Upcoming 2026 Speaking Events
“Building Taxonomies from the Bottom Up and Top Down“
Organizers: AILIS (Association of International Librarians and Information Specialists, Geneva), CERN Library, and Zentralbibliothek Zurich
Date: Tuesday, September 29, 15:00 – 16:00 CEST (9:00 – 10:00 am EDT)
Location: virtual on Zoom (free)
Description: This presentation will explain the methods to design and build custom taxonomies for information retrieval. A taxonomy, as a more flexible form of thesaurus with hierarchical or categorical structures, is usually custom designed to serve a specific use case of a set of users and a set of content. As a hierarchy, the taxonomy can be built from broader to narrower terms (top down) or by grouping specific terms (bottom up). The taxonomy design must also consider the needs of the users and the subject scope of the content. We can also consider the approach of basing the taxonomy on content as building the taxonomy from the bottom up, and basing the taxonomy on the needs of the users as building the taxonomy from the top down.
“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.