Firehead

Unlocking New Career Paths: How Semantic Search Skills Empower Technical Communicators

CJ — Thu, 12 Mar 2026 09:17:49 +0000

Number 11 in our series on KOS skills for modern technical communicators You’ve built the vocabulary. You’ve encoded the hierarchy. You’ve aligned your terms, tagged your labels, and wired your ConceptScheme into the content pipeline. The knowledge infrastructure is solid. Now someone searches for “why won’t my account let me in” and your perfectly governed terminology…

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Calling Software Developers: It’s Time for TechComm Bootcamp!

CJ — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 12:39:55 +0000

Hello Visitor! Are you an engineer, a programmer? Have you been working in your profession for 15, 20, maybe even 25 years? You’re good, you’re skilled, you’re knowledgeable, but you’re starting to feel burned out? The incredible intensive pace, having to constantly learn new material and trying to keep up with younger coders who are coming in with this sort of AI mentality.

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Unlocking New Career Paths: How SKOS Skills Empower Technical Communicators

CJ — Thu, 05 Mar 2026 15:05:52 +0000

Number 10 in our series on KOS skills for modern technical communicators If your documentation keeps tripping over inconsistent terms, mismatched labels, and terminology that drifts differently across languages and product lines, you already understand the problem SKOS was built to solve. If you’ve been doing vocabulary governance with spreadsheets, style guides, and sheer persistence…

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Unlocking New Career Paths: How SHACL Skills Empower Technical Communicators

CJ — Fri, 27 Feb 2026 14:23:22 +0000

Part 8 in our Knowledge Organisation Systems Skills series If you’ve ever been the person who catches the missing safety warning before a manual goes to print, or the one who notices that twelve product pages are missing the “Last Updated” field, then you already understand the need for SHACL. You’ve been doing the work of a validation engine – it’s just that you’ve been using your editorial…

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Unlocking New Career Paths: How SPARQL Skills Empower Technical Communicators

CJ — Tue, 10 Feb 2026 15:09:18 +0000

Part 8 of the Knowledge Organisation Systems Chain in our Skills for Modern Technical Communicators series If you’ve ever spent a rainy Tuesday afternoon manually auditing a spreadsheet of 500 topics to find out which ones mention “Safety Protocol” but lack a “Version 2.0” metadata tag, then you already understand the need for SPARQL. You’ve been doing the work of a query engine – it’s just…

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Unlocking New Career Paths: How URI Skills Empower Technical Communicators

CJ — Wed, 04 Feb 2026 10:46:41 +0000

Part 6 of the Knowledge Organisation Systems Chain in our Skills for Modern Technical Communicators series Today, we find ourselves at a vital junction in the KOS ladder. Before we delve into the technical details of stable identifiers, I wanted to capture the essence of the URI, the “connective tissue” of the semantic web, in a short poem. If the term “URI” sounds intimidating…

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Why does AI want to know what’s in your sandwich?

CJ — Fri, 30 Jan 2026 15:02:10 +0000

Jerry Bartlett of Content Pro Tech Ltd poses a classification question that brings semantics home in this guest blog post. Enjoy! Is a hotdog a sandwich? And what the answer got to do with AI or technical communication? My answer is “No”. Or perhaps, “No, of course a hotdog isn’t a sandwich!” Nor is a burger a sandwich either (but then again, I’m a Brit). But does it cosmically speaking…

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Unlocking New Career Paths: How Semantic Services* Empower Technical Communicators

CJ — Thu, 22 Jan 2026 11:02:00 +0000

This is the term I’m using for the time being, while the rest is under discussion in the community (see previous post). As usual, I’ll start with a short verse to put us in the mood. This one is about signals becoming services (nodes → answers; links → guidance) Through governed signals, service grows, Context aligns the paths we chose; Queries with provenance…

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Happy 2026! And a Question

CJ — Thu, 08 Jan 2026 13:33:16 +0000

I hope your long winter’s nap was enjoyable and your festivities brought you close to family and loved ones this season. I hope you’re happy to be back at it—at least a little—in 2026. All of us here at Firehead wish you the best for the coming year. I think it holds a lot of potential. I also wanted to start this year with a question for you, dear reader. The quick version is “What…

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Unlocking New Career Paths: How Knowledge Graphs Empower Technical Communicators

CJ — Thu, 04 Dec 2025 12:07:00 +0000

In the KOS ladder—raw data → structured data → vocabularies/taxonomies → ontologies → knowledge graphs → semantically‑enabled services, we’re stepping from the ontology (the blueprint of meaning and rules) to the knowledge graph (the populated, queryable network that adds instances, links, and provenance). But before we dive into the details, let me share a poem I wrote about knowledge graphs…

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