1. Stanford University March 24-26
Peer–Mediated Distributed Knowledge Management
M. Bonifacio, P. Bouquet, G. Mameli, M. Nori
AMKM-2003
Stanford University March 24-26

2. Traditional KM architectures: knowledge as content
In the last 10 years, companies have invested huge amounts of money in order to manage knowledge adopting technological “carriers” (such as corporate knowledge portals or content management platforms).
Conceptually, KM architectures are usually composed by:
Collaborative environments: in order to facilitate the generation of “raw knowledge”
Contribution workflows: in order to codify and standardize raw knowledge
KBs: in order to collect contents organized according to a corporate conceptual schema
EKP: in order to provide a single point of access for the members of different organizational units
Enterprise knowledge portal KB
Contribution WfS
Assumption: Knowledge as content that can be centralized, standardized and controlled
Collaborative tools

3. KM Has Greatly Underperformed the Tech Sector
Some problems
KM systems don’t match expectations:
deserted by users that continue to develop, install and use local applications (7000 LN DBs at Andersen)
not flexible nor interoperable and thus unable to adapt to organizational change and differentiation (Merging Banks, changing operating models)
very difficult to maintain (people and resources are needed to keep it updated and populated, 500 people at Accenture)
still benefits are not demonstrated (number of contributions and hits…?)
KM Has Greatly Underperformed the Tech Sector

4. Our idea: Knowledge as Context
Besides knowledge viewed as content, there are other forms of knowledge which are to be considered:
Interpretative Context: people know how to interpret what happens and generate a language to talk about things and events. Context is a mean to interpret content
Relational Context: people know who knows what and reduce complexity through trust and identity. Context as a mean to refer to other people. (People don’t believe in the paradigm of ideological sharing (all with all). They develop and use technologies if enable the sharing of knowledge within groups that evolve dynamically.)
Value emerges when content is positioned within its context: conceptual schemas,
web of relations, business processes…
Local “Knowledges”
Global Knowledge
Address to trusted experts
Interpret other contexts
Knowledge as content
Context
Interpret content
Content

5. Complex organizations as made up of Knowledge Nodes
Knowledge Nodes are social entities that “own” a local knowledge in terms of a content that has meaning within a context
Individuals
Communities
Teams
A community internal web site
Marketing
Communiy
R&D
Sales Force
Sales
Project Team 1
Knowledge Network
Content
An individual’s file system directory or outlook folders
Context
Local Knowledge
A lotus notes team room

6. Technological architecture of knowledge
The inconsintency of the technological architectures in current KM systems
From a technological point of view, current KM technologies are inconsistent with the very nature of knowledge and its social architecture  failure
Social architecture of knowledge
Technological architecture of knowledge KB
Portal
Social and technological architecture of knowledge
AUTONOMY
COORDINATION

7. From organization to the technological architecture: Actors and Roles in an Information Retrieval applications
Organizational Actors
Individual  K-Peer of a P2P network
Group  K-Federation
Roles
Knowledge Seeker seeker module
Knowledge Provider provider/federation module
Broker (suggesting potential providers to seekers) brokering module
K-Peer
I know!
New Tool?
Marketing
she knows!
Community
K-Federation
Sales Force
we know!
Project Team 1
Community
Community
KnowledgeNetwork
Sales
R&D

8. From organization to the technological architecture: Knowledge Processes
CONTEXT
Vacation
2001
2000
Sea
Lake
Mountains
Puglia
Spain
USA
Create and manage a knowledge representation
Context Markup Language
Context Editor
Context extraction tools
Declare its existence in the network
Advertisement
Discover other available / active peers on the network
Discovery module
Ping module
Ask, receive and provide information in and from them
Knowledge Exchange module
Discover, create and join to federation of peers
Membership module
Autonomy
Coordination
Coordination
Sales Force
R&D
Marketing
Sales
Project Team 1
Peer Network
Community
Communiy

9. KEx (Knowledge Exchange): User interface for Seeker

10. Context management tool
Search documents related to a focus
Semantic search
Search (Focus Source)
Query (Focus Source)
Matching
Service
Provider
Seeker
User
GUI
Document descriptors
Focus Target
Document descriptors
Document descriptors
Mail id
Document name
Document path
Mail subject
Document descriptors
Perform a semantic match
Context management tool
P. Bouquet, A. Donà, L. Serafini, ConTeXtualized Local Ontology Specification via CTXML
Proceedings of the AAAI Workshop on Meaning Negotiation, Edmonton (Alberta, Canada), July 28, 2002

11. Semantic Matching

12. Search documents that contain keywords
Keyword based search
Search (Keywords)
Keywords
Query (keywords)
Indexing
Service
Provider
Seeker
User
GUI
Document descriptors
Document descriptors
Document descriptors
Mail id
Document name
Document path
Mail subject
Document descriptors
Search documents that
contain keywords
pst
txt
ppt
html
doc
pdf
xls ps
Document repository

13. KEx: Knowledge Space

14. Context management tool
Share these documents
Provide documents
Incoming query
Document descriptor
Green Table
Concept ID
Context management tool
Outlook pst file
+ Keywords
Association to concept
Semantic matching
File system
Indexing
Service
Provider
Indexing
Service
Lotus Notes repository
Keyword matching
Add to indexes
Indexing
Service
Other content repositories
Indexing
Service

15. Conclusions and future works
We have developed a P2P application (based on JXTA protocols) for DKM that provides functionalities such as:
Seeker
Provider
Broker
Federations management
To be developed:
Community Management: peers can suggest to users to which federations they should join since semantically similar to them (bottom up community formation)
Push information services: peers can advertise services to other peers on the base of semantically relevant interests (targeted advertisement)
Recommendation: peers can listen to other users or other peers requests and suggest where or what to look for (help new comers)
Social Network Monitoring: Knowledge Managers can monitor the formation and evolution of trust networks and corporate languages

16. Thank you Gianluca Mameli: mameli@irst.itc.it
Project: