Peer–Mediated Distributed Knowledge Management

M. Bonifacio, P. Bouquet, G. Mameli, M. Nori

AMKM-2003 Stanford University March 24-26

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 knowledgeKBs: in order to collect contents organized according to a corporate conceptual schemaEKP: in order to provide a single point of access for the members of different organizational units

Enterprise knowledge portal

KB

Collaborative tools

Contribution WfS

Assumption: Knowledge as content that can be

centralized, standardized and

controlled

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

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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…

Knowledge as content

Context

Content

Local “Knowledges”Global Knowledge

Interpret content

Interpret other

contexts

Address to trusted experts

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 contextIndividualsCommunitiesTeams

A community internal web site

A lotus notes team room

Content

An individual’s file system directory or outlook folders

Context

Local KnowledgeMarketing

Communiy

R&D

Communiy

Sales Force

Communiy

Sales

Project Team 1

Knowledge Network

Communiy

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

Portal

KB

Social architecture of knowledge Technological architecture of knowledge

Social and technological architecture of knowledge

AUTONOMY

COORDINATION

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

Sales Force

R&D

Marketing

Sales

Project Team 1

KnowledgeNetwork

Community

Community

Community

K-Federation

K-PeerNew Tool?

I know!

we know!

she knows!

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

– Advertisement

– Discovery module

– Membership module

Autonomy

From organization to the technological architecture:Knowledge Processes CONTEXT

Vacation

2001 2000

Sea LakeSeaMountains

Puglia Spain USA

Coordination

Sales Force

R&D

Marketing

Sales

Project Team 1

Peer Network

Community

Community

Communiy

Coordination

KEx (Knowledge Exchange): User interface for Seeker

Semantic search

MatchingService Provider Seeker

Document descriptors

UserGUI

Perform a semantic match

Query (Focus Source)

Document descriptorsFocus Target

Document descriptors

Search documents related to a

focus

Mail id

Document name Document path

Document name Document path

Document name Document path

Document name Document path

Mail subject Mail id

Mail subject

Mail subject

Mail id

Document descriptors

Search (Focus Source)

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

Context management tool

Semantic Matching

Keyword based search

IndexingService Provider Seeker

Search (Keywords)

Document descriptors

pst

txtppt

html

doc

pdf

xls

ps

Document repository

UserGUI

Search documents thatcontain keywords

Query (keywords)

Document descriptors

Keywords

Document descriptors

Search documents that

contain keywords

Mail id

Document name Document path

Document name Document path

Document name Document path

Document name Document path

Mail subject Mail id

Mail subject

Mail subject

Mail id

Document descriptors

KEx: Knowledge Space

Provide documentsShare these

documents

Context management tool

Outlook pst file

File system

Lotus Notes repository

Other content repositories

Document descriptor

Document descriptor

Document descriptor

Document descriptor

Green Table

Concept ID

Concept ID

Concept ID

Concept ID

Provider

Incoming query

IndexingService

IndexingService

IndexingService

IndexingService

Keyword matching

Semantic matching

Association to concept

Add to indexes

+ Keywords

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

Thank you

Gianluca Mameli: mameli@irst.itc.it

Project: http://edamok.itc.it