Re: schema.org

Steve,
That helps a lot. In my case - a proposed visual dictionary-thesaurus 
- I don't have the resources to invest in avoiding the initial labor 
cost, much less investing in the elimination of redundant skilled 
labor down the road.  But another consideration might be the creation 
of a market-making application: one so whiz-bang nifty that it 
becomes viral and sets a standard. I suspect a terminology engine or 
glossary exchange process might fit that bill on the consumer end. 
And work in network theory (small world networks) makes me think 
there might be a plausible case for a search engine that gave 
feedback about semantic proximity (and "betweenness centrality") 
multiple nodes).  Given Steve's analysis, I suppose the ball is in 
the innovator/entrepreneur's court for the moment.

Bob


At 11:45 AM -0400 6/7/11, Steve Newcomb wrote:
>On 06/07/2011 08:27 AM, Robert Parks wrote:
>>I wonder if Topic Maps doesn't suffer from a business analysis 
>>problem. It seems that "better" should at some point translate into 
>>significant savings of time/money.  Can you identify a business 
>>model based directly on appealing to those who will save time/money 
>>by using Topic Maps?
>>Bob
>
>I am very certain about two things, here:
>
>(1) The cost of building/maintaining any particular topic map is not 
>always justified, at least not now, and probably not ever.  It's a 
>multi-skilled-labor-intensive task.
>
>(2) The cost of building/maintaining some topic maps is sometimes a 
>very good bargain, because it dramatically reduces the need for 
>*redundant* multi-skilled labor.
>
>Theoretically, at least, the question "to topic map, or not to topic 
>map" can be boiled down to the question of whether the cost of the 
>avoided redundant labor cost is greater or lesser than the original 
>labor cost.
>
>Much of the developer effort in topic-map-land has focused on 
>reducing the upfront labor cost, which is great.  Some has focused 
>on hiding the fact that it's the quality of the upfront labor that 
>determines the usefulness of the product; I'm less sympathetic with 
>that focus, but I recognize the importance of it in an imperfect 
>world, as full of clueless customers as it is.
>
>But the PRIMARY marketing consideration for topic mapping projects 
>must always be: "Is the proposed Topic Map going to save more money 
>in redundant skilled effort than it costs in upfront skilled 
>effort?"  When we deceive ourselves and others into investing in 
>topic mapping when it's not the right approach, we damage ourselves, 
>we damage our customers, and we damage the whole topic mapping 
>industry.  It's the wrong thing to do.  Better for everyone if we 
>err on the other side, and let some smaller fish go.  (I know that's 
>not easy advice for an entrepreneur to take, but any general will 
>tell you that if you can choose your battles at all, you should 
>choose the ones you can win.)
>
>It's simple to estimate the cost outcome, really.  (It's not simple 
>to estimate the value of imponderables like quality-of-service 
>improvements, so even if we're certain of them, and even if they're 
>the main selling point, it's a valuable exercise to pretend they're 
>not the issue and just make the following calculation.)
>
>(A) How many skilled-person-hours/year will it take to 
>build/maintain the proposed topic map?
>
>       Normally this is just a few people, from 1 to 20 person-years.
>
>(B) What is the hourly labor cost of (A)?
>
>       These are highly skilled people.  Figure $100-$300/hour (or 
>perhaps even more) depending on the domain and the labor market. 
>Don't skimp and don't lie about it.  It always turns out to be 
>harder than anybody thought it would be.
>
>(C) How many person-hours/year will be using the proposed topic map?
>
>       These are people whose *effective* skills will be enhanced to 
>a higher value by their use of the topic map, but that enhancement 
>is hard to quantify, and quantifying it will likely lead to trouble. 
>So let's ignore that aspect, regarding it as just one more 
>imponderable.
>
>       If this number is very large, the result of the calculation 
>will always be favorable, so this is the number to focus on when 
>making a rough prediction of savings/success.  (I think the unusual 
>situation in Norway is due to the largeness of the number of users 
>there, and the fact that Norwegians see themselves as participants 
>in a Norwegian economic community.  In other words, they're alert to 
>the fact of their shared economic destiny, and they are rational.  I 
>do wish that were not such an unusual thing in the world.)
>
>(D) What is the hourly labor cost of (C)?
>
>        This number is extremely situation-dependent.
>
>(E) What is the productivity-improvement factor of the use of the topic map?
>
>         You really won't know this until after the project is up and 
>running, and maybe not even then unless you've got a control group 
>working without the topic map.  We have demonstrated a 
>productivity-improvement factor -- a direct labor saving in a call 
>center -- of +10-20%.  But it could be much higher.  On the other 
>hand, if the topic map doesn't effectively address the productivity 
>requirement, it could also be less.  Worst case, it could even be 
>less than zero, because a poor topic map could actually make the 
>user's job harder.  I feel pretty safe with +10% because as a topic 
>mapper I'm *always* and *primarily* concerned with user 
>productivity.  I generally expect the factor to be more, but 
>disappointments happen.  People are weird and unpredictable.
>
>Savings can thus be calculated conservatively as ((C * D * E) - (C * 
>D)) - ( A * B).
>
>Does that help, Bob?
>
>Steve


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