Tagging for Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing By Beth Kanter

Trainer, coach, and consultant to nonprofits and effective technology use. Beth Kanter: Offline

Beth Kanter: Online Profiles & Presence Content in many places RSS Powered Fundraising Sharing photos, bookmarks, videos, and more Conversations connections

Photo by Robert Scales Let’s do a quick poll!

3 words that describe your work interests Type into chat Identify someone you want to chat with based on their word(s) Private chat for 3 minutes Disclaimer: This might not work!

3 words that describe your work interests

Type into chat

Identify someone you want to chat with based on their word(s)

Private chat for 3 minutes

I wrote my thesis on that! http://www.flickr.com/photos/ginable/ This is exactly what I need to learn about!

What is tagging anyway?

Social Bookmarking

Limited Flexibility Limited Descriptive Information

Bookmarks are our junk drawers. Only hyper organized people put them into folders, clean out dead links, or click around the site to figure out why they were bookmarked in the first place. - Laura Gordon-Murname http://www.flickr.com/photos/ledgard/

Limited Mobility too …

Old way to share links …

Can I just use a search engine?

Tagging to the Rescue! Enhanced description! 24/7 access! Serendipity Flexible Easy Share

What’s in it for you?

Rashmi Sinha’s theory of tagging – or why it is catching on “ Tagging is simple”

“ The beauty of tagging is that it taps into an existing cognitive process without adding add much cognitive cost.”

What are some ways that Nonprofits can pick the low Take advantage of the social aspects of tagging What did you tag?

Tagging is wonderful!

Tagging is crap!

Apple For example, the tag …

Fruit

Record Company

Computer

Paltrow’s Daughter

The F Word Folksonomy is the “vocabulary” or collection of tags that results from personal free tagging of web resources for one’s own use and the aggregate collection of tags that results from a group tagging project.

The T Word Taxonomy is the practice and science of classification. A taxonomy might also be a simple organization of objects into groups, or even an alphabetical list.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/leeontheroad/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/absinthe-green/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michal/ “ If taxonomies are trees …” David Weinberger

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thesullys/61095237 Tags are a pile of leaves

http://www.flickr.com/photos/thesullys/61095237 Tagging systems are possible only if people are motivated to do more of the work themselves, for individual and/or social reasons. They are necessarily sloppy systems, so if it's crucial to find each and every object that has to do with, say, apples, tagging won't work. But for an inexpensive, easy way of using the wisdom of the crowd to make resources visible and sortable, there's nothing like tags. David Weinberger

Unscientific Content Analysis based on Examples Found on Net2

Personal Use

Publish links to your blog!

Organizational, Departmental, Team, or Community of Practice Discuss Tagging Policy Set up Account (s) Share Bookmarks

Discuss Tagging Policy

Set up Account (s)

Share Bookmarks

Began an attempt to create an emergent nonprofit technology taxonomy which lead to an experiment with del.icio.us

http://www.flickr.com/photos/editor /

Ad hoc collaborations

Some initial analysis of tags and taggers

Collaborative filtering Social search Retrieval NpTech Mashups

Key Learnings Not everyone had to do the tagging for everyone to benefit Fire hydrants are bad, help people simplify People write the best summaries (not programs) Make your own unique tag! Be open – do not limit the crowd Get the word out; promote your tag Encourage conversation, real conversation http://www.flickr.com/photos/joeshlabotnik/

Not everyone had to do the tagging for everyone to benefit

Fire hydrants are bad, help people simplify

People write the best summaries (not programs)

Make your own unique tag!

Be open – do not limit the crowd

Get the word out; promote your tag

Encourage conversation, real conversation

The Reflection Exercise

Pivot Browsing

Register for a del.icio.us account Identify ten web resources that you find most valuable to your work Bookmark them into del.icio.us using the unique tag “ extag ” Annotate Pivot browse to discover new users or resources, bookmark items you find Write your reflections before May 23rd

Register for a del.icio.us account

Identify ten web resources that you find most valuable to your work

Bookmark them into del.icio.us using the unique tag “ extag ”

Annotate

Pivot browse to discover new users or resources, bookmark items you find

Write your reflections before May 23rd

http://www.flickr.com/photos/bright/ Did you find tagging exercise useful? Why or why not? What surprised you? How will you integrate the use of tagging into your practice? Reflections

Did you find tagging exercise useful?

Why or why not?

What surprised you?

How will you integrate the use of tagging into your practice?

Thank you! Beth Kanter, Beth’s Blog http://beth.typepad.com

Thank you!

Beth Kanter, Beth’s Blog

http://beth.typepad.com