Angeles Notes

8/14/2019 Angeles Notes

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Michael Angeles

[email protected]

http://studioid.com

What they are, why people are using them, making them useful for

knowledge management

Usability Professionals Association

16 September 2003

Making sense of weblogs in the intranet

Thank you.

Today Im going to talk about weblogs inside my company, their use inknowledge management, and how my organization is hoping to make themusable for enterprise knowledge work if the number of blogs in the company

increases significantly.

Ill talk briefly about our company and the types of people involved in variousforms of web publishing on the intranet.

Then Ill look more closely at what weblogs are, how people use them, and how

we might develop information systems to make usable, the data that getspublished from these weblogs.


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Disclaimer

But, first... a disclaimer.

I like it when documents such as functional specifications start out with adisclaimer -- a discussion of what it doesnt cover as well as what it does.

Id like to try to introduce this presentation in the same way so you know thatnot everything Im talking about has been implemented.

Much of this talk has to do with strategy and positioning.


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What this is

A discussion about weblogging for knowledge

management within corporations

A discussion of my organizations role -- how

we view ourselves in terms of providing

weblogging support

A look at our long view -- how were planning

to support webloggers

So heres what this presentation is going to be...

This is going to be a discussion of a phenomenon occurring within corporations* Namely the proliferation of intranet weblogs for knowledge management.* Im also going to talk a little about how weblogs affect corporate intelligence and IT.

This is also a discussion of how my organization has analyzed and is planning to deal with weblogs.* Im going to talk a little about how were supporting bloggers presently.* And Im going to talk about how we, as the companys information management organization, arepositioning ourselves to deal with any information growth as a result of blogging.

The disclaimer part is that we have NOT implemented all of our ideas yet, though we have the technology andresources to implement them. The technical implementation, as you will see is trivial when compared to thestrategy and resources required to actually pull off some of the ideas weve kicked about.


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Before we get into the nitty gritty of weblogs ...

a very briefandincomplete history of Lucent

intranet web publishing

How web publishing has evolved

Whos needs are being met by web-based

publishing

Lets start with a timeline

A history of web publishing in my intranet

But before we get into the nitty gritty of what weblogs are and before I start throwingout buzzwords

I want to give you some idea of how web publishing has evolved in our intranet

And then want to look briefly at the different people involved in publishing corporateinformation on the intranet and why they need to do it


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First there was the command line

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Technologies

CompanyMilestones

IISMilestones

Internetprotocols(Archie,FTP,

telnet)

LINUS(Client-server)

NCSAMosaic(11/1993)

Web browser timeline: http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/browsers.htm

From a thousand miles up and with the benefit of hindsight, we can see where thecompany has gone with web publishing on the intranet.

In pre-web days the library organizations electronic resources were accessed usingLINUS, a shell interface that you accessed by telnetting into our UNIX server. This was

a hierarchical menu interface that dumped you into oru databases, which usedcommand-line search syntax identical to Dialog, a large database aggregator popularwith researchers.


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Then came pictures

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Technologies

CompanyMilestones

IISMilestones

Internetprotocols(Archie,FTP,telnet)


NCSAMosaic(11/1993)

NetscapeNavigator 1(12/1994)

InfoViewDigital Library(1994-1995)

Simple sitesproliferate;Hand editted and FTPed;Front Page webmasters(1995-96)

ISG created;producescustomizeddb-drivenBU intranetsites(7/96)

Then Tim Berners Lee wrote the specifications that became HTTP and HTML and theweb was born. Most web pages at this early stage of our intranet are all text andalmost all sites are probably marked up by hand in vi or emacs. Later people start touse WYSIWYG editors like Front page.

In 1996 my organization begins to hire staff to produce web interfaces for customerdatabases and web sites and we begin to get more heavily involved in doing db-drivenweb-based information systems for business units.


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Then useful data competed for screen space

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Technologies

CompanyMilestones

IISMilestones

ONSource,first BUportal(1/1999)



NCSAMosaic(11/1993)



ISGsupports BUportals withindexedcontent(1999)


ISG created;producescustomizeddb-driven BUintranet sites(7/96) Business

taxonomydevelopment(1998)

IISindexingprocessintroduced(1998)

Then useful data started to crowd and compete for screen space when the first business unit portals arrived.

