(Knowledge) Community Networks

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(Knowledge) Community Networks

• Ramon Sangüesa, Ph. D
• Centre for Internet Applications
• Technical University of Catalonia, BCN

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Overview from KM to K-Community networks

• Knowledge Management
• Some tools
• Some experiences
• Implications for Community Networks and CN
  research

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KM

• The main goal of knowledge management is the
  detection of potentially useful knowledge in a
  group, typically a company, with respect to this
  groups goals in order to empower its members, to
  make them better learners and to improve and
  increase the overall ability for organizational
  learning

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Knowledge Sources
Groups (CoPs/Project Teams)
Documents
Individuals
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KM Cycle
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KM Components

• A bundle of
• Human-resources related methodologies
• Learning methods
• Information Technology
• Knowledge Engineering

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KM processes (I)

• Knowledge mapping
• What do we know?
• Who knows it? Who knows who knows it?
• People
• Groups (Communities of Practice)
• Knowledge Representation
• Building shared vocabularies and taxonomies
• Building knowledge bases
• Concepts, relations, cases-solutions,
  best-practices
• Tagging, Indexing

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KM processes (II)

• Knowledge access/distribution
• Who should access it?
• Intranets, repositories, distributed knowledge
  bases, collaborative environments, intelligent
  searching, proactive agents
• Learning
• Tutoring environments
• Putting knowledge into practice
• Evaluating it

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A moment to think...

• Which are the goals of a Community Network?
• To be more competitive than other networks? (!)
• To learn faster?
• What type of knowledge it generates?
• Which form?

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KM Tools

• Complementary views
• Knolwedge evolves from the interaction between
  people and documents
• What you write is what you know
• What you read is what you are interested in
• Knowledge results from interaction among people
  with common goals and problems
• Your solution may be useful to someone else
• Someone else may know something of help to you

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KM tools document-centered view

• It is important to manage documents correctly so
  as to
• Tag them consistently according to shared
  taxonomies so as to ease knowledge access and
  distributing
• Relate documents to people
• Structure documents as cases such as best
  practices, best solutions, etc.
• Oriented towards formal groups (projecte-centered
  groups)
• Common prescripted goals, vocabulary, and
  practices

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KM tools people-centered

• Find patterns of interaction that may reveal
  knowledge producers or knowledge buddies
• Enhance collaboration
• Enhance communication
• Enhance knowledge sharing
• Evolution from groups with common interests
  towards teams with common goals
• Awareness technologies (expertise location
  collaborationcoomunication)

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KM and Community Networking

• Implications of KM-view of networks
• Shift from ensuring access to improving learning
• Giving value to knowledge assets of the community

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Some Examples Knowledge Mappers
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See-K (trivium)
Name of the map
Associated objects (competencies, levels)
Arbor PME Profils PMI Trivium
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The strategic chart
Competencies
collaborators.

• Relate collaborators to competencies

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Document Atlas
All strategic charts
Arbor Sens
Membres
Activités
Ressources

• Dossier des collaborateurs,
• Rapports de missions
• Descriptifs de Projets
• ...

Trivium
Collab.
Pme
Commandes
Postes
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Documentary charts
Keywords in documents
CV, project descritpion courses
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The Collaboratory

• Find/Contribute documents relevant to you
• Get knowledge relevant to you
• Relate people and documents
• Reveal networks of knowledge producers and
  possible partners
• Communicate with them

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Vote for it Vote against it
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Differences with corporate KM

• Goals
• Cooperation against competition
• No proper working environment, working
  routines or rules
• Semi-structured knowledge
• Incentives
• No wages
• No pecuniary rewards

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Commonalities with KM

• Finding pockets of knowledge valuable to the
  community
• Integrating knowledgeable people (elderly people,
  for example)
• Rewarding sharing of knowledge
• Creating a community knowledge memory
• Awareness of the community potential
• Empowering the community
• At a higher level locating partner communities

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Some examples

• Parthenay
• Maison Connaissances
• Campiello (http//klee.cootech.disco.unimib.it/ca
  mpiello/)
• PrairieNetwork

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Opportunities for Research

• Which are the types of knowledge?
• Which are the paterns for k-creation?
• Incentives?
• Values?
• The city as a set of K-communities