage interaction and networking.
Throughout 2024, ISKO UK Meetups are being organized as online events through the Meetup.com Knowledge Organization London Group. Join the group to receive updates and register to attend.
In 2021, ISKO UK organised a series of Open Source Tools Workshops where participants could use a shared environment to experience working with VocBench and Wikibase.Past event videos are available on YouTube as 2024, 2023, 2022, open source tools workshops and meet-ups playlists.
Upcoming Events
We are working on the calendar of events for 2025. Join Meetup.com Knowledge Organization London Group to receive updates.
Past Events in 2024
| Tuesday, 19 Nov 2024 6:30pm GMT |
Introducing Jekyll RDF by Natanael Arndt from the German National Library We'll introduce Jekyll RDF, a plugin for the open-source static website generator Jekyll. It allows the use of RDF data, such as SKOS Taxonomies and OWL Ontologies, in the static websites generated with Jekyll. If you are looking for a fast, lightweight and open-source taxonomy publication system, this event may be for you. Video, slides and event details... |
| Tuesday, 8 Oct 2024 6:30pm BST |
What's New in Skosmos 3 by Osma Suominen from the National Library of Finland Skosmos is an open-source, web-based tool for browsing and publishing SKOS controlled vocabularies, facilitating indexing, information retrieval, and vocabulary development. It is being developed by the National Library of Finland, which uses it to power the Finto.fi vocabulary and ontology publishing service. Many other institutions worldwide use Skosmos for publishing their own controlled vocabularies. The upcoming major release, Skosmos 3, focuses on reimplementing the user interface with modern frameworks, featuring a new visual design, enhanced accessibility, and comprehensive automated testing. This presentation will demonstrate the current status of Skosmos 3, discuss its impact on Skosmos deployments and end users, and outline the roadmap for future steps. Video, slides and event details... |
| Tuesday, 3 Sep 2024 6:30pm BST |
Documents, Databases, Knowledge Graphs, LLMs and Their Common Roots in Natural Language by John O'Gorman from Semantium "Stepping back" is a common technique when new ideas threaten to overwhelm old thinking. The current excitement, and sometimes anxiety, around AI is akin to the kind of chaotic synergies that took place when electricity first came into common use. People fear for their jobs, make mistakes that cause injury, while at the same time marvel at the "new magic". |
| Tuesday, 14 May 2024 6:00pm BST |
FINRA's Machine-Readable Rulebook Initiative by Afshin Atabaki, Alex Khachaturian and Nick Vitalo from FINRA Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) staff will provide a demonstration of their machine-readable rulebook initiative. As part of this initiative, FINRA developed a taxonomy - a method of classifying and categorizing a hierarchy of key terms and concepts - that was applied or "tagged" to the 40 most frequently viewed FINRA rules. The taxonomy allows users to apply an enhanced search feature to find specific content by starting with a broad topic and then narrowing down to more specific topics through sub-categories and combinations of multiple terms. Based on the taxonomy, FINRA created a prototype of a rulebook search tool - the FINRA Rulebook Search Tool™ (FIRST™). FIRST is a taxonomy-based rulebook search tool designed by FINRA to make the FINRA rulebook more accessible when searching for relevant information or developing automated compliance functions. FIRST is enabled by a regulatory taxonomy applied, or "tagged," to a series of FINRA rules. The taxonomy enhances the FINRA rulebook by allowing users to narrow down the universe of potentially applicable rules through sophisticated search filters. In addition, the FINRA Application Programming Interface (API) Platform provides a rulebook API that enables users to receive rule content, including the taxonomy terms tagged to each of the 40 rules. These may be mapped to internal compliance systems and can facilitate the development of automated compliance tools. Our hope is that attendees will understand how FINRA's machine-readable rulebook initiative can help enhance firms' compliance efforts, reduce costs, and aid in risk management. For more information, attendees may read the Special Notice: FINRA Requests Comment on Its Machine-Readable Rulebook Initiative. |
| Tuesday, 16 Apr 2024 6:30pm BST |
What Information Behaviour and Practices Mean for Use of Metadata and Knowledge Organization Systems
by Marianne Lykke from Aalborg University Starting with what we know about information behaviour and information practices in business environments, Prof Marianne Lykke will discuss what it means for Knowledge Organisation, specifically for the use of metadata and Knowledge Organisation Systems and the role they play in information systems, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning technologies. |
Past Events in 2023
| Wednesday, 8 Nov 2023 |
