Driving Knowledge-Worker Performance with Precision Search Results
Earley & Associates
http://info.earley.com/webcasts/intelligent-assistance-drive-performance-answers-not-documents

This recent webcast from Earley & Associates on search based applications caught my eye for two reasons.  First, I greatly respect this organization. It consults and coaches on taxonomies, IA, and search solutions, and I have benefited from their webcasts over the years.  Secondly, I was just wrapping up a series of posts on search, and this nicely illustrated many of the things I had been talking about.

The webinar starts by explaining how the nature of solutions for knowledge workers has changed over the years due to changes in technology, a more sophisticated understanding of information, and a richer understanding of knowledge worker goals and what success looks like to them.

These are elaborated in subsequent sections.  I particularly liked the material on componentized content and structured authoring. Unlike adding metadata externally to a document,  this provides internal structure based on the semantics of the document, allowing pieces to be created, searched for and retrieved at a more granular level than the entire document.

The webcast finishes with two cases studies that both talk about delivering information to knowledge workers how and when they need it, though detailed analysis of the user goals, tasks and information resources available.

These are leading edge solutions, and give those of us who are more mainstream a mouth-watering glimpse of treats in store.