Event ID: 550835
Event Started: 7/18/2006 8:21:40 AM
ET
Please stand by for real-time captioned text.
Please stand by for real-time captioned text.
We will use this throughout the work shop. This is an example of using a wiki.
This is your resource. We will have worked up all of us, and we will be taking
notes and taking your suggestions. When we come to the three are part of the
agenda we will go over your suggestions and have a follow-up questions either
during the workshop or after the workshop. For those on the fall by using a
power point. You can tell what it, and I will call out the slide numbers. If I
forget to do that, please provide me. This is an international workshop with put
as much from Canada and India. We appreciate all of those who are here and those
who are presenting. I want to welcome Susan back. She has done outstanding work.
This is the fact second workshop. If you figure there is one a month, that is
almost five years of workshops. Also featured Susan as the best practice. She
has been able to join us she is working on and September 19th workshop. We
welcome your suggestions. But would like to offer to do part were all of another
workshop. I would like to go into the purpose of it will but year. Basically we
are looking to mobilize the. Today we are focusing on the goals that wiki
technology has. I think we have some excellent presentations and discussions for
you to help you with decisions within your organizations but technology. We have
a growing community of practice that will benefit from this knowledge sharing.
The plot to work that chart manages in GSA that you are looking at a part of
when I showed you the agenda. These are some of the other things we are working
on. We are particularly interested in bringing this model for and also dealing
with knowledge. It is not like Russell, but this button for our normal pattern
you will hear more advanced things being done with wiki. So the more it is basic
to for information and will hopefully answer your questions. This afternoon will
be your view into the future of work wiki is going. Cloud of work and garments
that we are using today featuring the best practice example of wiki supporting
what's the Kennedy's includes not only the wiki or rubble web, but Intel
discussion arca. Wiki comes from the Hawaiian word for fast. It is a web site
where any and all Contract Information. For example, it is so fast that is a bet
I had the wrong person making a presentation on the agenda for that meeting. In
one second of change the name. We are talking what submit that helps you do the
things relatively quickly. It is all about how much structure you want to bring
to this and trying to bring to link to bear. This Susan has made the
collaborative work will both for public and private persons, particularly
through part of the data reference model. You can help our discussions before
the results of the deliberation. It you look at the table of contents, this is
it. This is the structure. The first that most people need to know is how you
get started, how to log in, and that what is new. We are trying to do calendar
events now. Then the additional links below are the other features of the that
we need to listen caught discussion forum, it fell less, file sharing, except
rep. It talked about how their are a burden that was as and only about nine or
12 being worked on. They are a danger. Then there is some transition from work
which is is it to provide a catalog of the initiatives. These activists put the
cup or. We suggest you become aware of this framework. We are announcing it in
public forum on July 6th. It will be formal in September. I have a link on the
wiki pitch for the federal framework documents to make it easier for you to look
at all of that. L, a little bit of back here on how we got to this summer
workshops that I volunteered to help chart with. She was on medical leave. We
were asked to lead the implementation team, and that work of swum or. Out of
that group came the suggestion that we would have said that it did to the did
that reference model. We looked round at how to get all of that. We thought we
could do that with wiki and Symantec wiki. As we hoped for in this case, a
proposal from a group of people in industry and academia but wanted to focus on
to your special. That blossomed into not just a one day workshop, but a three
day workshop, and now is looking into a community practice. And interestingly
and doing what you all might like to do up of this workshop, an ecology of the
workshop content and working with G of special bid. Conner will show you an
overview of that today in his presentation. We help others that are working in
the subject wiki and are enjoying it and providing useful feedback. This
workshop, the June workshop turned out to be settling of in the emergence of the
2.0 in the -- this workshop is a convergence of the Records Management Workshop
2.0 where we are involving record document Information. And a little background
we were invited to come talk about these things on fabric and the third and out
of that came they thought that GPO would be interested in publishing and the
government. The August update workshop which is the last of the summer surge
really is the convergence of the Security and privacy profile. We are actually
going to bring together at least three communities, existing communities of
practice. A new consortium working on Symantec things for government and
European Union and possibly another one working ecology to serve little Global
customer. These workshops -- these free workshops the waltz into one in terms of
working on over UPS between the FDA reference model and the profile and also
involving in terms of the follow up their produce. To help you get a roadmap and
mills will to more of this this afternoon. I prepared you this little table. The
basic features are what you see in what we hope to of in all wiki. Then we would
have to enter a really across wiki. The key thing is besides these basic
features the templates be used in conventional wiki are very useful. The
templates are really some magic to. You could do a lot more exciting and are all
things with wiki. There is even something beyond that if we are then able to
operate on. We approach something that is almost like an Auburn system on the
Internet on which you could build a great part the artist but it Workshop has
promised to show us one of those occasions. You can see how we are building.
These three letters -- and I think Bill's as seven or so lawyers in his model.
Following there is a purpose and description. This architecture is evolving into
finding a common solution for shared services. As I look back on this I see
there are varying ways in which this has all come about, this and use of wiki.
One of the best was when we have a mandate. Other one, the one we just had
recently to four or about a year ago, the suggestion was made to get this
together and it in the practice. Now there is the and the excess. We have had
several other. Then a new group in Atlanta us did a presentation that they asked
me to make Friday. That will be an experience. The industry and academia
requests, I just wasn't that. The governing subcommittee asked for a project
which led to us practice was sexually approved a proposal to five this workshop
really relates to the request. So logistics', you are here. You don't need the
first part of those. We are using the federal rely caption conference Serbs
today. We have at least two people at that service. We ask you to use the
microphone and speed limit, and hopefully we will get it there transcript. Lots
will be on your own. Food can be taken into our media room. Jobs that will
encourage the parents of want to tell us what they think and what is on their
mind. So the next item on our agenda is introductions. You get to speed varies
seven in this workshop. It looks like in half and hour we might be able to get
everyone here. Our first keep notes will be Dr. Calvin Andrus period when I
heard him talk cut said we must bring him to talk at one of these workshops. He
is exciting in the field of changing culture with technology. Then we will up a
break. We will go to the panel. The panel will come up here. We have not heard
from Fred. Fred, are you in the audience? We have not heard from him or Jerry.
We have the best route. Rich, are you here? Breeze is here. He works for the
transmission Agency, I think I got it right. This will replace Fred on the
panel. Then we will of our second keep notes. This will be remote from Canada
because the author of this new book was invited to speak in England at the last
minutes and had to catch a plane and was not able to come down here first. He
will speak remotely, and we will have our networking wants. We will have our
afternoon agenda all leading to some hands on experience following the semantic
part of this. Upcoming events, I mentioned next month's workshop. We have
registration open for that. It is always open. To conferences coming up in
October, support 19 and set to air Oct. workshop. We have a special event next
week. All these are free. We have a special event at the end of the conference
at the Reagan center starting at 215, I believe. It is a series acknowledgement
that work group meeting. Now, let me give you a little tests before we go to the
introduction. How many of you consider the results in each of these categories a
knowledge manager or an architect? A librarian or affirmation scientist to an
enterprise architects to I guess I should site you can raise your hand more than
84 user or provider? Presswork journalist? Other, what did we very good. Super.
We will give you the microphone and lets you -- let me ask, how many of you have
never seen or use a wiki?
Consider my and race.
Thank you. I will do just one quick little tunnel because this is something we
are or to ask you to do when you get home. What we are going to suggest you do
this through the GSA sites, you go to the Congress and workshop which is that
this address. Scroll down here to upcoming events which is this workshop. Than
notice that we have a list of confirmed participants. If you are not on this
list or if you are on this list this is what we would like you to do. What in.
Log in. I don't even use a password. I hope this will work. So now I am locked
in. I am going to go down to the bottom of this bit. First I will see how this
manages records. Every religion that has been made to this page since the
beginning of this space has been documented year us what it was. For example,
let's look at the change that I made. I added a couple of additional resistance.
Of course I can't you that Rickenbacker -- version. Then I can take the option
of recovering at. This is how Spam which unfortunately can still get in can be
easily [ INDISCERNIBLE ] what I am going to do is show you this. At the top of
the page, I am coming down to my name and removing these space. And I save the
page. Is that the only change you. Add your name to the page if it is not there.
Look what happens. When I did that is created what is called a wiki work. If
this is the first time I had done this it would take me to a blank page. I
encourage you to fill in your information or too something as I up on. I have
done this or did before. I treated it personal wiki page for the benefit of and
anyone else that documents what I'd do. I believe rates firmly eating my own dog
food. I believe in personal loans and interest. I believe anyone should be able
to look and see what I am doing. I keep this up. It does not need to be nearly
as the separate, but we suggest that you take in a ditch of this workshop and
create your personal wiki page. It your basic information, but not your Social
Security number or home phone number or the kind of things that people are
looking for to miss use. Put something like where you work or what you do. Any
questions on that? On the phone I just finished slide 20. The instructions are
there. Follow up with Susan. She offers. It to for training. Any questions? All
right. Let's leave it there and go around the room. We would like to divide this
up. Susan will work one side of the room, and I will work the other side of the
road. We will ask you to give a very brief introduction to do you are, who you
work for and in the interest with regard to this workshop. Great. Thank you very
much.
We will alternate.
We will alternate across the road.
I George. I have been working on these technologies since 1980. I worked with
Don to start this series or many years ago but was.
I am Colin Andrews with the Central Intelligence Agency, and I will be speaking
a little bit later this morning.
I am interested in. On a list of science and publishing.
Den Bergen, you fall as a force we are interested wiki for our standard
reference products.
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
We are looking at introducing Florida of technologies. That is my interest for
today.
I felt. I am with the Corps of engineers. But I use wiki and just want some
reference per.
TC Evans. You will hear more from the ledger.
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
Street with the Pentagon Library.
I am Deborah from the den or EDS library. We are looking at wiki for information
services.
I am TC while. We will try to use wiki for affliction purposes.
Rock Evanston, National Steel Special Intelligence agency. I work in the
library. We have been using wiki.
I am Diane. I work for the Defense Information Systems Agency, and we are using
wiki.
We are developing some tools and technologies to be used with wiki.
My name is Tom. I come from the northern Shenandoah well. I am trying to use --
en el and regional planning in trying to use this for a high level technology.
Sherry from the Pentagon Library.
Date from the Library of Congress expressed matrix Service and we would use the
wiki.
Barber from the Pentagon Library.
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
I am Catholic. I am at the Pentagon Library and I am here just to learn about
wiki and what other people are doing.
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
Windy hill. I am with the defense and for Russian center. We brought part of the
introduction to the Department of Defense.
Bills this, I am from the Senate and are brought a grant. I am really interested
in submit it would use in all the three categories called for reading and
writing, for being able to stand up services. We will and the kind of services
we were talking about where you can basically are apologize or read and make it
so that it formed a commission and be able to write it out at access at which
ought think you will find interesting from a library perspective.
I work in the information technology services as structure of the Library of
congress. I am here to call one, give more information wiki and how it can be
used. Hopefully that will help me.
Jim Cicero, our work for the in the information station. I am it number of the
chocolate in the practice. We have been working belt the energy community and
structure within the selected Web which we will hear about this opinion. In
November up will be doing a presentation to the pigeon sisters of science
teachers of energy and watersheds. I am hoping that this will be a position
where I can use it as a teaching tool to showed teachers how to introduce in the
two students at different its rates so they can see how the energy in all of its
different forms in in.
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
From the National as to the of. We are using wiki.
List of winds from the national recovery. We used to for internal and we are
investigating whether we want to use them as it is a tool.
I am for the National Archives and Records of recession. One of the things we
are trying to do is expand our Web Management Guide to address the fact that the
disease are now creeping federal records on wiki. That is what we are here. We
would like to get background from participants.
I am much from the director of. We are interested in how this product group is
calling to react.
TC from the National archives.
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
My name is Yuri. But work with the agency for International developers I work in
progress in the race as an acknowledgement. We are pretty good with wiki But
aren't up it fair amount of knowledge on migration.
Library of congress.
Joe baby working with the new the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. It seems like
there or Ed lot of potential applications.
I am Jen hers business referencing Library of Congress. We use it primarily. It
is all imported and word. It is called catheterization, etc.
I am Joe Jackson. I am a reporter for Government Computer News and I covered up
and we will be doing a story of wiki letter on this summer. My name is Marion
and I am a consultant. I am interested in the electronic medical records and I
want to find out as much as I can about information technology which I think is
one of the most important issues.
Selling. I am the new director.
I am Mike Burke with the Hubble is a restriction. I have been running an
acknowledgement that program.
By them shop. I up with computer sciences at Johns Hopkins. We are looking to
use wiki technology to share information on government is since in a medically
meaningful way.
I am Peter Taylor. I am here for the Defense Advanced Research Projects agency.
We are looking at using wiki or what the potentials are. My name is Eric. I am
here to demo our wiki on some read it.
I am Susan from the Library of congress. We are about all sitting together. We
should get in touch with each other. Aside we are all pretty interested in
would. My personal address is and possibilities for God's best provisions were
Petrus and also -- this will not be in the upper of cars but we may be able to
use with these as a way to all patients in an interactive way with our web site.
That is buried far from actually happen.
I am the president uses wiki to Duke street development.
I am terraforming. I am interested in wiki tracking for use of information. I am
also very interested in ontologism, semantic intelligence and use of wiki in a
collaborative environment.
I am 10 from the Library of congress. I am interested in using a collaboration
tool. I am getting in a lot of requests from run the library for other purposes
for using wiki. So I am interested in learning what other people are doing.
I am James working with Carol Davis. I am interested in how some that the
technology can actually be made to be human usable, not just in wiki but in
other demands as well.
I am here to learn.
I am here from the Wharton business school. There is a specialist in information
technologies. We are part ring up a project or concept and text fighting. We are
exploring what we call pattern warranted as opposed to record warranted
information from collections of documents. We have a couple of patents pending
rights now. Today we have focused on -- we are looking for some partners in
other areas that we can partner with.
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
Might it is Larry. But first question is --
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
Good morning. I am now is it. -- Nancy. II think there is perhaps for much of an
interest overlap or information architecture. So our hope because it is first
day in hell. This feel free if you are interested in sharing information.
After about 15 in all referrals to this I decided to come.
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
Hello. I am a national account manager at GSA. I am here to become familiar with
wiki. My name is Joel of them from the Library of congress. I am here to look at
use of lucky and possible uses. My name is Joyce. I am the digital library at
the National Treasury judge Barbour. We just released an upgrade of a research
system and we are looking to see what we might do more attractive.
I am here in testing with the technology.
Good morning. I approached letter. I work with the U. S Department of
Agriculture and the our cultural Library. I serve as team leader for research
and new resources, it a reference of using wiki. We are planning to do more with
less, as we all are. There is a lot of potential and USDA. There are tools that
could be developed.
I am Christina also from the Johns Hopkins in Dorset. I am it size of to causing
mud wren. I am interested in how would these are used in technology in varmint
for a interaction searching for people with some what interest working on
different projects.
I am Susan. I work with Christina and it sets of it Library at Hopkins. I could
devote most of what has been said already. I want to use the wiki for a clever
to project, and it was really an easy call per flexible tool. I would like us to
be able to use us more both within our library and with our colleagues at the
lab.
I am talk with medical appliances. We work with for rapid knowledge transfer.
Particularly I am a trusted and wiki and how they can easily drop a bit less
generation of content Management by streamlining the work.
I am proud from as see at sea. I know some of the folks at TC Hopkins. There are
a total of three Brand now.
Did we miss anybody could do on the phone no. Did we miss anybody and the
audience?
Yes, anyone on the phone to.
Yes, my, and I worked for the Congressional Library. I am not sitting with my
colleagues. I am just here to learn about wiki, and I also want to set sometimes
I can't hear what people are saying and other types maybe you have a different
route from, I really can't your most of what they say. And I think I missed some
good jokes.
We may have a tragic of debate. We'll see. Anyone else on the phone?
I am Karen. I am at the same location. I am at the Walter Reed Army Institute of
research. I confer with a separate I cannot hear some times. The eggs go blank.
And I cannot see the presentation our far all is presenting at.
Is there anyone else on the fault?
This is Richard wrote down in return for up in Atlanta. We will be hosting job
next Friday. I am here to get that process started and keep in touch with what.
I am Susan from they National Laboratory in New.
Go. I should be joined by some college, but it is still Peter.
Peter calling in from California on pass that type, which is we are and Internet
Service provider offering posted infrastructure and support to like GSA and
other institutions for years already. The infrastructure is what you were
looking at which Brand calls the cooperation of wiki. It is a plan written work
environment. I am also supporting the remarks share screen servers for our
remote users today. Professionally I am interested and involved in ontological
of engineering and the application of some into technologies as well. My company
strives to improve open operations knowledge sharing and bootstrapping. This is
for that worked unities and destroyed it seems. Obviously this is the place to
be at today.
That you, Peter P. has made extraordinary contributions to the technology.
Anyone else on the phone?
Mary from NIH. I am happy to be here today to further explore wiki as a clubbers
and technology. Thank you all for participating.