ON Source is probably the most successful large-scale web site implementation Ive seen in the company. Itwas the result of an Optical Networking Group team that worked with analysts who came into theorganization to do interviews with Optical Networking knowledge workers to find out what they looked for todo their jobs, where they looked and how much time they spent looking. After an extensive report wascreated describing their prospective users and estimating the amount of money spent per person searchingfor information, the functional specifications for this portal started to come together.

Our organization was brought in to develop a metadata schema including an Optical Networking subjecttaxonomy, and company taxonomy which was then expanded to include all of the product and researchareas at Lucent.

IIS then began to modify its applications and indexing processes to incorporate these subject taxonomy termsand classified data going through our organization began to feed the portal.


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The bubble bursts and standards are born

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Technologies

CompanyMilestones

IISMilestones


MyLucent,Companyportal(7/2001)



NCSAMosaic(11/1993)



ISG supportsBU portalswith indexedcontent(1999)

Portals close;subdomainsremovedMigration toMyLucentbegins(2000-2001)

ISGceases toproducecustomsites(2000)




IIS indexingprocessintroduced(1998)

Then a wierd thing happened. The bottom fell out when the dot com bubble burst. Telecom was hard hit andfrom up high every executive and senior manager was looking for ways to cut costs.

So corporate standards were discussed for a long time and we began getting involved with an initiative tomigrate all of the companys separate intranet sites into one company portal. I remember hearing about thelong meetings that seemed to go on for months around this topic.

In the end, the Oracle Portal server was selected and is now running the corporate intranet. My groupstopped doing custom-information services involving new web site development.


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Then the bottom really falls out

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Technologies

CompanyMilestones

IISMilestones





NCSAMosaic(11/1993)





ISG ceasesto producecustomsites(2000)





Much ofCIOsupportingMyLucentis laid off(2003)

And then another wierd thing happened -- the failing economy caught up with our CIO.

The CIO organization has been decimated by forced management procedures (orlayoffs) in the last year. So much of the hard core information systems / developmentwork is returning to us in IIS again.


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And everything old is new again

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Technologies

CompanyMilestones

IISMilestones



We are here

Blogs appear;Blog-related

services(2002)



NCSAMosaic(11/1993)





ISG ceasesto producecustomsites(2000)





Much ofCIOsupportingMyLucentis laid off(2003)

Which brings us back to where we started really. Were finding more people needing tocreate/and share knowledge who are using some form of lightweight web publishingto do it. But this time the technologies have matured and some of the savvy peopleare picking up light CMS in the form of weblogging software.


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Really seems like web-publishing chaos

From an IT perspective, however, this appears to be chaos.

We see different processes and technologies serving different types of people.

But this patchwork image really tells a good story...

As an aside, the CIO reaction to this chaos has been to start up large projects requiring a good deal ofspending and to mandate the use of standard processes and technologies in the enterprise. From myperspective, it seems that not all of these processes and technologies have not always been coordinated withuser processes and needs. As a result there might be a backlash of users backtracking of users to simplermethods. Were starting to see this in the re-emergence of personal publishing (such as with weblogs) andwith an increase in requests for information services of my organization.


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Our intranet story can best be explained in

terms of people

Diverse set set of user types

Diverse set of needs

Diverse set of technologies used to meet

these needs

Theres a story to be told in that diversity/chaos

Looking at our timeline, I think our Intranet story can best be explained in terms of the needs of the different

user types within the company.

and specifically by observing who these needs have been satisfied (or not satisfied) using various technologies

over time.

Looking back at that timeline from a high vantage point, it seems like IT infrastructure for web publishing iscomplete chaos. To some degree that's true. Until recently, all IT implementations within the company havebeen executed from within the individual business units rather than directed from above. Slowly that's changing

again! We'll look more at that issue when we talk about information ecology.

The issue that we're going to focus on first is this diversity of needs.


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Knowledge workers

Researchers, engineers, sales force

Communities of Practice (CoPs)Communities organized around projects, products or

topics (e.g. Mobility)

Chief Information Organization (CIO)

Enterprise Information Technology people

Executives

Officers, upper managers

Whos who in intranet web-publishing

We can generalize about who the major players in the Intranet web publishing picture, reducing those involved

to a few key user types.

Knowledge workers

Communities of Practice

Chief Information OrganizationExecutives


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Knowledge workerResearchers, engineers, sales force

"I need to capture and

distribute information about

companies and contracts I'm

working with. Email and the

telephone is usually the fastest

way to do this, but I want to

spread this information

throughout the company."

