Hendrik Thomas' contribution to Workshop I
From Knowledge Federation
Contents |
Challenges.
The challenge is to find solution for problems which are so complex and critical that we can not effort to wait any longer (e.g. global warming, social degeneration etc.). Till know the old, dusty traditional approaches have found no answer. The possibilities of the digital world are not used to their full potential. The challenge is to free us from the old doxa - finding new ways to create and use knowledge.
But knowledge federation is not about abandoning “things” - its about the combination, coexistence and reuse but on a new level of quantity and quality.
Advantages
The biggest advantage of knowledge federation is its fundamental nature to see a problem and therefore a solution as a whole rather that a sum of particular isolated solution for sub problems. It is not the elements but also their connection which are important. To say it more forcefully this ubiquitous holistic views forces us to focus not only on our action but also on the action and reaction of the other involved groups. Only together we have a change to deal with these wicked problem. Knowledge federation (service, view and most of all knowledge federation) is a change for federation - but how this is still open to discussion.
The direction where we want to go is clear but how to get there is still unknown.
Resources
I offer the following resources which may be helpful:
- "The World Is Flat 3.0: A Brief History of the Twenty-first Century" by Thomas L. Friedman (link more info...) I don't have much experience in this field, but the whole topic reminds me on the disunion over the changes and risks of globalisation, which is one of the wicked problems.
Strategy
Basic Agenda
| OBJECTIVE: WE WANT TO ANALYE THIS PROBLEM TOGETHER COOPERATIVELY. | |
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How to achieve this objective:
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How to organize the Workshop?
Obviously, there are endless problems, which are so complex and so critical, so they are worth to be called wicked problems. The focus of this workshop is the question: can knowledge federation help to deal with these problematiques as a whole instead of isolated approaches.
In order to deal with this question and to foster further research it seems reasonable to focus on (most suitable) example problems instead of the general issue. Therefore the first question is, which wicked problems are of peculiar interest for knowledge federation?
A second question is, what do we need for a productive discussion, e.g.
- One or more experts, who are familiar with the specific field of problem in order to give a proper introduction and are able to answer detailed question (important for focus and granularity).
- Some experts who are not familiar with the specific field of problem, in order to provide some fresh and unprejudiced views on the wicked problem (avoid organizational blindness).
- Tools to document or to support the discussion progress.
The short participants at the beginning of the workshop could provide all participant with such a needed introduction to relevant wicked problems and related questions. After a short discussion, we will select some wicked problems, which will be discussed in the team work phase (e.g. one problem per group).
In the second phase the participants split into small 3-person teams to discuss the assigned problem in detail in order to find starting points where knowledge federation maybe helpful and which further steps are needed to deal with this problem.
Which type of discussion model we will use is still open to discussion, e.g. see following options
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| Option A: fix groups static groups for 1 hour | Option B: speed dating changing groups, everyone talks to everyone for 5-10 minutes | |
| Pro: intensive discussion, simple organisation, elaborate results Contra: fewer ideas | Pro: more people, more ideas/views Contra: only high level solution,confusing organisation |
Any comments?
In the final conflation the groups can present their proposals and we work out a common solution (method, actions, cooperation) in the plenum, which can be applied to other wicked problems.
Summarizing the concept for the first workshop looks like:
Technical Requirements for the workshop
No technical equipment necessary, but a laptop with a recent version of Firefox and a Java Runtime Environment 1.5 (minimum) may be helpful.
Talks schedule - Registration
In order to use the limited workshop time as efficient as possible, we kindly ask the participants to register their short presentations with description and references in advance on this site.
| Talk Registration |
| # | Author | Title | Short Description |
