Although this case study describes a legal environment, the learning can be applied to any environment.

Life before the FindIt! Portal:

• thousands of structured and unstructured documents
• no centralized enterprise search
• no metadata

Step 1: Defining the Search Scopes – created four basic scopes: people, precedents and research, firm information, client matters

Step 2: Defining Search Requirements – case sensitivity, spelling, pluralization, word stemming, language

Step 3: Define Metadata Standard, including the controlled vocabulary

Step 4: Conduct Content Inventory – determine anything restricted or sensitive

Step 5: Metadata training for content owners – consistent naming conventions, synonyms, categories (also done for French content). Used Resource Description Framework (RDF) as a tagging framework. Developed a metadata tagging tool to add metadata to documents.

Step 6: Content Sources:

Web pages (ASP files) were indexed too. The website was built in frames, which presented challenges for indexing. Similar issues for Javascript links.

Internal blogs using Moveable Type and WordPress were also crawled and added to the index.

Structured data included InMagic Content Server, people directory (SQL).

Used crawl rules to include or keep out particular content and content types.

Best Bets were created based on frequently requested content, common tasks, stats on content usage, and existing “can’t find it” information.

Step 7: Search Interface and Results Display:

• Customized search display.
• Included link for user feedback and problems.
• Used a lot of out-of-the-box functionality, such as “did you mean” and “still can’t find it?”.

Step 8: Search Usability Testing – compare against actual user behaviour.

Having a project sponsor at a senior level in the firm is crucial.

Current Work: content migration into SharePoint; reviewing metadata fields.

Future Work: Faceted navigation, improved search.

How do we break down silos, and improve conversations across and through them?

Top-down communication is working …  but horizontal communication is poor. A chat over a beer (or around the water cooler) is often not enough. The weaknesses continue to be exposed with the rise of Web 2.0.

How do we build on the knowledge and solutions we already have? The ability to take advantage of current ideas and discoveries and use them in new circumstances. At the same time, we need to avoid reinventing the wheel.

Indexing tools are not enough – technology is not the whole solution. Google is not the whole answer.  We are not faced with an information discovery problem, because indexing can solve that. Search results are abundant.

It’s not necessarily only an knowledge sharing problems; centralized knowledge bases are not the whole solution, either. Centralizing knowledge via knowledge extraction is not the whole answer.

The issue is how to bridge the gap between industries and the differing terminology. Ideally we want to find the right people to talk to, where the meeting of minds produces new ideas and discoveries.

We need to talk about sharing awareness before we share knowledge. We need to know where to look. Everything that we do, we think what we’re doing is unique. We need more peripheral awareness of what else is happening in the organization.

How to Share Awareness?

Search Engine best bets: www.steptwo.com.au/papers/cmb_bestbets

• People want knowledge at the point of need – this is tremendously difficult. Can use best bets to promote and share related knowledge in best bets search results.

Communities of Practice – see Cultivating Communities of Practice by Etienne Wenger

Information discovery can be aided by bringing people together to communicate and share best practices that can be used and built upon.

Using RSS to support peer-to-peer communication  – see www.steptwo.com.au/papers/kmc_rss.

It’s not about the blog – it’s about the communicator.

Communication must be recognized as a business problem, not an information discovery or a knowledge management  solution.  We need a business solution, not a technology solution. Start small, and focus on the people.

When people think of search, they think of Google; simple, give me what I’m looking for now.

The problem with information discovery and enterprise search is much more complex than that. We have many different systems and repositories that need to be accessed.

The idea is that you should be able to find information no matter where it is, and to find information that you don’t know is there. This often requires a discovery process that is not very direct. It’s not that simple; it’s much more complex than “I’m feeling lucky”.

CMS Watch uses a vendor risk profile to evaluate the wide range of tools out there. For each solution provider, Vendor Evolution is measured against Product Development.

Most vendors who historically called themselves search companies are now calling themselves Information Access Platforms – they are trying to integrate with other systems in their clients’ organization. While the marketing message has changed, the core focus remains the same.

Theresa cautions people to be wary of the marketing message – but keep in mind the ultimate window to knowledge does not yet exist. They don’t have access to every repository from one place – yet.

Security is one of the most significant limitations of these systems – who has permission to view what, at the document and repository levels. Vendors are focused on addressing this issue.

