This is the 2nd in a series of blog posts dedicated to sharing favorite speeches from previous conferences/events. This week I’m sharing Ruven Gotz’s session Understanding Metadata – Working with stakeholders to build the taxonomy. Ruven delivered this session at the 2011 SHARE conference in Sydney, Australia. It explains what metadata is, why it’s important and how you can explain it to your stakeholders. Consider it your metadata 101 course that covers everything from hamsters to soup cans.

The formal session abstract and speaker bio are included at the bottom of this post. Enjoy!

[vimeo http://vimeo.com/33202418 w=500&h=280]

 

Session abstract:

When it comes to defining the site columns and content types for a project, the first step is to help your stakeholders understand the ‘what and the why’ of metadata so that they can picture how they are going to organise the documents.

Once this is accomplished, you can start to inventory the types of documents that are going to live in SharePoint and then explain the function of content types and site columns.

This presentation will explore some methods that have proven to be successful for explaining these concepts and then organising the taxonomy.

See how to use tools that help users to inventory their documents and capture the metadata (and how to identify the right metadata). You will see how to conduct workshops that help you and your clients to organise this information and then document the taxonomy in a form that can be shared, reviewed and easily modified.

At the final stages, you will see how the required document libraries begin to emerge as part of this process.

Ruven’s speaker bio:

With over 20 years of IT industry experience, Ruven has spent the past seven years delivering award-winning SharePoint solutions for a wide range of clients. As a Business Analyst and Information Architect, Ruven is able to apply his education and experience in Psychology, Computer Science, Economics, Software Development and Training to solve complex problems. He has become a leader in the use of visual tools to help his clients and team members achieve shared understanding of problems and goals and shared commitment towards implementing a successful solution.