Groupware

1
Groupware

• What are the goals of a groupware system?
• Facilitation
• Coordination
• Cooperation
• Augmented, supported production
• Is efficiency the goal?
• How can you be efficient with things you dont
  know about? (tacit knowledge)
• Is hardware and software are only improvement?

2
What makes a successful KMS?

• Goals defined before the system is sought or
  bought
• Knowledge Repository
• Connecting People, not just their knowledge
• Make knowledge shareable as you go
• Measure knowledge as part of performance
• Doesnt depend on one thing or person
• Doesnt do everything (at first?)
• Works with the culture, improves the culture
• Allows flexibility of people the system(s)

3
Technological Progress

• Knowledge Appliances
• PIM, PKM, PVC
• What if everyone had Lotus Notes and knew how to
  use it?
• KM and economic efficiency
• People-centric
• People as k units?
• A matter of economic faith
• Categorization and Organization
• Personal, Group, Corporate taxonomies?

4
Instant Messaging in Action

• Real-time chat is more natural informal than
  other choices (email, newsgroups)
• If used, may bring about more narrative or
  anecdotal knowledge
• Outeraction - communicative processes among
  each other managing communication, not to
  explicitly exchange information
• Is it the right medium for the task or the
  available one?
• Easy to use, quick for coordination scheduling
• Visibility of users gives extra information
• Awareness, buddy lists, previous interactions
• Asynchronous, but continual (a long, sporadic
  phone call)
• Its like working together, but not sharing an
  office

5
Real time participation - chat?

• Butterfly uses IRC to build a database of content
• How much knowledge work can be done with
  interactive text?
• Presence
• Annotation
• Conversation
• Recommending based on explicit queries
• Reference Interviews?
• Combine help and normal conversation
• Keywords for help, queries and updates

6
Using large social spaces

• How do you use or make sense of very large social
  interaction spaces?
• Your own participation as anchor points
• Dynamic views of topics and overall use
• A key finding of collective action studies
  shows a mutual awareness of other participants
  histories and relationships is CRITICALTO A
  COOPERATIVE OUTCOME
• Watching threads of conversations helps with
  selection and understanding of the community
• How would this work for merely a large space?
• One organization or group of people?

7
AnswerGarden

• This is an organizational based space
• Help for commonly asked questions
• Ad hoc, real-time help vs. a personal
  interaction?
• Can a database replace a mentor?
• Does the community react change without novelty
  and use?
• Use experts to tune and provide answers
• Interview-like questions
• Routing to correct information or expert
• Incentives, Proofing Alternative Answers

8
YouServ

• Is simply sharing the answer?
• Is P2P the real difference?
• Corporate policies
• Personal reputation accountability
• Drag and Drop to the Desktop
• Personal connotation
• Distributed storage (and retrieval)
• Uptime replication
• Up to date, dynamic searching
• Ad hoc group coordination

9
Basic Support for Coop Work

• How about basic support for individual work
  first?
• Applications
• Training
• Web software is first platform for CSCW on the
  interenet
• Will it be the last?
• Will others use the network, not the
  applications?
• Data stream exchange medium?
• Servers as shared workspaces
• Events and activity awareness
• Whats new
• Whos working
• Let users control sharing and workgroups

10
Experiments with Oval

• How relevant is this now?
• Agents as metaphor, not applications
• Customization
• Links among objects
• Sharing
• Db
• Objects
• Mail?
• Whats right about this system?
• Is everything possible with Web standard
  applications and protocols?

11
Expertise Recommender

• Finding help within the organization
• Just in time help
• Intricacies of locating expertise
• What if this scaled to the Web?
• Validity of skill assessment
• Meta data issues
• When do people need experts?
• Situations, projects
• General education
• Whos busy?
• Technical Support

12
The Future of KM?

• 1996 View - how knowledge will be managed in 10
  years
• WWW Lotus Notes
• Hypertext, Links Repositories
• Agents for searching
• Organizational enthusiasm
• Commonplace KM practices by 2000
• Success evaluation of KM work
• Categorization and organization of knowledge
  will be a core competency of every firm
• Vocabulary, search tools, navigation aides
• More time working together

13
Other Business

• Next Week
• Research Paper Updates