How vendors deal with structured and unstructured content is also an important consideration.

Most solutions require a significant amount of tweaking and specialization to make them work the way you need them too.

Non-textual assets present a particular challenge – how do you index and search these assets (maps, images, audio, video, maps, etc.) Search tools have a hard time figuring out how to describe these assets. Metadata is part of the solution; in some cases, OCR and speech-to-text may be used.

Rights management for rich media is also an issue – how to manage the metadata for rights and resuse of these assets.

Auto-categorization is also a trend — using software to index content automatically. These tools are useful but not fool proof (differentiate a picture of Tiger Woods vs. a picture of a tiger in the woods).  It takes time and training, and search vendors continue to develop the technology to be more contextual.

Vendors are integrating standards such as Dublin Core metadata to aid in categorizing information.

User Interface Trends:

Vendors such as Oracle have made their search results resemble Google’s; there was a study that indicated that if your results look like Google, they will trust it more.

Also introducing filters and facets to narrow down the results. The facets must be customized for them to be effective.

Another trend is saving searches over time, so that renewed results are displayed in saved searches.

Coveo produces results that look like Google, but also include other topics the result falls under. Filters are also listed on the left to refine the results.

Theresa’s favourite search results pages is Exalead, which provides a dashboard of results.

Funnelback, a vendor from Australia, provides mashups with other apps such as Google Maps.

Social Search is another trend; Vivisimo is doing the most with social search, but Theresa isn’t sure how many people are using it. The hit list provides you not only with rated search results, but a list of people profiles who may know more about how to find the answer.

Search and Business Intelligence where data is sliced and diced to enable analysis. Tends to be used with structured information such as sales data to help the organization decide what to do next.

Reporting and analytics which provides a dashboard that describes how people are using the search engine.  This information will help you adjust your taxonomy and metadata to improve the search performance. Also provides info when searches are occuring.

Tuning field ratings allows search administrators tweak how attributes and variables are weighted to improve the relevance of the search results.

The importance of Scenarios: you must understand what situation you’re in to determine which tool(s) will work best for you. Structures vs. unstructured information, data, text, multimedia; types of employees, from knowledge workers to informed transaction processors.

Most vendors do not do well in more than 3 areas. Get customer referals and case studies. Try before you buy via 30-day demos that can be tested in your own environment. Make sure the vendor you choose has done work in your industry, with organizations with similar information types, user types, and challenges.

Peter’s blog:  findability.org

Information that’s hard to find will remain information that’s hardly found.

Peter will talk about how search must fit into the larger architecture.

Peter is a librarian (wonderful!!) who fell in love with the Internet in the early 1990′s. As a consultant he works with a wide variety of clients including corporations, .

What is Information Architecture?

• The structural design of shareed information environments.
• The combination of organization, labeling, search and navigation systems in web sites and intranets.
• The art and science of shaping information products and experiences to support usability and findability.

It’s important to provide many paths to the same information to accommodate a variety of target audiences.

Information architecture is a part of usability and user experience, and part of knowledge management.

• We need to worry about usability, but we need to also strive for desireability and creating pleasurable user experiences.
• The site and the information within it need to be findable, perhaps despite the web site it’s part of.
• Must think about mobile devices and people with disabilities.
• Credibility is crucial.
• The site must be valuable in that it helps to fulfill business goals.

Location matters – improve your search engine rankings. People trust the higher rankings (sometimes wrongly). Today, findability and credibility are closely related.

There is an important relationship between search and knowledge management:

Many people depend on Wikipedia because those pages are found frequently by people searching for information. This is important; Wikipedia is valuable becasue the contributors know that their contributions will be viewed by many people.

Enterprise Findability = IA + KM + Search

• In portal space, information architecture is top-down (controlled vocabulary)
• In collaboration space, IA is emergent – need to observe, shepherd and harness the learning to make things navigable and searchable
• Enterprise search needs to bridge across all systems (portals and more)

Findability:

• The quality of being locatable or navigable
• the degree to which an object is easy to discover or locate
• the degree to which a sstem or environment supports wayfinding, navigation and retrieval

Ambient:

• Surrounding, encircling, enveloping

The ability to find anyone or anything from anywhere at anytime (this can be scary from a privacy point of view)

“A wealth of information creates a poverty of attention.” – Herbert Simon, Nobel Laureate Economist

The Internet of objects  – examples include Google Earth, and tagging objects that are then findable through a wireless location appliance. Soon, will we be able to Google where we left our keys?

