Tagging is an extremely popular mechanism in many Web 2.0 applications to create metadata supporting search and retrieval of arbitrary multimedia information like digital images, video or audio. However, compared to the syndicated multimedia information itself, the metadata are still “sticky”. They cannot be accessed across several Web 2.0 applications, their semantic enrichment is not possible and they cannot be embedded in the local practices of communities of practice. Here, we present a multimedia tagging mechanism based on the international standard MPEG-7 for community-aware, standard compliant tagging of semantically enriched metadata implemented in the M7MT proof-of-concept application.
This paper describes the VAMP web application for the validation of MPEG-7 descriptions with respect to semantic constraints defined in a profile. The semantic constraints are formalised using an ontology and a set of rules.
We present the Publication Platform, a component of the PrestoSpace1 project, which provides retrieval and browsing functionalities of enriched audio-visual material. The Prestospace Factory is a system for enriching audio-visual documents in order to provide automated content and semantic analysis.The Publication Platform provides a user interface for semantic queries and produces a Web page with the results of the AV analysis and additional information about related external documents.
Manual quality control of audiovisual content in the different steps of the media production, delivery and archiving process causes significant costs. Semi-automatic quality control requires automatisation of quality analysis, quality metadata interoperability and efficient visualisation tools. In this paper we propose the use of MPEG-7 for standard compliant description of media quality metadata and a quality summary visualisation tool which facilitates efficient exploration of visually impaired content by the user.
The task of creating specific references rests on specifications that qualify how parts of resources can be addressed. The lack of standards for fragment identifiers has lead to the problem that links, metadata and references merely point to whole resources. Although it is suggested that fragment identification is specified with a media type’s MIME type registration, there are few formats that provide a fragment identification scheme. Furthermore formats that specify fragment identification schemes have not agreed on a common set of requirements. In this paper we present an overview of the current status of interoperable fragment definitions, point out promising activities that promote interoperable fragment definitions and suggest strategies to promote uniform fragment identifiers. Additionally a set of requirements is defined and described to ease the development of fragment identification standards.
We present an innovative approach that treats the right management metadata as metric objects, enabling similarity search on IPR attributes between digital items. We show how the content base similarity search can help both the user to deal with a huge amount of similar items with different licenses and the content providers to detect fake copies or illegal uses. Our aim is the management of the metadata related to the Digital Rights in centralized systems or networks with indexing capabilities for both text and similarity searches, providing the basic infrastructure enabling the private use and the commercial exploitation as well.
Along with the rapid increase of available multimedia data, comes the proliferation of objectionable content such as violence and pornography. We need efficient tools for automatically identifying, classifying and filtering out harmful or undesirable video content for the protection of sensitive user groups (e.g. children). In this paper we present a multimodal approach towards the identification and semantic analysis of violent content in video data. We propose a layered architecture and focus on ontological and knowledge engineering aspects of video analysis. We demonstrate the development
of two ontologies defining violent hints hierarchy that low level analysis, in visual and audio modality, respectively should identify. A violence domain ontology, as a reality representation, defines higher-level semantics. Taking under consideration extracted violent hints, spatio-temporal relations and behaviour patterns higher-level semantics automatic inference is possible.
This paper introduces a new model of personalized usage of the internet that is based on technologies of user representation, artificial intelligence and semantic augmentation of the content. By taking advantage of internet’s unprecedented dynamics, compared to traditional media, this user representation model incorporates cognitive, mainly, psychology theories, combined with parameters that constitute more traditional approaches in user profiling (such as demographics, expertise, etc). The purpose of this research is to alleviate difficulties that massive approaches impose on areas such as education and information processing, by integrating intelligent adaptive characteristics into web applications; this can lead to a highly adapted to each user’s needs content and more effective, in our case, learning.
New media applications like E-Learning or Computer supported collaborative learning are becoming more and more popular and the internet plays a key role in this development. These applications open up new ways in education, which were not thinkable only some years ago. Nowadays the progress in technology like broadband internet access, video on demand, streaming media, etc. allow to realize such applications. But as first approaches show, to realize a good E-Learning application is not only a matter of technology it is also a matter of good interface and system design. Often a good interface/system design, which puts the user and his needs into the focus, is as important for a successful application as the realized functionality.
This papers presents a study investigating the learner perspective on the use of learning management systems by conducting focus groups. Based on the statements we derived requirements and propose design improvements in order to support and facilitate collaborative learning applications.
The Web 2.0 philosophy has brought new ways of using the web as a content repository and a sharing platform. Non-computer skilled people can now publish their own text, images, videos and/or sounds and take part in communities created around topics they like. Our idea is thus to use this new communication mechanism to assist skill learning. Skill is indeed a difficult knowledge to learn on a text form as it is hard to describe movements, gestures or procedures in this way: sometime, a picture or a video is better than a thousand of words.
As a popular field of experience, we have focused our attention on music learning, and more particularly on guitar pieces learning. Music is very representative of skill learning, it is both a physical and an intellectual activity. The “Gloss2U” service we describe in this article takes into account the specificities of this learning process, especially as events are time-related.
To achieve this, we rely on new equipment conditions that are nowadays gathered. Userfriendly multimedia tools opened new horizons and broadband networks (ADSL, cable, …) are becoming more and more common. Almost everybody is a potential content producer with just a webcam or a cell phone. Our system is therefore audio and video based and users interact with each others by submitting contributions, called glosses, in the context of the piece they are learning. A dialogue starts between student users (learners) and experimented ones (professors), to discuss encountered problems and the way to solve them. The other strength of this system is that it can act as a knowledge repository for forthcoming practitioners.
Due to a shift in the marketing focus from mass to micro markets, the importance of one-to-one communication in advertising has increased. Interactive media provide possible answers to this shift. However, missing standards in payment models for interactive media are a hurdle in the further development. The paper reviews interactive advertising payment models. Furthermore, it adapts the popular FCB grid as a tool for both advertisers and publishers or broadcasters to examine effective interactive payment models.
There is plenty of hype around the term Web 2.0. While the change of the web has gathered increased attention from the Web 2.0 community itself, it seems that the corporate world feels unconfident how to apply the principles of the Web 2.0 to their businesses. Due to the ambiguity and fuzziness of the concepts describing Web 2.0 there is a lot of uncertainness. Highly affected industry branches like the media industry show interest but their fears of loosing their competitiveness because of not knowing how to handle the phenomenon Web 2.0 are evenly strong. Nevertheless, little academic work has been conducted on the implication of Web 2.0 to the business domain. This paper bridges the gap in having a deeper look into the phenomena of Web 2.0 leading to the development of a more graspable model for corporate use of Web 2.0 encapsulating a business focus and hence defining the term Corporate Web 2.0. By showing how the introduced model is applied, it helps companies including the media and other businesses to derive a business value from the new Internet.
