Discover the new KB Expertise Locator
07-Oct-04
Hence the Expertise Locator: an email based application through which you can find 'experts' and communicate with them about relevant subjects.
What we really like about this experimental service is the ability to identify the right member with the right expertise based on public contributions to KB (sources: articles, article comments, forum comments, document titles, and public who's who records).
Only members who have chosen to have a public profile and their email address visible on that public profile are part of this experiment. None of the KB profiles are used for any other purpose beyond this experiment.
Only registered members can use this service - question emails will be checked against the database of those with public profiles and visible emails - if you have not opted for this, you request will be rejected. This is to (a) keep the service focused on the community, and (b) deter spam, bots, silly users etc.
Please bear in mind that we ask you to use this system constructively and will take a very dim view of its mis-use (member harrasment, spam etc will lead to removal from the experiment).
To use the system, send a question by email from the email address you are registered with, and it will suggest members to contact by return email. Contacted members receive the question by email. They can reply directly or forward to their personal network, therefore acting as knowledge brokers.
KB Expertise Locator learns from these interactions. Every new action, reply or forward, triggers a new learning loop.
This is very much in the experimental phase. In the future, we hope that this service could be further integrated to KB. Please help us to make it interesting with your contributions and feedback.
To try AGiLiENCE Expertise Locator:
- Please use only English contents
- Ask a question. Enter the title in the email title field
- Enter the question in the email body
- Send the email to mailto:question@knowledgeboard.agilience.com
If you are not keen on being part of this KM experiment, you can:
- email Agilience and request to be removed from the experiment: mailto:contact@agilience.com
- make your who's who profile private
- request not to show your email in your public who's who profile
- email the editor requesting this change
You have been invited! Just reply or forward within your email as usual.
To learn more about this Expertise Locator service, contact AGiLiENCE at mailto:contact@agilience.com or mailto:editor@knowledgeboard.com
Details
- Author:
- Ed Mitchell
- Publisher:
- KnowledgeBoard
- Date:
- 07-Oct-04
- Categories:
- knowledgeboard (project sig)
- Sections:
- News
This article has been read 6898 times.
Tools
Member comments (13)
Share your views with other users: add your own comments to this item.
open society
It would be interesting to know whether anyone has access to the system's complete catalogue of questions and nominee responders
This question goes 2 ways: if yes, as a principle of open community should not this be published so we all have equal access information; if not, how is the system's development actually tracked?
I hope we will have a considerate if not rapid answer to this question. It seems to me to be raising privacy and media issues, that the EU as ultimate responsibility-holder may not be aware are being made on its reputation's behalf.
Corporate memory suggestions
The people suggested were:
Martin Roell (blog post)
Chris Macrae (e-reply received)
Carol Tucker
Miguel Cornejo
Jacques SOUILLOT
The question was:
Corporate memory: What are the 5 most important issues?
Interaction
Thanks Anne!
Reponding to Neil: When I got my first (and until this morning only question) from the system, I replied to the enquirer through the system, gave an answer and added an explanation of my answer (that this was not the best answer I could give, beause I needed to know more about the context of the question). I asked questions to get more information about the context of the question asked. The enquirer never wrote back.
I asked an own question to the system ten days ago now, but have not received any reply yet. (None from a person and also none from the system. I would have expected something like a status report "we have sent you question to X people, if you don't receive a reply within Y, then do Z.")
Denham's question reached me through the system this morning and I also posted my answers to my weblog to invite more feedback.
my first try
...did not result in the locator even suggesting anyone
if it responds to corporate memory, so as to foster transparency of community, why not tell us whom it suggests;
chris
Another try
My first try - a request for the 5 top experts in knowledge mapping - resulted in zero replies after e-mailing the 5 gurus suggested by the KB expertise locator.
Trying again.
This time my question is: where are the 5 top sites to learn about 'corporate memory'?
Let's see!!!
Response to Martin Roell
Yes, your reaction is not a surprise. We have not been able to finsih all the integration of the expert locator so far. The next steps planned (wanted!) are
-the biography of the "experts" will pop up so that you learn about the persons and you can judge if you think it is useful to contact him or her.