“The Transparent Society” by David Brin, who states that the rich can already track our every move – do we want that to be reciprocated? Do we want to be able to track the moves of others?

But with the firehose-aimed-at-a-teacup amount of information is causing greater challenges of findability.

The Revenge of the Librarians – metadata has become sexy. This is NOT your mother’s taxonomy – we have the folksonomies of Flickr and everyone is tagging like mad.

What we need to do is find the happy medium, and bring together the librarians with the average person.

“Search has become the new interface of commerce” – John Batelle

Search is one of the most important ways we learn, so it’s crucial to a robust knowledge management system. Search is a complex, adaptive system.

For examples of different kinds of search results, see Peter’s search pattern collection on Flickr: www.flickr.com/photos/morville

Search is a wicked problem:

• No definitieve formulation
• Considerable uncertainty, complex interdependencies

This presentation can be found here.

Peter provides his thoughts on building an innovation capability within the organization.

Why bother with innovation?

Gary Hamel: “Innovation is the only way to stay ahead of the curve.”

There is a rhetoric gap between innovation being talked about as being at the top of the agenda, and what’s really happening.

• Proctor & Gamble are talking about innovating the way they innovate. This stance is all about culture change, and in P&G’s case, it’s about becoming less insular and more open in the way they operate.

• GE declared they are thinking in a new way how to lead the business.

Is it that P&G and GE finally woke up, or is there something else at work here?

It’s always difficult for organizations to change.We know this, and so there is a movement to make innovation more natural and require less effort.

How to Succeed:

1. Bring innovation to the front line; listen to those closest to the problem.
2. Humility: there is always someone smarter than you in the organization.
3. Focus on the business model.
4. Teach. Learn. Apply. (rinse and repeat)
5. Challenge orthodoxy – break glass, but heal it too
6. Harness disruption (inevitable surprises) – things that you can see coming, but inevitably you’re surprised when they happen, such as the popularity of Second Life.
7. Address unarticulated needs of customers – experience a day in the life of a customer
8. Please crash! (safely)
9. Approach innovation systemically – think about enablers and impediments to innovation

Dare to be Radical: (radical does not mean risky or far-out) -does it have the power to change customer expectations?

See Whirlpool as an example of an organization who’ve innovated, and would have a revolt on their hands if they were to go back to the old way of doing things.

Copies of this presentation can be obtained by emailing Peter.

Dr. Cindy Gordon, CEO, Helix Commerce International Inc.

Cindy speaks about Web 2.0, virtual worlds, and some research highlights from her upcoming book, 2bevirtual or Not!

Evolution to Web 2.0:

1st wave = email, calendar, discussion forums, group scheduling, groupware

2nd wave = virtual workspaces, instant messaging, portals, web conferencing

3rd wave = blogs, wikis, RSS, social networks, social bookmarking, mashups, podcasting, metaverses

Must think through what tools will fit into your organization and what can be integrated with the minimum of disruption.

Kids rule – the first generation that include avatars as part of their socialization. How will the organization plan for this shift in  rich customer interaction experience?

Virtual worlds are not for everyone, but its an indication of things to come. Like the web, over time the virtual worlds will become simplified and easier to use. Eventually we will be able to allow our avatars cross from one virtual world to another.

ROIs are still developing, there is nothing yet out there that can measure the impact.

See The Project Factory for stats on who’s in the zoo on Second Life.

