Knowledge Management Systems

1
Knowledge Management Systems

• Blog use
• Whos who?
• What can make it easier?
• RSS readers good or bad?
• KM Infrastructure Semantic Readings Discussion
• KMS System Evaluation

2
Blogging for KMS

• Everyone understanding more about blogging?
• Does it seem worthwhile?
• Is it easier to share?
• What would make it even easier?
• Are there elements of the interface that dont
  make sense?
• What topics categories are the most interesting?

3
RSS Readers

• What is the best design?
• Private or Shared?
• Client or Server?
• Functions
• Interfaces
• Individual Users
• Collaboration?

4
Semantic Web

• bring structure to the meaningful content of Web
  pages, creating an environment where software
  agents roaming from page to page can readily
  carry out sophisticated tasks for users
  (Berners-Lee, 2001)
• Who says whats Meaningful?
• Where will all this Smart Content come from?
• Will we trust Agents?
• How much do we want to think about Tasks?

5
Semantic Web Elements Overview

• Expressing Meaning
• Knowledge Representation
• Ontologies
• Agents
• Evolution of Knowledge

6
Expressing Meaning

• Documents for People
• Information for Systems
• Keywords and Their Meanings
• Real World Rules
• Real World Limitations
• Extension of the Current Web
• Decentralized

7
Knowledge Representation

• Structured Collections of Information
• Sets of Inference Rules
• Automated Reasoning
• Without Centralized Control
• Massive Concurrency Coordination
• Massive Complexity of Interpretations

8
Ontologies

• Consistency of Object Classification
• Taxonomy of Object Uses
• Navigation Scheme for Information Objects
• (New) Applications to Utilize Data
• Do people think in ontologies?
• Defining Ontologies
• Updating (Correcting Testing) Ontologies
• Expressing Ontologies (IIC)
• Defining Sharing Ontologies Use (Privacy)

9
Agents

• Programs That Use Semantic Web Content
• More Automated as Systems and Content Support
  Increases
• Digital Signatures
• Organized Services
• Ontology Exchanges
• Agents vs. Interaction
• Maes, Pattie Ben Shneiderman (1997) Direct
  manipulation vs. agents. Interactions, ACM Press.
• Organizing Mappings of Virtual and Physical
  Interactions

10
Evolution of Knowledge

• Extend from Virtual to Physical World
• Other Devices Platforms
• Composite Capability/Preference Profile
• Complex Relationships and Interactions
• Extend to Individuals (Characteristics)
• Locations (Temporal)

11
Semantic Web Challenges

• The Biggest Database Ever
• The ONLY Database?
• Individual/Group IM
• Individual/Group KM
• Decentralized or Partitioned?
• Concurrency? (Time)
• Currency? (Money)
• Knowledge Representation
• Computational Issues
• Cultural Issues
• Classification Issues
• What about People Readable Information?
• Understanding is an obvious key to using
• Another layer of trust, a person/organization a
  system?

12
The Semantic Web KM?

• How can semantic systems help organize manage
  knowledge?
• Are the details going to keep the big picture
  from getting accomplished (at first)?
• Will people have to change their habits to get
  new functionality
• Lets look at the elements principles that will
  help.

13
Semantic Web Principles

• Everything is a link (URI)
• Permanence
• MIME types
• Everyone/thing is a Web server?
• Extended Control
• Individual/Group
• Form(at) and Content seperated
• Function is form(at)
• Translation Transition
• Archives Conversion
• Forever Bootstrapping?

14
The Network is the metaphor

• The metaphor for both work and KMS design
• Hypertext - links nodes
• Storage medium
• Access medium
• Collaboration - almost everyone one technical
  node away
• Information barriers should shrink
• People will expand broaden their social networks
  
• Does that make each network weaker
• Will the human element of managing relationships
  become more difficult?
• Network(ing) Metadata?
• Individual/Group (habits, cultural coventions,
  work products)
• Devices (what the access medium is, how it is
  perceived)
• Situations (when the information is used, where
  is the work/play division?)

15
Knowledge Org Systems

• Isnt this everything?
• Information system
• Database
• Commonality
• Tasks (applications)
• Terms (thesaurus)
• Technology (media, mediums)
• Formats
• Functions

16
Information Retrieval SemWeb

• Can you find things easier with semantic
  information in documents?
• Transform the Web into a database
• Structured information (system identifiable)
• Structured queries
• Embedded (behavioral) logic
• Make asking questions easier
• Understanding document sets
• Using agents for retrieval
• Break down events into semantic objects
• Its all building processing markup

17
Semantic Web Model
18
Framework for Semantic Web KM

• Maybe the best platform, if enough adoption
• The only platform?
• Will progress or vendors force us this direction?
• The only logical direction to go?
• Suspiciously like a RDBMS framework
• We need abstractions
• We need system designs
• Conversion from existing systems
• Tools make the standards
• People choose the tools

19
Table 1
20
Table 2
21
Enterprise KM Components
22
What about other Enterprises?

• The blogosphere can be thougt of as an
  enterprise
• In some cases, a group of bloggers might have
  more in common that a group of co-workers
• Is socializing work?
• Is work socializing?

23
Semantic Blogging KM

• Cayzer, Steve (2004) Semantic Blogging and
  Decentralized Knowledge Management
• Is this the ultimate buzzword merger?
• We all work with snippets of information
• messages, links, quotes, todos, lists
• Information should have some semantic properties
• Each snippet has (polymorphic) properties its
  related to certain tasks
• Snippets may be (logically) inferenced (and
  related)
• Blogging lets you define these as you go (in
  some ways) tag items as you make or work with
  them
• The ease of use has made adoption rapid
• Would more complexity slow things down?
• Will people already blogging voluntarily add
  semantics?
• The Semantic Web is best viewed as an enabling
  technology p49

24
Building a Semantic KMS

• Use blogging as the process to capture snippets
• Use RDF (or some other structure) to represent
  transfer (meta)data
• Use consistent URI syntax for global
  addressability
• Mix in existing metadata
• Dublin Core
• Your Organization
• Your Own
• Share this metadata
• Initially, as domain vocabularies
• Continually, as you create update it
• Semantic representation in the interface - seeing
  information in context
• Semantic navigation - info retrieval link paths
• Semanticblogging.org

25
Semantic protocols standards

• URI (URL)
• XML
• RDF - Resource Description Framework
• RSS
• vCard vCal
• SMTP IMAP
• HTTP
• (simple) relational database support - SQL

26
KMS System Evaluation

• Overview of the type of application
• What are its goals?
• Who does is help? When?
• History of the type of application
• Improvement over time
• How it is used
• Screenshots of the application
• Case studies of the KMS in use