-the integration with "any answers"
-all interactions (in english) at the portal will be considered
-the questions and the answers to be visible at KnowledgeBoard
We have an exceptional tool, but it is not yet used at it's potential, because the integration is only partial at this stage
( Agilience and Sift are doing this in their "sparetime"- as other content contributors in our community!). The system is functionning, but the results are not yet as we would like them to be, they will improve through the interactions("self-learning") with the members.
We hope that you can see the potential of this, give us feed-back and support the initiative,- and we will try to complete the integration with the rest of KnowledgeBoard to improve the functionality in the meantime.
couldn't there have been a more communal way of testing this service
Suppose you had launched a thirty day thread:
suggest key phrases for this search after which we will do a lucky dip of 10 of the phrases and publish the results so that all can see what turned up
I wonder too if from birth KB members had been permitted an open monitor, befitting what is after all one of the world's largest publicly owned virtual communications spaces, tracking transparent ways of introduing how we communicate which way most members would feel this is heading; transparency in a community takes relentless innovation, particularly on anything to do with search- that god bless google's cotton socks is the number 1 lesson of this season as well as compounding 40 billion dollars of financial value and presumably 100 fold that across google's local users
chris macrae , wcbn007@easynet.co.uk
(this week in London & Delhi)
Intangigles Crisis Union
No replies
I sent e-mails to 4 names who were suggested as knowledge mapping experts, asking for the leaders in the field - sweet nothing came back.
Incidently I only recognized one of the names and do not think any of the others have written or published in the field....
could be valuable to look at google
Its "any answers" model has quite a bit of human subtlely to the way the players interact
Suggested norm for Agilience Expertise Locator
By the way, apparently the Agilience "expertise locator" learns by iteration, and benefits from emails between "brokers."
Therefore the emphasis should be on iterative two way email conversation. One should de-emphasize the necessity to "be an expert" and respond authoritatively to the first question. Therefore one norm would be to "dial down" the expectations level for the first iterations of contact, and to encourage "high frequency" communication, not necessarily "high bandwidth," initially.
Also Martin's comment below, indicates the importance of building of trust in the exchanges. This also requires a gradual buildup of mutual exchanges.
Doesn't Agilience have some consulting expertise in this area and aren't they watching the results? Are they participating in this implementation?
Context, Norms & Orientation
Perhaps there has not been enough explanation about the norms of asking and offering expertise. For example -- Martin -- should you send a return email requesting additional information.
I believe there needs to be a bit more conversation and context in the implementation of the "expertise locator."
If KB were an organization, we would have rolled out this "new initiative" with perhaps a bit more fanfare and publicity and some training and orientation content.
As an example, a "prototype" or "model" knowledge exchange might be posted, so that everyone understands how the system is intended to work.
More context needed
I received my first question today. It is interesting but I don't think I will provide an answer as I don't know anything about the person that is asking. There is only a name, but no background information. Sure, I could google that name and try to find out if that person is trustworthy. But that is a lot of work. And even then I would need more context to answer the question.
Have a look at Bruce Karney's 10 Rules of Asking Others to Share Knowledge for some ideas about the information needed.
Project presentation
Dear
the Research Center on ICT and Management (CETIC, http://cetic.liuc.it), in conjunction with the Research Center on Enterprise Management (CREGO, http://www.crego.univ-montp2.fr) is currently doing a study on Expertise Management Systems (EMS), i.e. software supporting the localization of experts.
We strongly believe that a better understanding of the specificities of the EMS that distinguish them from the Knowledge Management Systems could benefit both EMS adopters and vendors.
The aim of our study is to contribute to the definition of the design principles for Expertise Management Systems through action research study in organizations.
Therefore we are interesting in participating in an eventual KB Expertise Locator development process.
An extended presentation of this research project is available at http://cetic.liuc.it/people/cvitari/project.htm
Vitari Claudio
cvitari@liuc.it