Best Practice Highlights:

• IBM – uses SL for executive engagement and showcasing new products, collaboration for R&D staffs worldwide
• Metanomics – has Muse Island that provides a forum for discussions on the future of science, new technology, economics and policy
• Nokia – uses SL for recruiting as well as arenas for innovation. You can buy a SL version of your phone for your avatar
• Nissan – has a large vending machine with prizes that can be purchased with points gained during a virtual scavenger hunt.
• New Ways of Recruiting – Accenture, Semper HR Island, Career Builders

• Rumours of the death of KM
• CIO is reporting to the CFO, not the CEO
• Second or Third Identity Crisis re: what KM is; feels like we’re lurching, not building
• Web 2.0 is not the answer, whatever the question is

This has lead to what we have today, which is a boutique approach, what Tom calls “little km”:

• peripheral to the central activities of the organization
• KM as best practices
• KM as a management fad
• Divorced from information – KM got off track early and often

Tom argues that KM has been reduced to 2 categories, tacit and data-information-knowledge-wisdom – this is inadequate Tom suggests some sources for new ideas:

• philosophy – go beyond Polyani, look at Aristotle, Kant
• cognitive science – need better consumer models

Need to get back to big KM, specfically:

• building a semantic infrastructure
• KM must become an essential part of the organization
• KM as the interdisciplinary focal point of organization

Panelist #2: Terrie Rollins, CKO, Federal Systems, Unisys Terrie’s perspective is on KM from a US federal perspective:

• need to understand the critical needs of KM as it affects the next administration
• KM is about life and death when it comes to crises such as 9/11 and Katrina
• how to approach knowledge sharing in a world where terrorism is a real threat and national security is critical?

Current/emerging trends:

• knowledge retention technologies to anticipate threat
• adding KM to Presidential Management Agenda
• knowledge sharing from a global point of view, with international collaboration
• National agenda for knowledge sharing across all levels of gov’t

Panelist #3: Dave Pollard, VP Knowledge Development, Canadian Institute of Chartered AccountantsDave talks about the emerging role of the Information Professional Our role is shifting to:

• Helping workers share knowledge
• Introducing real time connectivity tools
• Teaching real research skills
• Enabling just in time knowledge canvassng
• Teaching storytelling
• Adding meaning – enviroscaning and sensemaking

We must focus on improving context and improving personal productivity. This new focus is driven by the Gen Millenium entering the workforce, a very different kind of worker:

• digital natives who use instant messaging tools
• email is a waste of time
• thinks research is just searching Google
• their career is their network
• they are committed to their own talent development, not the organization

Need to move to KM 2.0 to keep these new workers engaged and contributing positively to the organization.

Peter Andrews, Innovation Strategist & Senior Consulting Faculty Member, IBM Executive Business Institute

The needs of the previous generation are very different from today. In today’s context, things change very quickly. Major Web 2.0 tools include:

• Blogs and podcasts
• social networks
• mash-ups and wikis
• tags and syndication
• virtual worlds

The problem is that many executives don’t get it, so the executive blog is awful, and the audience is lost immediately.

• Web 2.0 is a terrific way to enable talent, and to get talented people engaged
• The tools offer better search, help to establish reputation and trust, and help you stay up to date

Peter measures the audience by asking about their organization’s attitudes toward Web 2.0.

• Most organizations see the opportunity and are exploring options;
• very few are actively engaged, whereas a minority see it as too risky or irrelevant.

People with great talent are what’s important. It’s all about the people – the new kind of worker is talented, demanding, motivated, savvy and impatient. They are not interested in paying their dues.

Over half of people at IBM are like this – they’ve been with the organization for 5 years or less. How do you serve these people? They think and operate very differently. Forget about free enterprise. Think enterprise-free:

• Workers identify with peers, not the organization.
• Their career is their network.
• The firm is defined by the knowledge of the workforce.
• As long as its fun, they’ll keep showing up.

The new model is to pull in people from all different discplines to enable creativity and innovation. How is IBM adapting?

• The majority  of IBMers collaborate using social software, collaborate, draw on p2p expertise
• Blue pages is the employee directory with lots of information about that person, a picture, their reporting chain, background and skills
• Anyone can (and is encouraged) to blog externally (just don’t do stupid things); these are used extensively to identify expertise
• BlueTube and podcasting for knowledge sharing and dissemination, and to build communities of interest
• WikiCentral which is maintained by communities of interest, with glossary of acronyms, forums and discussions.
• IBM in Second Life, which improves remote conversations, improves training and abstract knowledge transfer.
• Small Blue social networks are emerging; speeds finding expertise and leveraging networks of individuals.
• Jam technology are structured brainstorming exercises to leverage the wisdom of crowds

Peter thinks that there is work to be done in terms of building trust in social networks. How participant reputations are ranked has some loopholes that need to be addressed. Also, there are considerations that are important:

