Enough of Big Data.

1. BIG CONTENT
A Semantic Review of the Pink Elephant Pink15 Conference, Las Vegas 2015
Titles like that rev things up, so it's important that they get tamed quickly. That's exactly the issue that
comes with many great items of work presented at conferences. In the course of a single presentation,
we may be taken across many different points of reference in order to be given a broad perspective. Or,
the material may dwell only on a single point or point of view. From the item's title, maybe we could tell
which thing would happen; but often not.
The major annual ITSM conference produced by Pink Elephant is no exception, and the range of issues
covered for the attendee audience is knowingly far greater than any one professional can address in
depth during the actual event. One of the most important benefits given the audience is access to the
entire set of presentations given during the conference.
Year over year, those materials add up to a massive library of reference material. While any given year
has the flavor of current urgent topics in the field, a compilation of materials can take place over

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multiple events and naturally over multiple years. That immediately offers opportunities to compare
materials that may at first seem dissimilar but may share a focus on the same topic. In other words, the
multiple items add up to depth of coverage.
Additionally, over time, the materials collection creates the possibility that a gradually wider range of
topics will get covered. In light of that, it is especially interesting at any conference to anticipate and
monitor which issues get more coverage this time, and which get less or even none.
HOT OR NOT
Usually, discussions are interesting precisely because they help establish connections between multiple
ideas. At least superficially, that makes more work for the task of deciding what "most notable" issue is
going to get chosen as the discussion's main assignment. And, unless the conference is academic, the
superficial guidance of titles is an important ingredient as signposts for beginnings, but they are not
scientifically reliable as descriptions of the destination.
The distribution of topical coverage is what our post-mortem research thinks of as a "heat map". This
mapping depends on making decisions about what any particular discussion means most distinctively, in
relation to most others of similar audience interest or shared agenda.
The table below shows the result of making those choices based on weighing the strength of the
enhancement or the resistance that a presentation offers to a topic, relative to the other materials also
offered. The named topics shown are not the titles of the materials; they are the issues found within the
materials. However, to dramatize distinctions in the conference coverage, any item from the conference
is allowed to represent only one topic in the table count.
Further, there is no argument of "objectivity" in those interpretations; the decision-making recorded in
the table is far more like jurying than like any other method. However, one thing that makes the
decisions even possible is the ability to refer back to many years of collected reference materials put
through the same exercise.
MAPPING
The "face value" of the findings is meaningful mainly as a weather report. But naturally, the contrast of
emphasis in some areas versus others can be interesting. For some areas, one might say "Okay, not
surprising." And in others, the reaction might be "Really? That's unexpected." Or maybe, simply,
"Why?"

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With a statistical mapping like the above, it is important to resist the urge to "draw conclusions" from
the differences. What is "in evidence" is nothing more (but nothing less) than a description. The
description is along the likes of saying that more people came to talk about Topic X than came to talk

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about Topic Y. On the one hand, the eventfulness of a conference is greatly derived from the relative
emphasis that it offers; but in a knowledge base, what matters is the relevance of the concepts to the
scope of the declared domain. Thus, inclusion, not emphasis, is the key characteristic.
CURATING
Declaring topics makes the most sense when there is a background context for calling them up. The two
most intensive approaches to establishing that context are arguments (a hypothesis), and frameworks.
Not coincidentally, the value of a content collection as a knowledge base relies heavily on both
approaches, which are complementary. A framework provides the criteria for identifying contexts, and
within a context, a hypothesis generates its greatest impact.
Like architectures, frameworks provide a functional logic of inclusions and exclusions. The framework
underlying the table above has been set up as a collecting device that topically catalogs both older and
new materials. Currently, this framework is maintained by Archestra Research and has migrated to the
new online content management platform from eXie LLC. A SaaS curating tool, the eXie solution allows
continual collection and contribution of materials in user-defined, private or public, frames of reference
( http://bit.ly/1TsngVv ).

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The ongoing collection becomes accessible 24x7 online. By default, the eXie user's account makes the
user’s curated collections initially private; the user then can choose to publish the collections as shared
reference content. Using the frame of reference, persons with rights to view the included materials can
readily and consistently locate the relevant curated materials addressing their issue at hand.
In our case, the framework has been applied to (and currently labelled as) the Pink15 conference
material. This collection can easily be merged into a similarly defined frame that also curates additional
material from other upcoming ITSM conferences as well.
DESCRIPTIVE AND PRESCRIPTIVE
While scope and inclusion make relevance the key criterion, the "heat map" of content newly presented
brings up a chance to ask if more coverage should be pursued in a given area. The answers can equally
influence the retention, assignment, and development of content.
As a result, knowledge planning moves into content management as a strategic effort aimed at
supporting designated audiences. A defined framework, even entirely without included content, is still a
critically important device for designing content collections and for excavating the meaning of existing
collections.
Content is, literally, what is found inside a container. A knowledge base stores and organizes conceptual
content.
Big Content, so to speak, captures content across subjects, formats, origins and time periods --
strategically assessing its significance in a contextual analysis and re-presenting the content's meaning
on demand.
©2015 Malcolm Ryder / Archestra Research