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Allowing users to publish and share photos on the Internet makes Flickr one of the most popular tagging services currently available. The organisation of images in Flickr is based on Folksonomies, where users attach loose metadata—instead of well-defined terms from a controlled vocabulary—to their images. Although this lowers the barrier to participation it has a number of negative effects and can make searching, for instance, more difficult.
This paper offers a solution to a particular issue that can be encountered in Flickr—the Vocabulary Problem. The suggested approach is based on the use of a semantic lexical database for expanding Flickr queries. WordFlickr, a prototype implementation of this concept, is presented together with FlickrClustr, a related tool for clustering Flickr search results. Results of informal tests with these tools are provided, and characteristics of tag usage are derived.
Abstract: In this paper a novel form of online users, the “Online Crowds”, is described. “Online Crowds” gather virtually, behave and act collectively and produce effects and phenomena which would not be possible without the Internet [Hof 05]. A remarkable example is “The Million Dollar Homepage”1 where a clever student made more than £ 100.000 only by offering a simple but unique online idea. He used the dynamics between online users and companies to make money with almost no effort. To understand these “social contagion” processes, an interdisciplinary conceptual and psychological model of “Online Crowds” is introduced. The model is based on the principles of “Other directedness”, “Critical mass”, “Positive feedback loops” and the accelerating impact of network effects on the Internet. Some recommendations are sketched how such “Online Crowds” can be actively formed for promising online business models. If the behavior and the characteristics of “Online Crowds” are better understood, decision makers and providers will be better capable to predict and promote successful online communities and services.
Moreover a look at the positive and negative effects of these phenomena is taken and their challenges, as well as the implications for the affected society are analyzed. Especially the domain of New Media Technology (NMT) and the particular area of online recommender- and personalization technology are facing a potential for exploiting these Internet phenomena. Finally, a list of related work in the field and an outlook on further improvements in
the discussed approach are given.
Abstract: User generated content published via weblogs (also known as blogs) has gained importance in the last years, and the number of globally available weblogs increases. However, a large fraction of these show low publishing activity and are rarely read. This paper is a quantitative analysis of success factors in a community of over 15.000 weblogs, hosted by a local Austrian newspaper. We looked at publishing activity by content type, community activity and writing style. Also, the interconnectedness of the community was analyzed.
The digital media and games industry is one of the biggest IT based industries worldwide. Recent observations therein showed that current production workflows may be potentially improved as multimedia objects are mostly created from scratch due to insufficient reusability capacities of existing tools. In this paper we provide reasons for that, provide a potential solution based on semantic technologies, show the potential of ontologies, and provide scenarios for the application of semantic technologies in the digital media and games industry.
With the advent of Web 2.0 technologies a new attitude towards processing contents in the Internet has emerged. Nowadays it is a lot easier to create, share and retrieve multimedia contents on the Web. However, with the increasing amount in contents the retrieval process becomes more complex and often leads to inadequate search results. One main reason is summarized easily: Approaches to image clustering and retrieval usually either stick solely to the images’ low-level features or their semantic tags. However, this is frequently inappropriate since the “real” semantics of an image can only be derived from the combination of low-level features and semantic tags. Consequently, we investigated a more holistic view on semantics based on a system called Imagesemantics that tries to close the gap between both approaches by combining them.
In this work we propose how to deal with the Semantic Gap in closed domains. That is, we propose to bridge the Semantic Gap by means of mapping wellknown low-level feature patterns found in MPEG-7 descriptions to formal concepts. The key contributions of the proposed approach are (i) the utilisation of ontologies, and rules to enhance the retrieval capabilities (effectiveness), and (ii) the realisation of the feature matching process being carried out on the structural level through indexed MPEG-7 descriptions (efficiency). We discuss advantages and shortcomings of our approach, and illustrate its application in the realm of non-linear, interactive movie productions.
Today the availability of digital media content is well established and widespread. Not only commercial content distribution is a big market, but also user driven digital multimedia content is produced and shared in big communities. There is an increasing need to automatically categorize media such as music or pictures and more general to provide intelligent mechanisms for easier navigation, search and retrieval within huge distributed content repositories. One of the metadata standards that has been established to describe multimedia content via metadata is MPEG-7.
This international standard facilitates many application domains and is probably the richest multimedia metadata set available today. However, one of the key issues is to provide an almost automatic annotation of multimedia data in respect to low-level (e.g., color, shape, audio signature, etc.) as well as high-level (e.g., object recognition, event recognition, etc.) features. This work investigates and analyzes currently available MPEG-7 annotation tools and summarizes their applicability and limitations.
Interactive digital TV is becoming a reality throughout the globe. The most important part of the picture is new services for the user, in terms of audio-video quality, but mostly in terms of entirely new content and interacting experience. To this end, we explore the potential of introduction of semantics in the distribution, processing and usage of the media content. We propose a smart iTV receiver framework capable of collecting, extending and processing (reasoning) semantic metadata related to the broadcast multimedia content. System architecture is presented along with an example service to illustrate the combination of semantic metadata, user preferences and external data sources.
This exploratory study aims to discuss issues on media measurement in relation to concurrent media consumption of digital media news services. A survey was conducted using a sample consisting of students from the Media Technology program at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. The data was mainly analyzed qualitatively as the majority of the survey questions were open-ended. The respondents stated that a combination of the computer with the Internet where the media most common to consume simultaneously with other media such as TV or the mobile phone. The phone was the media most mentioned as prioritized when consuming media simultaneously. The findings thus indicate that simultaneous consumption is common among the media aware technology students in the sample.
Simultaneous media consumption might imply for the media companies that competition for the audience attention takes on new forms. This consumption might then affect media companies as their advertisers are becoming more and more aware of the phenomenon. Measures for media consumption have to be adapted to this behavior and previous research suggests that observation methods might be used to detect simultaneous media consumption.
Many organizations are in front of most competitive economic environments, where, in order to survive, they must reduce costs all the time and adopt the most intelligent business strategy. We decided to design an expert system for choosing the most adequate accountancy program for an enterprise and that will serve as an effective tool for knowledge management. The purpose of this paper is to highlight that an Expert System is an innovative tool for managing knowledge in any domain.
