Knowledge Management at Kent State University

On Wednesday, July 9, 2008, from 6 PM to 7:30 PM, there will be an online, interactive session on the certificate program and Master of Science degree in Knowledge Management at Kent State University. For information about joining this online open house, go to: http://iakm.kent.edu/kmonline/ The session will also be recorded, so interested parties can access it immediately following the event.

Potential students are encouraged to make time for this informational meeting. They will be able to access the presentation as it occurs and will be able to ask questions through their computers online.

Dr. Thomas J. Froehlich, Director of the Masters Program in Information Architecture and Knowledge Management, will provide an overview of the program and its online options in the area of Knowledge Management.

Dr. Denise Bedford will speak about her background, experience and expertise in knowledge management and will provide an overview of the two courses she will be teaching for the IAKM program in the fall, Foundational Principles of Knowledge Management and the Economics of Information.

Dr. Bedford holds a Ph.D. in Information Science from the University of California, Berkeley. She has been the Senior Information Officer at the World Bank since 1997, where she is responsible for management of the World Bank’s core metadata strategy, including content type strategy and the various ontologies that support Bank metadata.

She has taught courses at the University of Tennessee, Georgetown University, Catholic University of America, University of Richmond, and George Mason University.

Dispatches from the Front Lines of SharePoint-based Collaboration

Thursday, July 17, 2008, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m, Jarg, (MetraTech Building), 330 Bear Hill Road, Suite 230, Waltham. Directions.

SPEAKER: Sadie Van Buren, Associate, Knowledge Management Associates

TOPIC: As a consultant helping clients implement Microsoft SharePoint technologies to leverage their knowledge assets, Sadie has observed significant changes in the way clients collaborate and manage their knowledge, but recognizes that many of them still have a long way to go. She will discuss how some Boston-area companies are solving their KM and collaboration problems, the barriers they faced or are still facing, and the positive outcomes, intended or otherwise.

BIOGRAPHY: Sadie Van Buren consults for Knowledge Management Associates, a Gold-Certified Microsoft Partner based in Waltham. Her main area of focus is in architecting and customizing SharePoint deployments, specifically from a usability and design perspective.

Sadie has a Bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University, having majored in English Literature and French Literature. She received a Certification in Project Management from Boston University, and is a Microsoft Certified Technology Specialist. Sadie blogs at http://amatterofdegree.typepad.com/.

PLEASE Register even if you are not certain you can attend so we have an accurate estimate of attendees for handouts.

Registration Form for Thursday

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The Center for Semantic Excellence: Solving “Wicked Problems” Not Addressed by the For-profit Sector

Thursday, June 19, 2008, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m, Jarg, (MetraTech Building), 330 Bear Hill Road, Suite 230, Waltham. Directions. Registration Form for Thursday.

SPEAKER: Phil Murray, Secretary and Co-founder, The Center for Semantic Excellence and Tom Bigda-Peyton, President and Co-founder, The Center for Semantic Excellence

TOPIC: The Center for Semantic Excellence (CES) is a new not-for-profit that helps stressed communities — single organizations as well as families of organizations in a domain — overcome barriers to productivity, progress, and competitiveness when those barriers seem most impenetrable. Those challenges are especially evident in such domains as healthcare, education, transportation, energy, and securities markets, where participants from business, government, and education all play critical roles.

Why “semantic” — a word that evokes splitting hairs or reeks of arcane computer technology? Because complex challenges involving multiple competing and complementary stakeholders can be addressed only by focusing first and foremost on meaning, not information or process. A “semantic approach” is not obscure or picayune; it’s a logical, structured, scalable, and inevitable way of addressing how we work, how we manage people and projects, and how we achieve measurable improvements in productivity and competitiveness in an environment awash in information.

In this presentation, members of the CSE will describe how the perspective of meaning (1) guides more effective research, (2) supports productive group encounters, (3) creates a navigable, easily visualized, and re-usable map of the community’s knowledge, and (4) aids in predicting how solutions will be accepted … and how to influence the acceptance of solutions.

We will then describe a healthcare scenario in which these principles are being applied.

