Episode 34 of The Informed Life podcast features an interview with Ren Pope. Ren is a Principal at Info-Do, which offers data, information, and knowledge architecture consulting. He’s worked in these domains for the last 25 years or so, and has also taught colleagues how to do these things through workshops and presentations. Our conversation focused on ontology — in Ren’s words, “the study of things and how they relate to other things” - and why organizations need to know about it:
if you have a very complex subject where your employees, your clients, your stakeholders, can’t wrap their heads around, then you might use ontological thinking. You may not need an entire formal ontology, but you may need to apply ontological thinking to that effort to be able to understand it.
Recent interviews at The Informed Life have veered far afield from information architecture. This conversation with Ren touches on subjects that are central to the discipline. I hope you find this episode valuable.