Upcoming 2026 Speaking Events
“How Taxonomies / Ontologies Drive Knowledge Management“
Organizer: Progress Data Platform Summit
Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2026
Location: Hyatt Regency Reston, VA
Description: Taxonomies, ontologies and knowledge management increasingly overlap as organizations seek better ways to organize, connect and apply enterprise knowledge. This educational session explains how knowledge organization systems support knowledge management, why they remain relevant in the age of AI and how they can help turn scattered information into usable business context. The session will define the roles of taxonomies and ontologies, showing how they relate, differ and extend one another. It will then connect those structures to the core components of knowledge management, including knowledge creation, capture, organization, retrieval, sharing, reuse and governance.
“Taxonomy 101 Tutorial“
Organizer: Taxonomy Boot Camp conference
Date: Monday, November 16, 2026
Location: JW Marriott, Washington, DC
Description: This introductory taxonomy tutorial covers key concepts to get you up-to-speed for the rest of the conference or helps prepare you to take on a role in a taxonomy project. Topics include what taxonomies are, the various uses and benefits of taxonomies, comparisons of taxonomies with other knowledge organization systems, standards for taxonomies, taxonomy creation research and sources for concepts, the wording of concept lapels, best practices for creating hierarchical relationships, the structural design of hierarchies and facets, and brief introductions to other issues related to taxonomy management.
“SPARQL Field Guide for Taxonomists“
Organizer: Taxonomy Boot Camp conference
Date: Monday, November 16, 2026
Location: JW Marriott, Washington, DC
Description: Modern SKOS taxonomy management tools come with useful built-in reports: orphan detection, cycle detection, basic structural validation. But built-in reports cover only the questions the vendor anticipated. Working taxonomists routinely need to ask questions that no template covers, such as which concepts are missing definitions, scope notes, or alternative labels and which concepts have multiple broader concepts (polyhierarchy). This talk, presented by a taxonomist and an ontologist, is a practical field guide to using SPARQL as a custom reporting layer for SKOS taxonomies. We will walk through a working set of queries that surface the kinds of structural and content patterns taxonomists may need to see.
“Uses of GenAI and LLMs in Taxonomy Development” panel moderator
Organizer: Taxonomy Boot Camp conference
Date: Tuesday, November 17, 2026
Location: JW Marriott, Washington, DC
Description: GenAI is rapidly changing how organizations create, maintain, and apply taxonomies. In this panel discussion, practitioners from financial services, professional networking, media, educational publishing, and AI technology share their experiences using LLMs and other AI techniques to support taxonomy and ontology work. Panelists discuss applications such as term mining, taxonomy maintenance, genre and category development, structured knowledge creation, metadata enhancement, domain coverage analysis, and machine-readable knowledge representation. Hear about practical successes, implementation challenges, lessons learned, and emerging approaches for integrating AI into taxonomy workflows. Together, the panel explores how AI is reshaping taxonomy practice.
Book Sale and Signing Events
Heather Hedden signs copies of The Accidental Taxonomist, offered for sale at a conference discount at the conferences at which she speaks. Some conferences, such as KMWorld, have a book sale table. At other conferences Heather Hedden will have a few books along to sell and sign when meeting informally at the conference.
A very limited number of books will be available for sale and author signing at the ISKO conference in São Paulo in August.
A book sale and signing event will be held at KMWorld conference (with which Taxonomy Boot Camp is co-located) on Monday, November 16, in the Showcase during the Grand Opening Reception, 5:00 – 6:00 pm, which can be accessed with Enterprise Solutions Showcase pass. Register for the pass for free through October 16. After that, it is $25.