Panel Topic: Community Information Service

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Panel Topic Community Information Service

• Ben Lambert

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Integration of media forms

• IM, Email, online forums, mailing lists, Web
• All can be placed on several continuums
• Personal lt-gt public
• Temporal relevance instant lt-gt long term (Web)
• Contextual relevance/importance (relevance to the
  task at hand)
• Aesthetics (and time investment in the content)

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Recommendations from the information service

• If integrated, we can possibly recommend some
  information based a users current task
• Recommendations based on
• Users mode (current task)
• Information outflows (email/IM requests)
• Information recommendations could allow employees
  to get up to speed more quickly
• How to make a Web page or fix your paycheck

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User tasks or modes

• Necessary to guide the information system about
  what should be considered relevant
• Reading mail
• Writing a paper
• Shopping for organizations products (external)
• Accessing the organizations content (external)
• Procrastinating (auto-on)
• Use the mode to determine what information is
  needed mail, papers to cite, etc.

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Community examples

• Newspapers (editors, readers)
• Slashdot (moderators, readers)
• Amazon (marketing/sales, customers)

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How can we exploit community characteristics?

• Internal information organization
• Groups of people with similar tasks need similar
  information(akin to mailing lists)
• Use internal groups provide
• list of services, proper description of org.
• Outsider access to information creates a demand,
  this can guide the org. distribution of resources
• Similarly, org. info service can serve as reverse
  auction

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But, how to navigate the "information space?

• If there is so much information, how do you find
  what you need?
• Recommendations will not be sufficient
• Need some way to visualize the info and navigate
  the visualization

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Information Marketplace?

• Integrated info service can publicize each
  organizations supply and demand

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1,000,000

• User study for GUI
• Standardize information protocols
• Support topic, priority
• Develop open (source) front-end systems
  (Eclipse?)
• Study how to guarantee privacy and security