BackgroundKnowledge workers are closes toour products. Depending on theirrole and Business Unit, typicalkowledge workers might doresearch related to products or

prepare contracts for customers.One common need is to documentand communicate knowledge withintheir department.

GoalsCreate and share personal orproject-related knowledge.

ToolsHTML editors (Front page,HomeSite, vi) and FTP, Weblogapplications (Radio Userland,Movable Type), Email

Community of practiceGroups organized around specific

topics or projects

"We increase our personal and

group intelligence through

collaboration and knowledge-

share."

BackgroundCommunities of practice are formedaround topics, product lines,technologies, customers. CoPs aretypically interested in collaborationand knowledge-share at a group

level.

GoalsIncrease awareness and knowledgeon topic of interest to CoP forgroup or personal gain.

ToolsDocument management systems,Groupware, BBS, Wiki, Emaildiscussion groups

ExecutiveExecutive officers, vice presidents

and upper management

"In this tight, competitive

economy, we have to operate

at world-class levels, but wehave to be lean and cut costs

where we can.

BackgroundUpper management is focussed onkeeping the company profitable.One of the popular ways to do thisis to control costs. Management islooking to reduce duplication and

leverage resources in order to cutback on unnecessary costs.

GoalsLead organization to profitability.

CIO managerCIO directors and managers

"I satisfy my user demands

using our standard toolbox of

technologies. CIO works hard

to establish the solutions that

deliver the most bang for the

buck"

BackgroundThe CIO organization is interestedin establishing technical standardswithin the company. They arelooking for ways to efficiently meetinformation systems needs in a

manner that reflects the budget andresources of the company.

GoalsMeet user needs with standardizedprocesses and informationtechnologies.

ToolsEnterprise portals, documentmanagement systems

This matrix hopes to tell the story of the key players in intranet web publishing and what their needs are.

These are the people who:* need to create and share personally acquired knowledge --> these are the knowledge workers

* who need to collaborate and share group or community knowledge (for example,. project and client

information, product and contract details) --> these are the Communities of Practice

* who need to establish a standard way of doing things (for instance, determining standard architecture andprocesses) --> this is the CIO organization* who need to find ways of saving money --> this is upper management, especially company executives

The primary users of web publishing applications are the knowledge workers and communities of practice.

These user needs have mapped to specific tools and technologies over our history. Describing their businessgoals and knowledge management needs would help the CIO to try to provide a road map for IT standards,

but for my purposes, this matrix helps so we can observe how the different user needs have resulted in ourpresent information ecology.


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Nardi & O'Day on information ecology

A system of people, practices, values, and technologies at work in a local

environment.

A healthy ecology is one that is dynamic (changing/evolving), diverse (madeup of different types of people and technologies) and that allows for adiverse set of people and technologies to work in a complementary way.

The new knowledge management

Deloitte: bridging the gaps between people and systems depends on firstcreating the conditions that allow people to participate in KM locally ratherthan enforcing technology-based KM policies. These local activities arebridged in Knowledge Network systems

Forrester: organizations have begun to move away from single-solution KMpackages

Diversity is a good thing

Diversity is a good thing.

I began to realize over time that the perceived chaos didnt represent a failure of IT or of management. The diversity, I think,simply represented a lot of people with information or knowledge management needs that were finding different ways ofsatisfying those needs. The implementations are as diverse as the people that make up the organization.

I found in the writing of Bonnie Nardi and Vicki ODay some justification for or validation of this diversity. Essentially they use theanalogy of ecologies to describe the organization.

They define an information ecology as a system of people, practices, values, and technologies at work in a local environment.

They also say that a healthy ecology is one that is dynamic (changing/evolving), diverse (made up of different types of peopleand technologies) and that allows for a diverse set of people and technologies to work in a complementary way. Ive used thisopinion to rationalize our strategy of working with this diversity rather than imposing systems or processes from above.

Some recent research by Deloitte Consulting and Forrester Research supports this.


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Diversity remains the only constant

Our information ecology is diverse

Our needs are diverse

Our web publishing toolbox is

diverse

Analysis of Lucent information ecology


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Database driven publishing -- CMS and

document management

Home grown and low-cost server-based

publishing tools

Desktop personal publishing tools

Groupware applications

Our web publishing tools

We've used a diiverse set of tools

Weve seen a lot of Database driven publishing -- Home grown or commercial CMS and documentmanagement. A lot of these applications in the past have been front ends for databases using scripting

languages (for instance perl).