Information Governance by Noeleen Schenk Information Governance is a crucial aspect of managing information in organisations, and in this meetup, we'll examine what it is, why organisations are adopting it, some common overarching processes and how it relates to knowledge organisation. We'll also delve into how organisations partition the domain, including whether security, privacy, and quality are included and if there are any regulations that drive this partitioning. Additionally, we'll discuss case studies to understand what good information governance looks like. Don't miss out on this opportunity to learn from Noeleen Schenk and understand the impact of Information Governance on organisations! |
| Wednesday, 11 Oct 2023 |
How Can a Knowledge Audit Contribute to Knowledge Management Planning by Patrick Lambe and Janine Weightman A knowledge audit provides an "at a glance" view of an organization's needs and opportunities. Its purpose is to improve an organization's effectiveness through a better understanding of the dynamics and levers of knowledge production, access, and use. However, there is a lot of inconsistency in how knowledge audits are conducted, which sometimes undermines the credibility and usefulness of the exercise. Patrick Lambe will introduce a systematic approach to knowledge auditing and will talk about the inspiration behind his newly published book "Principles of Knowledge Auditing: Foundations for Knowledge Management Implementation", and Janine Weightman will share her practical experience conducting knowledge audits through a case study. |
| Wednesday, 6 Sep 2023 |
coli-conc: Mapping Knowledge Organization Systems by Uma Balakrishnan coli-conc is an infrastructure that provides easy access to KOS and mappings in a uniform data format on a single platform. It also facilitates management and exchange of concordances between library knowledge organization systems. The heart of the coli-conc infrastructure is the mapping tool Cocoda which assists in the creation and processing of intellectual mappings amongst various types of KOS. The presentation will include a live demonstration of the tool, the different sources of mapping suggestions as well as the current and possible future use cases of the tool and mappings in different scenarios. |
| Wednesday, 10 May 2023 |
One Information Management System for Compliance, Governance and Findability by Stuart Eve and Darren Wray In this talk, Stuart Eve and Darren Wray from SimSage will discuss meeting competing priorities with a single information management system. |
| Wednesday, 12 Apr 2023 |
The Opportunities and Challenges in Leveraging Sustainable Finance Taxonomies by James Phare and Daniel Burke-Ward Suddenly in recent years, the world of sustainable finance has become transfixed with Taxonomies, which classify financial securities and activities as 'green' (sometimes even light green or dark green). With the EU Green Taxonomy leading the way, over 30 green taxonomies now exist - mainly developed by international financial regulators & standards bodies. Yet, whilst finance for a long time has worked with a variety of taxonomies, such as industrial sector classification schemes, for the vast majority of the sustainable finance community, these taxonomies remain an untapped resource, poorly understood and underutilized. In this talk, James & Dan will share their practical experiences of working with the various sustainable finance taxonomies, the direction the space is headed in as well as touching on some of the use cases Neural Alpha are delivering utilizing taxonomies within Knowledge Graph powered Natural Language Processing (NLP) and other applications. |
| Wednesday, 8 Mar 2023 |
Vocabs Editor and Taxonomy Publishing Ecosystem by Peter Andorfer and Klaus Illmayer In the first Meetup of 2023, Peter Andorfer and Klaus Illmayer from Austrian Centre for Digital Humanities will discuss Vocabs Editor and the taxonomy publishing ecosystem based on Skosmos. |
Past Events in 2022
| Thursday, 24 Nov 2022 |
Data Discovery at Wiley by Niké Brown In this follow-up to ISKO UK Meetup in October about taxonomy business use cases, Niké Brown focuses on the real-world issues of taxonomy design and implementation. |
| Monday, 10 Oct 2022 |
How Taxonomies Can Solve Complex Business Problems by Ramona Aubry Have you ever wondered what pain points a taxonomy can solve? In this session, we’re sharing our experience around the way in which taxonomies deliver value for organizations that struggle with content challenges. Join us to learn why taxonomies are unique in tackling the most advanced business problems when it comes to unstructured content. |
| Tuesday, 13 Sep 2022 |
How to Build a Knowledge Graph by Paul Appleby In this talk we cover the steps in the journey to creating a knowledge graph, from beginning to use taxonomies and ontologies through to finally delivering knowledge graphs at scale through APIs. The best approach for many organisations is to deliver a knowledge graph incrementally to provide value as soon as possible. The learning curve can be steep and the skills are not always available. We look at how the latest tooling can help with this. There is also the question of build versus buy (including open source) and we cover some of the pros and cons of both approaches. |