Knowledge Management is meanwhile generally recognized as a discipline established in many organisations and no longer needs a special justification. It is certainly not unrestrictedly positively seen and even some of its supporters saw a hype in the development of the last few years, which is fading and is being replaced by a realist view of what is feasible. In the attempt to gain a proof of success, one bumps into further difficulties since the effects of KM activities are often not easily or explicitly measurable. It is not clear if this would not have developed as positively when not measures would have been taken for the development of knowledge management. The goal of this paper is the attempt of a comprehensive explanation of a new theme which is incorporated in Tacit Knowledge Management (TKM), as well as a proposal for the integration of TKM in the traditional understanding of knowledge management.
Classical knowledge representation methods traditionally work with established relations such as synonymy, hierarchy and unspecified associations. Recent developments like ontologies and folksonomies show new forms of collaboration, indexing and knowledge representation and encourage the reconsideration of standard knowledge relationships. In a summarizing overview we show which relations are currently utilized in elaborated knowledge representation methods and which may be inherently hidden in folksonomies and ontologies.
Knowledge Management literature suggests that failure is a non trivial issue. Crucial to researchers’ understanding of this phenomenon are: definition, causality, and predictability. These issues are addressed in this paper, as it aims to propose a methodology to examine Knowledge Management Systems Failure. The position advocated here is that Knowledge Management Systems are descendents of Information Systems; thus, we take up the Systems Failure Approach from the Soft Systems school of thought, as a potentially fruitful methodology to be implemented in Knowledge Management Systems failures studies.
This paper evaluates methods that can be used for effectively generating und utilizing intellectual capital reports (ICRs) for external and internal reporting as well as for internal knowledge-sensitive management decisions. Research is accompanied by a case study in a high-tech enterprise (Infineon Technologies Austria AG). An intellectual capital report controlling process has been developed. The findings of this research will be of use to all knowledge-based companies and institutions as they demonstrate how and why to measure intellectual capital. The paper discusses the proposed controlling system and the most important findings. An ICR is a multi-indicator system used to depict the development of intangible assets. As there are currently only unsatisfactory accounting guidelines for the reporting of intellectual capital available, an emphasis on techniques for selecting indicators for the report has been made. As a result, convincing reports for external addressees can be generated. Furthermore, methods for using this information as a foundation for knowledge-sensitive management decisions are drafted. The ideas presented in this paper are based on a master’s thesis written at Infineon Technologies Austria AG.
There are many technologies calling themselves knowledge management systems in the market but most of them deal only with information management. The main difference between them is that knowledge management systems are oriented into people and participated in tacit knowledge capturing. The paper describes set of information technologies which could take part in all process of knowledge management and especially in collecting tacit knowledge.
Service oriented architectures (SOAs) are a new paradigm in IT-management. This paper presents an SOA-implementation in the intranet portal of a 520-employee research institute, which was launched to accompany parallel knowledge-management (KM) activities. Furthermore it explains the benefits of an SOA-based IT-landscape for KM-activities.
The search for professional knowledge is affected by an endemic ambiguity in the definition of required and provided competences. Ontologies represent a mean for disambiguation, by providing a shared vocabulary for job market knowledge domain. In this paper we propose an ontology based search engine for curricula, which exploits the semantic annotation of available curricula to rank them with respect to a knowledge request and implements novel technologies for dynamic and interactive web applications development.
In this paper we describe novel ideas and their prototypical implementation for the visualization of rule bases. In the creation of the visualization our approach considers not only the structure of a rule base but also records of its usage. We also discuss methods to address the challenges for visualization tools posed by rule bases that are large, created with high level knowledge acquisition tools or that contain low level rules that should remain hidden from the users.
Analysing and understanding the evolution of historic artefacts requires the crossexamination of indications ranging from specific pieces of data (remains of the edifice, archival materials, etc.), to generic pieces of knowledge (historical context, comparable cases, theory of architecture, etc.). This research is based on the premise that the artefact’s acts as a media allowing the integration of the above-mentioned heterogeneous indications. Consequently, they may enable information visualisation and retrieval through 2D/3D dynamic graphics. In this contribution, we discuss four SVG-based graphic tools aiming at exploiting visually the relations between an artefact and the above-mentioned indications, i.e. its documentation.
Reading text for knowldege acquisition is a linear process in which a user reads verbal content by scanning text in a sequential manner. It is an established fact that computer users prefer to read text from papers than off computer screens. Hence, computers must take a more activerole in supporting knowledge acquisition through reading that just displaying text. This paper reports on a research program that aims to find a new role for computers in supporting this process. One way to do this is by eliciting the semantic and conceptual content of text in an explicit representation, the semantic and conceptual structure. Providing appropriate means for visualizing such structures can facilitate non-linear navigation of text, which may prove to be a more effective and efficient way for acquiring knowledge from orthographic content. Based on this, we develop semantic structures as cognitive tools to support text-based reading on screen.
This research aims at innovative IT support for competence management (CM) integrating organizational, group and individual perspectives. Our method is action case research resulting in a design model. This paper addresses our overall approach towards an integrative CM system, which is usage-oriented. Based on in-depth analysis of seven business companies’ CM activities, we present a new interactive visualization model for CM. The model is suitable for explorative analysis and for communicating competence situations at individual, group or organizational levels. It provides support for constructing competence information incrementally. We view competence descriptions as negotiable estimations with varying verification levels, and use a competence representation which deals with uncertainties of estimations. Our view on competence is novel, and has far reaching consequences. Future work includes a running prototype and planned pilot studies.
This paper suggests a powerful yet so far not used way to assist knowledge workers: while they are working on a problem, a system in the background is continuously checking to determine if similar or helpful material has not been published before, elsewhere. The technique described aims to reduce effort and time required to search relevant data on the World Wide Web by moving from a “pull” paradigm, where the user has to become active, to a “push” paradigm, where the user is notified if something relevant is found. We claim that the approach facilitates work by providing context aware passive web search, result analysis, extraction and organization of information according to the tasks at hand. Instead of conventional information retrieval enhancements we suggest a model where relevant information automatically moves into the attention field of the knowledge worker.
For investment decisions the development of market trends is very important. In this contribution we present our results concerning the influence of news on market trends. We processed the stock news delivered by the Wall Street Journal with two methods of text mining – Bayes classification and grammar-driven classification. We found some potentialities of Dow Jones trend prediction and present promising results.
Diagrams are often conceived as static representations. In this paper, by contrast, we explore how conceptual graphic representations can be used as communicative devices for knowledge-intense activities in groups. We do so by reviewing and extending existing cognitive and communicative dimensions and criteria. The aim of our research is to formalize the description of diagrams used in management discussions, analyzing their communicative and collaborative functions in order to better use them in knowledge creation and sharing in teams. We start with reviewing and merging the literature on cognitive and communicative dimensions and the literature on boundary objects, as well as information visualization, in order to compile the most relevant dimensions for knowledge creation and sharing in team. Thus, we cluster those dimensions obtaining eight macro-dimensions. We propose a formal analysis of diagrams which can be used as a tool for selecting and modifying appropriate visualizations fordifferent knowledge-intensive activities in teams. An application example illustrates this approach.
