How a Taxonomy Becomes an Ontology in the Real World

How a Taxonomy Becomes an Ontology in the Real World

Cynefin’s Dave Snowden was right to call on philosophy when he pushed back on my claim that a conference lanyard and badge formed a “living ontology.” Under classical definitions, what hangs around a participant’s neck at KMWorld looks more like a taxonomy: categories and labels, color codes and groupings. But knowledge management rarely lives inside classical definitions. It lives in practice, in movement, in context. In that sense, a KMWorld lanyard is not just a taxonomy of roles and affiliations, but instead behaves like an ontology, enacted and negotiated in real time.

Taxonomies classify things. Ontologies express relationships among things. The distinction matters in software and formal reasoning, but it becomes more porous when applied to lived experience. A KMWorld badge does not stop at “speaker,” “press,” “exhibitor,” or “attendee.” A lanyard encodes and animates relationships between person, event, community, and knowledge flows.

Consider a badge as data. The badge’s front usually holds a name, an organization, perhaps a role. That already goes beyond taxonomy. “Speaker” or “Sponsor” might be a category, but “Speaker at KMWorld 2025 on AI and Knowledge Governance” implies a relationship between the person and a set of sessions, a track, a body of content, and a likely cluster of hallway questions. It creates an expectation: this person is connected to those ideas and those conversations. The lanyard is a visible assertion of those relationships.

Now add the decorations: pins from previous affiliations with standards bodies, membership in professional associations, vendor lanyards swapped for something more personally representative, along with whimsical pins that reflect fandom or identity. A taxonomy would say: here is a list of tags. An ontology would say: here is how these tags relate to one another and to the bearer. A pin from a vendor’s knowledge graph product, above a ribbon labeled “Consultant,” next to a conference-branded AI icon, does more than classify; it signals that this person likely works with AI-enabled KM tools, occupies an advisory role, and engages across organizational boundaries. That is a graph, not a hierarchy.

Relationships deepen the moment another participant reads the badge. The simple act of glancing at a name and role initiates a micro-ontology: “This person from that company is speaking about that topic.” The observer’s mental model turns the badge into a node in an evolving network. Even without technology, people perform lightweight reasoning: “This is a speaker on knowledge governance from a large pharmaceutical firm; that intersects with a current project; a conversation might be valuable.” The badge has become an interface for relationship discovery.

Conferences often amplify badge relationships further through digital overlays. QR codes on badges link to schedules, profiles, or session lists. Scanned into an app, the physical badge becomes a key into a semi-formal ontology: people tied to organizations, sessions tied to tracks, interests inferred from attendance and interactions. The lanyard is no longer only a physical taxonomy of roles; it anchors a hybrid ontology spanning physical and digital spaces. A person’s badge links to their session history, their vendor engagements, and perhaps even social graph connections imported from LinkedIn or other systems.

Status markers on badges offer another layer. Color-coded bands distinguish exhibitors from practitioners, first-timers from long-time attendees, sponsors from analysts. Those colors are not simple classes. They shape behavior: who approaches whom, who is expected to sell, who is expected to listen, and who is treated as an authority. Those social expectations are relationships. The lanyard encodes them up front, and the community activates them through interaction.

Even location and movement get pulled into the ontology. A badge that opens the expo floor early for exhibitors or grants access to speaker lounges embeds permissions. Access control is an applied ontology: this role grants these capabilities in these spaces.

When a speaker badge unlocks a quiet room just before a session, the system executes rules—perhaps crudely, but usefully—about the relationship between person, time, role, and place. The lanyard may also hold other permissions, such as access to lunch, a free drink or admission to a party.

The “living” part of this ontology emerges during the conference. Pins get traded, ribbons accumulate, stickers from side events appear on lanyards. A badge on day one is not the same badge by the closing keynote. Each addition reflects a new relationship: attending a vendor gathering, participating in a workshop, aligning with an interest group.

At KMWorld 2025, where conversations about AI, KM, policy and practice run hot, those additions often reflect real shifts in ongoing dialogue. A new AI-themed pin, acquired after a breakthrough session, does not just celebrate a topic. It signals alignment with a community of practice focused on that topic.

From a strict philosophical standpoint, Snowden’s correction is defensible. The printed structure of the badge is designed as a taxonomy, built on categories that keep registration and logistics manageable. At design time, the lanyard system is indeed a hierarchy of classes and labels.

But ontology in knowledge management practice is less about what designers intend and more about how artifacts mediate meaning. The moment the badge enters the social field of KMWorld, it becomes a boundary object: shared enough to be recognizable, flexible enough to mean different things to different groups. Exhibitors see prospects. Analysts see patterns. Practitioners see mentors and peers. The same artifact participates in multiple overlapping ontologies, each defining relationships specific to the observer’s role and purpose.

For KM practitioners, that distinction matters. Knowledge work is not only about controlled vocabularies and managed taxonomies inside systems. It is about the ways those structures intersect with human experience. A badge and lanyard at KMWorld 2025 is a compact case study in how classification, context, and interaction fuse into something richer than a list of categories. They are an object lesson in how even mundane artifacts can carry and express a dynamic model of relationships: who is connected to what, where, how, and why.

Call the badge a taxonomy at print time. By mid-conference, surrounded by pins, ribbons, and stories, it behaves like an ontology: a living model of relationships that exists because people create it together.

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