Communities of Practice, Wikis and a Knowledge Reference Model

1
Communities of Practice, Wikis and a Knowledge
Reference Model

• Susan Turnbull, Peter Yim, Brand Niemann
• Special Training Session for the
• Knowledge Management Working Group
• January 20, 2006

2
Preface

• You should be proud of the way that DRM 2.0
  turned out and how it has been accepted by the
  data community. The open, collaborative
  development process sets it apart, and gives us a
  high standard for our other efforts across
  government.
• Richard Burk, Chief Architect, OMB, 12/22/2005.

3
Overview

• Message
• Communities of Practice using Collaborative Wiki
  Technology guided by a Knowledge Reference Model
  can be very successful.
• Messengers
• Communities of Practice Susan Turnbull
• Collaborative Wiki Technology Peter Yim
• Knowledge Reference Model Brand Niemann

4
Communities of Practice

• The concept of a Community of Practice (often
  abbreviated as CoP) refers to the process of
  social learning that occurs when people who have
  a common interest in some subject or problem
  collaborate over an extended period to share
  ideas, find solutions, and build innovations.
• Source http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community_of_
  practice
• More recently Communities of Practice have become
  associated with knowledge management.

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Communities of Practice

• Collaborative Expedition Workshops (CEWs)
• Susan Turnbull, Leader, General Services
  Administration Office of Intergovernmental
  Solutions
• Since 2001. See http//colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki
  .pl?ExpeditionWorkshop
• Expanded Across Two CIO Committees and Multiple
  CoPs in 2004-2005 (See slides 6 7).
• Co-chair, Emerging Technology Subcommittee, AIC
  Representative to DRM WG, and Co-chair, Social,
  Economic and Workforce Implications of IT and IT
  Workforce Development Coordinating Group,
  Subcommittee on Networking and Information
  Technology Research and Development.
• Rooted in the work of Doug Engelbart, Practiced
  in CEWs, Requested by New CoPs, Lines of
  Business, etc.
• Community Building Through Individual Training in
  How to Keep a Journal of Their Activities.

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Communities of Practice
Industry Advisory Council (IAC)
U.S. CIO Council
OMB - FEAPMO
Enterprise Architecture Special Interest Group
Architecture Infrastructure Committee
IT Workforce Connections
Best Practices Committee
WGs and CoPs
Subcommittees Governance Components Emerging
Technologies
Semantic Interoperability Community of Practice
Chief Architects Forum
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Communities of Practice
http//colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?WikiHomePage
8
Collaborative Wiki Technology

• A wiki (wee-kee or also wick-ey, also why-kie,
  according to Ward Cunningham) is a group of Web
  pages that allows users to add content, as on an
  Internet forum, but also permits others (often
  completely unrestricted) to edit the content. The
  term wiki also refers to the collaborative
  software (wiki engine) used to create such a
  website (see wiki software). In essence, the wiki
  is merely a vast simplification of the process of
  creating HTML pages, and thus is a very effective
  way to exchange information through collaborative
  effort.
• Source http//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wiki
• Peter Yim (CIM3) has created a Collaborative Wiki
  that implements Doug Engelbarts work using
  multiple open source components and co-leads a
  Citizen-centric CoP - Ontolog Forum
• See Facilitating the Evolution of Our Collective
  IQ
• Doug Engelbart, September 1, 2005
• See http//colab.cim3.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?Expediti
  onWorkshop for slides and recording (mp3).
• Also see Wiki means fast Online collaborative
  sites open to everyone enable the sharing of
  ideas, Federal Computer Week and USA Today,
  April 4, 2005, http//www.fcw.com/article88467

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Collaborative Wiki Technology

• CIM3 the ISP for CWEs (Collaborative Work
  Environments)
• Mission to enable more effective distributed
  collaboration and virtual enterprise through
  bootstrapping collective intelligence over the
  Internet.
• Products/Services providing a robust CWE
  infrastructure that enables high performance
  distributed project teams, virtual enterprise
  partners and communities of practice to work.
• Host to the Ontolog-Forum an internal CoP
  focusing on the practical issues of both formal
  and informal ontologies, and their adoption into
  mainstream application through standardization.

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Collaborative Wiki Technology

• Key characteristics
• Simple markup using a web browser generally,
  there is no review before modifications are
  accepted usually highly interconnected via
  hyperlinks and most wikis used CamelCase as a
  link pattern by far the most common wiki systems
  are server-side scalability of the search
  depends on whether the wiki engine uses a
  database or not and considerable effort going
  into defining a wiki markup standard.
• Controlling changes
• A person willing to maintain pages will be warned
  of modifications to the pages, allowing him or
  her to quickly verify the validity of new
  editions.
• Vandalism
• Studies from IBM have shown that most vandalism
  to Wikipedia is reverted in 5 minutes or less.
• History
• First wiki established by Ward Cunningham on
  March 25, 1995 (recently left Microsoft
  Corporation).
• Wiki communities
• About 1000 public wiki communities (as of
  6/12/2004).