BIOGRAPHY: Phil Murray has been designing and developing systems for turning information into meaning for over 20 years. At the Center for Semantic Excellence, Phil has developed the semantic technology underpinnings of an approach to solving complex, changing, socio-economic problems — often referred to as “wicked problems.” Phil also identifies and selects semantic technologies and practices to support CSE solutions, including the organization’s own web site, wiki, forum, and internal knowledgebase. Phil was most recently Chief Knowledge Architect at Aelera Corp. and, in a previous life, Chief Knowledge Officer at Network Solutions, Inc. Phil’s blog can be seen at: http://semanticadvantage.wordpress.com/

Tom Bigda-Peyton is an organizational consultant, researcher, and educator who has spent more than twenty years working with managers, teams, and organizations. Tom is the founder of Action Learning Systems, a research and consulting practice started in 1992 to help teams and organizations improve the quality and pace of on-the-job learning, recognize and manage transitions together, and create environments of shared leadership and accountability. He is also a founding partner of Third Ways, an organizational consulting group begun in 1998 to scale the action learning methodology and enrich it through interplay with other useful methods and approaches.

PLEASE Register even if you are not certain you can attend so we have an accurate estimate of attendees for handouts.

Registration Form for Thursday

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Categorization and Tagging - Where’s the Beef?

Boston Knowledge Management Forum at Bentley College
A Symposium on Leveraging Knowledge

Wednesday, June 25, 2008, Bentley College, 8:15 AM - 4:00 PM, LaCava 325ABC located in the LaCava Campus Center, Waltham, MA (Bldg. B52/B53 on Map) Directions

Registration

Following on the heels of our six recent Symposia on Leveraging Knowledge, our June, 2006 Symposium is focused on “Tagging and Categorization – Thoughts from Thought Leaders.”

We’re all aware of the use of the multiple flavors of tagging and categorization – controlled vocabularies, taxonomies, social tagging, del.icio.us, Technorati, flickr – and you could Google for a gaggle of others. But how are they being used today to leverage knowledge, how are they and their uses changing, and who is using them for what?

In this symposium, we will explore these flavors of tagging and categorization and their value in leveraging knowledge. We will discuss tools and techniques, share learnings, and hear case examples. Among our speakers will be a vendor whose products incorporate tagging tools, a professional taxonomist, a Web 2.0 thought-leader, an industry analyst, and a knowledge manager from a law firm.

As one of our speakers has said about tagging – it can:

  • Help you logically group and find Web sites
  • Provide you with access to a very substantial collective intelligence
  • Point to people interested in and possibly working projects similar to yours

How does it do all that? Join us to be enlightened!

$50 Pre-Registration Deadline JUNE 20 [click here to register and pay online OR bring cash/check; $60 for walk-ins with no pre-registration] The fee, includes a light breakfast and full lunch.

Moderator: Larry Chait

Link to program readings

8:15- 8:40 Registration and Continental Breakfast
8:40 - Opening and Introductions, Lynda Moulton, Lead Analyst, Enterprise Search, The Gilbane Group and consultant, LWM Technology Services

Presentations with Speaker Introductions by Larry Chait

Social Bookmarking within Enterprise 2.0 - Bill Ives, Consultant, Writer and Speaker

Social Bookmarking began in the consumer web world with del.icio.us. It has now moved into the business world and behind the firewall. This session will discuss a number of the issues connected with this transition.

Taxonomy for Search & Discovery - Heather Hedden, Information Taxonomist, Viziant Corporation

Taxonomies not only aid search but also enable discovery, whereby the user finds information not known to exist. This presentation explains how controlled vocabularies and taxonomies are integrated into search and discovery systems for improved results and how auto-categorization works and serves discovery. The benefit of integrating taxonomies with search is too great to dismiss just because you lack a taxonomist on staff. Well-designed base taxonomies that serve as examples, an easy-to-use interface, auto-categorization based on algorithms can enable select non-taxonomists in your organization to maintain and grow your taxonomies.