• legal concerns
• security and intellectual property
• trust and credibility
• fairness, credit and HR concerns

In the new world, these issues are still important and need to be dealt with. Web 2.0 is all about the talent of people:

• visibility and reputation
• develop deeper relationships
• connect with peers
• influence the conversation
• learn more directly

What’s Peter’s view of the future:

• need some convergence of social media tools – which network do I join? there are too many to choose from, and it’s impossible to keep them all up to date
• smaller, more real-time pieces of information; see this with Twitter
• identity management – how to manage our “characters” in Second Life vs. FaceBook vs. LinkedIn

Peter’s final words:

• Cuture nd individual needs are cntral to understanding
• Engagement, authenticity, ownership, talent and power are the new keys to success.

Dave’s talk outlines the early KM efforts, from the early days in 1994, to present. He also speaks about where KM is going in terms of the ways the Gen Milleniums are communicating, and the impact of these new communication techniques on the organization.

KM 1.0 model  1994-2003

• The focus was on content and collection, and storing information “just in case”
• For the most part, KM was a new concept; most executives did not understand value of KM
• Executives suggested they outsource KM, and distintermediate it (read: get rid of the librarians)
• Didn’t address the pain
• Participants said they couldn’t find anything

KM suffered a rise and fall; there was an exciting beginning, but soon became just a buzz word. Organizations needed to find a better way of buiding KM.

KM 2.0 – 2004 to present – focus on context and connection

• working on a just-in-time basis (instead of just in case)
• personal content management tools
• RSS-publishable and subscribable web pages where main info flows are Peer to peer (instead of top-down)
• communities of passion (instead of practice) are self-organized and ad hoc, and conversation focused (instead of focusing on ceontent)
• story-telling replaces the KM 1.0 best practices; visualization instead of text
• everything is accessible to all (as opposed to public vs. internal web site). Organizational boundaries disappear.

This new model for KM based on making sense of information, then publishing to the community. As a result, the role of the information  professional is evolving:

• improving conections and facilitating conversations
• teaching research skills – teaching them how to fish
• environmental scanning, then making sense of it

There’s a focus on personal KM:

• Getting out of the info centre and working with people on the front lines of the organization
• Teaching them to organize information to serve their own needs
• Teaching research skills

The new paradigm is just in time canvassing to better understand how people in your organization search, find, use and produce informtaion.

• CICA is starting to use instant messaging to draw on expertise on a just in time way.
• New milleniums find email to be to slow to get answers.
• Also using Adobe Connect for virtual meetings; very little set up, everyone documents their own information in the system;
• The Gen Millenium doesn’t use email; they use more immediate and faster-paced tools for communication.
• They are self-directed and self-motivated. They will determine what KM 2.0 looks like.

Tools such as:

• blogs as courseware
• cultural anthropology – observing customers and employees instead of sending out surveys; focus on workarounds
• simulations and scenarios for learning (virtual stock market)
• proximity locators
• affinity detectors ntag.com
• p2p sharing of education – slideshare — slideshare.net/DavePollard/
• content moves to cyberspace – google docs
• mind mapping – freemind
• google mashups
• openspaceworld.org – openspace problem solving
• virtual world collaboration

The key to KM 2.0 success is to reciprocate.

Janus is a big fan of social media such as wikis and Facebook because they focus on community and knowledge sharing.   Janus presents his Top 4 Knowledge Sharing Enemies:

1. Intranets – because they are not editable. Wikis can be a solution here.
2. Knowledge Management – because they tend to be chaotic; there are few success stories out there.
3. Email – it’s chaos
4. Shared Drives – issues with version control, and no one can ever find anything.

Keys to successful knowledge sharing: There are multiple cultures within any size organization, so it’s best to be as open as you can. The more open we can be, the better chance we will have to share knowledge. Examples of knowledge sharing vendor solutions:

• Oracle Web Center Wiki
• IBM Lotus Quickr – similar to Facebook inside the enterprise
• Liferay – open source solution
• Vignette Community Applications

There is lots of innovation going on in open source arena; on the propreitary side, there is consolidation due to larger vendors purchasing smaller ones. J. Boye has published a report, The Enterprise Portals Report, which evaluates various solutions.