Taxonomies have been around for years, so why are they such a hot topic now? How will the semantic Web affect online searching? What connection is there between taxonomies and ontologies? Find our the answers to these questions and more from industry leaders such as:

• Joseph Busch (Taxonomy Strategies)
  
• Denise Bedford (World Bank)
  
• Ramana Rao (Inxight)
  
• Stuart Sutton (University of Washington)
  
• James Hendler (University of Maryland)
  
• Michael Daconta (Department of Homeland Security)
  
• Dan Dabney (Thomson/West)

Session 1

Joseph Busch:
is the Founder and a Principal of Taxonomy Strategies. Mr. Busch is an authority in the field of information science, a past president of the American Society for Information Science and Technology (http://www.asist.org). He is the author of many articles on indexing, classification research, and information retrieval systems.

Denise Bedford:
Denise Bedford's duties at the World Bank Group include management of the World Bank Group's Meta Thesaurus and core metadata strategy, as well as membership in the Information Architecture Group. Since 1997 she has been a member of the Adjunct Faculty at Catholic University of America. In addition to her role as member of the board of Trustees of the Dublin Metadata Initiative, she is a Senior Fellow of the Montague Institute.

Session 2

Ramana Rao:
As CTO and Founder of Inxight, Ramana Rao is responsible for the strategic vision and architecture of the company's products and technologies. At Xerox Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) for 10 years, he performed pioneering work in intelligent information access, digital libraries, information visualization, and user interfaces. His work includes 25 patent filings and numerous refereed research papers.

Stuart Sutton
Stuart A. Sutton is Associate Professor in the Information School at the University of Washington, Seattle, and the Director of Education Digital Library Initiatives in the Information Institute at Syracuse University. Dr. Sutton is also a lead researcher for the U.S. Department of Education's Gateway to Educational Materials project. He serves on the Usage and Advisory Boards of the Dublin Core Metadata Initiative and co-chairs its Education Working Group.

Session 3

Dan Dabney:
Dan Dabney is Senior Director for Taxonomies and Subject Access Research at Thomson/West. He is in charge of the revision and updating of West's legacy taxonomies, including the Key Number System and KeySearch. He has a B.A. from St. John's College in Santa Fe, a J.D. from the University of New Mexico, and M.L.I.S. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of California at Berkeley.

Session 4

Jim Hendler:
Denise Bedford's duties at the World Bank Group include management of the World Bank Group's Meta Thesaurus and core metadata strategy, as well as membership in the Information Architecture Group. Since 1997 she has been a member of the Adjunct Faculty at Catholic University of America. In addition to her role as member of the board of Trustees of the Dublin Metadata Initiative, she is a Senior Fellow of the Montague Institute.

Mike Daconta:
Michael Daconta is the Metadata Program Manager for the Department of Homeland Security. Mr. Daconta is an author, lecturer and columnist who has authored or co-authored 10 technical books, as well as numerous magazine articles and online columns. He previously served as the Chief Architect of the Defense Agency's Virtual Knowledge Base.

August 2005