The Knowledge Organization

💩 Visualizations are limited. Most vizualizations rely on structured data — so forget about a Kanban board with swimlanes, an event calendar, a gantt chart, or a hierarchical list.

A single generic hierarchical network is capable of holding all the knowledge of an organization. So why aren’t these networks common?

Is there a way to combine structured and unstructured knowledge, vertical and horizontal connections?

💩 Querying data is hard. All pages have either the same or unpredictable attributes. Getting all high-priority features or all customers due to renew the next month is nearly impossible.

💎 The structure is flexible. The knowledge architect is free to create as many or as few tables as needed and connect them in the way it makes sense to the particular organization. As organization evolves, she creates more tables and adds more relations.

So we need both horizontal and vertical connections as well as the ability to handle structured data. Sounds pretty much like…

In a flat network we are free to form arbitrary connections between nodes (pages).

In a relational database, both vertical and horizontal connections are present through one-to-many and many-to-many relations. Each table has its own attributes making home for structured data.

💎 Structured and unstructured knowledge is mixed. You set feature priority, but you also write specs. You advance deals through a pipeline, but also take meeting notes. Hopefully, digital whiteboards and interactive embeds will also be welcome — one day 🤞.