Home grown and low-cost server-based applications such as weblogs are increasing in popularity.

Desktop personal publishing tools remain popular. There are still a lot of people that maintain their own

web pages by hand and using WYSIWYG editors (simple editors like vi or notepad or using Front Page)

And finally weve seen Groupware Applications, such as

* Lotus Notes* Wikis and bulletin boards for community collaboration


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Maybe these diverse needs and

approaches should be accepted

The goal should be to work with thisdiverse set of user needs and

technologies

To find some way to glue the data

together to make it usable

What do we do with this diversity?

The first thing is maybe to accept that in a large organization people will often want to do things their ownway.

I am not against standard processes and procedures, but, I think the goal should be to work with the diverseuser needs and technologies that are expressed and find a way to make them work together.


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Let's step back a bit and talk about weblogs.

They're the new up and comers in web

publishing on the intranet.

Weblogs are growing in popularity and thereare lot of inexpensive weblog tools to

choose from today.

Enter the weblog

Before we go into details about how to make the data from these web-publishedresources usable, let's step back a bit and talk about weblogs because they're themost recent arrivals to web publishing on the intranet.

A lot of applications for web publishing have emerged over the last few years.

Weblogging applications in particular are growing in popularity and there are manyinexpensive weblogging tools to choose from today.


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A web site (usu. of personal/non-commercial origin)

that is frequently updated with information and links

to resources within a particular subject area.

The published information is presented much like ajournal on the web in reverse chronological order.

In 1999 Peter Merholz coins the term "Blog".

Rebecca Blood. weblogs: a history and perspective.

Rebeccas pocket. Essay discussing the emergence

of weblogs. http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/

weblog_history.html

A quick look at what weblogs are

A weblog is a web site that is frequently updated with information and links to resources within a particularsubject area.

The published information is presented much like a journal on the web in reverse chronological order.

Peter Merholz announced in early 1999 that he was going to pronounce it 'wee-blog' and inevitablythis was shortened to 'blog' with the weblog editor referred to as a 'blogger.'

You can read more about the history of weblogs by reading Rebecca Bloods essay, weblogs: a history andperspective. Shes also written a book on what weblogs are titled The weblog handbook. Shes an exampleof one one of the bloggers out there who maintain a personal weblog, hers in particular devoted to writingabout the literature and movies she devours.


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Personal opinion

Industry & topic specific information &

opinionVery often meta discussion / revolve

around specific web page content

(URL) -- discussion about something

some else has written about

What do people blog?

So now that we know what weblogs are, what is it that people blog and why should you care?

Well blogging started out as a form of personal journal writing that was just transferred from paper to the web.That still makes up the bulk of what bloggers blog. An example of this is Rebecca Bloods blog, RebeccasPocket.

But a growing area of interest is in publishing opinion and commentary on an industry or subject area. Anexample of this is John Rhodes WebWord or the IA community blog iaslash. These sites also becomecommunity discussion areas when the weblog allows people to leave their comments.

And a lot of the time, these are sites that just maintain a list of current articles and web sites within a subjectarea. Examples of this type of blog are Lawrence Lees Tomalaks Realm.


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Weblogs allow you to publish a news feed

A news feed can be a data file listing recent

entries from a weblog

Or a data file listing recent news headlines

from a commercial source.

Blog feed formats are in XML format

(specifically RSS or RDF)

Look for these buttons:

Blogging also means sharing


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Aside from being tools to publish and share,

weblogs often offer a mechanism for reading

other weblog data in XML feeds

News readers / aggregators

An application that retrieves and displays

news feeds from multiple sources.

Client application -- runs on PC for

individual use.

Server application runs on a web server

for group use.

Reading blogs in a news aggregator

Well talk a bit more about this later


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Usually HTML form based interface for

creating each blog entry

Really entering a simple database record

Enter title

Body of text

Category (optional)

Author (auto-entered)

Date (auto-entered)

Creating and publishing a blog entry

Weblogging is easy. Most of the tools available are simply HTML form-based interfaces for creating databaserecords.

The blog records are usually quite simple.

You enter the title and body of your text. Optionally you can enter a category from a list of categories youveentered in your tool. The author and date are usually auto-entered.