| Tuesday, 12 Jul 2022 |
Taxonomies for Confluence by Eugene Morozov One in the series of short talks showcasing developments in knowledge organization tooling. Eugene will talk about Taxonomies for Confluence, a Confluence add-on that lets you classify pages and blog posts using SKOS controlled vocabularies and integrate Confluence content into knowledge graphs. |
| Tuesday, 14 Jun 2022 |
Why Graphs? The Limits of Hierarchical Thinking by Bob Kasenchak Why would a taxonomist 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 modelling options, and usurps existing (tree-based, or arboreal) power and information structures in favour of a decentralized, democratized information environment with no beginning and no end. |
| Tuesday, 10 May 2022 |
The Evolution of UX Strategy by Jaime Levy Have you ever wondered aloud, what the hell is UX Strategy? Well Jaime Levy, the author of the O’Reilly Media best-selling book UX Strategy is coming with a long ranty answer. User experience (UX) strategy lies at the intersection of UX design and business strategy. This talk delves into the evolution of the term over the last 15 years and how it has taken on new meaning. Jaime will also provide a high-level overview of the product/UX strategy techniques that make up her methodology. Please come with good cheer and questions. |
| Tuesday, 12 Apr 2022 |
Keywording Creative Content by Clemency Wright This presentation explores the key methodologies and strategies employed when Keywording creative content. We’ll see how Keywording relates to content classification and content retrieval. We’ll look at illustrated examples and learn about real-life case studies, and how organisation employ creative Keywording practices. There is a focus on conceptual Keywording and the impact this has for today’s brands and visual communications. This presentation introduces the practical skills required to harness conceptual keywords, optimise access to assets, and target more users with relevant content. The key principles of Relevance, Accuracy and Consistency will be discussed alongside visual examples, to achieve the key learning outcomes. |
| Tuesday, 8 Mar 2022 |
Basic Steps in Creation of Structured Vocabulary by Leonard Will When creating a structured vocabulary, in addition to the technical and intellectual considerations about defining concepts and their relationships, there are management aspects that have to be resolved. Why do you think that a structured vocabulary is needed? What resources will it give access to? Who will use it, at the input and output stages? What kind of structure will be appropriate? What software will it use? Who will maintain it? These matters are dealt with in clause 13 of the international standard ISO 25964-1:2011, which this talk will summarise to encourage participants to answer these questions for themselves. |
| Tuesday, 22 Feb 2022 |
E-commerce Search is Broken - How to Fix it With Open Source Software by Charlie Hull The simple truth is that if you can't find it, you won't buy it - but in that case why do so many e-commerce websites fail at the basics of search, with irrelevant or even zero results for the simplest of queries? Charlie will show examples of search failures and introduce Chorus, an open source reference implementation for powerful and relevant search that can be swiftly tuned to fix common e-commerce search issues. |
| Tuesday, 25 Jan 2022 |
The Evolving Role of Metadata by David Haynes David Haynes will talk about ways in which metadata’s role in the digital economy is changing. In his book "Metadata for information management and Retrieval" he talks about the six purposes of metadata. Some areas such as information retrieval are due a re-think and other areas such as information governance are becoming more critical. |
Past Events in 2021
| Tuesday, 23 Nov 2021 |
ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: Introduction to Wikibase by Mohammed Sadat Abdulai, Georgina Burnett, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov |
| Tuesday, 19 Oct 2021 |
Coping with Complexity: Building a Knowledge Graph for UK Parliament by Anya Somerville and Michael Smethurst |
| Tuesday, 14 Sep 2021 |
Copyright in a Knowledge Organization Workplace by Stephen Garfield |
| Tuesday, 06 Jul 2021 |
On the Pre-history of Information Technology by Stephen Robertson |
| Tuesday, 15 Jun 2021 |
Semantic Tagging and Text Classification for Archives and Content Systems by Chris Newell. Many archives and content production systems suffer from a lack of comprehensive content metadata. This presentation describes work to overcome this using automated text tagging and classification tools which can be applied to text documents, video subtitles or speech-to-text transcripts. |
| Tuesday, 01 Jun 2021 |
ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: VocBench Workshops: Part 3: VocBench Vocabulary Versioning and Data Catalogue by Armando Stellato, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov In this last interactive workshop in the VocBench series, we'll talk about managing versions of your vocabulary. We'll provide an instance for all participants to get the first-hand experience - you'll be able to use a preloaded vocabulary to play along or bring your own. |
