:Title:    Nonprofit Technology Taxonomy Creation
:Author:   marnie webb
:Date:     Wed, 22 Dec 2004 09:29:36 PST
:URL:      http://www.omidyar.net/group/compumentor/news/11/

I decided to pull the last three comments from the `TechSoup RSS`_ thread into this thread so that the subject line is more descriptive.

At the end of `this post`_, `Richard`_ wrote:
  
  Now thinking about collaboration ... I'm fantasizing that a bunch of we folks who publish in this space agree on some platform where we can share our bookmarks, blogs, etc. For instance, set us some basic taxonomy and agree to use those tags in `del.icio.us`_. Spurl and others integrate with delicious, so you can basically pick your front-end means of populating delicious tags. Oh, and check out stream.spurl.net, which lets you set up numerous "tributaries" flowing into a single stream.

`David`_ `replied`_:

  Richard, keep in mind that Techsoup has the lead in NPO technology taxonomies with techfinder. I hope that there are meetings inside CompuMentor accross divisions to leverage the power of being a first mover in NPO tech taxonomies!!

  We did a great job a back in June 2002 building a good, smart community around the taxonomy discussion. It would be pretty easy to loop Rem Hoffman into the discussion along with the Techfinder email list http://list.nten.org/lists/info/techfinder.

  As you say, first implement/test taxonomy ideas with del.icio.us. Great Idea!! From there, the next release of techfinder can accomidate the learning from that excercise.

And then I `suggested`_: 

   I think that there could be a way of creating a ground up taxonomy using a tool like del.icio.us. This is all about thinking aloud so feel free to shoot whatever holes in this you like.

   Let's say we push a single shared tag -- nonprofit_tech. We ask everyone add that to relevant links. But then we encourage them add whatever tags they find meaningful. We can set up then set up a del.icio.us account that tracks that shared tag via it's subscription mechanism/inbox. Folks can access this via the RSS feed.

   We spend some time just collecting. After we get some suitably robust amount of data, we do a little analysis and from that select some keywords and then begin to devise a taxonomy. This process would have to be repeated.

   What do you think? Could that be a fairly painless way of getting a jump start on a nonprofit tech taxonomy creation?

As Richard said, let's talk!

.. _`TechSoup RSS`: http://www.omidyar.net/group/compumentor/news/10/
.. _`this post`: http://www.omidyar.net/group/compumentor/news/10/6/
.. _`Richard`: http://www.omidyar.net/user/u444385112/
.. _`del.icio.us`: http://del.icio.us
.. _`David`: http://www.omidyar.net/user/u746899553/
.. _`replied`: http://www.omidyar.net/group/compumentor/news/10/7/
.. _`suggested`: http://www.omidyar.net/group/compumentor/news/10/8/