Anyone else to do extra day. We got through all of that group exactly on time.
Now it is my pleasure to introduce our first speaker from Dr. Calvin Andrus
period that you for being here. We look forward to your presentation.
If I start walking around, I will pick it up. For those on the fall, to have the
position?
On the fault, if you at these kids to the wiki pitch you can download the first
presentation and run the slides at your desktop and we will call out the slide
members.
Are want to thank Susan for inviting me this morning. I enjoy talking about this
topic. I am really want to talk about the why. I hope you find that interesting.
Or should this year. She will keep me honest as I go through my presentation.
Let me just say one or two words about where I fit in the Central Intelligence
agency. As most of you know why is it has come under some pretty severe
criticism and the 9/11 commission reports and they WMD Commission report. The
theme was my ID is it needed to become more innovative. Injured period textile
decorated in office for innovation. The intent was we wanted to diffuse
innovations brought it does it. My office mission is to do that. By was trying
and diffuse in addition, brought the is see. I have been on the job since the
first of the year. Next slide. Where am I coming from? I am interested or I was
interested in a particular kind of problems. Let me move to the other 25 Who
knows what the big deal with the bulk of New Orleans was to do it was fought
after the war was over. Why would anyone find a ball after the war was over.
Lack of interest. They signed the treaty and put it on a boat. It did not get
your insight. So interjection took the opportunity to beat the British and he
became third popular, became president. Someone wrote a song and the 60's that
we could probably all sing. There we have a policy cycle that is months-long.
From the type something begins to happen until the time it ends it takes a long
time to happen. During the Second World War when the President did in order to
drop the atomic bomb on Hiroshima it actually took several days for that to work
it goes it is in operation rocky from where we got some intelligence that small
sons are eating dinner and a particular restaurant and 15 let's let the poems
are drop. That is an incredible shrinkage and the policy cycle from months to
minutes. The question is, how do we as an intelligence community keep up with
that kind of pressure? Because we can't our bosses expect that we will. Your
bosses expect you to work faster than you are working. We all feel that. There
is an incredible job front. Most of us who up been around for awhile and compare
our work stock up to the Cold war. We feel that this is incredible pressure to
work faster and faster and faster with or ours. To do this because we like it
know, we don't like it. It just happens to be a feature of the century in which
we look. Now, let's say. I are just trying to remember what.
We are on side three.
Slide three, thank you. It turns out because our ability to do that allows us to
interject or distraught or destroy our enemies before they can do it during the
Cold War we were in an arms race with our enemy. Now we are in a tight race.
There are trying to be faster than we are, and we are trying to be faster than
they are. We are trying to get faster and faster and faster. All of us feel
that. Let me switch gears just let it. Biologists want to study some to want to
they study elephants or fruit flies to effort was, why? They breed fast. If you
want to modify 18 and stick it into Japan and what it play out you need for
floods. Why don't they just go on. Why don't they just predict it can be done
with it? You don't know what is going to help in. There are so many variables,
especially over the degenerations, that it becomes nearly are practically
impossible to predict what will happen many generations and the future. You want
to just inject that what Feinstein and let them -- and see what happens. They
have some about the CS they are tested, but you don't know until many times you
cannot know what is .2 up. In a positive cycle where things are happening in
month one cycles it is not too hard to predict a year out because there are only
three cycles. If you are flopping over every three minutes it becomes almost
impossible to predict a your out or six months out. You just don't know what is
pointing up. By EDS to stop is to try to figure out what is happening in the
near future so we can react and to submit our job is getting harder and harder
because these policies suckles up over so quickly it becomes impossible to
predict the future. How do we keep up? The future is unfolding in ways we cannot
understand or predict. So what do we do ticket we have to keep up in ways that
we cannot predict. How to lie to that you? That is the problem we are facing
here. Slide for. Let's go to slide five. There has been edging convergence of
intellectual process that converts and the early 90's. There is an impression
series which came together with about this point example. One example is in the
ant hill. When I was in school I was told that the Queen it was in charge of the
ant hill. That is why they call her the Queen. Toll all the other tenants want
to do. We now know that the queen has no more control then any of expert she is
just who is in charge? Nobody is in charge. And it's are hard wired what is it
they do? There one round. They have three basic functions. Remove dirt out of
the Intel and bring food and. How do they know what to do? They have this
internal biological clock but says if I am standing in line to log, I need to do
something else. They will just say, is there some dirt I can take out teetoo
they will pick that up and take it out. They leave for Montrose. If they -- they
were off and some other direction. With these birds simple be Edgar's there is
no architect, no desire. It happens out of this simple the herders. And you get
lots and lots of parents with several years. We called this in merchants. And
simple, salt or as researchers they are stopped work as an instance would it get
a sense for where other ants are and they change their behavior based on the ant
hill is adapted. If you dig out half of an ant hill and go back to ours later,
it has reappeared. The queen ants did not set, rebuild my aunt. Eventually the
end of just returns. That is what if I wanted to a banana pudding by on Thursday
to I need to call up the store and said can you make sure I have three slightly
overripe? No, we don't call them up how does that happen teetoo how did they
know. They don't care. I am pursuing my own local saw the interest of making by.
How long does it take for Panetta's to grow to two years ago somebody started
right Panetta so hour could have been in part on the budget. It just happened.
It's just emerges. That is what we call we call this a market. Down below we
call it in a cream pie. Some no all these people making an and cream pies causes
something to happen which is larger than my banana cream pie. That is an example
of another example, if I want and what route every day and make notes about what
they are at the end of the year I would say I no their bodies fly by, and they
fly up and form a the. Nothing I would have known would have allowed me to
predict they would fly in a. That is emerging be it. There are things we can to
structurally that allows us to if we have the right behavior is at the bomb.
That is what I am talking about. Next slide. What we need in the intelligence
community in order to keep up with these circles is, come up with a good set of
rules that every candidate and where one and can trust the offense because they
are hard wired. Humans our not as hard work. We need rules that we can adopt and
stressed other people the other thing is that ends up the freedom to act. Each
ant can choose whether they will be people or mirrors or fruit. Loaded tours,
but they can just choose. I can't go make being applied. I can't take my credit
card and there is a rule that governs my test car. Let's wait my debit card is
good enough for some to grow bananas to the on the fate that so simple rules. We
need to be able to share. I share information with the band ring or in terms of
the press of bananas. We can share information supplied sub. How do we enable
intelligence officers to be it this way teetoo their are two enabling
technologies. From a government agency point of view -- so what is called wiki
and one is called a block. I will talk about these and we recognize this will
rise teetoo these are not per affairs. You know this, but they are out for
defense. The thing that is that this is the next one. The story of Guernica as
Picasso was and FERS managing the Research. It was during the special or
reported that is a little town, and rainfall during the Civil War was having
trouble subduing the back country. So he called up Hitler and said I am really
having trouble? Yes, we just invented the dive bomber. So they came in and dive
bombed this time. Blew it to smithereens. Picasso was in Paris. He was so
horrified he was so horrified that he threw everything away and started doing
these he had a sketchbook and just started sketching away. Eventually
incorporated this into this. Eventually the Germans conquered France. Picasso
was still in Paris at the time. Some Russian officers or some German officers,
excuse. These German officers by and large portions, very well educated, very
aristocratic, very cultured. They came in and saw this spinning in a stupid they
were. Perhaps also.
Did why do they do that? You take notes as in high school experts have been done
over and over again. We get Post-it notes. We get tires for our cars. It is
important to could track you need to be able to go back and recreate them. That
is a lab book of what they are doing. Next slide.
Let me get you a pointer.
Some -- like to write the next great American if we are serious about that we
keep notebooks with us. We see a quirky character in the subway and said that
needs to be in my novel. If you or your someone saying a neat phrase you write
it down. You keep track of all of this stuff. I don't know what my next slide
is. So part of this is commenced offers keep there intellectual couple of these
I don't know what it is like. The researchers test work a lot like it analyst
desk at its head. That is, they are piled with papers and books and stuff. It is
all over the place. We get reports and from all electronically, and what we two
is our analysts will print those out and they will let some comments on the side
of that report and that we will take them into a meeting are so far we should
write them off to do somebody else will said, you should look at these three.
They contradict this report. So we should not write this up. We want right of.
They will let it on the side of their low report and stick it on their desk.
That is where it goes. All this intellectual knowledge is all this person's
desk. Where does it go when that person takes a new assignment? Into the
garbage. Let's suppose that a your letters and it does a search and finds this
report that has been discredited. Nobody knows it. They use this report as the
basis of running some other piece. That happens. Keep laughing. It happens all
what we want to do is, if we had a block and they wrote down -- here is this
report with a lake and here are these in the SEC reports with which to them.
This your report is what really good because of the following three in the SEC
reports. Let that be out there so the next time somebody comes across as they
can search the bluster and find out here is a defense bloc. Here is an entry in
my log. How much time to buy have? Let me go through this quickly. He wrote an
essay called, and the beginning. When he got -- when he got his first computer I
don't know if it had Microsoft, toss 1.0. You turn it on and it's just has all
Kurds. You type in a command and something would come back. He felt like he had
a personal list up with his stick you. He could talk to it. He could type in DIR
and it would come back. Then he got a Macintosh. He was so upset because some
had mediated is listed with his CPU with a graphical user interface. So he
brought this big a seconding the grapple user interest because it earned his
left with his CPU. Several years later somebody wrote Stevenson and said, you
know, that as it needs to be adopted. Stevens said, yes, it probably does. The
guy says, well, when are you pointing to it your I'm not going to do it. My life
has moved on.
The guy says, can't I did it Stevenson says, sure. Go ahead. What I have is a
link to the original as a, a link to the your Homeland Security. None of that is
really a point. What is important is both of those give me a path to six of the
Art Watson said. I want to talk about the what happens here is Stevenson as this
brilliant idea which he makes little. This other person as. I call them some
guy. Some guy as these two ideas cause I can put into the this is that is the
point about sharing. It makes us all smart. This is because we have ideas wheat
was would not have that. Let's go on to its lead -- what is this? Slide 13. What
this is telling you is that since 2003 up through early 2006 the number of
active blocks on the Internet as been bubbling every six months. What does this
chart tell you to this chart tells you blocks are here to stay. When I started
work at the that is they would give me a legal yellow pad. Mechanical pencils
and a secretary and a stack I wouldn't subsides the cables and hand it to the
secretary then a few years later they gave me a word processor. They broke my
social change. Since they asked me of our wanted it? No, they just gave it to
me. I know analysts who refused to learn how to type. They're retired not
walking out to type. This is a stack of paper. What my is the upset at the time,
word processing all most of our analysts the could we have said that we would
have been out of business. We would have been out of this because it was whether
we wanted to do it. Blocks and wiki are in this is the towards you have as an
agency.
In the back of the road if we are out of chairs you can open the door and pulled
out of the chair.
Blocks tends to be single authors. I can say what I want to say. What we want to
talk about in this conference as the wiki technology which is we try to weed out
or personal let's put our personal opinion but more short except knowledge into
the wiki. Next. And as we saw earlier today and edit these pages. Anyone can? It
means a couple of things. It means that things can be updated frequently. That
was my problem and the era when we published on paper, publishing on paper was a
spasm. Especially. You have to set up the departure and get the paper and
distribute all of that. Then if you made a mistake you have to recall all of the
probability of an error by front loading of process with that. We might get a
beach reports from MGA on Wednesday at about. Our analyst will look through it.
This is. It goes to the production process Friday morning. That was a is this
news tomorrow purdah. I was okay during the Cold War will but it is up okay now
what we are dropping bombs be speeded up because several things have happened.
The cost you don't have to of a published in a cycle. This picture was put into
about 90 minutes up to the first ball. There was no enter in chief. They were
unable all than this fire storm of the 20 happens. This is being updated every
15 or 20 seconds. It is being updated by a whole bunch of different people. That
is keeping up in real time with what we did not know this was went to happen. We
can keep up we have on the seventh of July you just had to hitch refresh. And
you got next page. Now it is a great reference document, and now you have a
table contents, at sidebar, all of these banks. Just wonderful. If you want to
know about the London bombings, go. U.N. it was all published first edits after.
Next. They can adapt as fast as a person. From all of these people who are
adding will piece of knowledge we get this huge insect. That has over a million
pages. There was a study done between the SEC the Botanic get and would appeal
the would compete as four errors per article and the wicked. Has four. The
article. If you normalized, about our article on words -- next slide. We need a
repository on which to draw. If I am going to make comments I need something to
make comments about. I need this repository of a temple on which can be
disorganized. That is okay. I need to be able to search. Next. I will talk about
feed back in just a Robert Metcalf made a statement -- how much social but as a
single telephone have to do not. You cannot call it is not what these were. The
first one that's what counts the two telephone as a kid it expects to sell that
will change Chinese society for a period China will be a different place when
their are 2 billion Selz. I was talking about how I am suggesting a some point
it is critical mass once every business had it been known as it is our society.
What I am suggesting is the link -- when you first start a bulky and have, it
does want to watch. I could to that an western. Once you get a quickie that has
on the dozen or a million Harbor makes it is unbeatable in terms of knowledge.
So it is in those lakes behind the repository between the whiskey and blog
search and feedback. We can change what is my next slide to just like in the mid
80's we give our people work processors without asking them. The world has
changed. We are rolling out and give everyone in my is sick in blog space. It is
internal like itself. Eventually. We are doing it's internal it because the bill
managers feel much better about that. It is all these people who set up will
cover blog. So we just have to wait a few years and we will be fine we have an
Internal wiki. We have about 12,000 pages or so what or Internal 24. Not as many
hyperlinks there as we would like. Just recently from our internal top secret
and work, as many of you know there is a top-secret work our group has put up a
blocking ability in wiki. It is called the Intel. Our office has decided that it
will take its analysts off line for two weeks each in groups of seven or eight.
They need to start putting their knowledge about rock into the Intel's of
committees and go back on line and keep it up today. That is our first effort to
go outside the bounds of our agency. That is a great place to be. My preference
warmer, I think Networks to but even at the top seed and local we are still just
is talking to each of the. We want to get to know where we have state, the eight
as, command. When we have the ability for one of those people to comment on my
block and I am getting the feedback that I need in order to adjust most wiki
about comments the big issue is trusting our people to publish before and it's.
This is where people at the State Department's can see it. Maybe they want to
change it. Next. The problem is much technology. The problem is those middle
managers. So it is really a cultural problem, a getting used to and so I am
arguing that it is a great work function. And I think that is it. Is that it?
Questions comments? Two has the mark from two -- who has the microphone to do.
I don't have a question, just a comment. When do we learn not to share?
And first grade.
Next comment, question teetoo.
You are looking for a critical last.
Right. Critical mass in the context of what I am talking, what is the critical
mass does is, when we get a critical mass the way we do our business changes.
Instead of running a single author papers that go through a weak one or what one
publication cycle we start with our first attempt on wiki. We start to your work
really on the wiki and not on paper. It is, how do we change the tells us
community to work faster than it is working at? Would we get a critical mass and
the wiki blog space, that is where we will be. When I first heard you talk what
impressed me was the state its views that you are getting the CIA analysts to
work in the whisky. It makes it so unnatural but it will become the way it
works.
That is what we are talking about let's draft and wiki.
I have two questions. The first one is, how do you ensure subject integrity?
Yeah did not really talk the second question is with respect to the London
bombings initially there is not so much knowledge, but statement. Where is the
cut off between -- and your mind deterrent data and knowledge to do when the
supply become taxable?
Record that is let's see. You as to questions. What. Let me address in this per
Doug the complexity. Per the, there is much much of a top-down structure.
Something emerges. So instead of having selected integrity by having an apology
that, it ends up being more like what you see in Fokker. Once you get to lay
people to ring out, it structure emerges out of there. You don't have to worry
about the integrity because it is what it is. It will evolve over top as people
start stirring different things. What's ever in such caring infrared cameras for
example we will start talking all those pictures with different kinds of tax. No
one person or group of people up to figure that out in advance. So that is what
complexity theory will tell all the semantics are always and never whatever you
have is all you up your second question which was when does it become knowledge
to that is it is just eight bit of. People just their are these quotes that
wiki. What does a plan turned into when you start raising the plan in an
aesthetically pleasing way and get the weeds out two but there are some people
who don't put in original content. This is not for it will organize purge let's
move these per restaurant. So you have these other group of people who we might
call editors organize it and put it into context and at constant at to abolish
there is no cut off point. It just happens or talk.
Mark, it was war back to the I am fairly new to the. My federal as it does not
trust people to have opinions or to stick responsibly for I have had to
consistently tended my a fictitious. I was just wondering if you know how
federal its juices will up to change in order to link up into individual made
and if you are seeing any of that happened in your own institution ticket.
I start up by saying some very bad things happened and why it's. That was other
agencies who don't experience that may not have the to do this different.
