Evolving a Portal Complexity Theory & Intranets Tom Reamy Chief Knowledge Architect KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services

Evolving a Portal Complexity Theory & Intranets Tom Reamy Intranet Deity KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services

3 Agenda  Introduction – Complexity Theory (abridged)  Complexity Theory and Intranets – Is there evidence of Intelligent Design on Intranets? – Environment, Evolutionary Mechanisms  Complexity Theory and Blogs, Wiki’s, Folksonomies  Conclusion – Evolutionary Model – Benefits of a Complexity Theory Approach  Source: Intranets May/June 2005

4 KAPS Group  Knowledge Architecture Professional Services (KAPS)  Consulting, strategy recommendations  Knowledge architecture audits  Partners – Convera, Inxight, and others  Taxonomies: Enterprise, Marketing, Insurance, etc. – Taxonomy customization  Intellectual infrastructure for organizations – Knowledge organization, technology, people and processes – Search, content management, portals, collaboration, knowledge management, e-learning, etc.

5 Complexity Theory (abridged) History  An interdisciplinary method – Applied to math, model systems, economics, ecology, etc.  Initial Hype Period – 1980’s-1990’s – Chaos theory, Catastrophe theory, AI, etc.  Current – half way between hype and practical – Beware articles that focus on one aspect – self-organizing  Santa Fe Institute, social research, our Keynote  The Center for Complex Systems Research

6 Complexity Theory (abridged) Examples  Complex Systems (not complicated) – Large number of independent relatively dumb elements interact according to a small set of rules. – Self-organizing – order emerges – Local rules, local interactions – global order emerges  Definition by Example – Ant Colonies – clear tunnels with no idea of how to clear a tunnel – Neighborhoods – create a structure with no central planning

7 Complexity Theory (abridged) Essential Features  Large numbers of elements  Local Interactions  Emergence – global from local  Feedback  Self-organization – Key idea – often over-hyped  Importance of the environment – Often overlooked

8 Complexity Theory: The Hype  Business Organization / Taxonomy / Intranet Management President HR VPIT VP Products VP Computers SoftwareHardwareServices

9 Complexity Theory: The Hype  An Ant Colony, Blogs, Folksonomies, Worker Queen Worker

10 Complexity Theory and Intranets Evolution - Problems  Evolution takes a really long time – Even at electronic speeds  Evolution doesn’t care about the individual – A bit harsh even by Oracle Management standards  Evolution is sloppy – Needs to kill a lot of individuals to achieve progress  Evolution will lead to a better Intranet if: – We wait 100 million years – Are willing to have most people not be able to find anything while we wait.

11 Complexity Theory and Intranets Is there evidence of intelligent design on Intranets?  IT Technoid Model – Web site units, drop down menus everywhere, cheap, lots of content, no one can find anything  Corporate Communication Model – Pretty, organized top down, expensive, one way flow, all the important content is stuck in one bin – no one can find anything  Library Model – Extremely well organized – alphabetical, rich content, expensive, no one (except librarians) can find anything

12 Complexity Theory and Intranets  Intranets – self-organizing gone mad – No central control – web sites everywhere – Designs – good to bizarre to truly tortuous  Intranets are complicated but not complex  Turning Intranets into complex systems: – Structured environments – Evolutionary mechanisms Feedback with consequences

13 Complexity Theory and Intranets Structured Environment – More structure  Complexity – need right level of structure and disorder  Unstructured systems can’t evolve  Level of structure = value of order that emerges – Color clumps, ants, neighborhood stores  Need “taxonomies” and metadata – content, users, activities  Units – not web sites, but documents, concepts, category nodes – Web sites are too complicated – need simpler rules

14 Complexity Theory and Intranets: Evolutionary Mechanisms  Feedback with Consequences – If an ant fails to follow a rule, it dies – If a store locates in the wrong place, it dies – If a web site locates in the wrong place or fails to organize it’s content well – what happens?  Option - It dies – Simple rule -- minimum number of visits to survive – Good – universal and numerical measure - visits – Bad – too simplistic – visits not = quality – Really Bad – CEO web site dies

15 Complexity Theory and Intranets Evolutionary Mechanisms  Need better Feedback – better than Top pages, most visits  Need eCommerce kinds of reports  Need paths, activities – tied to categories and audiences – WebTrends top paths – not very useful – Too much variation, not enough structure – Can’t see the patterns – Need categorization – documents, audiences, activities, paths

16 Complexity Theory and Intranets Evolutionary Mechanisms  Build in feedback into everything – Implicit rankings of search terms, was this useful? – Explicit – usage tracking  Feedback into categorization – How good, suggested terms and modifications  Navigation and search – How good, ranking of content – Collaborative and Competitive Best Bets

17 Complexity Theory and Intranets Evolutionary Mechanisms–What do you do with feedback  Refine categorization, taxonomies, search – Uncover the effects of “interwingledness” – Discover natural category levels – by audience  Documents – classify dynamically by subject, activity – Class of document – single item, part of path-rule – Simple – top documents, most recently visited By topic, audience – more useful  Create rules or ontologies, clusters of order Fly-Sleep-Drive Facts – policy-form- Evolve rules – by usage, explicit feedback

18 Complexity Theory and Intranets Evolutionary Mechanisms: Rules alone not enough  Current situation – no good overall set of rules  Intelligent Designer / Knowledge Architecture Team – Create the structured environment – Create the rules and feedback system – Tweak the evolution of the system – Analyze data, paths to monitor – Develop initial candidates – interviews, search log analysis, ethnographic studies

19 Complexity Theory and Blogs, Wiki’s, Folksonomies  Wikipedia – fast cheap encyclopedia – Not really just mass of workers making local decisions – Role of initial environment and sets of rules – Feedback everywhere - including on structure and rules – Still have designers – administrators, councils of administrators  Folksonomies – fast, cheap taxonomies – Currently – only flat keyword lists – Need designers and taxonomists for higher level structure – Economics of mass feedback, growing some structure

20 Complexity Theory and Blogs, Wiki’s, Folksonomies  Blogs – within the enterprise – special case – As they grow – need more categorization “Set the Blog categories using keywords and topics” – Design – which areas to develop policies and which areas to evolve Policy – legal, corporate rules Evolve – reputations, conventions, etiquette  Theoretical rigor and Blog Buzz – Better use of blogs – Experimental area to try ideas

21 Conclusions: Evolutionary Model  Designed structure at infrastructure level, not application  Feedback and rules based on categories, not web sites  Advanced feedback is necessary  Knowledge architecture team is necessary – Develop infrastructure, analyze feedback, facilitate  Order is grown – from a combination of bottom up and design  Management is suggesting rules and testing and gathering feedback about usefulness, not setting policies  Make change part of the solution, not the problem

22 Complexity Theory and Intranets Approaches and Benefits  Develop arguments for more structure – – Better taxonomies, metadata, etc. – New focus for metadata – purpose, audience  Fresh perspective on approach for and value of: – Taxonomies, Management roles, metrics.  Benefits of research – Investigation itself yields ideas – Application of theory to Intranets – Framework for range of ideas – social bookmarking, Wiki, blogs, folksonomies  One tool to improve Intranet order and management – Not THE answer

Questions? Tom Reamy KAPS Group Knowledge Architecture Professional Services