Through-out his career Seth Earley has been passionate about the crucial role of information management would play in a world hurtling toward digital transformation. Named to Thinkers360 top 50 global thought leaders and influencers on Artificial Intelligence for 2022, he provides challenging insights to executives who are tasked with leading their organizations forward in an age in which the digital experience offered to customers determines the winner.
As CEO of Earley Information Science, a consulting firm he founded over 20 years ago, Seth guides some of the worlds most recognized brands on how to leverage their information assets to deliver state of the art customer experiences through integrated enterprise architectures. Seth has a long history of industry education and research in emerging fields. His current work covers cognitive computing, knowledge engineering, data management systems, taxonomy, ontology and metadata governance strategies.
Seth Earley is a sought-after speaker, writer, and influencer. Seth’s book, The AI-Powered Enterprise: Harness the Power of Ontologies to Make Your Business Smarter, Faster and More Profitable, was published in 2020. His writing has appeared in IT Professional Magazine from the IEEE where, as former editor, he wrote a regular column on data analytics and information access issues and trends. He has also contributed to the Harvard Business Review, CMSWire, Journal of Applied Marketing Analytics, and he co-authored “Practical Knowledge Management” from IBM Press.
“We need more training data” is a common reframe from AI project principles. However the organization does not lack data. If anything there is too much data and machine learning and automated approaches are needed to understand and make use of enterprise data. The missing ingredient is a consistent framework and structure for information. Frequently the conventional answer is “master data”. While master data is important and critical to many processes, starting at the data level can cause the organization to miss important elements. A better place to begin is defining the concepts and things that are important to the business. Those concepts can then be designed into multiple systems and technologies.
This is a critical distinction that business leaders need to understand rather than leave to technology groups or worse, try to outsource to third party and off-shore providers.
One expression of these business concepts is referred to as an “ontology” which is the master knowledge scaffolding for the enterprise. Building, applying and maintaining an ontology sounds complex but it is no more complex than other important business considerations.
Creating an ontology is an essential investment to prepare your enterprise to realize the benefits of AI and machine learning. Gone are the days when businesses should simply allow a number of small AI projects to blossom independently: for these projects to be competitive they need to draw on data from across the company, data stored in many different forms in many different systems and in different structures. An ontology defines these connections in a way that AI can take advantage of.
Business will be best positioned to build and apply practical business-focused ontologies if they 1. Identity pain points and friction in the current process 2. Define the desired future state 2. Understand what data is required to support that future state 3 Develop the organizing structures to harmonize and apply are most needed-before beginning to set the organizing principles for the ontology itself.
Attendees will leave with an understanding of:
“Seth’s keynote was informative and humorous. He cut through the AI hype and explained the technology’s true promise and constraints. He also reminded us that high-quality, audience-focused, well-structured content is key to success in any digital communications channel, including AI-enabled channels.”
“Seth Earley is a terrific speaker on a variety of content-related topics. His knowledge of the space, along with his industry affiliations, place him well above the pack. In addition, Seth is an engaging speaker. He clearly shows passion for his work, holds the attention of the audience, and provides a captivating and enjoyable experience. We enjoyed having him speak at Information Development World and look forward to additional opportunities in the future.”
“Seth’s practical approach to AI in his Information Development World keynote presentation provided a much-needed, realistic view of the technology for content professionals. His knowledge of content, information architecture, and content management helped to put the AI story into a broader context that any content pro could understand and relate to, and his humorous delivery engaged the IDW audience and ensured that his important messages about AI were received.”
“Seth is a powerful speaker who understands the values of proper data management in large complex environments. Seth has a keen sense of the future direction of information science as it relates to the digital revolution. Seth keeps his audience engaged and active when presenting. Seth can sense the listeners understanding level and adapt his presentation on the fly to keep the topic relevant and engaging. I always enjoy listening to Seth speak and feel like I leave his presentations with a better understanding than when I walked in.”