Hopefully they will change enough incrementally that they can survive. For the
commission. To some extent you have to do that and have some kind of crisis. It
is not just corporate receipts, in the direction. I don't know. Let me tell you
the other way to do it. I give this talk to some mid-level CIA managers. They
said, we will never do this. I said what happens when T IA is putting out their
intelligence wiki? Well, we will be out there to correct I just up to see the
wiki with some information we don't trust and we will be there in full force.
And ensure we could go on with you for the other a corporate we need to start
the panel. We have our candid presented, in public at 1150. So we are ready. We
will start promptly at 1030, thank you.]break]
[Captioner change]
Please return to your seats, we're ready to start again.
the previous speaker raised an interesting possibility that I would throw out
information about the -- and let them jump in quickly and correct it. I am not
going to do that. Okay, you set?
the phone, qeer we're using the wiki page, a link to the question.
What I'm going to do is ask each of the panellists to introduce themselves, and
give us a brief picture, contextually of what their agency is doing or intend to
do with wikis. And their goal, what they want to get out of it. We have a
series, then, of & % - then we're going to focus on questions. I will sct
panel -- throw a question out, let you self-regulate. If you have an answer,
grab a microphone and have at it. We will go through those as quickly as we can,
and tie in for you, to ask questions that may have a Rhode Island a Arisen.
Chief of Staff for strategic initiatives in the government printing office, my
lead in here, because it's a fairly new position, less than a year old. I was
asked to take on the role to help Shepherd a strategic vision. Part of the
vision is to develop what's called now the future digital system through which
all of this plethora of government information we have to, manage, disseem seem
Nate, is handled. Many of you may be familiar with the resource known as the --
manual, for many years, publishing, still does, printed publications. We said
we're going to need digital resource along those Lynn lines, started talking
about how to do that, the complexities. Resonated when you talked about how fast
some of this is evolving. We will a heck of a time keeping up if we publish a
book, fretting about that.
About that time -- at upo, somewhere in the midst of that the clouds parted and
I thought maybe there is a way, people are actually doing this in real-time.
Creating a resource we need, and as such, publishing community practice is that
we draft a plan, and as we move along quickly as we can in government, and those
of you in government agencies -- hopefully, the formation of a steering
committee, will emerge quickly, if any of you have particular interest in
playing a role in the steering committee, setting up blogs to form the community
and operate it, please let me know.
With that said let's start with Bruce, you toment want to grab a microphone and
give us some background?
Bruce: Thank you very much for inviting me. I am Bruce Pete. Single company, E
process solution. I have a product that incorporates a wiki with another thing,
we will talk about inadequacies of wikis, I try to match those inadequacies with
a response. I support the Department of Defense specifically. The agency
responsible for business enterprise architecture, based on federal enterprise
architecture. I would like to share with you our experiences in the
implementation. Our problem was a little bit different than our guest speaker in
that the architecture is so large. To understand what portions of the
architecture applies to you, when you go to the investment review board for
funding, to make sure our portfolio is going in the direction we want to spend
our money on, we use the wiki to help digest that and that together with some
facts and classification and searching, and most importantly, the wizards that
drive the templates to help that through, and to codify their relationship,
their context through these connections that the wiki provides, and the
architecture linkages provide, give you a strong link between an architecture,
anonnology and the community of practice, what we call the community of
interest.
So that's my --
good morning. Thanks for inviting me, allowing me to subfor Steve Ray. I am the
U.S. secretaryiate to the international manufacturing systems program,
internationally based collaborative organization that's looking at advancing --
the mission is to meet and pull all of the thinking minds together, to advance
the state of technology on a global scale. That sounds rather legalistic but
that's what we're trying to do.
We don't have, didn't have a problem, per say, that we applied the wiki
technology to. But we wanted to move towards a paperless agenda, because when we
travel four times a year, internationally, across Seoul, Korea, Japan,
Switzerland, trying to get all the paper under 55-pounds. Steve came to me, and
Susan, we purchased a site, found it very helpful. How did we use it? Well,
there probably four different political points on an international collaboration
we try to survive in, one being the agenda published by the hot hosting seat
that requires us to respond with tons and tons of documentation. The other is
the private conversation that takes place in the U.S. action meeting room where
discussions are not intended to be public. The other is managing documentation
and remembering what the Korean Secretary of Secretary of State Secretary
secretary secretary stated, and we find the wiki technology really allows us to
cut down on the mental overload of trying to who said what, or said they would
do what.
Specifically, my team consists of eight members lo catted East to West, North to
South in the United States. Our sponsoring four projects out for membership,
open to the international participants, and so I have designed four sites inside
of my wiki to allow each of those projects to have their own little environment
to conduct business. Now, I was asked to speak to the agency level by Steve. I
stated earlier that I don't know of an agency level in10 the to move into the
use of the technology, but within the manufacturing systems integration
division, one division within the manufacturing engineering lab at -- the
project Susan is part of is a very large successful application of the
technology and someone else will talk to that. We are beginning to require --
not require, but I am showcasing the collaborative technology on the lab level
to manage all of the competency proposals that are exg had in across the lab,
and passing up the presentations to the director.
The interoperability test bed, beginning to use it, you will hear more about
that, it will become more public. Having said that, I am here as a user, and not
necessarily, you know, one that's looking strategically across the agency.
Susan?
I am Susan Turnbull, from the General Sufficiencies Services Administration,
speaking to our interests, my work, in contrast to Calvin's, working with a
tight community, in my world we know there's more intergovernmental improvement
community that's need to form, more existing communities that need to be able to
find and talk with one another. So the work that entails our use n this case of
wiki plus a couple other capabilities, we call the collaborative work
environment, the GSA and a hat I wear on the science side of the house, the
group that offers offers the workshop series -- and on the service side of the
house a community tied to how we get smarter, the infrastructure submitee. With
those three groups coming together what holds us together is how do we form the
intergovernment communities, working with people across the country. We know the
constraints of time and travel costs.
So we were very interested to incubate the -- existing e-mail, teleconference,
and face-to-face meetings. We feel that we need to really improve on the
continuity, and coordination. We're creating a work flow, creating the
conditions that would allow the trust among the partners to be able to
understand each other, share common purpose and be able to decide to do
something together. It's almost 180-degrees opposite from the more closed crk
crk crk Kirk circumstances we heard from the cia. The wiki for us is like the
extended conversation. You have your own named page, people can understand where
you're coming from, and the openness, transparency. The principles that are key
to holding a group together, and being able to go 23-RD. Collaborative work
environment has been indispensable to the workshop series. I would like to share
how we used it for a real task, major task, a team of 30-some people for the
data reference model work that Brant mentioned. Technical people, lots of
settings, didn't know each other, loaded words, talking past each other. This
space was really key in that it provided the transparency of the process as we
became better able to understand each other. It helped us with the hard pardon
parts, comment, resolution, as well as the discipline. The record here, it
really is lightweight but very powerful. I will talk later about the experience,
similar to post-boom bombing in London, strangers from around the world that
helped pull -- and Calvin said, it was the best information source, people
around the world putting together a wiki, a blog
I am John -- from the national Ar kiefkiefs, we published guidance on web
management, also the transfer of web records. A question we often get is, is my
web record, wiki, or record, all I can say at this point, it depends on business
process. As Calvin said in his keynote speech, that's changing, dram at
dramatically what actually constitutes a record now, we're talking about
critical mass, talking about editing after publishing, talking about a lot of
institutional changes that run counter to some of the practices that we are used
to at records management. A lot of that is going to come out of readings like
that. Solutions will come out of meetings like this. I hear from -- a colleague
of mine from the records program, and together we hope to learn some things
about that. We have guidance -- will be coming out about wikis, blogs, the end
of August, will be on our website.
I am -- I am from nih, scientists with -- and I feel really humble in front of
this audience because there so many experienced wiki users and I consider myself
a beginner, even though, I have -- we still are in the process of thinking
through and designing -- wiki that would allow us to bring together knowledge
that nih represents. I think wiki technology has good and bad sides, and we
should be aware of both of them. Good is that it is fast and easy; bad is that
it is fast and easy; because you can publish anything in no time. And then -- I
guess we will get to this later, questions, but also talking about nih, I would
like to say nih is a very complex agency. We are a federal agency, but at the
same time there 37 institutes and centers that are very -- and each has a number
of wikis. However, the disability of the wikis might not be high, because of
concerns of what can be published with a government website and made available
to the public. We have a number of projects for internal purposes to support
software engineering, software development, different plough different projects,
and a number of wikis available to the public. They are hosted externally, not
-- NIH-supported wikis, but contain information about our external
collaborations. This wiki is really well used, reasonbly organized. I can share
the links for you to look at them, but they are not government sponsored or
supported wikis.
One thing I want to say about wikis, because they are so complex, and -- further
up agency, have to communicate very consistent information to the public about
human health, in all the different areas, the role of wikis is different.
Research can have multiple opinions when you talk of agency. You really some
communicate something very consistent. To discuss the different issues, offices
of -- architect, where I work, put together a group of people from -- institute,
and discuss all the different issues, skeen yos of wiki usage and externally. If
you want to know more about this we can talk later at more -- as questions come.
As I'm sure you're fill wed more to talk about more to talk about individual
efforts, and let that come out as you respond to these questions. The first one,
is your wiki or planned wiki part of your content development and management
strategy. If so, what role is it playing or will it play?
Who wants to take the first crack at that on the panel?
In the process of putting together something like wiki PGM. For support of --
because NIH funds and 179s a lot of -- projects, there's not a lot of
redundancy, but we would like to we would like to see more collaboration.
Currently we have a group of people putting together the wiki ped ya style of --
especially for people here to learn for the first time. Wiki ped ya is actually
very complex structure database architecture, I like to -- published on the web.
Wikiped ya is really -- the source that I wouldn't quote -- authority source. If
you want to check something very fast you go to wikiped ya, to be sure this is
the definition of something you go someplace else. This is sometimes -- that I
have, even though wikiped ya is absolutely beautiful, in a way, for example,
government uses a lot of -- federal agency, I really don't know sometimes what
people talk about. One thing that would be great for government to have is
library of -- wikiped ya of government acronyms. To address this issue in NIH,
that's what we're trying to do right now.
Anybody else want to talk about the content development, management strategy?
Again, the GSA, internal to GSA, I will say that I am not aware of strong
exploration towards the wiki. As I mentioned, in the settings I work, in the
cross-governmental, the communities of -- important to move out of our silos and
being able to work together, what they are lacking is the type of structure that
can be provided by a wiki or as we describe it, the hosted approach we use,
collaborative work environment. So the collaborative work environment is
recognized by the two communities I support, the science agencies, as well as
within the architecture and infrastructure committee, and of course it is kind
of the mainstay for our workshop series. What the remote participants join,
allowed -- feels good that the workshop series has come to a point it can just
be handed off to a community of practice. Brant put together the excellent
workshops over the summer. Had I needed to stand in -- I was was in a skilled
nursing facility helping my mother, had Internet access right there. Didn't need
to, but the comiewfn communities can work together. You are not stuck. Joint
action going forward.
A brief add, the interregional sec resec retariate, that manages -- the
manufacturing systems program, is 12EU8 operating on their traditional
recordkeeping foundation. Paper, Robert's Rules of Order, action, who accepted
it, when is it due? The United States showcased our wiki in Seoul in April. We
did a very good job of selling, how we used it, to them. However, in their last
semester of managing that burden, but we managed to get Switzerland, the
incoming seat, to move to this environment. That's a positive for us. It's not a
cowp, but moving towards the web-based management and processes. Now, what role
is it going to play? Well, now we're losing versions of the strategic plan as
we're sitting here. Hopefully the -- will not be a problem this time next year.
Would we use essential elements as a good charter --
I wanted to make one comment. We don't have a wiki, not working with one at Knar
at NARA, but concerns we have with wikis as a records issue. We talked here a
lot about how fluid a wiki can be, how fluid it makes the business process. The
question becomes who is responsible for it, responsible for content, asking, who
is responsible for appraisal of content. Does it reflect the business of the
organization that's asking the record? In the past we looked at web content as
being domain specific. In other words, the content is demonstrated by the
domain. A Department of Defense website, dodz DoD dod content. We need to be
careful of that.
Ready for next question? What do you see as the essential element of a good
charter for a government wiki?
I struggled with this one. As Ole gay mentioned, there's conflict, with the
wiki, what's nice about it is that it is so flexible. Really augments whatever
good organization process is in place, and I think that's the key thing here. We
need to lead with our strong knowledge management, organizing process, hopefully
that should address the concerns John had as well. Just maybe an example here,
where we did use the wiki, closer to a rile a real management task, we were
charged by omb to develop the data reference model, department of department of
homeland security was -- I was in leadership role for aic. The team got urn got
underway, rules of participants. Our office created the working space for the
community, and in 180 days we did deliver on the document that, within the
month, became omb's, and it was fascinating because in the past, I can only
imagine what we could have done without this work being space. g space. It would
have been hard, the parties didn't see eye-to-eye. It was a hard slog. I think
back to when things were moving fast, too busy to do the documenting,
transparency. Things kind of hung up. We had to take time, bring everybody back.
It was like all the eyes of the 130 people watching helped the integrity of the
process, and it was that level of buy-in, because the process was trusted, omb
had a half dozen people with passwords. This is a private space. Keep that in
mind you can do a good process within a password protected wiki, and a half
dozen people can watch at every step. Artifacts that omb looks at, and the nice
thing about our space, it's held intact, you can see in real-time exactly where
we were with work products. 300 documents, 600 comments.
several uses for wikis, I will share some with you. Some of them are as simple
as for coordination, training, education, virtual needs that we have here. Some
people participate in that. I t is also for information sharing, vocabulary
development and -- I started to talk about wiki -- and got off on something
else. Sorry about that. Wiki is great in its abilities to do something very
fast, but we need to compromise it with some lessons from the past. These are
that we need to take with us -- architecture, something that works. We have data
models developed to enable -- databases. We have seem antics, we have onologies,
other stuff, these are the things that allow to -- Because what happens
sometimes with wikis and blogs is that information gets posted and then you find
whatever you -- you find things, and all kinds of information. You really want
to have something concise. You are looking for an answer to your question. You
don't want to have five million hits. You really want to get to the bottom of
what you are looking for.
So alking about the government wiki, I will just bring up this idea again.
Government agencies, very specific languages, internally and among themselves,
and I think it would be great simply to enable -- between people from different
agencies. One of the features of wikiped ya is it allows -- pages, which means
that, for example, there two acronyms, used different ways in different
organization. What we can do, simply create a page where the acronym is
explained explain plained from the point of view of different agencies. I
started to work for -- institute, I was leading a group of administrators, I
don't know what you think when I say sequence, but this person came to me more
than a month after joining the team. She said you know, when biologists say
sequence they don't mean database. Biologists mean a sequence of -- abc -- words
like these confuse a lot. Especially words that have very certain meanings in
specific area. Then you move to a different area, and the word means something
totally different. People get confused. I imhoa I know I do; from a different
country, and federal agency, I know how confusing it might be. I thought it
would be good complement to make a reference model, put together a glossary of
terms that people could refer to. Control the vocabulary in a bigger sense, not
one meaning for words. If you use it differently, look at the definition there.
If I talk to DoD I know what definition to use, and --
I can see that, in terms of time we are not going 20 be able to get to each of
the questions, I am going to combine some, and reserve a little time for the
audience. As a wrap-up on this proargz portion of it, what concern bes wikis do
you have, and anything in the current state of wiki technology you find
inadequate for reaching the goals you or your agency have?
I guess I would say, again maybe I'm dpe fine defining this differently. But for
me the word wiki as defined by Cunningham is just that read/write page, it's
important that people recognize that isn't enough. It's what you see with
wikiped ya, and I am not sure if I was clear. But the data reference model work
couldn't have been achieved with just the wiki. What we had was the wiki was one
component, the other components were discussion forum, all the conversations
were automatically ar automatically archived. Communist existing documents,
whatever the different groups brought to the table, were hyperlinked. The wiki
provided the glue, malleable so everybody could make contributions, and the
learning curve was so low. 80% of what people brought was their existing
experience with Word, pdf, whatever, the important thing to realize is if you
are going forward I suggest you don't just wander out and think that by
downloading a wiki you're really ready to go. You want to give it more thought.
The power, of course, is that you can put together the right capabilities, and
that's going to be task dependent again. The tsunami volunteer that's organized
around the world, start wed blogs, got snippets of information from everywhere.
Couldn't organize in blogs, turned to the wiki and used yahoo groups to have
side bar conversations and figure out the rules of how to proceed, then used
flicker for the pictures. These lightweight capabilities that can be pulled
together.
What was the question, again?
The state of wiki technology, your concerns
With Department of Defense we have security on it, it's sort of a wiki of wikis,
so to speak, to apply a layer of security. There's public pages, private pages.
When one looks at -- the whole wiki is password protected, but once you get in
there are shared and -- You have to realize, looking at the public area it's not
a reference moreso than it's a discussion area. You have to keep that in mind.
