I went to something called a ‘knowledge mash-up’ last week at the British Computer Society. This was a reasonably enjoyable event - 2 of the presentations were interesting. But for one of them I really didn’t get what the speaker was talking about. For another, I felt the topic worked well - but within very narrow confines and that there was an alternative reality that many people are engaged in, which is politically different, but perhaps equally successful. 

I’ve been to many, many conferences and workshops and seminars over the years, and there are still some things that speakers said years ago that I remember - often the more unlikely people. For last Thursday’s event I’m struggling to remember more than one or two things. Maybe it’s the knowledge management syndrome; do I really get it?

Which comes to purpose. I don’t have any immediate requirement for understanding knowledge management in the abstract, whereas I do need to get a deeper understanding about faceted classification. To do this I have two books that I’m reading - ‘Classification and Indexing in the Social Sciences’ by D.J.Foskett and ‘Essential Classification’ by Vanda Boughton.

As it normally takes at least 3 years for me to catch up with the latest gadgets and technology, it occured to me earlier today to search on the internet for ‘faceted classification’. This returned a paper by Vanda and a rather entertaining website and blog called ‘Elegant Hack’ - http://eleganthack.com

There’s a very entertaining discourse on faceted classification, based on the cooking of a risotto.