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Variations of the process -- URL based

blogging

Since a lot of the time blog entries contain

meta-discussion, the starting point is apointer to an article someone else has

written

Blog from an aggregator

Blog from a bookmarklet

Lets see how it works...

Blogging variations

There are some variations as well. The starting point isnt always a blank blog entryscreen.

Since blog entries are often opinion of other peoples writing, the starting point in ablog session might be a URL on a remote site. In this case, if for instance, you are

reading someone elses site, you can use a news reader to read someone elses blogentry and then click a link to auto fill that blog entry into your own blog so you cannotannotate and comment on what the other person is talking about. Soundscomplicated, but Ill show you in a minute how this works.

So lets take a look at a few tools to show you what a blogging session is like.


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1. Enter title

2. Enter bodyof blog entry

3. Select category

4. Publish

Movable Type

This is the typical web-based blog entry screen. In this example were seeing Movable Type, a webloggingtool written in Perl.


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Click here to read comments

This screen shows the published blog.

One of the nice features that most blogging applications allows readers to leave their comments.

This example shows a link that indicates the number of comments attached to a blog entry. If you click thatlink...


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The reader comments usually appear on the screen or in a separate browser window.

Another neat feature like this using XML RPC[1] is called TrackBack -- feature allows people to referencethe URL for this blog entry on their own weblog, and then their trackback ping appears on my weblog.

[1] XML Remote Procedure Calling protocol. See Userland http://www.xmlrpc.com/


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Sounds good, but why use them

inside the intranet?

In the current economy, some

individuals are breaking awayfrom traditional KM to do KM on

a Budget.

Low cost weblog tools are

available to help with 2 core

concerns of KM.

Knowledge creation

(publishing)

Knowledge sharing (XML

feed aggregators)

Enter the k-log

You might be thinking, Sounds good, but why would I want to blog in the intranet?

The type of weblogs were seeing in the intranet are a special type called knowledge logs or k-logs.

A few articles in the past year have discussed the advantage of using weblogging software to handle someaspects of knowledge management.

The first advantage is that it offers a low cost alternative to doing knowledge management. Ive read ondiscussion groups that a lot of people find weblog software appealing after seeing larger KM efforts fail.

And weblogs help people to handle 2 core concerns of knowledge management:

Knowledge creation and sharing


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Bloggers are often subject area experts

Free-loading on these experts helps grow

the knowledge of individuals and the

organization

Theres advantage in belonging to a social

network formed around research interests

K-logging is about knowledge share

Additionally, the people who are adopting this form of web publishing are savvy web users who read blogsoutside of work and know that relying on other peoples whose expertise you trust is a great way of growingyour own knowledge.

Additionally, bloggers, I think find great advantage in being connected to others who share research interests.Social networks or societies of bloggers who read each others opinion often form and in this way, ideas arechallenged and tested.


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Fast (and easy): Set up is quick and doesn't

require much expertise.

Cheap: Powerful personal publishing solutions

at low cost.

In total control: The real power in weblogging

is that it puts knowledge creation in your

control and also allows you a standards-based

mechanism for pushing/sharing that

information.

Fast, cheap and in total control

The bottom line, I think, is that people on the intranet are using blogs for web publishing because

1) Theyre quick and easy to setup. Most setup will cost you 15 to 30 minutes if your company has web spaceavailable for you.

2) They offer a great amount of functionality at very low cost. Some weblogging software is free.

3) And probably most importantly, weblogging puts knowledge creation and sharing in your hands. You dontneed to rely on the processes and technologies of anyone else to do this and the sharing mechanism usesstandards based XML, which means that your data can be re-used elsewhere.


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XML feeds of databases

News data

ABI/InformTechnical documents

Almost any data set can be mapped to the

standard RSS format

Email discussion groups, CRM, directory of

new personnel

How we are supporting k-loggers

So with the appearance of new weblogs in the intranet, my organization has begun to discuss how to supportk-loggers.

One area has to do with supporting their knowledge creation.

The first blog user came to us asking for news feeds on specific topics. What we have done is to providedatabase search results in RSS format so she can do any complex or simple search for a topic she has in

mind and then have a URL that will serve as a news feed that she can feed into a news reader or aggregatorof her choosing.


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What our users do with the RSS

This example shows part of a database search result page. This particular database is our Selected Newsdatabase which pulls indexed content from published news sources via Factiva.