Records management, it's not a -- it's a database -- we have dealt with database
management for decades now. As we apply our rules, it would be from a database
perspective. Our next step with wiki is we have a term service, a preferred
termy within -- and aliases within other groups, not only external, but what
Army calls it, what Navy calls it, we link that to our wiki.
Thanks. There's an expression in jock world that goes if you build it they'll
come. That's not necessarily true in the wiki world. Some of my members, they
were taught the IT lingo, but when we throw up a page, send them a link to t I
have to send a hard copy of the minutes, they need a password, time to go in. As
administrator I am building hooks to help them, encourage them to move over to
the platform so we can have a smooth transfer. That's something we deal with
from time to time. Thank thanks for your explanation. It's there, information is
there, we can manage the -- control the configuration, we are real-time, global
time zones are not a factor now. We can move. I can just tell them it's user
friendly, come on out and play.
Thank you. Do we have time for a quick question?
Five minutes.
I see there's a hand up over on the left side, Brant?
The way to see the advantage of wiki over off-the-shelf commercial --
Not sure I can answer that. For the collaboration workshops we began five years
ago, we've used a number of tools, commercial, blogs, just we're basically
looking for whatever we could find that would enhance the conversation and
extend the opportunities for people that couldn't be present in the room. I
don't think I would be prepared to do a full comparison. We've -- we're finding
this to be very useful to us. I went out with this, and what I had in mind of
what I was looking for capabilities, what I said, things that were easy,
web-based, technology could actually be in the background. We have a hosted
service -- lightweight.
Ready for another one?
I want to do add, very complex community, because we work with people at
academic institutions, other people around the world, open-sourced wiki seemed
more appropriate for communication in the entire community. We reviewed several
clab ratters, you have to make sure the tools you purchase fit with your
architecture and also is well -- to the community you would like to collaborate.
That could be a --
And reiterating, it is just browser-based, no requirement, no barrier for the
community members to participate. In this setting that's really what's intended.
The workshops are open not just to federal people, but wide-open to the
community. Supports platform independence, and you can use your Blackberry.
t h e -- focussed standards, content, open-source or proprietary, a fair amount
of importance so you are morage more a jill, hopefully support -- a criteria for
selection of a tool, open-source or proprietary.
I think there's room for everything. Turp Turns out the final drm version 2.0,
you won't find on a wiki page to add your own tweaks, will find it at the omb
site, in pdf, and Word. It's important too have the working space allowing for
things people are used to doing, not that they are not participating because of
what they happen to have on their machines.
Do we have time for one for question?
Are you on the phone yet?
Yes, listening to the conversation. Can you hear me?
Yes, we'll be with you in a moment.
During the conversation, the panel -- there were a couple of references to areas
of interest to myself and perhaps others. Looking at what -- mentioned, how to
get information back out of the wiki. It's all well and good that one can
quickly put it on the web and share it. We do have to be able to get the
information back out. In order to search -- i n t h e term service, I would like
to hear the panel discuss that a little more.
We don't have a mic. You have the mic's. I like to control everything.
Put information into wiki -- it does the name performance as database, easy to
store. When we start to do have huge relationship date base, you couldn't find
anything, it was a -- security problem, still is. A few people can find
information in hierarchial relation, database required so many -- I think wiki
technology might be complemented with -- conceptual models. We all have
different conceptual models, and is not yet developed well. The
conceptualizations I come with are different from what you come with. You come
with your own things you are interested in. Wiki should be able to recognize
that addresses it in some way, I would like to know more about it. But
definitely a data model, conceptual model, seem antic web, all in one place, to
be able to find information properly.
Applause]
I would like to speak for all the budding comiewfnity communities out here. Four
to six months why don't we come back, let the communities share what they are
doing. The power of the wiki is each community brings its strength, and our
communities of practice learned very much from one another through the
diversity. I will say that I want to make sure the small communities working
together -- make their meaning together hopefully in a way to support others and
collaborative work environment, text search, google bar, full text search of the
discussion forum. Thank you.
Let's give the moderator and panel a round of applause.
Applause.
t's my pleasure to introduce now, director of -- public domain initiatives for
knowledge and information, George Washington University, and author of
self-winning strategies for the private sector.
Again, thank you very much, now, thank you for fitting us in your schedule.
Is that Brant talking?
Yes.
It's difficult to hear what people are saying, I hear applause, guess there are
people there. Can you hear me?
Full room, when we get questions we will repeat them if we need to.
Can you hear me all right?
Good, all right. So first of all, sorry I couldn't be there today. It's a hectic
life, couldn't fit it into my schedule. I was in Washington living in Falls
Church, commuting up and down the -- line, so I know exactly where you are. I
want to talk about the changing face of km. We will talk about that in, I guess
a strategic way, conceptual way, but it will come back to what you are talking
about, new technology opportunity. Wiki. I am about to take up a posting with a
company in Toronto, Chief knowledge architect up there. I have a strong
suspicion we will end up looking at wikis as a way to -- that organization. I
will come back to you as a community, maybe learn something from what you folks
are actually doing.
Let me make a start. Going to slide 2. I will talk a little about the reality
check-in terms of where km sits in most organization. I want to talk a bit about
where steght km came from, and a lined strongly with where technology is take
take taking the discipline. Slide 2. The reality check. It's nice to get
together with like-minded folks. You leave the room and there not a huge cad
huge cadre of people interested relevance, the terminology prevalent in the can
addian government, but certain relevance talks about what is this discipline you
are trying to describe, why does it fit into what what we are doing.
You look at an organization, and most organization run into the thousands this
terms of employees, you will be lucky if more than 100 people have interest in
km. A lot won't understand what it is, very few have time. Time is a key
element. Constantly people say I just don't have time -- additional burden.
Can't find the time to do it. That means there's a low level of toll rens for
introducing new -- you can come up with your own list of why people don't want
to do it. You view what you do in terms of km in terms of relevance to the
average employee. Km people tend to be evangelical. They say see great virtue.
What that really means, bottom line, it's a difficult file to work on. You don't
shoe-horn into an easy -- it's a challenge. The good news is it isn't going
away. We will move to slide 3. People ask me about km, is it dying, dead? Why
are we doing it? Any relevance?
I believe reports of km's demise are great ree exaverag exaverage rated. It's
like any domain, evolving, a lot of change there. What's constant in that churn?
I guess constantly in the sense of what you're doing around km. Whatever the
state of it, it's a program, may be that big an issue for you, may just be a
project, may be somebody's good intentions. Project manager or engineers think
it's a good idea, that level. Whatever the level or scope of what you're doing
there four key elements. Any organizational discipline, , you have to market it,
see who is interested in bay buying. Vu You have to find out who wants to be
engaged. May be a scoping issue, start low down the radar. Marketing is key
area. You have to find its alignment. Alignment is a difficult one. Seems to be
new, seems to be adding another dimension to planning and project delivery, but
alignment can help you.
My belief is I don't care what you call it, km or -- there's a knowledge
dimension hidden in the organization, you have to find it. And find ways to
implement it. Deploy the thing, get it out there. You also need to measure it.
People will die a million deaths around metrics and measures. My advice there is
don't try to -- French expression, boil the ocean. It's pretty apt. Don't try to
kill everybody with your metric metrics. Alignment will help you. You have to
show some return to the organization as to why you are doing it. What does all
that mean? It's a fluid concept. If you head my book, a key thing is "never
define km." seems contradictory. I always turn it over to the people involved,
say how do you define it? Everybody sees it in a different way, different
understanding, different definition in everybody's minds. They are all right.
The thing you don't want to do is fight a fight you will die on the hill. Find
out how people view it, help them deliver that vision. It's a fluid concept, you
have to find its fit and relevance.
Let's move to slide 4 here. First things first. Whatever you do in terms of
knowledge management you will have to face three dimensions. Really, there's the
focus for questions and answers. These are a good rehearsal point for you in
conceiving, conceptualizing how km is going to work, why. People have to know
why you are doing it. You can't explain that -- and I say to any organizational
audience, somebody stops me in the corridor and says what's this km thing about?
You have been able to explain it. Doesn't matter if it's the Jan tor or senior
v.p. if you can't do the elevator description -- if people don't understand it
there's little purpose. Has to be a rational, what are you doing it? May be an
end goal, objective, that's sufficient. Something that says to people we're
going to do it because.
The last one, value proposition. What's in it for them? Human nature, we do
things because we think there's something in it for us, see something back. If
you can't explain that to a individual, group, very little value for doing this
thing. If you can't answer those questions, don't expect anybody to get too
excited. You are not ready basically.
Healthy approach, on to slide 5. I need to give you background on why stelght
km. I was director of km initiatives, bw -- is equivalent to GSA, by the way.
Senior manager said, finally, it's a good idea, let's do that. We set up an
organizational view to what I was going to do, plenty of authority to do it,
happy as lair as Larry to do it -- did a survey of the department, around 20,000
people, by the way. You think that's probably the only -- survey done in the can
addian government. Did a lot of interesting stuff in the first six months,
worked on how it would look as a program. I went and briefed senior people. It
was going great in my mind, looked like it would work. One day -- and I have to
explain the background. Within the first year I had two changes of Deputy
minister, four assistant Deputy minister changes, four departmental reviews, and
two external department reviews. I was constantly going to senior management
meetings to brief them on km. It was a constantly changing merry-go-round. I was
a little sick of it. I ran into the Deputy minister. The God-like people you
occasionally see. I ran into him going down in the elevator, a classic elevator
moment. 20 seconds to impress this individual. I told him, gave him the full
bore of my personality, hoping he would smile ben ef olen thetly, he said
actually we're not doing it, going to focus on im. I had a year of work
underway, and the senior manager saying we're not doing it. You can imagine. A
wonderful revealing moment, it told me I am wasting my time trying to build a
program in a major department around km. The reason is it's a con constant churn
of change at the top. Looking for a -- typical public sector mind dplt set to
say we'll initiate a km -- they view as a program. It instruct me clearly that's
not going to happen. It's going to be a constant churn at the management table,
you will spend all your time in committee. I went away, happened to be going to
department of national defense to do a similar conference to now. Trying to
explain the change of mindset I had, go back to lowest common denominator,
people, individuals, see about building from the ground up. I was trying to
explain that to the Department of Defense, mill tear people. And in my mind
popped the image of a stelght boom bomber, coming in under the radar, people
won't know you are there, and make big changes. Went over pretty well. We
started to work on that.
How would that work, basically we decided km is counter intuitive to the public
sector mindset. Doesn't work well with a lot of control. It's a grassroots,
building networks, trickling up of expertise that works great at that level, but
doesn't work well at the program level. Program level senior folks want to
measure it, see it operate like a normal program, which in there mind is an IT
program, expect to see an ro I, blah, blah, blah, doesn't work that way. That's
why we said no. Not going to do that. Go back to the stelght approach. What I
had in mind there was basically looking for ways to bypass all these controls,
approvals you have to go through. What we had in mind was working with
individuals and teams to start them on the road to managing engage. We have a
smaller view to knowledge in terms of enterprise. You can start within your
network, community, environment, that will impact the greater organization. It
was literally a trickle up approach.
At the same time we were thinking about what to call it. Ended up with knowledge
mobilization. Looking for a proactive verb people could visualize. Mobilizing
knowledge, everywhere, trying to get people to engage. The same acronym as km.
The km practitioners could still say it's km, and the others could say not, and
both sides seemed happy with that. We were giving that grassroots environment
something effective they could help lead the knowledge through. It was about
knowledge and governance. We set up a committee, paid homage to the structure,
but did it in a very engaged way, folks at the director general level, could do
things, had budgets, deliverables in mind to basically say if we worked with
you, help you deliver this or that, saw it was good. Things come out of this
environment, like a best practice, lesson, we can engage it, disseminate through
the organization that way, rather than keeping it all central.
The central group was a km core expertise group, very small. I said let's
structure around three or four individuals, business unit. Help them. The way we
did it.
Going to page 6 here. It's fairly evident in I look at the environment today,
working with a lot of companies, the focus is changing. I try to believe there's
more k of the focus, knowledge, less 69 m, management. Very tip very typically
businesses try to structure around technology. You have a lot of money being
spent over a long period of time with new technology. Whether it be content
management, document management. Look, if we build these huge IT structures we
can manage knowledge. How you're going to use it, these are the constraints,
security, privacy, all these protocol things. You typically find organization
build a huge knowledge repository, and it sits there, nobody uses it. Or else
they bring a technical tool to bear, I have used a lot of them, a lot of good
ones that are great. We did a lot of work around sharePoint. One or two people
are keen on getting the things engaged, but nobody else does. A typical bell
curve, you start with a lot of interest up front and it tapers away.
That was an issue for me, why does that happen? Working with faa folks it last
little while. The problem was, if you have a central IT organization maintaining
a km technology, having a technology issue that needs resolution, may take days,
weeks to resolve. Practitioners don't want to engage with tools like that. Saa
built their own, they maintain it in the business units, train people to do the
mechanical things needed, embed them. Almost a real-time environment, virtually
no lag. People work best with tools they are in control rough of in daily life.
Instant connectivity, very persuasive, pervasive. People like to be in control
of technology, instant messaging, blogging, a lot of km based tools, the cell
phone is everything. The convergence of technologies in the cell phone, that's a
km tool in itself. People text stuff, shoots that's knowledge sharing, phot,
photos while standing there, that's sharing. What that is doing is evolving a
new business environment. Doing km is less formalized structures. slide 7. I
love this stuff, it's technologies bringing -- I saw it in stelght, empowering
individuals and teams to do to it themselves. There's a lot going on in terms of
how people will or won't even engage with technology, but the bottom line is
people like to tell people what they know. A certain way to find out knowledge
is just to ask somebody. Very few people will not talk about what they know.
It's vanity I'm afraid. They basic ole don't want to manage the knowledge. They
like to do the sharing piece. Wikis are great for that. A lot less emphasis for
management there, encourages sharing. Many organization are starting to make a
transition here. Say okay, if new technology will not fit the old mode we have
to think of ways encouraging people to use it, to get us where we want to go,
but we have to give something back in return.
Bottom line there is you have to think about, there's a change coming. Not
suggesting it's over. It's evolving into a more flexible plu fluid kind of
environment.
Slide 8, more about k than m. Reading everywhere I go, web 2, web 2, ang, an
architecture of -- getting people engaged on an individual basis. You will find
change in daily life. Think back, remember the day before pc's came along. How
did we manage, communicate? We didn't have mail. That's all changing with a
different type of participation, online, individualized, people will be able to
interact, an exchange of information and knowledge. Not so much about the formal
management. It's control, going back to that eses that essence of what I
scribed. It's control. The bottom line -- used to drive me crazy at treasury
board in Canada. I talked to the cio in Canada about teley work, she said great.
You try to get a senior manager to encourage it without control? I need to be in
touch, control that -- no, you don't. Empowerment is saying I give that to the
individual, I understand, we have a pact that person will manage and deliver.
Why would you needs to control the individual's working life if they are working
in the way you wish them to? Will mature the self-management environment, people
will be more and more in control of work.
Slide 9, wiki or not to wiki. A new work environment for the next month, pretty
exciting for me. I see an interesting environment ahead of me. These folks just
spent a pile of mony evaluating technology. Haven't started the km journey,
engaging me to do it. But thinking about the technology to use. I am giving them
strong messages to say whoa, I don't think you need to know that. The last thing
you need to consider is which technology to use. Where it's going to head -- and
when I say technology they are talking about traditional enterprise-scale
technologies, I won't name the technologies, it's not a technology-bash fest. My
sense is they won't get 1% of technology use out of them. Why wouldn't you just
look at what's coming on the market. Wikis, if you have read my book, I was
looking two years ago at wikis to decide, and blogs, other things, the most
alive km environment. Wikis stood out head and shoulders above. The corporations
putting up corporate blogs trying to control the flow of information, counter to
the reason blogs are there.
Wikis seemed to be the only technology I had seen that was really perfect for
km. A true technology that fits the knowledge environment. It's encouraging
collaboration in the true sense. Now organization are looking at wikis, and I
have a list of organization I am beginning to compile in terms of -- a lot in
banking, financial sector is heading there, and the health factor. They see
wikis as a way of effectively facilitating collaboration. By doing that they are
giving away something in the hope they will get back something, basically
achieving corporate goals through leveraging of information in the wiki
environment.
Also, there's additional dimension. People began with that thought, but actually
wikis are so open, now you have the evolution of external partner wiki becoming
part of the organizational internal view to have a user wiki. So collaboration
both internally and externally is getting -- through wiki. Again, I am not an
expert in the use of wiki, but basically a lieu allows disconnected people to
have connected -- learning and growth, the seed bed for those. Bottom line is
wikis have changed the game. What we discussed earlier, view of stelght, to
bypass a lot of this large monolithic organizational stuff. Bypassing in terms
of allowing user control. Not suggesting no IT presence, but the controls are
very different. Users are more in control of content, navigation, all that.
