Peer–Mediated Distributed Knowledge Management M. Bonifacio, P. Bouquet, G. Mameli , M. Nori

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

2. KB 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 Contribution WfS Assumption: Knowledge as content that can be centralized, standardized and controlled Collaborative tools

3. 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. A community internal web site Marketing Local Knowledge Context Content Communiy Communiy Sales Force Project Team 1 Communiy An individual’s file system directory or outlook folders A lotus notes team room Communiy Knowledge Network Sales R&D 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

6. Social and technological architecture of knowledge COORDINATION AUTONOMY 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

7. 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 From organization to the technological architecture:Actors and Roles in an Information Retrieval applications K-Peer I know! New Tool? Marketing she knows! Community K-Federation we know! Sales Force Project Team 1 Community Community KnowledgeNetwork Sales R&D

8. Autonomy CONTEXT Vacation Coordination Coordination 2001 2000 Marketing Community Mountains Sea Sea Lake Sales Force Puglia Spain USA Project Team 1 Communiy Community Peer Network Sales R&D From organization to the technological architecture:Knowledge Processes • 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

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

10. Search documents related to a focus Search (Focus Source) Query (Focus Source) User GUI Matching Service Document descriptors Focus Target Provider Seeker Document descriptors Document descriptors Context management tool Document name Document path Document name Document path Document name Document path Document name Document path Mail subject Mail id Mail subject Mail id Mail subject Mail id Document descriptors Semantic search Perform a semantic match 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 Search (Keywords) Keywords Query (keywords) User GUI Indexing Service pdf Document descriptors Provider Seeker Document descriptors Document descriptors ps xls doc html Document name Document path Document name Document path Document name Document path pst Document name Document path Mail subject Mail id Document repository Mail subject Mail id Mail subject Mail id txt Document descriptors ppt Keyword based search Search documents that contain keywords

13. KEx: Knowledge Space

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

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: http://edamok.itc.it