Topic Maps Elevator Pitch, the winning 60-second sales pitch aimed at potential adopters of Topic Maps, in the contest at the annual "Topic Maps Research and Applications (TMRA)" conference held in Leipzig, Germany, 1 October 2010.

HyTime Groves: the progenitor of Topic Maps, 24 March 2010. This response to a posting in Patrick Durusau's blog explains why gaining an understanding of the intellectual roots of the Topic Maps paradigm increases one's estimate of its scope. (Local copy of this text.)

Closing Keynote for Topic Maps Norway 2007, Oslo Congress Centre, 21 March 2007. This talk begins by considering where we are in the story of civilization (the "big story"), and charts a possible future in which the technology of memory sharing enables a profusion of collective human intelligences. It uses the Information Economy Metalanguage (IEML) as an example of such an enabling technology. It proposes that a revolutionary aspect of topic maps is that they enable shared intuitions by allowing information emanating from different cultural perspectives to be co-located, even while such co-locations remain addressable in terms of their original cultures. The conference was sponsored by the Norwegian Computer Society and OASIS. (Downloadable zip file.)

Reflections on Subject Identity, Collaborative Expedition Workshop, National Science Foundation, February 27, 2007. (Downloadable zip file.)

American Library Assocation LITA Forum, October 27, 2006, Nashville, Tennessee; introductory slides for a panel discussion on topic maps in libraries.. Slides from various topic mapping projects. (Downloadable zip file.)

Flat Topic Mapping for a Flat World, opening keynote at Topic Maps Research and Applications 2006, Leipzig, October 11, 2006.. An inspirational talk about topic maps.

Information Systems, Tribalism, and Subject Maps (with Patrick Durusau), paper given at Extreme Markup Languages 2006, August, Montreal. Plain talk about the Topic Maps Reference Model, with diagrams and a demonstration.

Smarter Data, Smarter Publishing: EP2010 and Europe's "Smart Content" Vision, slides for presentation given at the U.S. Government Printing Office, Washington, DC, May 11, 2006.

The "Topic Maps Attitude", slides for keynote address given at Topic Maps Norway Conference, March 29, 2006, in Oslo, Norway.

Topic Maps Reference Model (ISO/IEC 13250-5) poster for XML 2005 Conference. "Yet another attempt by one of the editors (Steve Newcomb) to explain it briefly." (Full size version)

Digital Voting Undermines Democracy, commentary by Steve Newcomb. The inability of voters to see how their votes were recorded (by the new Advanced Voting Solutions "WINvote" voting machines) have given the voting process in Blacksburg, Virginia the appearance of fraud. (Facsimile of article as it appeared in print, with color photo, in PDF (3,688K) and as a bzipped pnm (61,712K). (Backup copy of article as it appeared at the Roanoke Times website.)

"Multiple Subject Map Patterns for Relationships and TMDM Information Items", Patrick Durusau and Steve Newcomb, presented at Extreme Markup Languages 2005, Montréal, August 2005.

Versavant Topic Map Application Bus / Subject Addressing Engine, Steve Newcomb. Open source, Apache 2.0-license software first released May 2, 2005, and frequently updated. Includes several demonstrations, including the applications used in the above "Multiple Subject Map Patterns..." paper.

"What is a Topic Map Application (TMA)?" (slides), Patrick Durusau and Steve Newcomb, with additional slides by Ann Wrightson, presented as a "Nocturne" at Extreme Markup Languages 2004, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, August 5, 2004.

"Ontological Engineering and the Topic Maps Reference Model" (slides), Steve Newcomb, presented in an Ontolog teleconference on June 10, 2004.

"Smart Content, Opportunity Discovery, Knowledge Trading and Alliance Making" (slides), Steve Newcomb and Brian Blunden, presented at XML Europe 2004, Amsterdam, April 21, 2004. Click here for the paper..

"Topic Maps: The Inventor's Perspective on Subject-based Access" (slides), Michel Biezunski and Steve Newcomb, presented at the Library of Congress, October 15, 2003. The full webcast is available at the Library of Congress website..

"A Semantic Integration Methodology" (slides), Steve Newcomb, presented at Extreme Markup Languages 2003, August 4-8, 2003, Montréal, QC, Canada.

"The Economics of the Topic Maps Reference Model", Steve Newcomb, presented at XML 2002 Conference and Exposition, December 8-13, 2002, Baltimore, Maryland, USA. (PDF version.) (Slides.)

"A Perspective on the Quest for Global Knowledge Interchange" (PDF), Steve Newcomb, Chapter 3 of XML Topic Maps - Creating and Using Topic Maps for the Web (Jack Park and Sam Hunting, eds.), 2003: Addison-Wesley. (The publisher makes this chapter available free.)

"Forecasting Terrorism: Meeting the Scaling Requirements", Steve Newcomb. A chairman's keynote address at Extreme Markup Languages 2002 (Montreal, August 2002). (PDF version.)

"Preemptive Reification", Steve Newcomb, in Springer-Verlag's Lecture Notes in Computer Science, as part of the proceedings of the International Semantic Web Conference, June 2002. (PDF version.)

"Topic Maps for the Web" (PDF), Michel Biezunski and Steve Newcomb, IEEE Multimedia, April-June 2001.

"Version Management as Hypertext Applications: Referent Tracking Documents" (PDF), Eliot Kimber, Steve Newcomb, and Peter Newcomb, Markup Technologies '99, December, 1999, Philadelphia, PA.