Non-Subject Tagging in a Web 2.0 World - Jordan Frank, Vice President of Marketing and Business Development, Traction Software

As wikis and blogs find their way into the Enterprise, users and knowledge managers alike transition from taxonomy to folksonomy and from structured workflows or team rooms to more emergent hypertext workspaces. The implications for knowledge managers, corporate librarians and information scientists are as enormous as the freedoms that these tagging and page publishing tools bring to the business teams that use them. Even in emergent platforms, a tagging strategy is a vital path towards guiding 2.0 technology adoption and leveraging the value of time and money poured into these systems. In this session, Jordan Frank will outline 3 wiki use cases and tagging strategies which leverage 5 classes of tags to support a variety of enterprise wiki and blog use cases.

Analysts Ponder Tagging and Categorizing - Geoff Bock, Lead Analyst for Collaboration & Social Computing & Lynda Moulton, Lead Analyst for Enterprise Search, The Gilbane Group

Lynda Moulton will interview Geoff Bock on how he sees social and search technologies being leveraged for collaboration and sharing. Special focus will be on where categorization and tagging are being used, and when and how they bring value to sharing and finding.

Tagging and the Enterprise - David Hobbie, Litigation Knowledge Manager, Goodwin Procter LLC

Tagging the Web is very useful. But tagging inside the enterprise can extend to people, documents, and more. As the “T” in McAfee’s SLATES, tagging is an essential part of Enterprise 2.0. We’ll examine what tagging can do for the enterprise and features of inside-the-firewall tagging that make it so important.

Wrap-up: What have we Learned? Larry Chait, Chait & Associates

3:15 - 4:00 - Wrap Up

After meeting posts

[Room is available for audience to network until 4:30 pm]

Registration

Speaker Biographies

Geoffrey Bock is the Lead Analyst for the Gilbane Group’s Collaboration & Social Computing Consulting Practice. He focuses on a broad range of collaboration technologies, including enterprise applications of wikis, blogs and other social media. An analyst and author with over twenty- five years industry experience, he tracks how organizations create, organize, and manage business information to sustain profitable relationships. He advises software companies, end-user organizations, and government agencies in areas of business planning, technology innovation, and operational excellence. Geoff is co-author of the recently published Gilbane study, Collaboration and Social Media - 2008“, with Steve Paxhia. Read his blog at Gilbane.

Prior to launching Chait & Associates, Larry Chait was a Corporate Vice President of Arthur D. Little, Inc. He built ADL’s internal, global Knowledge Management function and served as the firm’s first Chief Knowledge Officer. In that role, he oversaw the design, development, and implementation of the firm’s multi-million-dollar KM initiative. In his earlier consulting role at ADL, Larry led major engagements in change management, process improvement, and strategic IT planning for domestic and international clients ranging from start-ups to the Global 100. Larry has also authored 20 articles published in the US and abroad, lectured in MBA and post-graduate programs in five universities, and spoken at over 40 conferences on topics including knowledge management, process improvement, and the management of change. He is currently President of The Boston KM Forum, a community of practitioners that offers over 25 KM-knowledge-sharing events each year.

Jordan Frank most recently held program, product and operations management roles at Inktomi and Adero. He landed at Inktomi after the company purchased his product (Content Bridge) and team that built and operated it from Adero in December 2000. Jordan graduated from the MIT Sloan School of Management in 2000. Previous to Sloan, Jordan spent 4 years at a Cambridge Computer Services where he built and managed a region leading practice in the emerging automated forms processing market. Jordan received his BA from Dartmouth College. Check out his blog.

Heather Hedden, is an information taxonomist at Viziant Corporation where she creates taxonomies for enterprise and government search. Through her own business of Hedden Information Management she has worked on a variety of contract taxonomy projects in addition to freelance indexing. Previously she worked as a controlled vocabulary editor at the periodical and reference database publisher, Information Access Company/Thomson Gale/Cengage Learning. Heather teaches online courses in taxonomy creation and web site indexing through the Continuing Education Program of Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science. In addition to numerous articles, she is the author of the book Indexing Specialties: Web Sites. Heather is the founder and manager of the Taxonomies & Controlled Vocabularies SIG of the American Society for Indexing, is the past manager of the Web Indexing Special Interest Group, and is past president of the New England Chapter of the American Society for Indexing.