This paper is on the aesthetic layout of n-ary trees with nodes of variable size, also referred to as generalized box-drawing. For this layout problem a few algorithms have been proposed, which differ in their runtime performance and the attained aesthetic criteria. We introduce a new approach to this layout problem, which is interesting because of both its simplicity and elegance, and which employs the following piggy-back metaphor: The original box-drawing problem, Π, is topologically reformulated as a layout problem with uniform node size, resulting in a new drawing problem Π, which then is handled by the best tree layout algorithm for uniform node size developed so far. The reformulation step can be done in linear time in the number of nodes of the original tree, resulting in overall linear time complexity. Compared to the existing approaches our approach fulfills more aesthetic criteria; experiments have also shown its efficiency in complex layout settings.
Self-Organising Maps are utilised in many data mining and knowledge management applications. Although various visualisations have been proposed for SOM, these techniques lack in distinguishing between the items mapped to the same unit. Here we present a novel technique for the visualisation of Self-Organising Maps that displays inputs not in the centre of the map units, but shifts them towards the closest neighbours, the degree of the movement depending on the similarity to the neighbours. The night-sky visualisation facilitates better understanding of the underlying data. We report results from applying our method on two synthetic and a real-life data set.
In this paper, we present GlobeMash, a mashup web application that uses standardized data formats like XML, JSON, LOM, SVG, CAM and protocols like SOAP, HTTP, to enable users to access the repositories of the Global Learning Objects Brokered Exchange (GLOBE) consortium. GlobeMash uses the Google Maps API to display the repositories and results on a geographical map, the Timeline API of the SIMILE project and the federated search layer of the GLOBE infrastructure. It enables users to query all the repositories in GLOBE and to get an insight in their search history by visualizing the latter as a combination of an extended tag-cloud and a synchronized timeline.
In this paper, we introduce a so-called DyVT tool (Dynamic social network Visualization Tool) to support spatiotemporal knowledge visualization and discovery in dynamic social networks. The dynamic aspects of social networks refer to contextualized information such as spatial, temporal as well as users’ personalized information. We also define an XML-based target language incorporating emerging formats like DyNetML, KML, and GraphML. It also provides means to express, store and interchange the dynamic aspects of complex dynamic social network data. Based on this language, users can animate and personalize spatiotemporal knowledge extracted from social network data like email threads or blogs. In addition, a Java based graphical user interface is also available to enable nonexperienced users to customize knowledge visualization easily. A mashup with Google maps for spatiotemporal visualization is provided. With this tool spatiotemporal knowledge on an IBM DB2 Mailing list database containing 69 mailing lists and 56389 mails altogether is well explored.
The visualization of temporal information should not be seen as a special case. A lot of applications take advantage of the time factor (e.g. capturing user events). In general recorded activities on a workstation can be seen as a temporal database and so can profit from a time-based visual output system too. We introduce a model which classifies the time as a ”first class citizen” in today’s operating systems. Such an invention would not only improve and standardize the capturing of temporal events but it would be of benefit for a temporal visualization system too. Within a 3D visualization space and a global time axis we introduce a printf4D() method. With this method it is possible to display images, videos, text strings or any other kinds of information in an automatically animated way. As a first proposal we demonstrate this function in a ”flow of information” metaphor where information-objects are not displayed all at once but in a flowing manner over a certain period of time. Additionally we will show that printf4D() is not limited to temporal data. It can be extended automatically to any kind of static information.
Explicit knowledge is often stored in various repositories within a company. As APOSDLE aims at considering the whole intellectual capital of companies, we are coping with the task to integrate the content of several and different repositories within the APOSDLE platform. Further, other modules in the APOSDLE system also require functionality to semantically enrich knowledge artefacts like documents or multimedia objects. In this paper, we present our approach to these challenges, namely the “Multimedia, Multi-source, Metadatabased Knowledge Artefact Repository”. After presenting the basic idea and critical issues of this solution, we point out related technological approaches as well as their limitations. Finally, we report about a first prototype realising this idea and our experiences gained so far.
Currently, social bookmarking systems provide intuitive support for browsing locally their content. A global view is usually presented by the tag cloud of the system, but it does not allow a conceptual drill-down, e. g., along a conceptual hierarchy. In this paper, we present a clustering approach for computing such a conceptual hierarchy for a given folksonomy. The hierarchy is complemented with ranked lists of users and resources most related to each cluster. The rankings are computed using our FolkRank algorithm. We have evaluated our approach on large scale data from the del.icio.us bookmarking system.
The Palette project dedicated to lerning in Communities of Practice (CoPs) aims to offer several services for communities of practice, in particular Knowledge Management (KM) services based on an ontology dedicated to CoPs, the so-called O’CoP. Built from information sources about the Palette CoPs, O’CoP aims both at modelling the members of the CoP and at annotating the CoP’s knowledge resources. The paper describes the structure of O’CoP, its main concepts and relations, and it reports some lessons learnt from the cooperative community building of this ontology.
Although ontologies promise an effective technology for information integration, it is often the case that two or more information providers do not share the same ontology. Several (semi)-automated ontology mapping methods have been developed towards solving this problem. This paper presents AUTOMS-F, a framework implemented as a Java API, which aims to facilitate the rapid development of tools for automatic mapping of ontologies by synthesizing several individual ontology mapping methods. Towards this goal, AUTOMS-F provides a highly extensible and customizable application programming interface. AUTOMS is a case study ontology mapping tool that has been implemented using the AUTOMS-F framework, and has been successfully evaluated in the international OAEI 2006 contest.
Explanations of modeling errors in ontologies are of crucial importance both when creating and maintaining the ontology. This work presents two novel incremental methods for error explanations in semantic web ontologies and shows that they have significantly better performance than the state of the art black-box techniques. Both promising techniques together with our implementation of a tableau reasoner for an important OWL-DL subset SHIN are used in our semantic annotation tool prototype to explain modeling errors.
The knowledge maturing theory opens an important macro perspective within the new paradigm of work-integrated learning. Especially wikis are interesting socio-technical systems to foster maturing activities by overcoming typical barriers. But so far, the theory has been mainly based on anecdotal evidence collected from various projects and observations. In this paper, we want to present the results of a qualitative and quantitative study of Wikipedia with respect to maturing phenomena, identifying instruments and measures indicating maturity. The findings, generalized to enterprise wikis, open the perspective on what promotes maturing on a method level and what can be used to spot maturing processes on a technology level.