Okay, moving on to slide 10. Final thoughts here, then I will wrap up. The new
wave of IT tools basically allow for more knowledge to be created, and likely
lead to less time or willingness by users to follow structured rules. The more
you give people the effective tools to manage their environments and knowledge,
the more they will do that. There's less and less structure involved there, a
double-edged sword to senior people. They will have to bite that bullet, give
350E78 tools and there will be an evolution in the way business operates. Think
along those lines.
The program, launch scale view of knowledge is just what everything else was
before it. Let's gather everything under one tent, put it all in a major
repository. That happened, that's not an answer. It's like what happened in the
records environment. You collect everything and put it in a warehouse, so what,
nobody looks at it or knows it's there. The -- needs to understand what's
important in terms of the knowledge they hold, knowledge for future well-being
and growth. In terms of government it's in interaction with the client or the
citizen. The social network is where that will effectively happen. Social
networks understand the knowledge they need, the environment they create to
manage their work environment, and will ever be so. They may hold the key on
their own in terms of what is important knowledge to the organization. My view
there is if you work at that level, effectively encourage the use of networking,
social networks will grow, facilitate those networks, encourage with the right
tools and the rest will take care of itself to a great degree.
Smar smart organization will start decentralizing and focus on true empowerment
of users through effective guidance, advice about managing knowledge at the
local level. That's how I see it at this point. Those are the thoughts I had. I
think I have wrapped in diseent time there, I guess there's time for questions
if anybody has any.
They have.
23-RZ empow The last few years, the -- knowledge and I'm curious whether -- how
this new technology, how do they interact?
I think you are going to have to repeat the question. I only got pieces of it
I'm afraid.
impacting corporate rule roles? Was it?
I think it will be forced on the government to change. People, the generation,
my generation, boomers, start moving out of government, there's a new generation
of technology cachey savvy people moving in. That's the reality. Sooner or later
government has to begin to think about changes in that sense.
I think the biggest change will be the understanding that if you just build
major corporate knowledge repositories, it's duplicating the past in terms of
information. I am strongly endorsing it's a networking aspect, really where
attention should be paid. That's where the return is going to be.
I'm not sure if that answers the question exactly, I didn't get the whole
question.
We will try another question.
Yes, you said that more knowledge is going to be created, but it seems knowledge
is in people, more a matter of using the network to find the person, the person
who participates in the network, they bring their knowledge, see the other --
the knowledge tends to be created in the minds of the people using the network.
It's hardz harder to get -- the people understand, the network may be like bread
KRU78s to the people who have the answer.
That's exactly what I described and how I see it evolving. When are you going to
build a network? The network understands what's appropriate to it and will find
ways of retaining and communicating and bequeathing the knowledge. It may be as
formal as capturing. It may be. It may not be. There may be other ways of doing
that. I looked at a lot of organization. NASA did interesting stuff with video,
retaining key corporate knowledge by having engineers talk about previous
missions. People can go to the video library and catch up on what was being done
if they want to reference it. That's how the network will keep the knowledge
strong. That network will be one of expertise. Either engineers, project people,
some focussed expertise and will have a requirement. Bequeathing the knowledge
to the next generation, very Oregonic in that way, and they need to be
maintained above everything else. I don't care if you call it a network or
community, that's the reality. Capturing that centrally, bring it all into a
central viewpoint. Usually a portal, not always effective, but networks and
social networksville those views to knowledge anyway, and they will find, within
the organization, a level for that knowledge.
What they need to do is be encourage to do do that. Guidance, a central group
can see a bigger picture. I worked with Pan American health in Washington, the
same knowledge was useful across a number of the health sectors they were
focussed on, but they weren't Kerik connected. You can encourage the network
growth and it becomes more Oregonic. Network growth is where I would focus.
When I look at your blog, hope you don't mind, showing to people, when you came
back from the -- conference stelght bomber like the picture on your book cover,
you -- motorcycle.
Actually the picture on the book is me stafnd standing by the motor bike, the
publishers cut the photo down to the face.
I wanted everybody to see the full picture, the way you returned from the
management of knowledge conference.
What a lovely ride. It was a joy. I got a real taste of small-town America an a,
it was beautiful.
Other questions?
one more.
What, if the knowledge is in the people, what does that do for outsourcing, the
information in books, vu you have to read the book, hard to reduce the true
knowledge. A world where they want to get knowledge -- through some process,
places that give you knowledge, but in reality you can't go there. Is that what
you suggest?
That's an interesting question. I had the library group at public works, a
wonderful group of individuals. They understand things like meta data, very
important, but there's no way you can retain all the knowledge in a codified
way. Really ieftically you ic realistically you are trying to lay trails to
knowledge, connecting with bridges. One way is to capture high level matter
around knowledge. I encourage at public works, people work on projects, fill in
a one-page summary telling people what their knowledge expertise is, a
high-level view of expertise. Not a knowledge map, a knowledge library. People
can look it up, say I need to go talk to Jill, Jack, whoever, find the expert
that way.
Libraries hold a key there.
They are a key group in terms of organizational knowledge.
I think they are in transition themselves, finding finds finding a way to the
electronic community is more tricky. What typically happens is IT people take
over the portfolio. They want to capture it all in databases. Don't take me
wrong IT folks, I have been an IT person my whole life, but it isn't an
effective way of capturing knowledge.
A large percentage of the audience classify themselves as library or information
science category.
A round of a applause.
fferz come back at 1:00.
we're going to break for lunch.
Please stand by for real-time captioned text.
Please stand by for real-time captioned text.
Welcome to the afternoon workshop. We will be resuming and about one or two
minutes. Thank you.
We would like to get started. We will proceed as outlined on your hand out. We
will of presentations and demos and then question and answer.
Good afternoon. I am Mills did this. This afternoon we are going to take a
journey on some of the -- well, they are related restrictions. Where we are with
wiki technology and what other kinds of things are coming on line and we are
expressing with. They will look at other things going into the of the stage.
This woman working with collaborative environments much more interesting. I want
to go back to the slide that Brenda and put up. There are a couple of the
sublicense from it. What we will look at is the first column. We are going to
see -- we will have a presentation where they will show you where we are going
taking the basic wiki idea and really doing an enterprise or professional or
just a really good job of taking over the sorted components and putting it
together with other things. There are other things we are building into this
that make it a powerful environment, which you may or may not be in a position
to talk about this week, but seven. That's will be our first point. We will look
at the abilities for reading and writing and managing group efforts and so on.
We will give a quick tour of what is state of the art in wiki. Then we will move
this to the second level which is what happens when we take the new more
powerful wiki and start working with semantics, that is the ability to put the
information in the context of semantic models and magicians to be able to bring
in either by writing or living in and tie up concepts and relationships. And
what will that do for us in terms of search and navigation. Use case that has
been drawing us in this work has been how to take these trenches of interest to
get together and share information. How they are going to be able to work -- is
it okay to leave it on for a second? We are all set. What we are looking at is
the ability to work with inflation in semantic context. When I think of ascetics
I am also thinking to the level of to five and so on. Being also wrapped into a
larger context of relationships such that you can support multiple users for the
same as your relationship of information. The third call this where we will be
demonstrating the next, which is really to be able to take these selected models
and put them to work. Made of the source of the base of functions and
applications. And so here we will allude to that with a little discussion of
semantic agents. The other area we are going to look at is, when you think about
84 you think about the reading and the writing and the search and access. Our
first thought is this is something we do as people. I rise to it or copy a
document and posted on wiki. And when it comes time to access that I to the
typing or searching. What we will look at in our third presentation is the
automation of reading and writing and reporting functions in the environment.
That involves being able to train the wiki software, we will call its research
software, to be able to look at results from a search for a collection of
documents that are on your desktop and be able to extract the information of
interest from its call being able to send take that information of interest in
its reform and use it to publish a wiki. I read 100 documents and publish the
page. On the other side we can talk about writing, reading over our entire wiki
and being able to sit and that's and ride it out with various kinds of reporting
functions. We start thinking about the next generation Library Services where we
are combining research and the ability to the village as did things across our
repository. I think you will find this a very interesting part of the
presentation. Now we will go into darkness. You are just putting too -- was
that? Early this spring by attended a knowledge Management Conference put on by
a group in Phoenix. Actually, I guess this is sort of a coming out for you guys.
They were third showing a new generation approach to wiki, taking its to a whole
new level. So when we were there we just started talking about this. I told them
that one of the areas that was becoming the subject of interest that I am
working with here in Washington is the whole topic of when they come. They were
approaching this from the standpoint of how do we make a collaborative
environment that can be used but only within an organization server or a be
hosted somewhere or run off a lot of different laptops. There are here to
introduce this to what he calls wiki on steroids.
With the technology I am going to show you you will see it that it extends well
beyond that. We were testing the waters they say that are offering is what
compelling because these applications have just become far too complicated and
difficult to use. So we thought, well call let's just as the waters. Our actual
losses next week at the conference in Portland. I will be real careful but what
I said because there are but a lot of publications I will show you, not what we
will be launching, but what we have customers using right now. If you are not a
journalist and want to hear the details in the near future I will be more than
happy to share some. Back at the end of to dozen for, we took with the Pia and
formed this open source project and extended it a great deal. What I am going to
show you is, you can think of it has knowledge and as much for the masses. You
can think of it as a file server because you are able to share information in a
potentially rich in varmints. I will just go ahead and dive into the demo. So
what you are looking at --
In national.
I'm sorry?
What we have is a gel that is being run across the web. What we can do is to
five can we make a video that will pose to the web site afterwards to.
Sure.
There are actually several products on the edge web site.
Said its solely.
Took to the product pitch. Go to the product page. This is basically -- so what
you are seeing here is the application. Obviously what I showed you here is the
web browser. I am not installing any hindsight applications. Like any good wiki
you can as the page. Or with this this is all inside the browser. I should give
you a little background did the majority of us are at Microsoft, but we are
really passionate about this. This offering is.
Different from what most people perceive to be wiki. People have preconceived
notions about what it wiki is. I guess you could think of to five if you want to
balance text, it is a good tool for that spurred by will just add some content
to this page and then I will skip it is. So all the content you see there was
added using our effort. I did not do any tricks or anything. And here you can
see -- I get a little sadly there. And I see this of Russian. Then I can pull up
the result of the pages of. I can see old versions of this page. Not only can I
see all persons, I can walk through versions' and see what was since. I can do a
comparison. So it is all there. I can reverted back to its original stitch and
to get back to where it was precisely. There you can see how easy it is. It is
considerably different. Just to be clear let me pull this up real quick I know
most people know what wiki is and they all know this. It is amazing to me, most
people -- there is a percentage of people who know what this is. This kind of
defeats the purpose courage to Care is Minneapolis. I can and does this page as
well. However, when I is this page I have this nonsense courage you guys
probably don't know what this looks like. You want to pull this step back out.
It is not structured. So actually considers it. Now, we actually call it in Next
Generation server. I will show you what I mean by that. For example, I am going
to go in and attach a file. Ordinarily, what I would do is get on my computer,
but interesting enough my computer has crashed on me, which because of how our
work and offer it doesn't really matter so why don't care if my computer goes
down. Now I am going to go ahead and attach a file here. There is a copy of is
there. I can attach a power plan there. No I am going to attach -- it is
actually the same file again, just to see what happens. So this is interesting.
Additionally just like a file server you have the ability -- you can see that is
clear water management. Sit out soon to personnel. It is very flexible and
irreversible. It is simple easy to use tools for information sharing. I will
talk more about that in a second. Let me move that page and look at what
happens. Notice that it does us do a page refresh. What I mean by that is it is
in place. It's does not the to the force the user. You are like, or was I on the
page? We do not do that. So what is the significance of being able to attach
files and images? You have the ability to create this conceptually rich
environment for information sharing. So you take this page for example adjust to
this ballpoint down here. So what this means is you can't capture information in
a centralized location that everyone has access to and provide a fresh about it
so that at a glance you can consume that information and gain knowledge. It is
my judgement / Project. So where is inflation right now in e-mails or your
network file server. The problem with that is it has no context. There is no way
to a racially go back in mind that stated and easily understand why it is
relevant. This is just not going to cut it. Here you have the ability to capture
information and it potentially rich environment. Now I will talk about discovery
a little bit. Let's say I want to see what is going on in my organization. This
is everything that has been done in my organization. Of course I can about this.
Winifred it will provide summary. We generate this -- you can say they have left
the company. Where is all the knowledge. It is in his the Mildred are going to
sift through the network file server, right to keep this is an environment that
is conceptually rich. Look, he was working on this, working on that presoak that
is a little bit about what I am talking about. The way we deliver this
traditionally to five and again, we are launching next week. Although we have
had customers or the last year and a half, almost call we approach result. There
is quite a difference in the data. We of customers from manufacturing to
nonprofit to technology to accounting. Based on what their recommendations where
we made changes to these of corporate we took a three different approach to
developing suffered than what most people do. I think we did a good job in
making it simple and easy to use. It is this machine like called it. The thing
is, of Rodney's this technology. That is a effect. Everyone needs it. All the
way from the enterprise down to the small business. Help the worst is -- and
this is generally speaking for people who just don't have the technical
knowledge or perhaps to of [ INDISCERNIBLE ] so he was talking about the fact
that often when you put the technology the that the departure of Phil's pretty
people don't feel like they have control. You drop your network and give it
power. It is committing with your server. It flies zero configuration. Anybody
in the world with access to the internet has access to this. In addition, to
that it does harm or monitoring sub for packaging, city budget. Let's say
someone stole your bars for the next day you would have a new one. So that is
how we deliver. I really want to leave some time for questions which I was
taking notes during -- I have some reminders for myself. So I actually is the
edges and a workshop. What I did here is that did a strict copy, paste from the
web site and put it in here. Then at the bottom by a test the file. Again I am
catching the impression in a potentially rich environment. This is the
importance of interoperable the. Some of the key points and recurring themes --
yes?
How about the purple numbers that look like little icons?
This denotes external links.
So I can still have gurgling?
Absolutely. Let's let me show you a link to a page internally. Yet how you have
to remember that silly name? With our system all you have to do is create a
link. Then you can browse the entire wiki. Here I am rising different pages with
different files. Here at does provide a link externally. In the same way that I
did that -- [ INDISCERNIBLE ]
So another thing I want to show road would is, let me insert an image. I am
going to insert an image into this page. I already uploaded some foes here. I
will attach an image. So I just insert an image. I can Great lakes. I can browse
the entire system. It has the table of contents based on the section. It should
be referring pages. This page points to the page I am hearing. Is this relates
to the page I am doing. So I should know that. I have pretty must touch the tip
of the as per. I really wish I could show you guys some of the more exciting
things we are doing next week. I would like to take questions put.
Thank you. Where is our might? Here it is.
Where is the source code?
Where are too?
This is even more friendly. What is really exciting is wiki is pretty cool. What
is really exciting is our framework. This is the open sores. It is
opensource.net. We need microphones.
What is your core business model?
Again the one I can talk about Russian out -- I have been told what to do. The
core business model is in several [ INDISCERNIBLE ] you just plug it in. It does
what you are supposed to do pretty can focus on what is important to you. Where
are you going to keep your back up to? I guess you guys are federal government
B'rith small Dutch press all the way down, their back up tips are in a building
in a file cabinet. Next question?
[ INDISCERNIBLE ]
Do you have anything coming out of that might help us to give.
And obsolete. Absolutely. Perhaps he just want a virtual Service or perhaps you
just want Harbor and we provide the of vacation for pushing the backups to the
beaches to the hardware monitoring. [ INDISCERNIBLE ]
Some of the resources you guys have. But our they're any questions that we have
from the phone?
This call one question. On your description it is a collaborative wiki with
semantics. Could you explain what you approach to semantics is and what has been
implemented.
What he are doing next week has some skeptics build into it. We really believe
in to the and I will go ahead and talk about this a little bit. I think they
really have the right approach and doing semantic spurred.
They are doing semantic Web with the small s and small w?
Could you explain.
Repeat it, Peter.
Did you explain. Are you of planting at least R T F or some other semantic
networking or something?
Not yet. As far as what is a village right now, the only thing we are officially
to five Havre, if we want is to talk of line a little bit.
Sure. I would love to. I was trees why you picked semantics and advertising on
the key descriptidescripti on line.
That is not released until next week.
Thank you.
The core representation supports matchups and other things with Weicker foraging
and things like that, yes?
Other questions?
Is that such a within your domain or is that surging the entire database?
That is surging to cut it will include attachments. You can search on
attachment, name, description. [ INDISCERNIBLE ]
Yes,.
[ OVERLAPPING SPEAKERS ]
I cannot stress that characters. -- I cannot translate characters.
So one of the things I wanted to mission was this paper. Is he still here?
No, he had to go back to work.
He wrote this rally billion to paperback in 05 on the wiki. I was like, IRA
reading a radical paper and complexity theory that give me a transition period
to settle.
I intends to incorporate in the talk this. Anyway, to notice that?
The federal scene and abilities.
Correction [ INDISCERNIBLE ]
[WILL PARTICIPANTS PLEASE MUTE THEIR PHONES]
So, I guess I have done then.
We will pick up on these things which is six. Our next speaker has been working
with us which is the semantic which is for informational message working group.
