Upcoming 2026 Speaking Events
“Taxonomy Design Best Practices“ 90-minute workshop
Organizer: Knowledge Graph Conference
Date: Tuesday, May 5, 1:30 – 3:00 pm EDT
Location: Cornell Tech campus, Roosevelt Island, New York, NY, and live stream online
Description: Ontologies form the semantic framework for knowledge graphs, but to serve the purpose of linking data, ontologies need to be based on taxonomies or other controlled vocabularies, whose concepts are linked to data and tagged to content. There has also been a trend of greater integration of taxonomies and ontologies: ontologies are being adopted for wider business use, and taxonomies have been included in the W3C standards with widespread adoption of SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System). While taxonomies are easier to design and create than ontologies, too often they are created without any skill or training, and poorly designed taxonomies yield poor results. This tutorial will cover the basics and best practices in taxonomy design, including: types of controlled vocabularies, standards, sources for topical concepts, wording of labels, alternative labels, hierarchical and associative relationships, and governance. This tutorial also explains the approach of semantically enriching an existing taxonomy to become an ontology by adding a semantic layer of an ontology or custom scheme.
Conference registration link
“What’s Working in Semantic Layers” panel discussion moderator
Organizer: Data Summit
Date: Thursday, May 7, 11:45 – 12:30 pm
Location: Hyatt Regency Boston, Boston MA
Description: This session discusses proven strategies for designing and operationalizing semantic layers across the organization.
Conference registration link
“AI in Taxonomy Building” live webinar
Description: Organizations are racing to build taxonomies to power knowledge graphs, semantic layers, and AI applications, but getting there is harder than it looks. GenAI tools like ChatGPT can give you a starting point, but they come with limitations on quality, compliance, cost, and fit with your actual content. This webinar will show you a better way. Starting from the fundamentals: what taxonomies are, why they matter, and how they’re used in modern enterprise architectures, they walk through the challenges of taxonomy creation and introduce Taxonomy Builder as purpose-built solutions designed to fit seamlessly into a knowledge graph automation workflow.
Organizer: Graphwise
Date: Wednesday, June 17, 10:00 – 11:0 am EDT; 4:00 – 5:00 pm CEST
Free registration
“International Standards for KOS supporting information retrieval and machine learning assessment”
Organizer: International ISKO (International Society for Knowledge Organization) Conference
Date: August 17-19 (panel presentation date TBD)
Location: WZ Hotel Jardins, São Paulo, Brazil
Description: Support for search and tagging using controlled vocabularies has been the main focus of the ISO 25964 standard, Thesauri and Interoperability with other Vocabularies, but this support has recently been complicated by the rise of Generative AI. The changes in the information access and distribution as well as the usage options expansion with recent applications in daily life automation clearly impact the expanded use cases. This panel will be given by members of the committee ISO/TC 46/SC 9/WG 8 Information and documentation, for revising ISO 25964 (Thesauri and Interoperability with other knowledge organization systems). The panel will introduce ISO 25964 Part 1: Thesauri for Information Retrieval, creation, management, and use, which just completed its two years revision and released recently. It will also report the on-going revision of Part 2: Interoperability with other vocabularies which covers interoperability between different thesauri and with other types of knowledge organization systems (KOS). Additionally, the panel will emphasis several recent significant standardization efforts that address responsible use of artificial intelligence (AI) systems by ISO and other organizations.
Presentation/Panel TBD
Taxonomy Boot Camp
Dates: November 16 – 17
Location: JW Marriott, Washington, DC
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.
There will be a limited number of books for sale at a 20% discount from the author at the Knowledge Graph Conference, New York, May 4-6.
There will be copies for sale at a 20% discount at the registration desk at the Data Summit conference, Boston (access without registration), May 5-7, with author signing possible on May 7.
If you do not want to buy a printed book in person at these two events, the conference discount of 20% will also be available for online purchases from the publisher’s website from May 3 – June 5 with the discount code of TATKG1.