This morning, I delivered a Metadata Management workshop grounded in reality — not theory. No buzzwords. No recycled slides. Just myths dismantled and practical steps shared, drawn directly from 26 years of verifiable, hands-on experience delivering metadata, data governance, and data strategy across global organisations. Metadata is not documentation for compliance. It is the operating system of trusted data. Those in the room didn’t just learn metadata — they learned how to apply it on Monday

⸻ **The Oromology Metadata Standards: Building Indigenous Digital Infrastructure for Oromo Knowledge Sovereignty** Abstract In early 2026, Oromia-My Country (OMC) established the Oromology Metadata Standards, a foundational digital infrastructure designed to bridge Oromo indigenous knowledge systems with global research, library, and AI-mediated environments. Unlike conventional heritage databases that subsume indigenous knowledge under external classificatory regimes, this framework prioritises