David Hobbie is Goodwin Procter’s Litigation Knowledge Manager. In that role he ensures that Goodwin litigators can quickly find and leverage information about previous work, whether it be a research memo, experience before a particular judge, or another attorney’s experience with a particular type of matter. Before joining Goodwin Procter, David practiced commercial litigation in Boston for eight years, first at Bingham McCutchen, then at Eckert Seamans where he litigated and tried civil rights, construction, securities, trade secret, and business dispute cases. David earned his J.D. at University of Michigan Law School and attended Oberlin College, graduating with degrees in history and violin performance.

Bill Ives is an independent consultant, writer, and speaker. His principal consulting practice is now concerned with helping businesses with their blogs. He has been writing his blog, Portals and KM, for over four years and primarily focuses on web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 topics. He also contributes to two Corante managed group blogs which cover entperise 2.0 topics: Fast Forward and The AppGap. Bill is also involved with several search-related start-ups including iQuest. Like many bloggers, his blog serves as a staging ground for writing in other channels. He has a Ph. D. in Educational Psychology from the University of Toronto and did post-doc research at Harvard on the effects of media on Cognition.

Currently Lead Analyst for Enterprise Search for The Gilbane Group, Lynda Moulton is also a consultant on information technologies and knowledge management. She has over 30 years of experience using and implementing search technologies, and developing technology-based solutions for managing enterprise content. Her blog is posted at Gilbane.

EXHIBITORS
HyLighter, Inc.

Traction Software

Viziant

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Advance registration is required to be eligible for the $50 for the full-day rate. Registration includes continental breakfast and lunch. After filling out the registration form, you may elect to pay using PayPal or you can mail your check to the address provided. Make the check payable to Boston KM Forum. We would appreciate prepayment to speed the on-site registration process. Note that this event is heavily subsidized by The Boston KM Forum to keep the cost within the reach of all KM practitioners. For walk-ins, $60 at the door, cash or check only. Click here to register.

Boston KM Forum wishes to thank the
Bentley College, Elkin B. McCallum Graduate School of Business
for its continued support of the KM series.

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To receive notices of upcoming events send a message to info@kmforum.org.

Event Pages for Organizations of KM Interest in Greater-Boston

Boston Chapter, SLA http://units.sla.org/chapter/cbos/events.htm

Boston-IA (Information Architects) http://www.boston-ia.org/meetings.html

Independent Computer Consultants Association (ICCA), Boston Chapter http://www.icca-boston.org/

New England Chapter, American Society for Indexing http://www.newenglandindexers.org/events.htm

Society for Technical Communication: Technical Editing SIG: http://www.stcboston.org/sigs/techedit.shtml

The Usability Professionals Association’s Boston Chapter (UPA Boston) http://upaboston.org/events.shtml

Boston KM Forum Blog - A Case Study in How to Share What We Know

Friday, June 6th, 2008 at 7:30 - 9:30 a.m. Rebecca’s at Reservoir Place, Trapelo Road, Waltham.

Now that the Boston KM Forum has a blog, it is easier to upload and link content related to each event held by the Forum. Members are also writing about our meetings in their own blogs and linking to events recently held. So, in addition to meeting presentations, bibliographies and topical discussions registered in affiliated blogs we are accumulating more content and commentary about members and themes. More than a year ago we built a taxonomy for KM topics. It is used to tag meeting notices but only by our blog administrators. It is time to have the next discussion about how can we make the blog site more content rich and organized for helpful navigation. What do you think we should be including on this site? How should it be categorized? How should we handle incoming links and event slide shows? What else should we be considering? We will make this meeting a working session, so bring your ideas and commentary.

Registration Form for Friday Only

Registration Details (Cost, logistics, etc.)

So You Were Just Promoted to Knowledge Manager - Now What?

