Learning templates for organising content…

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Learning templates for organising content. I’ve just come across Denham Grey’s Information Gathering Template post.  I’m not sure how I missed it before, I’m subscribed to Denham’s feed.  Anyhow it’s really interesting.

What he’s done is to publish his informal framework for categorizing information when doing research.  It goes like this:


  • People
  • Places
  • Problems
  • Promises
  • Principles
  • Patterns
  • Products
Please read Denham’s post for his excellent notes on each category.  Obviously this is very similar to the approach we have taken with K-Collector.


  • Who
  • Where
  • What

  • When
to which I think it might make sense to add ‘Why’.  In this case our framework is simpler, conflating: problems, promises, principles, patterns, and, products into what.

Although W4 is less expressive than Denham’s template we think making it simpler keeps it suitable for general use (Denham is a consultant and far more experienced than most people.)

 However if we can find a way to layer additional levels of meaning without giving up that simplicity I think we will do it.  It makes sense to enable users who can benefit from that extra expressability and for all users to benefit from the new relations we can build among topics.  Since K-Collector’s architecture allows us to do this it’s just a matter of working out the best way and Paolo and I have been talking about this recently.  We’ll also be sounding out beta testers and customers to see what they think.

I’m keen to hear from anyone about their frameworks for collecting & organising content.  I do think we have many lessons to learn and want K-Collector to reflect that learning as much as possible.
[Curiouser and curiouser!]