In this search above, I entered terms Classification, indexing and abstracting as my query and the searchresults show a lot of records.

Embedded within the search results is an option to view the results as XML (which is a dump of the search

results contents with all fields) or in RSS (a dump of the results in a brief record format showing title, URL, andabstract for each record.

Bloggers copy the URL for the RSS feed and can then use them in their own aggregators.


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Adding the URL for the RSS feedto your news aggregator.

Heres an example of how a user might follow a news feed. This example is using Radio

Userland, a weblog publishing tool with an integrated feedreader.

In the news aggregator, I have Hack the Planet as a website Im following


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In news aggregator view, user sees a story they want to blog

Selecting the POST button copies that story's URL and title to a new blog entry in t he editing form.


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Keep close watch of weblogs in the

enterprise

As weblogs profilerate, work onstrategy for making blog data usable

Talk to the bloggers who might benefit

from sharing and finding

So where do we go from here?

So now weve prepared our company to use the data we pull in daily from various news

vendors and internal databases. Where do we go from here?

I think already weve done more to support k-loggers than is expected, but were also

hoping to support their efforts if weblogs start to proliferate in the company.


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The natural progression in an information

ecology where k-loggers start to proliferate is

to seek a system that pulls together the

disparate k-log data.

The role of the information services

organization is to glue together the aggregate

of produced k-log data for its users to

consume.

Consider your place in the ecology

The natural progression in an information ecology where k-loggers start to proliferate is

to seek a system that pulls together the disparate k-log data. This is where the

information services organization comes in.

The XML feeds that k-loggers produce are almost always in one of a few standard RSS

or RDF formats. This is the common element that allows the your organization to gluetogether the aggregate of produced k-log data for its users to consume.

But you can do more to that mass of data to make it findable.


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How do we do that?

Use metadata to create rich bibliographic

records of each entry (author, publisher,

date, etc.)

Included in the process of recording

metadata is to help people make sense of

that data by classifying it -- by topic/subject.

Collecting blog data

Obviously you need to first begin collecting and aggregating that data. So you willneed a technical strategy for doing that. But once youve got the data, the real work isin making it findable.

The first step is to use metadata to create bibliographic records for each entry. You can

rely on a standard such as the Dublin Core metadata elements to help structure yourown metadata schema.

The next step is to consider some form of classification or organizing the blog entries by

topic or subject.


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Make the aggregate of collected blog entries

available by publishing it

Make searching and browsing of indexed blog

entries possible

Our organization already does a lot of the text

parsing, classification and republishing that is

needed to make a Blog aggregator fly

Offer varying means of use and notification when

new relevant data comes in. Email alerts, etc.

Making blog data findable

First you make the aggregate of blog entries available in a raw feed for re-use and also

offer a reverse-chronologically sorted spool of recent blog entries.

Next make it possible for people to search and browse the indexed blog entries in the

collection. Our organization does a lot of text parsing, classification and republishing,

and Ill explain that process in the next slide.

Finally offer other means of use and notification such as email alerts.


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Our process

Data from external feedsare loaded into server

Machine algorithms do someclustering and auto-classificationusing subject taxonomy

Human indexers review auto-classificationand correct or add index terms

Classified data is stored

Start: Raw feed from various sources(vendor data, internal databases, weblogs)

Finish: Classified data is served throughweb server requests

Ive already had someone on a discussion group tell me to just throw Google at the data to make contentfindable.

I don't know that search engines are always the answer to all problems. Yes search is necessary, but aresearch engines the front end you want to use for all types of databases?

We do, in fact, have search engines in-house that do cluster analysis and offer categorized and relevancy

ranked web site search results. But we aggregate a lot of data -- most not from websites -- and our processfor indexing this data uses a combination of machine and human indexing. Computer algorithms have notproven to be capable of discerning some concepts as well as humans.

But anyway, this is a high-level overview of what we do.


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The brute force method

Use an aggregator (e.g. Radio or Drupal)

Get humans to blog and classify the blogs

One way you could do it


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Web-based aggregator (brute-force) example

This screen shows the web-based aggregator built into the Drupal application, which we use on the IAcommunity blog, iaslash.

The Latest news shows the most recent blog entries collected from various blogs that we watch. From thispage, we can select the news thats relevant to our community and enter it into our database.