In knowledge intensive companies intellectual capital assumes a crucial role in the organizational strategy and, as any other strategical asset, it needs to be scheduled to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. When the required knowledge is a resource available inside the company, its assignment represents a key success factor, which many research efforts are devoted to. On the other side, when the needed competence is unavailable within the company, training programs may be seen as methods to strengthen such a strategic asset. In this paper we show a semantic-based integrated system aimed at supporting both the assignment of available intellectual resources in three different multiplicity scenarios and the search for training programs ad-hoc composed to fill possible knowledge gaps.
Performance in a task is influenced not only by the experience obtained in doing this task, but by how recent it is and by the experience obtained in doing similar tasks. Competence-Performance Approach is used as the theoretical framework. A modified version of Nembhard and Uzumeri learning and forgetting function is proposed to forecast performance by including the experience derived from other similar tasks. An experiment with voluntary students of telecommunication engineering was carried out. The tasks require assembly of electronic circuits. The results fitted well with the proposed model.
Existing business process, learning and knowledge management infrastructures work quite well in their specific context. Despite this, they are barley able to present any precise information about the usage of knowledge in certain working conditions, occurring learning needs or the identification of competency gaps and the detection of appropriate learning objects to fulfil the needs. Receiving this data from one single source is necessary to improve the individual and the organizational knowledge base continuously. Thus, the employees’ qualification as well as the enhancement of their competencies constitutes an important precondition for an effective and efficient business process execution, the accomplishment of change management and in terms of “Time-to-Competency” their ability to anticipate causeand-effect relations of process and market changes better and faster. To address the identification and provision of adequate (formal and especially informal) learning content in weakly structured or agile workflow environments, contextualized attention metadata can be useful. The attention metadata approach facilitates the improved collection of recent usage data across the various IT-system boundaries and applications used in different working surroundings. Consequently, it represents information about each session a user attends in the IT environment.
The requirements on learning support from knowledge work differ compared to traditional work. Based on those observations an approach for supporting learning in knowledge work is proposed considering requirements from e-learning as well as from knowledge management. In addition to traditional e-learning, on-demand e-learning takes the current situation of the knowledge worker into consideration to ensure learning support of knowledge work is proposed. For using a broad variety of resources in on demand e-learning a single metadata schema for describing seems not sufficient for every organisation. Therefore, application profiles appear adequate for describing resources used in the proposed approach for arranging knowledge elements. Identifying the knowledge workers current situation a learning need should be derived and to use it afterwards for selecting and delivering knowledge elements.
In today’s information society the border between the roles of learners, workers and teachers becomes more and more fuzzy. To support this, we are using the workflow language YAWL. It provides guidance in work processes and workplace embedded learning. Nevertheless, using workflows in user driven (e-learning) environments, triggers challenges. We discuss the ex-post OR-split, a novel recommendation of how to cope with OR-splits. Furthermore, the visualisation strategy on how to even simplify the graphical view of YAWL on the workflow during the workplace-embedded learning application is discussed.
Standard based management systems (as ISO9001 quality, ISO14001 environmental, ISO27001 information security, ISO 22000 hygiene management systems and others) are widely implemented and based on common principles: objectives and strategies, business processes, resource management and continuously optimization. These systems must also be documented, communicated, implemented and continuously improved. Therefore they represent an optimal basis for an integrated learning organization, if the requirements of management systems are completely implemented. This documentation contains the explicit organizational knowledge, but it is almost felt as additional workload with a little or no advantage and it is not totally corresponding with the lived processes. Therefore it is hardly used as reference book for workplace need-oriented process integrated learning to improve the organization. Based on this situation we prepared the system documentation according to media-pedagogical and didactical principles and published it on organizational learning and knowledge system based on constructivist theory. In the case study the documentation support a confidence-based, open and fault-tolerant corporate and learning culture by promoting a need-oriented workplace process integrated learning, shorter initial training periods for new collaborators and a continuous optimization of the organization for securing a sustainable success for the organization.
All organizations need knowledge, and international organizations are no different. Intellectual capital in international organizations needs to be nurtured to optimize their performance; and understanding the challenges of managing knowledge, and aligning technology solutions are crucial to achieve that end. This paper explores the knowledge in international organizations and the dynamic interactions between stakeholders. It also proposes tools to classify the various knowledge products and to contextualize knowledge initiatives in international organizations and other types of non-profit organizations interested in knowledge management. Organizational leaders, knowledge managers and consultants involved in creating and implementing knowledge management initiatives aimed at process improvements in international organizations context could benefit from the reflections and learning insights from this paper. This paper does not address efficiency matters from the political or governing sphere, nor does it propose specific programmatic changes to work of international organizations; rather it presents a pragmatic “bottom-up” approach, based on case studies and interviews conducted at eight different international organizations, including the European Union (EU), the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the International Maritime Organization (IMO), the OPEC Fund for International Development (OFID), the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe (OSCE), the United Nations Industrial Development Organization (UNIDO) and the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC) and were classified according to their functional orientation. Over 30 interviews were conducted, with organizational leaders, knowledge managers, IT managers and human resources managers. Emphasis was on UNIDO and IAEA, as these two had developed independent knowledge management programs.
The grounded theory methodology as described by Strauss and Corbin [Strauss and Corbin, 1990, Strauss and Corbin, 1994], using interviews and document studies for data collection, combined with findings from literature, helped identify processes involved in managing knowledge in international organizations. The KM processes discovered suggests that managing knowledge in international organizations is a complex cyclical activity that leads
an international organization to become more knowledge focused.
In today’s digital economy, knowledge manegment is critical to the success of many organizations. This paper is based on a research which examined the practices of knowledge management in Turkish large companies. The research sample was 214 Turkish organizations. Data were obtained by questionnaires and analyzed by SPSS. The main findings revealed that the majority of respondents believed that their knowledge management system was very important to the development of their organizations, and that the most important sources of ideas come from customers. The most important method used by Turkish organizations to facilitate the sharing of knowledge between employees was internet. This research produces some useful insights and leaving a number of issues for future research.
Radical innovation becomes a more important capability of today’s companies. It involves high resource commitment, a long range perspective and the acceptance of risk and uncertainty. As this paper will show, this is not only a question of resources but about organizational system architecture and individual characteristics. We focus the Front End of the innovation process and the individual behaviour of the initiator, who is the key person in this phase. He first recognizes the radical opportunity in terms of a potential product-market combination which is new to the world. The information processing behaviour differs from the usual bottom up initiatives driven by suggestion systems, continuous improvement processes or kaizen. The information resp. knowledge about radical opportunities is not visible for anybody else in the organization until the initiator starts its transition at the organizational level.
