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The organization of a successful course should not be underestimated, especially if it’s planed as a long term project. Therefore from my point of view; we should use the workshop to discuss some of major issues, because the answers have a huge impact on what and how we can communicate our vision of knowledge federation.
Topics
The first obvious question is, which topic do we what to cover. Which topics are impractical relevant for knowledge federation, in term of understanding basic philosophy, tools and to enable the participants to apply the ideas to their individual wicked problems.
For exmaple:
- Lesson: Introduction to Knowledge Federation
Its time for a update of the way we produce knowledge and to free us from traditional doxa ...
- Lesson: Tools for Knowledge Federation
Present current tools which support a collaborative knowledge federation including a practical training course.
- Lesson: Traditional vs. modern Information Retrieval
One key problem of knowledgefederation (see paper of Tanaka in KF’2008) is findability. In order to deal with this problem the participant need at least a basic understanding of information retrieval concepts/tools. The objective is to enable the participant to critical evaluate current research possibility and to understand their strengths (e.g. speed, cover) and weaknesses (precision, recall, comprehensiveness).
- Lesson: Semantic Interoperability
Another key problem of knowledge federation (see paper of Tanaka in KF’2008) is “reusability”. Currently many “semantic” languages (Topic Maps, RDF, OWL) and many vocabularies are out there. A lingua franca for the semantic web - in term of a language which anyone can correct interpret is not possible. In order to enable humans and systems to reuse and federate the existing valuable formal knowledge resources it is necessary to describe which models represent the same meaning and what can be do to make them compatible.
- Lessons: Obstacles for the federation of knowledge
In the digital age one can get the impression that knowledge is free. However the contrast is true. On hand many of the high quality information are closely graded by journal, book and database publishes. On the other hand free available knowledge (e.g. wikipedia, tagging) is difficult to trust and to verify. Therefore this lesson gives the participants an introduction in digital right management, copyright restriction and trust ensuring mechanisms. Such knowledge is critical for the implementation of a real and holistic knowledge federation.
If you have any further ideas for topic, please add them!
Target audience
The second (and probably even more important question) is: Which target group should be invited to participate in such a course?
One goal of knowledge federation is that problem solving is holistic oriented. E.g. in order to deal with global warming, as one of the major wicked problems, this implies that many different user groups on quite different technological/social and economical levels have to cooperate, share information and federate in the broad sense.
Therefore I would suggest that the workshop should be open to a wide variety of target groups. In the workshop the different groups - who might be interested in a common goal -could meet on “neutral ground” learn what knowledge federation has to offer. In particular participant from the following groups are important:
- Students: This is obvious the first group we should aim for. There minds are still open. They know the state of the art. We must show them what knowledge federation is and how it related or better can combine the traditional approaches of knowledge production with new solutions.
- Teacher & researcher: All people how are responsible for course relation to knowledge creation, knowledge organization and semantic web are another important target group. If we can convince them of (at least of some of our ideas) these group are excellent multipliers
- Information brookers, knowledge managers: people who usual see knowledge as a product, which is used to create profit. These people have to fight every day with the information flood and looses, they know the really live problem very well. This target group has the money (or the necessary connections) to start projects. They are interested in new solutions/approaches to make the live easier for all members in the companies.
- Technological Industry partners: We should invite some companies who develop knowledge management tools. These companies earn money by providing solutions and knowledge federation needs definitely such tools. We need to show and explain them, what kf is and in cooperation we can design such tools
The individual objectives and prior knowledge of these target groups are very different. This make the design of a workshop not easy but this heterogeneity is essential for knowledge federation. It gives the participants the opportunity to meet and learn form us and from the other groups, how they can federate and that is beneficial for all sides.
Marketing
These different target groups have a major impact on the necessary marketing to find suitable participants for the course. I would suggest, that the first workshop should be relative small in order to keep the overview and foster a intensive discussion with the participants. The first workshop should be a test balloon in order to learn, what can be offer and what are the participant expecting.
However, we should think about suitable options, where we could advertise the course in order to find paying participant. Obviously the first option is that participant of the KF’08 should be invited and encourage to make some advertisement in there companies or university. This should be enough for attracting students, research and teachers. It will be more difficult to talk to industry partners and knowledge brookers. They have usually only very little time. The best way ( at the moment) is word-of-mouth advertising, where we use personal contacts.
Please add to the following list all companies and university where we have contact and cold be able to place an ad or make word-of-mouth advertising:
- Ilmenau University of Technology (Ilmenau Germany)
- Trinity College (Dublin, Ireland)
Accreditation
A course is much more attractive for students, if it is an accredited graduate course.
I have only very little experience in this domin, but does anyone know which recommendations there are and which documents are needed (course plan, graduate credit etc.)?
Organization
The next question is: how do we organize the course? In order to break free from the traditional doxa (one or more guys hold 8-hours lectures in order to communicate information as much as possible till the heads of the participants explode :-).
Therefore I suggest:
- the knowledge federation course should be as interactive and proactive as possible.
- We should plan more workshops and less traditional lectures e.g.
- few introduction lectures and that present some use-case-example,
- several workshop to discussion individual parts of the use-case,
- participants split in groups and have to design together (all groups) a solution or strategy to handle the selected aspects of the use-case
- presentation of the results (participants have learn what is kf and have applied the approach to an real example problem)
- Invite few excellent guest speakers, who are familiar with knowledge federation and other who are not but familiar with the knowledge production problem
- Invited guest speaker should be involved in the workshops - in term that they not only share there experiences but also work with the participant on a real life use-case
Financing
Another annoying but critical question is the financing. We should keep the cost for the course as low as possible in order to allow all target groups to participate. Maybe it would be good to have different course fees for student, researchers and participants from the Industry.
But the main issue is, without a decent budget we can not provide a high quality course or invite guest speakers. However, calculating is difficult. It would suggest that we use the Knowledge federation conference 2008 as a basis for the calculation.
- accommodation
- rooms for the conference
- technical support
- eating
- guest participants
Let’s see, what in total the knowledge federation will cost and based on these figures we can estimate a course fee.
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