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Web-based aggregator (brute-force) example

This is view of the home page, which shows how our database is displayed with classification shown beloweach entry.


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Just use search software with automated

classification

Consider our hybrid approach

Other ways you can do it

And you can always rely on software to automatically do the classification of data for you. Many searchvendors offer some sot of module that allows for this kind of classification, but often some human interventionis needed to help guide or tweak the classification module.

Finally you can consider out hybrid, semi-automated approach. Our take is that their is a bigger return ofquality indexing when you insert humans into the process.


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Its important to note that the success of KM

depends on the willingness of individuals to

participate by using tools that will integrate

seamlessly with the organizations knowledge

network.

Deloitte suggests that while localized KM

efforts may not require knowledge networks in

small organizations, the advantage of

knowledge networks becomes manifest when

communities express the need to re-use that

localized knowledge.

Success


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Another important factor is sustainability

If you plan on doing automated classification

of data human resources will be needed at

some point to set up taxonomies

If you plan on a hybrid machine and human

aided indexing process, full time staff might be

needed

Sustainability


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Weblogs are really not different as a

technology, although they put control of

publishing closer to users

Classifying weblog data can be difficult andrequires human resources, but some search

applications can help

Value diversity and above all, support users

needs

Allow users to produce organizational

knowledge using whatever tools they choose

Closing thoughts

While comments, trackbacks and XML feeds are useful, as a technology, weblogs are really not very different from other applications made forweb publishing.

What makes them different is how theyre used from the end-user perspective. It puts control of web publishing in the hands of end users, whocan decide what process they want to use for sharing knowledge and what technology to use.

Some people view this amount of control and power to publish as a danger if bloggers record too much information. However, I think one of theways to produce organizational knowledge is to record all sorts of tacit knowledge including ephemeral communications, as well as meetingafterthoughts and opinions.

Making the output from weblogs usable can be as simple as allowing your search engine to spider and index their content, but if your searchapplication doesnt allow for classification, the ability to browse content by attributes such as subject, business unit, and product, might not bepossible. Classification allows the system to represent the knowledge contained in data more consistently.

The caveats to doing classification are that neither an automated or a manual process can you give you best results. So the investment in doingclassification might require additional time and resources if you dont already have indexing staff available. Some search vendors offerclassification, however, so this may be a good route to pursue if human resources arent available.

Finally, I think its important to remember to keep in mind the needs of the users who want or need to blog and to encourage it if it results in

knowledge sharing. While there are bound to be a lot of people who want to protect their intellectual capital, there are probably equal numbers ofpeople who see value in sharing their knowledge, and if using a cheap and easy weblogging tool is how they find their way to doing that, thatcant be a bad thing.


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Bonnie Nardi and Vicki ODay. Information Ecologies:

Using Technology with Heart. First Monday. http://

www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_5/nardi_contents.html

Robin Athey. Collaborative Knowledge Networks:Driving Workforce Performance Through Web-enabledCommunities. Deloitte Consulting. http://www.dc.com/Insights/research/cross_ind/ckn_workforce.asp

Joshua Walker. The New Knowledge Management

Landscape. Forrester Research. http://www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Brief/Excerpt/

0,1317,15338,00.html

Further reading on info. ecology and KM


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John Foley. "Are You Blogging Yet?" InfoWorld. Discusses the

value of using weblogs in the enterprise. http://

www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020719S0001

David Weinberger. The 99 cent KM solution. KM World. http://

www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/

index.cfm?action=readarticle&Article_ID=1337&Publication_ID=76

John Robb. A simple approach to KM. K-Logs discussion group.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs/message/313

K-Logs discussion group. Email discussion group that discussions

klogging for KM. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs

A Klog Apart. Phil Wolff's klog about klogging. http://

www.dijest.com/aka/

Further reading about k-logs


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Weblog software

Weblog publishers. Open Directory Project. http://dmoz.org/

Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Tools/Publishers/

RSS news reader client software

News Readers. Open Directory Project. http://dmoz.org/Reference/

Libraries/Library_and_Information_Science/Technical_Services/Cataloguing/Metadata/RDF/Applications/RSS/News_Readers/

Server-based news aggregator software

AmphetaDesk http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/

blagg. http://www.oreillynet.com/~rael/lang/perl/blagg/

Drupal. http://drupal.org

Radio Userland. http://radio.userland.com/multiAuthorWeblogTool

Where to get software


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Thank you :: The end

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