A Failure to Collate
Michael Barnwell January 7, 2010
The CS challenge: Connecting data – one content clue at a time . (Image via KrazyDad)
In the aftermath of the failed plot to blow up a Northwest airlines jet bound for Detroit, the finger-pointing over what President Obama called a “systemic failure” has centered on an inability to connect the dots. The language used in several commentaries I’ve read about the plot jumped out to me as oddly familiar. Reporters and columnists were speaking about a failure to rationalize databases, a failure to collate clues, a failure by the National Counterterrorism Center -the nerve center and “fusion center of all fusion centers“- to identify a dangerous set of data adding up to an extreme threat.
It’s not often that stock-in-trade content strategy work takes on an air of national importance, but the failures that occurred and the peril it permitted have roots in common challenges that content strategists try to solve from project to project: structuring and tagging data so that meaningful and useful information can be extracted and acted upon.