Otherwise it stays hidden inside the initiator. The transition needs high personal initiative and overcoming internal and external barriers. The tasks include predevelopment activities and issue selling. Radical innovations comprehend risk in respect of uncertain feasibility, costs and customer acceptance. Besides this organisational perspective the initiator has additional personal risks, concerning career, and as a consequence payment level and even job security. That is why prior revealing his information he has to take all potential consequences of the initiative into account. In this paper we focus this specific decision and determinants of the opportunity recognizer’s behaviour to take charge of the radical opportunity – an essential question not addressed in innovation research so far.
Unlike entrepreneurs, initiators act inside an existing organizational context with specific strategies, procedures, rules and norms. Moreover, every initiator has certain characteristics like traits, experiences and knowledge. We suggest that the personal characteristics and organizational environment influence the individual risk perception of the radical opportunity and the following decision in a specific way. The organizational variables can be configured as such that risk perception decreases and a higher motivation and target level are set. Hence, the top management will soon get guidelines of organizational design to indirectly influence this individual decision and to get to know about more radical opportunities. Then they can evaluate them which is especially important for building a balances innovation portfolio. The article helps getting a deeper understanding of the information processing behaviour of initiators in front end innovation processes and therefore has practical relevance for all organisations which try to intensify their innovation activities.
Data Mining describes a technology that discovers non-trivial hidden patterns in a large collection of data. Although this technology has a tremendous impact on our lives, the invaluable contributions of this invisible technology often go unnoticed. This paper addresses the various forms of data mining while providing insights into its expanding role in enriching our life. Emerging forms of data mining are able to perform multidimensional mining on a wide variety of heterogeneous data sources, providing solutions to many problems. This paper highlights the advantages and disadvantages arising from the ever-expanding scope of data mining. Data Mining augments human intelligence by equipping us with a wealth of knowledge and by empowering us to perform our daily task better. As the mining scope and capacity increases, users and organisations become more willing to compromise privacy. The huge data stores of the ‘master miners’ allow them to gain deep insights into individual lifestyles and their social and behavioural patterns. The data on business and financial trends together with the ability to deterministically track market changes will allow an unprecedented manipulation of the stock market. Is it then possible to constrain the scope of mining while delivering the promise of better life?
The ancient Chinese kind of thinking, as best known from TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine) is very different from the modern western approach of scientific medicine. But there is powerful knowledge in both systems and the knowledge is complementary. It is obvious that our methods and techniques of knowledge management do not support the foreign kind of thinking. Though many of our trends have striking similarity to this ancient Chinese behaviour. Holistic approaches, synthesis versus analysis, networking, social web, empathy, mirror neurons, memetics, graphical versus textual communication. Many of the things we cannot understand are complex systems and for these systems our analytic behaviour in thinking does not seem to work. The straight rule of cause and effect does not work for complex systems, so our western philosophy based on causality fails. Our attempt in managing knowledge using analytical models based on causality will probably fail too. To break up information into sentences of words and looking for grammar (taxonomy), syntax and relations (ontology) cannot work. Because it is the wrong way of asking questions compared to the ancient Chinese philosophy. So what could be a useful approach in managing complex systems like knowledge in organisations from the ancient Chinese point of view?
Leading researchers in the fields of business strategy, organizational theory, institutional economics and economic development routinely emphasize the growth of the knowledge economy and by implication, there is a vital need for organizations to manage, share and leverage knowledge assets. Yet, it has been increasing clear from previous research that the field of knowledge management (KM) has not in general met its goals of transforming information sharing and collaborations in organisations. Lucier and Torsilera [97] claim that 84 percent of KM programs fail to have any real impact. Despite these problems, KM addresses a clearly perceived need for innovation, whether expressed in terms of the knowledge economy, knowledge workers, or intellectual capital management. This paper points to some gaps in the current body of knowledge about KM, and suggests areas of investigation that build on its strength. We propose a simple framework for what we term Knowledge Fusion to provide rigor and relevance to KM.
Knowledge assets are recognized as primary sources of competitive advantage. Knowledge management typically aims at increasing visibility of knowledge, codifying it and enhancing knowledge sharing in order to improve (re-)use of knowledge assets. However, the often open-minded and decentral approach to knowledge management also bears risks that knowledge assets are negatively affected and competitive advantages potentially diluted. These risks are not considered systematically so far. This paper defines the concept of knowledge risks, discusses knowledge risk management issues and presents a model of hypotheses in relation to their governance. This model builds the basis for the design of an empirical study. Finally, the results of this study on the current state-of-practice of governing knowledge risks are reported based on a stratified random sample comprising 129 German companies.
Classical approaches to document management do not cope with the demands knowledge documents make. Knowledge documents or so-called “living documents” have a far more complex lifecycle than general documents. They are usually used, edited und utilized by several people and many different versions, revisions and variants exist. Today the multitude of information that these processes generate are not captured or used to provide a better management or retrieval for this kind of documents. Our approach shows that the capturing of this lifecycle information can help in the retrieval as well as usage and management of those documents.
The evolution of our society to the knowledge based society has raised new challenges for most of the scientific domains that exist. The higher importance given to knowledge extraction instead of getting just information (i.e. data included in a context) hast led to the development of several intelligent techniques for knowledge discovery. This paper shows some examples of using the techniques of case-based reasoning and data-mining for knowledge discovery in the knowledge management system of an university. We have taken as example, the educational domain with the particular case of universities as they represent good examples of organizations that acquire, generate, store and use knowledge for various purposes, teaching, learning and research.
The main idea of this paper is the combination of the following two declarations: (1) There is a variety of different models, tools and techniques in the area of knowledge management, but there is no framework for finding the right tool in combination of the strategic alignment of the company and the technical/cultural infrastructure. (2) A lot of research in the field of knowledge management is done for large companies or international concerns. A very interesting and important kind of business is neglected: the small and medium-sized enterprises. This paper shows a model for describing the flexible process finding the right tools and techniques with the adequate focus on IT support for a SME to efficient implement knowledge management cost-efficient.
Straightforward expertise localization is crucial for personal and organizational efficiency and productivity. Common issues with existing approaches are the amount of effort required to build up the database and keeping it up-to-date, and the difficulty of establishing a complete coverage of the organization. The ExpertFinder system employs the concepts of referral chaining, social networks and user-generated data to enable a fast, low-effort and thereby low-cost approach to building an expertise localization database. At the same time, ExpertFinder provides a number of views on this database. We describe the design of the system and discuss in detail two pilots conducted at Océ-Technologies and the Telematica Instituut, the findings of which show high user participation and a good coverage of individual employee expertise and overall organizational expertise.