He has been working on an informant's where the underlying architecture is all
about it is and semantic agents. It is being implied in the context of
collaboration and also the ability to send up applications. Conner?
Thank you. Okay. Well, I will just carry on with the general theme here in
wrapping things up. Excuse the interruption the size for college presentation
are posted. We just of is the link.
I am on page two right now.
Just a little bit of background about our software and our company. We are
slightly different from other types of technology. Our platform is based on the
idea of building up some four this on this link little pieces which of semantic
agents. We use them to treat one of the very core of things not working is that
they don't necessarily have to be updated but for errors or computer experts
predict can actually be created and assembled visually but people who have a
regular expertise courage and what we have been doing over the past 15 or 16
years is continually pushing this technology and using it's to build industrial
enterprise systems in the knowledge Base systems. Today what I am going to do is
talk about semantic to corporate I will adjust to a very very quick summary you
probably know by now that the FDA itself has actually been around for about 50
years or so. But it came into being once the Web started to really emerge and be
popular. This cylinder really lost the FERS would keep the chocolate. This is
about actually to helping. Instead of having a close environs which is published
by a single organization and having them held up as structure. Some of the
original ideas were to try and make it as simple as possible. One of the things
that was mentioned was the area of let's make it really simple. People should
not have to know it's in now. What we will to is invent another which is really
rather simple. And the whole idea was to make its enticing for people to
collaborate heard so the whole idea was that you actually see a Web page and you
have the ability to push that edit button and say, I would like to add my two
bits or change that. So it creates this complete novel idea. Based on pure
pressure and the transparency, everything is shown and wanted from the entire
community. Now this in itself would be quite interesting, but it probably would
not reveal of the light subtle things about wiki that are very powerful.
Concepts can be formed on the fly by someone some undefined that concept and
immediately putting march route that. That is actually one of the most powerful
things about wiki because you stop having information being based around
Tuchman's which are big buckets of a lot of different of design stuff. You start
to have and freshen forming around -- discussed four around sectors when you
look at the skies of things it can scale very rapidly and very broadly. We have
about 13,000 people who are coverage of the pain away. Now, this is obviously
quite different from what we are used to. Everyone probably by now has had to
share a word document or is spread sheets. More than one person can modify the
document at once. Of course what we also have now is people are using e-mails of
course on the other side we have a different base systems which are very
structured and require a lot of expertise to modify. So wiki is a are quite
powerful, but they do also have limitations on some issues. Some of those where
brought up earlier in the panel discussion, but what I am going to do is get a
little bit more focus on some of the issues. One of the issues with wiki as I
mentioned is this very powerful idea that you create this concept on the fly.
The issue is, these things are not differentiated. So if I had a wiki page and
then I had another one for companies like Microsoft, I could not actually
differentiate the two. This is other than the Egyptian. [ INDISCERNIBLE ]
Microsoft is a company. And they are located the infringement. The other thing
to which is religious to this is as the ability to to security is what limits It
occurred you can pretty much only focuses down on each particular wiki concept.
In a somewhat different way just because of how wiki were created as they came
out. They were not presented by some vendor or organization. There were wiki --
they are some of this open world. There is really not a great deal of
standardization in terms of how these things represent information and how you
use them. So the semantics can really help to make this more powerful than they
are right now. You hear a lot of semantic technology, and it sounds like a very
abstract work. Sister quickly it is something that all of us do every day. So
sorry to food courage we are checking all the data that we see on a daily basis
and we are either turning it into new concepts or related to costs that we
already know. We are applying in are continually providing a more real world
model. And Miguel and share those models with other people. It comes down to a
couple of key things. You have some idea about what these things are about, but
it comes down to ideas of generalizing things, and reading a bunch of complex
stuff into one thing some things of common properties. People have there first
name. We come up with dresses on how we name this stuff. And we actually talked
and helped by good and committed these things to other people. And a lot of
people would say that sounds like the vocabulary. In some respects these are
related to semantics, but they are a little more simple. There might be many
different meanings. So six can give us a lot richer context and things like
that. As an example of context if you take Frances this example of water, it is
setting up a constant to me something for different. We use concepts all the
time to imply a lot of subtleties. So what is this all battered Sue wiki? Well,
if you can take the idea of semantics into a 84 now, instead of wiki where it is
all the same weekend stops to chat and give them different properties based on
their types. The other thing we can do, and this is quite critical to some
people, is be able to actually introduce saw fairly rigid security. You can say,
not only do we want to have the attributes on people like maybe there's a scary
number, but we don't want to show that they really have some fresh and that
makes sense to some. With that sells like is that you are actually starting to
make this into a real operational environment it is not -- it is a collaborative
environments for a first systems. Then, what he really needs to do is stays a
development environment with the ability to move things between those
environments. So what we have done is build a semantic wiki on top of our
knowledge platform. We built it out of these little semantic is spurred the
general idea is that the wiki concept is just a term or page were just some flat
Asea that they actually become elements of these things called intelligence
which are semantic models. In doing that immediately those concepts can start to
have formal properties. Once things have proper is you can substitute semantic
searching. Who does this person know or who are the people that's no brands. If
we go out into the social network what are those people? And how many of them?
Those are the types of stocks surging oarsmen to charging that you can't do. You
can actually have different trading relationships or characteristics. The other
thing is that you can sense to really basically integrate security issued the
underlying system. Let now in most wiki the most you can do is say, this
particular word like Francis George Bush, we will let the people to modify. What
you can easily do is, you can actually say depending on what role you have and
your of the community you have the rights to modify its order of these
particular characteristics trade then the other thing is we treat these highly
customized vehicles where I actually people can increase this. And they are
complete driven by the knowledge then either keep things are very very
interested. These are some examples of before that comes up. A person is not
assist 84, but they are actually a person. So it's just immediately progress
characteristics. What you can also do is you can also create these forms in the
wiki which allows people to do very subject specific searching. In this case you
can is what someone based on who they know for their e-mail address or
something. Underneath this it is all driven by wiki -- this is a clever seven
runs. In this particular case support some people it might be to tackle and it
may not be of any interest. That is okay. At the very high level you have your
customers who are just interested in the content horses your average in the
user. At the next tier down the have the people who are interested in modifying
the conscience, and then at the third series you have the people who are
interested in knowledge. And they can all work as there different levels they
are all the chicken adjust to each other day all leverage off of each other. So
some of the things you can do is there are sauces of people, tens of thousands
of not hundreds of thousand people who are now building these semantic models
with the intelligence of the Web. This is something you can use to describe
things with other classifications. What other projects have interests and to
today no. This particular model here has done about 16 to 20 million people
organizing this information. So one of the key things about this as soon not
just have one wiki and not see just are surely throughout the. To have every
semantic wiggy or restaurant the idea of a community college we can do is we can
feed models up into that community which are of interest to them. If you have a
bunch of aircraft mechanics, they might be interested if you have a bunch of
until as analysts, maybe they are interested in particular events or particular
types of people. Maybe librarians are interested in other types. So in each
community you can have them have interests in the German models necessarily
approach by the gills, a technical informations as somebody else. So we have a
couple of different examples that we have seen. One of them as for a large
company who has like most public companies right now a real painful problem with
compliance. Ever since the world, the government has come down very hard on
public companies with very specifically imposing what they are doing internally
and making sure that front does not the court. Most of this affirmation is
expressed in the treacherous. They actually -- a lot of the information cannot
be handled by one particular definition system because that one interest system
doesn't know what is happening in another one. So it has to be done very
manually. And this is what we do is stick the doctrines and paste them into the
whiskey. Then we have such matter experts who are selecting the text and saying,
this is this type of policy. This is a violation. They are converting this into
knowledge and that's, in turn is driving the application. The thing that is
really cool about this is the hard language in the interpretation of policy and
the actual of the cases that are driving. You can actually see, what is my
application working this way. In that particular case you can separate out some
pretty hard artificial intelligence the second example is the special atolls'
the work group. It is a completely different type of vacation. These are a bunch
of people who are in the world of modeling this is about 80 percent of our jet.
These are I think a diverse group of people from various as government agencies,
industry, and academic. And they have this huge problem that's they come. They
have all of these models which overlap and it's different shades in this
particular case we have the treaty set up we do what is called the opposition of
model. And disks in your case we are on change and change.Ed captioner present.
This is more of a -- going right now, got some of the different communities of
interest that -- as eh ample we have the -- working group, and they have started
off by putting in their organizing their meeting -- various sessions, what
priorities and -- are, everything. They also have their little playground where
they are starting to drop in their -- which you see in there.
Then we also have a take-off -- starting to organize -- information. We have
some kind of a gentleman here who is doing a little educational environment,
teaching children and other people about energy, and -- things like that. Some
private communities here as well. In some respects it doesn't appear any
different from a conventional wiki.
to change -- you have to -- register in order to make a change. Just like your
conventional wiki, go in and modify the text, similar to the previous wiki here,
we have a little WISe wig, what what you see is what you get.
You can -- documents, preserve formatting, tables, from spreadsheets, things
like that. Conventional -- the -- this little group, and make it into a new
concept, then -- like your conventional wiki, now anybody on the web should be
able to immediately -- see that change.
We'll get into the -- show you guys the -- if you are interested.
I am going to reserve questions on this, we have so many waiting. But I tell you
what --
Are you interested in, like -- of interest, I guess it would be called. You
would have -- domain experts develop an -- you have a whole Corp us of
information -- the other thing is, ru interested in inintegrating tools for --
so you could look at your cor pus and say --
Would you use the microphone?
We have this -- before the division of -- ourn Onology being created -- [audio
not great: Background noise]
Every time they do something in a wiki, all of the context becomes a little --
than the knowledge base. We have an underlying inferencing -- we can do things
like -- and reasoning, and your more technical -- like logical -- to find. Based
on properties, because we didn't know -- to answer your first question, part of
what we're doing is -- structured stuff, but unstructured stuff. Looking at that
and -- semantics from that. Next presentation they are pushing that a little bit
further as well.
A lot of this is being able to take the structured stuff and --
Those of you on the telephone, you want to ring off now and we are going to give
you a new number. On the wiki page.
It's on the wiki page. 88346, 3950. 1-eight 888, and the code is 120034.
You use that code for both the phone and for the presentation. The presentation
link is also on the website. Www.infiniteconferencing.com/join.
1-888-346-3950, password 120034.
.. Chief technology -- generally in the case, context of semantic wikis we will
talk about the standpoint of the need to read, write, reporting -- also use some
technology to satisfy the various functions. Chuck?
Yes, okay, good afternoon.
This is more or less what happens when semantic technologies meet linguists, and
so we will see what's going on. This will be about automating the process of
reading, writing and reporting. You will see a lot of things fallout of that in
a semantic sense. Can you hear me okay?
Yes, we can.
Great. The approach that we're taking for this is to automate the capture of
content and knowledge in terms of exam inning a large Corpus of information and
extracting information into a separate semantic form for later processing.
Reading styles, by training the system. We will examine that shortly. Then to
provide a semantic search capability, to examine the large cor pus, interacting
with -- could be IRS, any sort of government regulations, informations for
general use.
Finally, to produce R-79 reports in various style and formats, in user-defined
write ing and reporting styles, and pre-defined write ing and reporting styles.
We'll see a little about that as well. First let's look at how to train the
system. For us to automate the training process we'll need to have a reading
style, an onology, and a dictionary is useful as well. We will see how so in a
little bit. We will also see that maybe not in this talk, but the dictionaries
aren't as useful as one would like.
A reading style is essentially a linguistic map between the constructs in the
natural language source and the concepts in the onology. They can be fairly
complex, as you can imagine.
The onology is a representation of a domain of discourse in terms of con1E79 and
their relationships and characteristics, values, units of measure, and
interrelationships among themselves. We need this to be able to represent the
linguistic complexity in natural language.
A reading style, then, would contain a set of linguistic patterns used to
identify these links, between what's found in the natural language source and
the concepts in the onology. What we will see is that, we'll create these
linguistic patterns, but there's more to it than just what you can create,
because language is far more complex than that, and we will start to see how we
address that.
We provide essentially three approaches, depending on what your needs are, to
creating, 20 essentially creating these reading style and onology, a
semiautomatic and -- we will train a set of documents, supplied by the user. You
generally want to select documents that can represent the kinds of information,
the kinds of constructs you find out in the world. You can constantly retrain
and update the system after the fact as well. The manual approach, starting with
a training document. The user indicates the con1E79s of interest by highlighting
them, by either words or phrases, paragraphs, groups of sfns sentences. The
system then will analyze these, what you highlighted, determined, identify
various concepts, key terms, key con1E79 Septembers and create in the onology
and start to link them together, a subject, verb, transitive verb, the
relationship between the object and the objects around it. Can relate in time,
in space, and such.
So it adds also these relationships and characteristics, adding units of issue
and other kinds of relationships where you can build a hierarchial onology, and
other kinds 6 relationships which are non-hierarchial.
Essentially these linguistic patterns, if you will, link, describe how to link
key words and their a appearance, syntax, grammar, in recognizing concepts in
the onology, concepts recognized in context, not just generally words found in a
word search, but in the context of the communication.
The semi-automated approach is similar to the manual, except rather than having
you highlight the sections of words, individual words or sections of words, you
can provide a list of words or phrases and it will go out and essentially
highlight those sections, those sentences and sections that are found in the
document. Then proceed to harvest the concepts and related concement Septembers
in the document. In the manual approach it will do the linguistic analysis.
The automated approach differs more in that you just identify disok identify
documents, concepts you have not yet identified and the system will identify the
key words, phrases, concepts of interest, words and sentences throughout the
document. With the semiautomated approach as with the automated you do the
linguistic analysis and it -- the reading still. In this case you generally need
to subsequently refine because you will find far more relationship and concepts
than you are willing to tolerate . You can turn the system down so it doesn't
find quite so many things, key linguistic pat everyoneterns of subject, object,
various patterns like that.
Once you have a reading style, onology, the system generates a document reader.
In this case it takes what you found in your training documents and our
linguists apply the knowledge inside of the system to look at all the various
different ways of saying the same thing. If you say Joe gave bob the ball, the
ball was given to Joe by bob. We also add in reference resolution, she, it,
they, also time tracking and out tracking sort of information. Then you identify
the document Corpus to read, cu you can schedule periodically and harvest.
Stores in different form, semantic form from the document cor pus. You can have
multiple concurrent readers if you need to consume vast amounts of information.
In terms of generating the report we start with the results of reading, which
are no longer in linguistic or textual form. You may select -- perhaps you
collected a lot of it, you possibly need to select a subset of information on
which to report. Then you apply a report template and writing style, essentially
to generate the report over just that subset of information that you have. We
will talk about this more. You can use the R-79s in the system to do all kinds
of things, to identify the selection of business rules you are interested in.
Your report can pick them up, format in certain ways, say here's what I found
for what we consider to be business rules. Relationships between things. You can
see give me a set of concepts, determine the transitive closure between these
concepts, and then report on it.
Two separate phases, selecting what you want to report on, could be quite large,
and then choosing how you want to report on it. The reports themselves have the
usual things of document structure, subjections, headers, and narrative prose,
and one of the interesting part parts of this in terms of writing styles, how do
you present a somewhat linguistically neutral in a semantic net into prose,
complexity ordered, various ways to walk the graph and specify how you want the
information rendered in the document.
Of course, lists of things, sets of things can be specified and aggregated as
such. Tables, diagrams, glossaries, rerch references, that sort of thing. The
prngt presentation is 130EU6ed by built-in or user defined presentations and
writing styles.
Each reading style can, after you automatically trained it or manually trained
it, represents what you find to be important. You can take out the things you
don't find important. When I I encounter this, this is what I mean. Having these
different reading styles may be developed over the same onology X an agreed upon
onology, two divisions each developing their own reading style to say what it
means. You can have reading styles developed totally independently, onologies
have nothing apriori in common except people read these, some documents, maybe
not the same, but over the same domain and came up with how they structured
their world.
The third way you can have the system we are talking about here, can help
harmonize the different point of view, reading styles developed over time by a
number of people collaborating, to say we will make this super reading style
that will make it better than any one of us. Or a single person works over time,
different moods over different days and come up with conflicting mappings, the
same phrase, linguistic construct may map into many things.
So, all of these sorts of divergences, differences, can be harmonized by the
tool by use Thanksgiving technology. this technology. You start off, agree on --
used -- loaded, edited, modify, group effort, however you did it. Then you --
specify reading style, this mean means this, and somebody else says this means
this. You can say in the system, say read this document, this same document in
both reading styles and see what they map to. Sometimes they will map to the
same thing, sometimes they will map to different different things and sometimes
overlap. You need to harmonize this, essentially make smaller Connecticut
Septembers out of a large larger concept or a Jud KATE and agree. Cu You can see
where the semantic overlap is, and fix the system.
when you have two independent onologies, reading styles, over the same general
domain of discourse, you can have each reading style read the same document, you
can see where they map in the separate onologies. Based on that, then you can
ask the user's questions, say is this the same as that. Anytime they say yes
then we can do some pattern matching, graph-type pattern matching, this other
stuff, similar in structure, may be the same kind of thing. We can make initial
guesses, have the thing checked. Identify the concepts that may be the same.