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Collaborative Wiki Technology
http//colab.cim3.net/
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Collaborative Wiki Technology

• Community Portal
• http//www.gsa.gov/collaborate
• Community Wiki
• http//colab.cim3.net/wiki/
• Community Forum
• Message Archives
• http//colab.cim3.net/forum/
• Subscribe/Unsubscribe/Configure
• http//colab.cim3.net/mailman/listinfo/
• To Post e-mail to 'forum-name'_at_colab.cim3.net
  (substitute 'forum-name' with name of the forum,
  like colab-test_at_colab.cim3.net )

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Knowledge Reference Model

• A Knowledge Reference Model that
• Builds on DRM 2.0 Concepts see next slide.
• Brings Knowledge Management and Enterprise
  Architecture Together with Semantic Models.
• Supports Knowledge Retention, Records Management,
  etc.
• Really Addresses the Search/Metadata Issue.
• Supports SICoP White Paper Module 3
  Implementation of the Semantic Web for
  E-Government.
• SICoP and the DRM 2.0 Implementation is lead by
  Brand Niemann - See GCN ONLINE FORUM Data
  Reference Model 2.0 and the role of metadata at
  http//appserv.gcn.com/forum/qna_forum/37914-1.htm
  l
• Delivers Measurable Semantic Interoperability
  Benefits.

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Knowledge Reference Model
Source Expanding E-Government, Improved Service
Delivery for the American People Using
Information Technology, December 2005, pages
2-3. http//www.whitehouse.gov/omb/budintegration/
expanding_egov_2005.pdf
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Knowledge Reference Model

• What did you find significant about that recent
  paper on using Wikis for government information?
• DRM 2.0 used the Collaborative Wiki and SICoP and
  the DRM ITIT used the same two layer information
  model see next slide and the same idea about
  implementing it in Wikis see slide 17.
• Supports SICoPs White Papers and Pilots for the
  Knowledge Management Working Group of the Best
  Practices Committee see slide 18.
• Building Semantic Webs for Knowledge Management
  and E-Learning in E-Government.
• Semantic Technologies for Knowledge Work
  Automation Knowledge Worker Augmentation.

SICoP Papers Submitted for the 7th Annual
Knowledge Management Conference Featuring the
E-Learning Solutions Seminar, April 19-21, 2006.
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Knowledge Reference Model
Information Model
Two Connected Layers Knowledge Map and the
Information Resources
SICoP and DRM Implementation Through Iteration
and Testing Making It Real, Federal Metadata
Management Consortium, December 13, 2005.
http//web-services.gov/scopefmmc12132005.ppt
Also used in Building Semantic Webs for
e-government with Wiki technology.
http//colab.cim3.net/file/work/SICoP/2006-02-09/E
Gov20Wiki.pdf
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Knowledge Reference Model

• Some New Initiatives
• What Weblogs and RSS Feeds are about is that you
  make it very easy to write something that you can
  think of, like an email, but it goes up onto a
  Web siteand it doesnt interfere with your
  normal inbox.
• Bill Gates, Microsoft CEO Summit, May 20, 2004.
• It was suggested that recent self-organizing and
  information-sharing tools from the Internet, the
  Wiki and the Blog, be deployed on the SIPRNet.
• The Wiki and the Blog Toward a Complex Adaptive
  Intelligence Community, D. Calvin Andrus, Central
  Intelligence Agency, July 2, 2005.
• Keynote Debate Blog, Wiki, and RSS Technology -
  Are they Enterprise Ready? Applicable? Or a
  Passing Tempest in a Teacup?
• The Gilbane Content Management Technologies
  Conference, November 29-December 1, 2005.
• Quickly build light-weight tools like Semantic
  Wikis that let people casually start modeling
  things.
• Fourth International Semantic Web Conference,
  November 6-10, 2005, Galway, Ireland.

Using CoPs To Simplify Processes and Unify Work
Across AgenciesCross-Industry Applications, KM
Collaboration Conference, Orlando, Florida,
December 5, 2005. http//web-services.gov/sicopkmc
12052005.ppt
18
Knowledge Reference Model

• Three Steps in Work Flow
• Conceptualization
• Markup
• Execution (searching, reasoning, rules, etc.)
• Tools for Each Step (examples)
• Suggested Upper Merged Ontology-WordNet now and
  Common Semantic Model (COSMO) Agent in 2007.
• Collaborative Ontology Development Infrastructure
  Services (CODS-multi-user Protege) now and
  Standardized Wiki Semantic Markup Language and
  Mapping Tools in 2007.
• Oracle 10g R2 now and Oracle 11g in 2007.

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Knowledge Reference Model
Building Semantic Webs for e-government with
Wiki technology. http//colab.cim3.net/file/work/
SICoP/2006-02-09/EGov20Wiki.pdf
20
Knowledge Reference Model

• Stanford Medical Informatics - developer of
  Protégé
• An open-source ontology tool platform.
• Comprehensive OWL / RDF / Reasoning support.
• Active community with thousands of users (33,000
  registrations).
• Has been used to edit ontologies with tens of
  thousands of concepts.

Protégé Ontology Knowledgebase Editor