The paper starts with the wish list for a “perfect” information exploration tool, where the topics of that list are collected from the work of some pioneers and experts in this field, as e.g. from C. Ahlberg, C. Williamson and B. Shneiderman. After that, a novel multi criteria knowledge management technique is introduced, that comes fairly close to the wish list given. This will be demonstrated by looking on some general aspects of information exploration, and how knowCube, a user-friendly software tool supporting graphical decision making, masters such tasks, where user interaction happens via standard drawing tools, like pen, brush or text marker. The paper ends with an outlook on FilmFinder – Version knowCube.
The innovation process is a rhythm of search and selection, exploration and exploitation, cycles of perspectives encountering which allow people to analyze problems from new points of view. In order to enable innovation, a lot of instruments have been developed connecting heterogeneous individuals thinking (e.g. social networks, web portals, wiki systems, organizational yellow-pages, etc.). In this paper we focus on web portals, and how these tools assist the users connections and the innovation processes among them. In particular, we analyze some services implemented in the Innovation Portal of the Brazilian Ministry of Science and Technology geared to stimulating the establishment of strategic partnerships and cooperation projects involving national firms and science institutions. These services are mainly based on social network analysis in order to manage connections (i.e. coordination) and innovation processes among users.
Requirements Engineering is recognized as a crucial part of project and software development processes. This is due to the fact that the different stakeholders involved in a development project have to establish common terminologies as well as goals, scenarios and requirements expressed using these terminologies. Within the Semantic Web initiative various standards emerged for the creation and use of terminologies, expressed in the shape of semantic networks, taxonomies and ontologies. We develop an approach for semantic based Requirements Engineering. We present an ontology for capturing requirements relevant information. Furthermore, we report about a tool for semantic based Requirements Engineering and its application in a real-world development project scenario from the E-Government domain.
Within a series of practical projects to introduce knowledge management systems in small or medium-sized enterprises (SME), we realized the need to reconsider current guidelines such as the European Guide to good Practice in Knowledge Management. Our basic assumptions leading to this reconsideration are firstly that the introduction of knowledge management is a wicked problem, secondly that a strong relationship to the employees’ actual work process has to be established as well as a dense integration of technical and organizational structures, thirdly that it needs at least a series of workshops to develop an understanding of the usage of KM in the workplace, and finally that the introduction is more often triggered by opportunities than by strategic planning. On this basis, we re-orientate the phases of introducing knowledge management.
This paper describes our work on developing an ontology-based software infrastructure for retaining and maintaining theoretical Knowledge Management (KM) Maturity Models (ONTOKNOM) by using a KM Maturity Model Ontology. Moreover ONTOKNOM provides technical means for designing a web-based system that supports the form-based selfevaluation of an organization with regard to its current maturity level, as well as for providing concrete organizational recommendations and measures in order to achieve a higher one. A description of including the existing KPQM model into the system is also provided.
Even though knowledge management has been around for more than a decade, so far concrete instruments that can be systematically deployed are still rare. This paper presents an optimization solution targeted at flexible management of office space considering knowledge management criteria in order to enhance knowledge work productivity. The paper presents the Flexible Office conceptual model and optimization solution and discusses the theoretical foundation, assumptions and reasoning. A corresponding prototype was field-tested, successfully introduced, evaluated with the help of a series of interviews with users and improved according to their requirements. The paper also reflects on the organisational impact and lessons learned from field test and practical experience.
Biobanks store alive cell samples to provide them for a later use in many biomedical applications. Amongst many others, cord blood samples are cryopreserved (longterm stored between -130°C and -196°C) today for future stem cell therapy or tissue engineering. Different cell types need to be treated differently. Therefore, biomedical laboratories and biobanks have to cope with a variety of specialized knowledge for sample preparation, analysis or storage while they may lack appropriate techniques for reliably managing this specific knowledge or for executing preparations reproducibly. Especially in scenarios which require sample exchange or comparing of results (as for example collaborative vaccine studies do), problems can arise. This paper outlines the evolution of a local infrastructure for long-term management of sample preparation knowledge to a system for globally managing preparation protocols and their reproducible execution within a network of collaborating laboratories and biobanks, aiming at the collective process of knowledgebuilding. The system enhancements are inspired by the requirements of collaborative research and complex sample preparation protocols, derived from the exemplary needs of the GHRC biobank (Global HIV Vaccine Research Cryorepository), being part of the Collaboration for
AIDS Vaccine Discovery.
Increasingly Wikis are used to support existing corporate knowledge processes. Wikis are an appropriate software solution to support these processes because of their specific design principles. However, it is not yet proven whether Wikis are an adequate knowledge management tool. This paper presents a new approach to analyze existing networks in Wikis. Four perspectives on Wiki networks are introduced to investigate all dynamic processes and their interrelationships in a Wiki information space. The Social Network Analysis (SNA) is used to uncover existing structures and temporal changes. Additionally, a data set of a corporate Wiki is used to present an analysis which has been carried out. Results of analyzes work can be utilized to improve the existing knowledge processes in a company.
Information and communication technology (ICT) skills/ competence frameworks are an important prerequisite for ICT competence development and related quality assurance for recognition and transferability of qualifications. In this paper it is argued the importance of interoperability through common or explicit semantics of ICT competence profiles. This requires modelling on basis of shared frameworks. Thus, existing frameworks have been analysed. The paper presents underlying structure and data models of some prominent systems that have achieved status of proprietary standards. Moreover, a conceptual model is derived on basis of a comprehensive analysis of respective meta data of skill/ competence grids. Presented work provides the theoretical foundation for further development of information systems for the management of knowledge, skills, competences and qualification. Applications are skill/competence catalogues and repositories, as well as web services for data exchange between human resource information systems.
Today, Web Based Training (WBT) starts to be widely used as a new way of teaching. Unfortunately, this mode of teaching imposes new requirements and constraints. It has made the creation of learning materials a complex and demanding task for the instructors because it takes much time and demands a multitude of skills, in particular technical skills that must be developed and continuously updated. Hence, we propose a collaborative authoring methodology based on division of labor as a way to produce WBTs where the processes of production are clearly separated to meet the existing and needed skills of persons involved in WBT production. This paper presents an efficient method to support instructor’s guidance during the first phase of the WBT production called the Macro Design using the Rhetorical Structure Theory (RST) and taxonomies we developed.