People may say, Oh this means this to you, but something different to us. You
can allow this to exist but understand this is what it means by them. Which of
course, when the system goes operational you can say ah, this means this to
them. 23U789 to communicate 23U789 if you want to communicate in their speak,
say what does it mean to them. Of course you can detect the overmapping mapping
of concepts to the system.
Another form of harmonizing, when you have a single reading style,
singleonology, people contributing, sometimes a single concept is mapping to
many linguistic concepts, essentially many ways of saying the same thing and
sometimes a single way of saying many things. Sometimes that's acceptable;
sometimes not. The system will give you a way to fix that.
You can say, well, I have this construct, means two different things. You can
say this is how we would explain, separate the two in our recognition of the
linguistics. You can say ah, this is how to separate, identify as unique. Or
sometimes you have a double intent and it's okay. Of course we can read wikis,
and pdf's, and empowerment poarpt PowerPoints, blogs, a list of URLs to go read.
They are kind of a to-do list, if you think of it that way. Additional
information source and codings can be added, database of your choice or next
nextis lexis. Once you have done a fair amount of reading. Cu jen you can
generate a large amount of information, you may choose not to throw this away,
creates a broader context. Just a lot of information. You might want to identify
a useful subset so you can interact with it, report on it, query against it.
You can identify a specific set of concepts to include, or exclude, so you can
create a subset of information. You can also create ob sets by posing a natural
language query whose answer or query, command, will essentially suggest a
subset, a way to subset the information, then you use the reporting style to
report templates and writing styles to report on it.
Another form of reporting, more interactive, less generating of large pages,
natural language queries. I can say what relationships exist between President
Bush and HerbertAl Len roam three. If there were such point, I don't know, in
the Iowa information of interest, in available text, relationships between those
however they did it. This could possibly come back, and say, give the transitive
closure between the points and state the ways they may be related. They may also
say we did not find a relationship.
This is important to note, , what we are talking about is reading rules as found
in the text. Explicit relationships, and only a little bit implied. Implied
relationships come from linguistic, not logical or -- another set of rules for
bridging the gap, like reasoning rules.
So, these reasoning rules e essentially would operate on on ioi, would say if
this is so and this is so then these things should be so as well. Its result is
more ioi. The semantic relationship populated by reading, and in another case by
reasoning or thinking. Can represent conclusions, inferences, trends. The result
is ioi is -- a special kind of ioi, comes from reasoning.
I would like to do a little demo to give you a sense of what it would feel like
if you were using the system. I don't have time to go through the demos of
training. This is a demo in concept because of where we are in development. I am
unable to show you a live demo of this. This is, consider this a conceptual
demo, and take a look at what it could be. In this case I am talking about
something called cyr a light -- research assistant, an assistant to your
research. We will talk about a browser plug-in which actually performs the act
of reading for you. In this case you should see should some things -- do you all
see a Google search?
We have a couple of themes, those of us working on this. The current three
themes are bird flu, and of course, teer terrorism, given where I am located,
and also autism. Doing lots of working with cor pus of these sorts of things.
This is where we have h. five n., over two million results alone. One could
imagine a cy rai lite server, ecoexample, user name, password. It lives -- I
wish to read this. I could say on this server I have liberal politics,
conservative politics, world health, I will go to world health. The number of
links, how many I want to read. The number of links on a given page, I start to
read, how far down am I willing to go in the reading of it. I could say okay,
read this, and it submits it to that server. It may take several minutes for
this to be read, depending on how much you ask it to do. You can see what your
jobs are, outstanding, some sort of situation where there's a reading done, the
results show that srng certain concepts were found in the first 100 selections.
I choose bird flu and death, a lot of user interface changes are still
happening, bear with me. I am going to say restrict to Asian countries.
Just as a way, directive, not a scwer query, but subsetting the information of
interest. Different report layouts, detailed form formats, news articles,
writing style, simple English, scientific, and -- at which point you submit, and
can refresh the status, find out -- it's a conceptual demo, of course.
When you want to go review the report. Results come back, server used, URL, the
search query, 345 pages read, world health. Onology was medical but didn't give
you a chance to select that, just was underlying world health. It's possible the
medical onology, the general medicine, may also use medical. Who knows? The
report template was news article, simple English was writing style and selected
certain kinds of criteria, restrict to Asian countries. We can save this query
and anytime we want to go read multiple pages or single pages we can fire this
set of constraints, filtering, to be there.
In this case, key concepts we used in this, world health organization, people in
as -- places where the information is found, sentence from a number of places,
as long as we had anchors, could resolve the outs in those places. Health risks,
so forth, like that.
You get a sense of this sort of thing. You can do this with other things besides
plug-in,s, enable the tool in a lot of places.
At this point I wanted to give the time for questions, interaction. I don't know
how I am doing on time.
I am going to suggest that we do like -- add time back at the end.
There's a relationship between the way -- is presenting and the topics --
covered, moving from -- then in the case of -- pulling it out, identifying
concepts, the modelling, and questions on what you would do. Pointing to the
direction with his use cases -- [background noise] chuck was going through the
-- looking at the automation of the read, populating of the wiki, looking at
issue of taking information of interest, onology level of it, looking at issues
of harmonizing, looking at reporting out as well.
At this point I want to throw it open for some questions. You have a question?
Yes, I actually have a question. Am I on? Cool. I understand what you guys are
doing with defining an onology inside the wiki, but everything after that, how
you were actually pivoting the data, is that from an onology you already
defined? How far along is that? Because you said it was conceptual, was that a
real demo or --
If this was ome weeks in the future this would be a real demo.
Are you pivoting it based on the onology you guys divined through the web
interface, taking what ord nearl is a loosely structured interface, a wiki, and
taking a web form application, defining onology from there, pivoting data
through the onology? Do I understand that correctly?
I didn't show anything on the act of defining onology. That's done with a
separate application.
Sorry, I thought you guys were okay. I apologize.
Okay.
In our case it's, our environment is a little bit different. We have a world
built up -- made up of things called. What's happening now, a lot ofonnologies
are being built by, actually at least a couple hundred thousand people in the
world. Taking existing onologies. What we also do, use semantic models,
onologies to actually create the wiki itself. So the wiki, in our particular
case, they are not pages in the classic sense or elements in a conventional
database, they are elements in a knowledge base. So as, if someone goes in
there, create a new -- identify something like, say, for instance, expedition
52. That becomes initially becomes an unclassified or unknown concept. Later on
someone could say well, actually that's a -- and meeting in the sense of maybe
something that's being defined in an onology. In many cases, one of the biggest
issues now is there might be several knowledge models or onology that's contain
the notion of meeting. In our particular case we allow people to take existing
onologies, use them to drive their wikis or community of interest. Then we also
use onologies themselves to drive the actual how the wiki is created. Now it's
actually built, how it's engineered. And we also allow people to manufacture
onologies or extend oven onologies through the wikis themselves. What
differentiates us from, Her a, we're not doing it in a highly automated right
now in terms of trying to take thing and make stuff out of them. It's more of a
machine manually driven process.
Do you have something to add to that?
I don't think so.
Questions?
Do we take it that, Chuck, that the tool just take a wiki, like any other HTML
page?
I am not the one actually implementing that part, but different wikis I think
have different sort of structures that we would navigate through. What we do is
take and convert into a cannonical form, run it through our processors, so
ourling wifertic our linguistic processors, the source of the wiki, structure of
it, navigates through it.
Fars
Other questions?
Chuck, Dan Question concerning -- example you gave, in front of the word death
-- I was wondering if that was a no notation system that --
This is -- used with other languages --
You mean, like where I am pointing now?
Actually --
No --
You changed screen.
What I had -- essentially the report template could determine where things
should actually go. I have a hyper link to the list of sources of this
particular constructed sentence. You mentioned something about other languages?
I thought perhaps the number that preceded death as a word on every page, the
number, concepts were always the same, that would be used as a notation system,
in the word, to make it transferrible to other languages than English. We have
talked about -- not about any language than English
Let me respond to that. In both -- environment and Chuck's, the underlying
onology is not linguistic. Think of it as numbers, they can point to a word, a
number. In that sense it's language neutral, in both cases. Does that help?
Does the numbering system -- looking at your presentation -- what needed to be
--
If you are referring to the cyra lite, the numbering system is just SE qecial.
Somebody there?
[Classical music in background]
Allows you to specify the language that syra can read and write.
Someone needs to put their phone on mute.
They won't know, they put it on hold, so they won't know.
Don't put us on hold.
It's always something.
Let's pretend like we're in the elevator.
Is this an elevator pitch, then?
One of the things that I think -- was exactly right, the onology as such is
language neutral. And doesn't -- there labels on concepts for human reading,
like reference for those to edit the onology. Sometimes it's difficult to edit
numbers. We are building a language lab that allows us to define pattern sets
for different patterns in English as well as other languages. We are working
pretty much in English, but our linguists speak many languages right now.
Thank you, Chuck. I have to say I think you have a monumental task ahead of you.
When did you guys start on this?
In various forms for the last three or four years, but really in eastern earnest
in the last 18 months.
Thank you.
I have a question, not sure which of you guys will feel it's -- to your --
[music louder] I am particularly interested in -- flicker, other sites,
documents, passages rather than the whole thing, but be done in a way that
doesn't -- where it doesn't change the underlying mark-up or text itself, so
that different people could come along and --
One minute. We are going to cancel this call, revert you back to the original
number. Hang up, dial the 800 number.
8 00-857-9370? 7 0
password: 545916696.
... meta information, or information about the information, take someone like a
parkway presentation, great presentation, presentation about wikis, about
semantics, given by -- some of those could be -- or have semantic characters,
but external to the original context itself. They are not intrinsic to the
context, not modifying the original information itself. I don't know if that
answers your question or not.
I think Chuck has an answer and then --
One of the things, a reading style is separate from the document read,
independent from any given document. In scrks y sy rai, you can say highlight
for me what is understood in this document or not understood, in this reading
style. It's different.
The idea of doing multiple -- thinking about a meta for of tagging, multiple
onology, multiple styles on a content. Domain, in the case of what Chuck was
talking about, could also -- I want to read this political information and
report it like Rush Rush Limbaugh, or -- modes of expression, information,
various as well.
Right.
The key thing here, alluding to, onologies layer odd top of data. Important for
purity of the data in and of itself. One thing I keep seeing, we have
applications that are so overly complex nobody is using them.
Our application, come on, Document um has -- to them they are looking at my
application, more powerful because it's easier to use. We start layering these
things on top of the application, additionally such that it doesn't destroy the
user experience, nobody puts information into the system in the first place.
Adding means of devicing categorization, structuring, immediately becomes a
problem of who wants to use that? Whose actually going to use it, adopt it? The
answer is nobody. Failures of knowledge management in the late 90s, they were so
blood I complex.
I will bring this around again. One comment I would add for the librarians, if
you thought about a service where you could take some cor pus of information,
research on some topic,ment, wanted to deliver a list of sources, concerned
about not violating copyright, you are no longer maintaining the language from
which it came, onology form, cu do that you can do that type of research,
reporting, consult your lawyers, but this is our understanding of the rules.
No, before you go on. I want to confirm if we got your question right.
The kind of example, Library of Congress, might want to document in original
form and offer interpretation by an expert. Not so -- maybe want to be able to
show with anal sis embedded from different perspectives of experts who might
might help people understand what they are looking at.
What we do in our particular case is allow people to essentially create another
version of that document so they can do those, in this particular case talking
about embedded anitation Ann talking about embedded annotations. That in itself
is quite powerful. You want to make it simple to do. External to content, meta
information, and intrinsic characteristics, compliance. We We We want to go
through Sarbanes-Oxley documents, each element of the sentence means --
explicitly, this is our semantic interpretation of it. Could be many versions
over time, in fact there are. Very important, how we interpret last year as
opposed to this year.
The work of different communities of interest, have to discover, access,
understand information. They have to work, harmonize the different point of
view, different levels. Documents, and scheme as, models, other things, and keep
these in synch while they go through the cycle. The notion, taking advantage of
the ability -- collaborative read/write environment, to work across different
organization, the file share we discussed, work from documents to models, and
take advantage of automation in the process to accelerate the process. This is
the -- that has us excited.
May I give a real-world example --
Please do.
I just heard from, I think all four of you, what is summed up today in my mind,
the real value of the different aspects of what you all said. Keeping it simple
for the users gets users to use these things, and we talked about actually
mining them, using semantics, information that management -- getting the
collaborative aspect of it all. Yes, you don't want to make it so complex that
the users won't bother. If you are selling this to management say wow, not only
can we mine this for information going across our group, but other groups can
mine as well if they so choose to do so. That's a real selling point that I am
taking away from it. This is just going to be -- a bunch of conversations going
on -- well, a lot more than that.
When you think about anytime you have a task force, a project, temporary
grouping of people, the process they go through, research, collecting
information, always multiple point of view. The example you talk about, referred
earlier to the tsunami experience, the goal here would be how do you enable
people to get their arms around the resources, tooled up as a group to be able
to work light, if they need to, get into services, something deeper, they can
make the transition. You wanted to share about that experience?
Sure -- I I guess what's interesting here, global volunteers with multiple
linguistic, cultural backgrounds, on one hand, lowest common denominator. You
wouldn't predict, because of all the differences, the fact it was so successful,
speaks to the right mix of what the people could bring, given their strong sense
of purpose, and the fact it was low barriers to be able to participate. I
remember for me, when what I was able to do, someone that knew the geography did
the cat gorrization by region. I could see cities, which were willing to fly
here, which were trying to reach people here. All match thag. ing that. I didn't
bring subject expertise, but editing a wiki. I never used that wiki, but it was
very easy for me to do. That's what made the power of this potential be
realized. As I mentioned a little earlier, still wouldn't have happened if the
only thing people had available was a wiki, because in reality, there had to be
that -- conversation where they -- rules, struggling with servers, trying to
decide which implementations to be using. I guess I would say, again, it's the
-- what we're really looking for is combination of approaches that can really
draw upon the best wealth, sense of experience as human beings. That was a
really good example. The example given was, in this case the importance was to
move very quickly. In the aver math and even now to mine and draw upon the
institutional lessons, because in fact the institutions in that part of the
country hadn't really trusted the Internet, per say. It was very interesting
this individual could push the envelope, give something meaningful to the
institution, that -- I would like to hear from Mr. sinclaire if these solutions
can -- the cia was very knowledgeable of this community of people. Didn't have
to do much because it was led by two individuals from India who never met one
another. I actually didn't know who started the group. I thought it was
happening here in the U.S. The persons name was Joe or Charlie. It was
fascinating to me how it all came together.
Thank you.
I really wanted to share a scenario that ties what everybody said together. We
deployed with a health service company, they rent medical equipment to hospitals
to keep their costs down. They are leaving a black box as a database, but
cutting the -- meaning the subject matter experts authored the content directly
in the -- through the ati pull that out, and pivot that database odd whatever it
is they want to. For example, let's say somebody -- Internet portal, technician,
that data is specific to that per sewn son a, define, have agreed upon page
structure, all xml. Trying to keep it simple, covering all four aspects of what
the woman in the back summarized for us a moment ago.
We are starting to run low on this one [battery beep]
We talked about the experience earlier, workshop, I am going to go to that
workshop -- any of you that might be interested to explore a little bit more the
-- organizing around the tsunami. I think it's time for the break.
Two things. Let's thank Mel, and the presenters,
And before the break let me just take you to this link I put in here. We would
like, what came out of the June workshop, feeling our way to semantic wikis,
decided to form the geo spatial onology practice, the four basic things we would
start to do. I will tell you what those are. Ask you to think during the break
what the community here thinks are logical steps to move forward. In terms of
the geo spatial, onology group, they started working, discussing three or four
weeks before the June workshop, showed it at the workshop, and now working with
it after the workshop. d i s c u s s i n g in a weekly conference call.
Hopefully the author of the onology, and in parallel, start working on
extracting -- wiki pages, other web pages, following, for example the recent
paper by Peter Metcalf, sited as being a very good best practice example. Then,
actually looking at building, actual application with one or more of their
spatial onologies, dem straitd as part of a broader activity that ties into the
-- federal transition framework. I challenge you to -- come back to what you as
a community of -- that we talked about, librarians, information science,
etcetera, what would be a logical follow-on to this workshop, working with
wikis, and semantic wikis for -- thank you, let's go to break, come back
promptly at 3:15.