Thursday, May 15, 2008, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m, Jarg, (MetraTech Building), 330 Bear Hill Road, Suite 230, Waltham. Directions.
SPEAKER: Gian Jagai, Knowledge Manager, Hitachi Data Systems (HDS)

TOPIC: The Case Study HDS KM Program
• Where GSS was, where we are now (<1 year in), and where we hope to be in 3 years
• Focus on the holistic approach to embed KM principles in our recognition program, consultant objectives, service development and delivery processes
• Building our first community of practice, and subsequently growing to about 6 communities now
• Results of our first community survey
• Lessons learned along the way to get people within the communities to participate
• A look at some of the IT platforms used (Groove, SharePoint, ChangePoint, Outlook)

BIOGRAPHY: Gian Jagai’s biographical journey to KM: I’ve been at Hitachi Data Systems (HDS) for 4 years. I started out as a technical consultant helping HDS customers with our products and services. Over the first 3 years I was continually frustrated by a lack of rhyme and reason as to how consultants received information, shared knowledge and how we never seemed to learn from our past mistakes. So I talked my way into becoming our professional services group’s (GSS) knowledge manager. Now I am responsible for developing a holistic approach to how we can use KM concepts and techniques to improve how we develop and deliver our services. Specifically I am focused on building communities of practice and leveraging SharePoint to help connect our technical consultants. [Note: check out his blog at http://kmapprentice.wordpress.com/]

PLEASE Register even if you are not certain you can attend so we have an accurate estimate of attendees for handouts.

Registration Form for Thursday

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Selling KM in a Hostile World

Friday, May 2, 2008 at 7:30 - 9:30 a.m. Rebecca’s at Reservoir Place, Trapelo Road, Waltham.

One line of commentary by Jessica Lipnack at the recent program on KM 2.0 concerned emotional and psychological barriers to getting colleagues to adopt new behaviors and technologies. She went on to make the case for creating a comfort zone and welcoming environment to help alleviate resistance. But there is much more to explore around the notion of a hostile world that has to be considered and planned around when we contemplate our KM initiatives. Join us to discuss how to move from outright barriers to may-be to probably.

Registration Form for Friday Only

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Highlights from KM 2.0 - Certainties, Show-Stoppers and Still-to-be-determined

Readings on KM 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0Thursday, April 17, 2008, 4:00 - 6:00 p.m, Jarg, (MetraTech Building), 330 Bear Hill Road, Suite 230, Waltham. Directions.

SPEAKER:Discussion Moderated by Larry Chait and Lynda Moulton

TOPIC: On April 9th we had an audience overflow at Bentley College as we heard the points of view of practitioners/academics, consultants, analysts and thought leaders on the subject of where all the 2.0 hype is leading us, changing knowledge practices and behaviors. With the benefit of a full day of rapid-fire exposure to piles of applications and technology tools, plus good commentary on how leveraging knowledge is impacted (or not), Larry and Lynda will try to summarize the highlights, lowlights, and what we were left to contemplate at the end of the afternoon, KM 2.0 - Reality or Hype?

Commentary is already flowing on the meeting and we will use that to launch the discussion after the short summary.

If you missed the Bentley program and want a synopsis, or if you attended and want to add to the summary and discussion, please join us next Thursday. Readings on KM 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0

BIOGRAPHY: N/A

PLEASE Register even if you are not certain you can attend so we have an accurate estimate of attendees for handouts.

Registration Form for Thursday

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The Learning Knowledge Connection

Friday, April 4, 2008 at 7:30 - 9:30 a.m. Rebecca’s at Reservoir Place, Trapelo Road, Waltham.

Brandy King of the Center on Media and Child Health at Boston Children’s Hospital sent this link a couple of months ago:
http://www.bl.uk/news/2008/pressrelease20080116.html

It is about a UK (British Library) study on a correlation with and possible impact on the heavy use of online content reading comprehension and analytical competencies. This has potential implications for how much understanding a younger population may accrue from the barrage of electronic content to which they have access. We will discuss how electronic media, with all of the 2.0 tools we are adopting, may have a significant down side when it comes to leveraging electronic knowledge assets.

Registration Form for Friday Only