Adapting E-Learning material allows re-using existing material even in changed usage scenarios. But this adaptation is a complex task. To achieve a perfect result expert knowledge is needed. Often adaptations have to be performed by persons who are not experts in performing these tasks. To enable those persons to achieve a satisfying result they need to be supported. Patterns are one possibility to make expert knowledge on certain tasks available to other persons. In this paper an approach is presented how expert knowledge of performing adaptations of existing E-Learning material can be collected and made available with patterns. This approach can also be used to collect knowledge of other processes, e.g. in companies.
In many respects Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management (KM) are strongly related to each other. From a KM perspective the Web 2.0 evolution can serve as a pool of ideas for new ways of knowledge sharing, knowledge organisation and for the development of new architectures of measurable knowledge management systems. KM projects are usually developed in a process-oriented, goal-driven environment, embedded in complex organisational structures, whereas typical Web 2.0 applications like del.icio.us, flickr or friendster are building “their own context”. This paper will examine Tim O´Reilly’s eight generic Web 2.0 design patterns in terms of their applicability for a measurable KM System in an Enterprise 2.0. Two use cases will be presented and it will be discussed which of the design patterns could be enriched by technologies from the semantic web which will be summarized as a concept named “Enterprise n+1”.
The knowledge is defined as combination and organization of data and information in given context and Knowledge Management (KM) provides capturing, storing and reusing of knowledge objects. In Web 2.0 world the knowledge is represented in form of microcontent object and KM 2.0 proposes creation, sharing and leveraging the microknowledge in a collaborative way. The microknowledge in Web 2.0 network can be controlled through designing the instructional strategies that will provide user learning paths and activities and that will give possibilities for sharing of those same learning activities and microknowledge with others. The present paper is aimed to reflect of the research needs and the new challenges in the mentioned above three areas: KM, Web 2.0 technologies and Learning Design (LD). It is focused on designing of personalized learning using IMS LD elements. The paper analyzes the possibilities of applying Web 2.0 technologies for defining a broaden set of activities and creating the rich environments with microknowledge objects and web services in one successful scenario.
Distributed cooperative contexts provide a challenge for successful Knowledge Management. Users in different places around the globe need to interact with one another in goal-oriented projects. In classical Computer Supported Cooperative Work applications this interactive component is often neglected. In contrast Web 2.0 offers a strong author-recipient interaction that may be translated successfully into cooperative work contexts. An integrated approach based on virtual knowledge spaces using semantic positioning to communicate meaning efficiently between project members enhanced with Web 2.0 functionality is introduced in this paper.
The goal of this paper is to identify and analyze Web 2.0 services and usage models appropriate for assisting the realization of Inclusive Universal Access (introduced by Derntl and Motschnig-Pitrik as an extension to Universal Access) particularly in cooperative learning and knowledge sharing environments. The analysis is backed by previous research and experience either at the authors’ or other educational institutions. It can serve as a brief reference of a broad spectrum of Inclusive Universal Access scenarios which have proven to be successful together with their Web 2.0 support. It will hopefully also help Web 2.0 service developers to get deeper insight into the different aspects and effects of the new web services in terms of their applications in cooperative learning and knowledge sharing. Furthermore, the paper aims to reveal the gaps and future topics for research, development, and practice.
This paper discusses the requirements of a framework for sharing digital resources and metadata to meet the needs of open, flexible Knowledge Management solutions. The changing nature of the Web and its users as observed in recent years clearly establishes the need for new approaches and technologies to fully exploit the potential for working with existing digital resources. Formal metadata about the resources can be combined with information created in lightweight and user-centric approachesin order to significantly enhance resource descriptions and enable more efficient access to existing knowledge. The ALOE system, currently in development at DFKI, is one such solution and it is used here as the basis for a sample realization of an appropriate framework.
Although co-located project teams from within one organisation can have difficulties to work together effectively and efficiently, the challenges are significantly increased in a team that consists of people from different organisations that work from different physical locations. In this paper we share our experiences of introducing new software tools (a project wiki and Skype) to support distributed project work and describe good practices, tips and tricks for the use of the new tools, also in relation to the existing toolset.
Semantic Technology is well established and mature enabling challenging and novel applications, but is rarely brought into real business applications. The EU-Project AsIsKnown (FP6-2005-028044) implements a show case of semantic flow systems in European home textile industry to solve two major challenges: (a) enable a homogeneous knowledge flow and (b) provide trend analysis. State of the art Semantic Web Technology is used for context, semantic and syntax transformation. One major challenge is the transformation from human knowledge into Ontologies. The PROMOTE approach has been selected for the transformation from the expert knowledge into Ontologies. This paper introduces the project AsIsKnown and discusses the PROMOTE approach to transform expert knowledge into Ontologies.
Process management is an important task in many companies. However, most of the literature on process management focuses on aspects like execution and monitoring and does neither deal with knowledge management support for the maintenance and contextualization of process models nor with the integration of such tasks into work procedures and corresponding tools. An effective knowledge management for business processes needs meta-data describing not only the processes but also their parts and details. This paper proposes a knowledge infrastructure for process modelling, usage and maintenance, which is based on a social tagging approach derived from popular social bookmarking tools. The concept of a tag-based prototype is described, which enables knowledge management support for complex sets of processes.
Abstract: In many companies search solutions span departments and functional operations, independent of individual working processes in particular departments. The efficient access to the required information in relevant sub-processes is a key factor for the performance of the enterprise. Optimizing the searching and finding of necessary information enables a better workflow, and thus reduces costs. Based on well known process modelling methods we present a guideline and methods to analyse and document relevant characteristics of information intensive processes. In a next step these observations will serve as a basis for a mapping between identified requirements and suitable methods and tools for an optimal support of the process.
There is surprisingly little literature specifically concerned with theorising and conceptualising of the transfer and sharing of complex information and/or knowledge, despite the fact that its significance is widely and without restriction acknowledged throughout the [mostly Anglo-American] literature on knowledge management and organisational learning. It is the aim of this paper to provide a brief review that allows an eclectic snapshot of the state of the – predominantly continental European – literature on this subject. After an introductory definition and limitation of the concepts involved the theoretical constructs are illustrated with the use of a set of models – selected predominantly for their link to empirical research and the capability to delimit the field. The empirical grounding of the models makes it possible to view them as partial investigations contributing individual elements of a more overarching research framework into which future studies may be integrated. In conclusion, a systemic approach of knowledge exchange in the form of a dynamic factorial model is proposed, the contributing frameworks are further categorised as to the type of knowledge for which they would be of maximum utility and the influence of external issue and problem spaces is shown.