Fferz l i b r a r y s t r a t e g i z i ng how to do this, the most recent one
-- referred to -- won award for, got recognition. Given that, that kind of recap
is where we are in the process of working with wikis. Again, I would like to
suggest -- we can do two things, hands on -- hands on, what I think, those of
you who want to stay on afterwards, Susan and I can show you hands-on. Providing
periodic wiki training sessions, usually Fridays from about 11 to 12:30. No
obligation, contact her, Susanturnbull at --.gov. She will -- you can learn a
lot in an hour and a half. I think we will forego the hands on, but Susan and I
will reremain on for those of you who would like to be guided. Let's go to the
next step. Before the break I suggested as a pattern that came out of the June
workshop, we weren't able to follow that pattern. For the August workshop we
actually have participants, in the August workshop that have some onologies, can
bring onologies to the workshop and soon we will organize -- to start working
with their onology and the -- semantics, where they can see import of the
onology, see the -- environment, like protege, if you worked with Protege, see
how you drag the parts of the onology out in a graphical form. The wiki user
doesn't know how to create the onology, but can create advantage of the
underlying onology, express indeed ed in a graphical form. In August we will
start that, the participants have medical, other onologies than geo spatial.
What we suggest to you, is here's the opportunity, we already have quite a bit
of interest from -- specifically TC and -- in leading this workshop. We will
open it up for both the organizerses, our -- Susan, Nancy, to offer comments or
suggestions first. Then open up for your suggestions.
Don't be bashful. We will use the microphone, pass it along, what we learned,
follow-up steps, and take suggestions from the audience.
This mic working? It is. For me, one of the most exciting things today was
listening to Andress. While he was presenting, the jowrng journey of the
intelligence community, am legal pads to blog and wikis, the model of things,
underunderlying knowledge, personal opinions. I am thinking, this is the future
of publishing. The role of librarians has sort of been about ork organizing
information so we can find it, but there's the living process. Now we have other
situations with communities of interest, groups of people need to collaborate
over a continuing period of time.
Just as the intelligence community is trying to keep up with large amounts of
information, make sense of it, get it in a form that's actionable, I look at it
when I try to study technologies, how much stuff to keep up with. How to work
with, collaborate, my colleagues, how to build an evolving knowledge base that's
more flexible, more richly organized in many respects than what we used to do
with database or document repos tore. I saw the presentation and said boy, these
guys are really -- must have been hurting, they're making a big move.
Here again, we have been working with wikis, now seeing with MindTouch, the
ability to take it to ang entirely different level, to be able to take the
language of our discourse and turn that into concepts, models into actionable
agents and that's exciting. The folks presenting from India, Chuck, rayberg,
looking in the same context. In the beginning the command line, right. Here it
is, we have information of interest, not just the command line. We want to be
able to perhaps look at lots of different information, leverage the knowledge
worker, be able to get information in a form that is information of interest, be
able to create queries, interfaces, semantics, express that, pull together
information into reporting of various kinds.
Again, with seem semi-automation, automation, the community to do this. At a
point where technologies are starting to come in, starting to hit main stream,
we are seeing the uptake in communities of water in the hot tub getting warmer.
Now at the point we can see we want to use these things, and how we'll be able
to integrate into operations and daily tasks. A richer prospect than going to
the web, reading, being able to write. There's a whole series of activities we
want to support. Looks like we're now at the threshold where these things are
going to be quite supportable.
I learned a lot today as well. One of the exciting parts was to listen to all of
you, and all of the interest, the sense of purpose you represent from all the
myriad settings. M y hope going forward is that we put enough into place, as
Brant is suggesting, with this session, that you feel, likewise, that you have a
sense of potential here, you don't have to go it alone. You may not be in the
CIA, same level of impetus, hard to go forward. I guess I would hope that what
happens in the next hour, going forward, is that we start to form a community,
will see how that will evolve, and then I guess just a couple, touch-points of
course, qa what we can offer to all of you, in effect you are as much a part of
it as any of us, we're able to do this each month and look forward to drawing
upon interested people like yourself too to organize a follow-on workshop.
Maybe today we would decide, in a few months, four or five months from now we
would reconvene, share what we learned in the meantime. Specifically in terms of
steps. Brant already outlined how you can go to to the wiki site, turn your name
into a wiki name, take the space from first and last name. Some of us have
already done that. Gives you your own page to begin to say a little bit about
what you care about that will enable the social networking to take place. Brant
already mentioned, I would be glad to invite anyone interested to learn about
the specific collaborative a accord.
I believe Peter may still be on the foreign, his company provides the hosting
service for our agency.
I liked Olga's idea of the -- something very specific that would help all of us.
Just the -- I made serious mistake necessary take necessary my generation of --
acronyms, thought about it in ma ma'am Miami, the acronym was coCA, the only
officially sanctioned office.
Recapping things from the librarians, and Peter, thank you, had to be there at 5
this morning to get this started. Susan is trying to create a tipping point, I
think, have wikis taking off across government. Many stories in computer week,
government -- the agencies that perhaps, the most paranoid have found ways to
adopt the technology. Shl we not fear. There is an article that -- and I are
writing for Internet References Quarterly, I hope it's okay to use the list, the
content from this session, ask people for information to feed the article. What
was mentioned, that was of interest they hope to share, up on the wiki after
this particular meeting, the special interest group, American Society for
Information -- meant for information sharing, stand-up pod-casting capabilities,
worth taking a look at. Some of the requests were physical hands-on work1407s,
half day session, hour spent looking at different wiki implementations. I am not
sure who would host that with a lot of pc's in a room might step forward on
something like that if it fits our business requirements.
In a short conversation I had with Mr. Anndress, asking about the scales for
wiki gardeners, something worth exploring. What are the skills? Fostering
training in those areas, a possibility. Also, maybe the KM working group,
brandon, Susan, Lisa, rules of engagement. Maybe put that in a central
repository, craft a rules of engagement generic statement, to tailor for
particular uses. How do you handle copyright problems, something like that. One
of the rules of engagement. Seems like it wouldn't be too hard to start
gathering that stuff to find it. Just -- wikis, they can look at somebody else's
rules of engagement and maybe modify. I appreciate everyone coming.
Well, I really appreciate Brant's statement that you were going to work up to
me. Seems mib the reverse is true. One of the things that really struck me, I
think, was airn's statement about the user perspective about all this. It has to
be something that at the end of the day is useful, can actually be operated by
the people implementing something like this. Just going in with an understanding
is key. Second concept is -- I can't remember who brought out about the
gardener. The T h e c o n c ept of many gardeners willing to work on many
concepts, but build it and they will want to change it, improve it, make it
better. That concept. What I really like to hear is what you all have to say in
terms of suggestions on where to go from here.
We always go to the adz yens if the audience first, on the foreign?
phone.
This is Richard down in Atlanta. Unfortunately I have been in and out. Never try
a conference call in your own office, you get interrepresent result rupted the
usability of it is key, people have to be able to use it easily. I think another
thing too, in the terms of self-emerging, part of the deal with with the wiki,
blogs both, the fact that those of us willing to use it do so. Hopefully success
will breed its own critical mass over time. I think these things happen really
fast. Industry catches on, off and running. My point is even if as individuals
we don't feel we are having much in-road or success, I encourage everyone to
plow ahead. You never know where you are influencing people, hart part of the
whole concept of chaos, the grain of sand that starts the avalanche. I believe
we are all getting things done in our own way. I encourage you to continue to
use if nothing else.
Anyone else on the phone?
Chris from the national geo spatial intelligence agency.
Hi, Chris.
I really liked Mr. Sincare's comments, he talked a lot about people. Human
nature, many many times he mentioned the social network knows what it wants,
instead of the computer, ask people, in the architecture of participation, to
find the information. In the intelligence community, very small part of the
community, about 1000 users, we have a very very long way to go, the same
battles as traditional publications, real, just as go, we are moving along.
anyone else on the line?
Shz
lars lars lars
Studio audience. Start here.
I would like to see a session, maybe a year out, how the culture changed. From
paper to compute ire piewt computers, the library, all things change. The
trouble of getting people to use the web, doesn't trust it. Now they do. I
really am interested in -- nteresting to hear from other organization. How it
happened.
A n y b o dy else? I want to encourage everybody to take a look at the
open-source -- all going to be released next week, what the conference is about
-- W e a r e - when they do they release it in part. Takes you -- so yes, you
can pull it down, grab at it. And -- for you folks, your own hardware, we also
provide support, updates --
We're going to have more information coming your way.
We're going to post more information on MindTouch, will be on the wiki, have to
wait for the embargo period.
[inaudible]
I would suggest we somehow come up with -- where you can look for -- work.
Excellent.
Also bridge brings up the question when you put together a new wiki, be great to
describe it somehow, we need some categories, at least.
Visualization of all the wikis and blogs out there.
The -- entry on -- they have a pretty good listing, and if that's useful, maybe
what we would do, even a federal -- if you are really looking for people to find
your wiki.
This is -- a suggestion, about three years ago when I was passed by one manager
no longer at the library, to try to start a blog, the first thing I was asked
over and over is what other federal agencies have blogs and I couldn't answer
that question. I want to thank you so much for giving me lots of -- fodder to go
back and say I know about a lot of wikis -- and I want to plant the idea that
maybe in that sort of a federal way, sounds like there interest groups already
in place. I d o n t full I understand what we are at today, but the
collaborative project, as new technologies come along we can find out sooner, or
conspire, go back and be told we can use this instead of waiting to hear we are
five years behind the curve.
I think if there were ways to do this, work with the cult culture of our
institution, explore the potential we can bring to collaborative -- would be
great.
We have some sand boxes set up, collaborative expedition, that wiki, the
environment that we use to support groups. The goal is to get these things
applied, see where they take us.
There's a number of federal labs using wikis too. About six months ago, I did a
search; looking for government wikis. And I agree. If we start to identify that
-- & % F0 & % F0
Other questions, comments? Suggestions?
There librarians here, record managers, they involved in this?
I will add suggestions to the list. First -- why we specifically want to -- we
-- you heard from John -- I like what they have -- updated guide for -- blog --
instant messaging, refers to the -- this suggestion I would make is that first,
now inventory our -- that they do the same for wikis and blogs.
In terms of getting ahead of the curve, so to speak, emerging technologies, what
these workshops were created to do, and that's why we looked at suggestions from
you, the community, to feed the process. We are bringing to you hopefully,
things ahead of the curve. We need this kind of networking every month, or even
more frequently to identify the things to the people, those interested in
fostering those. Thirdly, I want to hear, give -- a chance to s p e c i fic
follow-up proposals. We found coming out of these workshops over the last years,
more recently, it's important to do immediate follow-up, conference calls, to
keep going. Always a great pleasure to meet a lot of new people, hear a lot of
new ideas, good work going on. We want to capture that and not just let it drift
away as a good experience, not only a good experience, but something with
concrete action to create hopefully a win/win for every one of us. Something we
learn from someone else that we can actually apply in our situation, suggest to
somebody else that does the same for them. We view this, all about creating
win/win for you here. What make its worthwhile.
One last comment on how far I think we have come in this process of cultural
change. People would come up at these workshops, say, you know, I had to take
leave to come to this workshop, my a agency doesn't see the value of this. I do.
I want to come. We say hopefully this will change.
We have fewer people telling us that. Hopefully no one in this room had to take
leave from their job to come because their supervisor didn't see the value. One
person in an e-mail said I really want to come, waiting for permission from
supervisor, they are here. It's important to give employees the chance to come.
They will benefit and it is what E-government and collaboration is all about.
I would like tc particularly to wrap up with his -- suggestions.
What suggestion is that, Brant?
When is the next conference call or the next -- opportunity to bring together --
yourselves and others who all have things going on we want to keep up to date on
and work on?
I think one of the things we have been encouraged to do at gpo is use resources
of our facility to bring together groups from government to talk about key
emerging issues. Nancy had a couple of good ideas in terms of possibly using
some of our training room facilities from the institute or otherwise an
institute for federal electronic printing, publishing, might allow us to view
some hands on use by Attendees, in a facilitated way by those who know what they
are intended to do, goals. That might help you take knack back even more
evidence that agencies are benefitting from these. Real value in that. I know,
personally, when we were developing a plan for this thing that hopefully we will
be able to talk about more soon, that was the first question that came up. Who
else is doing this? What are they getting out of it?
I think that's probably resonating with anybody in a government agency here.
I would be willing to look at other facets of development. At lunch people said
they would like to explore some -- more, if I could coopt the panel attendees,
suggestions to meld into answers for questions, and post that, if you don't
mind.
Circulate this -- everyone can contribute to that, create a wiki page, do a
general call every month. Opinion on all these questions, send in an e-mail if
you want.
Exactly. The reaction I got, those are things I really want to do know the
answers to. Useful in me working not only on current application, but others
that might yet be identified. I immediately thought, just sitting here today I
thought of three or four other potential applications in carrying out our
mission, so --
thought there might be a way to do a survey without going through the
formalities of the survey. Don't quote me, but I think you could ask --
participants to respond to any and all the questions they want in an e-mail or
wiki page they create.
Why don't we do that. I think there's actually a list of the questions up on the
page. Do you know - it's off the agenda today?
A link below on the page. If you would like help, contact Susan, I will show you
how to update the questions. Main page --
I saw someone straining to hear you in the back.
However we do it, given the questions are there, people answer two or three, put
their wiki name under the questions they answered and then people could find
your ideas. We are just introducing the wiki page for that. We could explore if
enough interest to set up a discussion group around that. How we planned our
work1407 shops. In the collaborative work environment we have discussion forums
as well.
Yes, I like the idea of just enhancing the expedition of workshop page, the
thoughts, reflections -- I t b e c o mes a opportunity for the community to do.
This a little like Tom Sawyer, really feels like it's institutionalized beyond a
couple people, what we would like to see, really pleased this last week to get
such an endorsement. A place for people to think through emerging -- p e o p l e
t o b e here, a couple of us, we don't know how you do it. We do it because of
the interest that all of you bring.
Actually, those that want to start working with the semantic ontology, you can
join us Friday at 1:30 for the spatial onology conference call, send me an
e-mail if you want to start engaging in the use of the semantic wiki in
anticipation of the August 15 workshop. We can triage into basic groups.
People came with many questions today. Like what are the first steps, how to
convince management in -- how to start -- I think it would be a good idea to
frequency questions -- someone else, I think it would be a great place --
different --
That would be another topic, too. Privacy, security, governance, multi--
One of the questions that we have there, Mills, is about problems to avoid.
Let's expand that out to pit falls, that's a great idea. One thing that struck
me, a number of us have to put together business plans when we're getting ready
to, one form or another, getting ready to stand up something like this. Those of
you who had successful ones, your organization might be willing to share,
willing to work on a sort of successful template, that might be useful as well.
In response to Olga, we started the resource, with wiki sections of the
workshop, contributing questions, answers, this could grow into a separate
resource. We look to you to help us build on what we started.
Sure, Conner.
I wanted to expand on what you were saying. Maybe what would make sense is to
actually -- -- start to inventory or articulate the characteristics of the
business case that make it -- what are the pros, so that you can come across
clearly that you have researched it, you can really --
Nancy whispered in my ear at one point, as we were planning next steps we may be
able at GPO, anybody willing to contribute planning, helping set that up, get in
touch with one of the two of us. You are already linked on there. My name isn't
-- I will have to fix that.
ready to wrap it up, Brant?
I want to follow-up on Conner's -- a way forwards -- forward -- suggesting the
four things you see here, in chapters, a white paper to present to senior
managers of the government. What is your -- solution; in this case the semantic
wiki. What is the con1E79 of operation, how would you use it within your
program, agency, across agencies? How does this align with the federal --
architecture, and the business case. Here is a very formal way in which you can
go about this, foment, the geo spatial onology community interested in doing
that. We have been able to get two very eminent cochairs to lead that. John
Muller, the former head of the -- and USGS, and the -- informational --
identified a government and former government, now industry cochair, both very
interested in leading the public/private partnership to take this -- a very
formal -- as well as informal. It's important to talk among yourselves, and
decide what you want to do, what would meet your needs individually and imekt
collectively.
c o m m o n c h a l lenges, starting to explore new potentials for underpinning,
in reality I think the higher lesm level purpose is recognizing need to form
intergovernmental communities that allow us to break down the silos that are
diminishing our overall performance. We have the clear mandate, as you all have
seen, OMB, GAO, to do that type of collaboration. Again, that collaboration
extends beyond federal agencies. And tools like this allow the best of the human
process to come to fruition, the technology is there, but really in the
background, and hopefully serves to include the quality of dialogue, speed of
formation in overcoming the kinds of barriers that unfortunately make it hard
for groups to hold together, and develop the level of trust necessary.
I would keep that in my -- as well. This workshop has been different, we are
leading by sharing technology, but it's a means for people to be better able to
work together.
I know we are about ready to close, but given the -- mic, please if you have
comments step right up, join us here.
The schedule shows you can remain in the room a while longer, and -- the main
action item is -- results of notes taken, and I will post to the wiki on the
workshop follow-up, send an e-mail to everyone, call your attention to those,
follow-up actions and hopefully someone will volunteer to have the first
conference call, something you can -- o r g a n i zerses here with questions,
suggestions, we hope you will support the follow-up and actively participate in
that.
six months from now talk about how you overcame bhar year barriers in your
organization, how you wikid your way forward. Thank you for your participation.