| Tuesday, 25 May 2021 |
MS Teams – The Case for Information Architecture and Governance Presentation by Metataxis. This presentation seeks to address the issues and challenges organisations and information managers are facing with the introduction of MS teams, providing practical advice on how to address them, focusing on the developing a robust information architecture and governance . |
| Tuesday, 04 May 2021 |
ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: VocBench Workshops: Part 2: VocBench Data Import with Sheet2RDF by Armando Stellato, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov In this second interactive workshop, we'll talk about importing existing vocabularies into VocBench. We'll use both standard format and Sheet2RDF feature. You'll be able to play along using the provided data. If you manage your vocabulary in a spreadsheet, you can bring it along, and we'll see what we can do! |
| Tuesday, 20 Apr 2021 |
Beyond the Hero's Journey by Paul Rissen Drawing upon the work of screenwriting experts, critics and academics, as well as seven years of experience with narrative online, this talk will demystify the process of crafting a narrative, showing how information architecture and structured thinking can help us make sense of the stories we tell ourselves every day. |
| Tuesday, 06 Apr 2021 |
ISKO UK Hands-on Meetup: VocBench Workshops: Part 1: Introducing VocBench by Armando Stellato, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov "Introducing VocBench" is the first workshops in which speakers will present VocBench and explain the basics. A VocBench instance will be created to provide participants with a first-hand experience. Participants will be able to use preloaded vocabulary or bring their own. An open Q&A session is arranged to give participants an opportunity to ask questions and share their experience with VocBench. |
| Tuesday, 23 Mar 2021 |
Going Virtual with Taxonomy Boot Camp London by Helen Lippell and Kat Allen from Taxonomy Boot Camp London This was a very different talk from what might have been if we'd been asked in 2019. The call for papers for TBCL 2020 was sent out early last year, just as worrying news about the novel coronavirus were emerging. Boot Camp has been running since 2016 (and its US sister event for over a decade). The last year has been unlike any other. We explained how we have adapted to changing circumstances to create an online version of our friendly and intensive conference. |
| Tuesday, 16 Feb 2021 |
Searching Fast and Slow: Exploring Alternative Approaches to Search for Knowledge Workers Tony Russell-Rose is Senior Lecturer in Computer Science. He is also Director of UXLabs, a research and design consultancy specialising in complex search and information access applications. In this Meetup, Dr Tony Russell-Rose considers knowledge workers such as information professionals, legal researchers and librarians and their requirements to create and execute search strategies that are comprehensive, transparent, and reproducible. |
| Tuesday, 19 Jan 2021 |
Email and MS Teams From an Information Architecture Perspective In this Meetup, James Lappin has explored what strategies towards email will best enable information professionals to make a positive contribution to how messages are managed, protected and exploited as a knowledge resource. James Lappin has spent over twenty years working in the field of archives and records management. He has provided consultancy advice for UK Parliament as well as the Hinkley Point C nuclear power. James is currently working for the European Institutions. He is also carrying out a doctoral research project into archival policy towards email in conjunction with Loughborough University and the National Archives. James is the author of the Thinking Records blog and presenter of the IRMS podcast series. |
Past Events in 2020
| Tuesday, 22 Dec 2020 |
Interactive Workshop VocBench: Getting Started, Installation Step 1 VocBench is a web-based open source application to build knowledge organisation systems using SKOS, but it needs a bit of work get it running. In this interactive workshop, Phil Stacey and Eugene Morozov will walk through prerequisites and the local set up of VocBench step-by-step, and develop a simple taxonomy using Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS). A Simple Knowledge Organisation System (SKOS) provides a standard way to represent knowledge organisation systems such as thesauri, classification schemes, subject heading systems and taxonomies within the framework of the Semantic Web. |
| Tuesday, 17 Nov 2020 |
Myths and Half Truths About Semantic Data Modelling In this talk, Panos Alexopoulos, Head of Ontology at Textkernel, described certain myths and half-truths that are found in the semantic modelling world and discussed what typically happens in reality. |
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