The Pocket Site

I’m concluding a special topic course for my computing degree, in which I submitted a paper contrasting ontologies with folksonomies and their relative merits in building knowledge representation. In particular I suggested that user interfaces such as those designed for digital libraries and other repository access might benefit more from collaborative folksonomies.

A interesting example of this approach is being trialled at the Bibsonomy web site where instead of the system spending expensive processing power attempting to generate the best semantic ontology for collaborators to employ, users define the site semantics as the site grows, and language restrictions are reduced through the opportunity to use made-up words or conjoint words etc. They have used a highly structured model for the tags that maps nicely to relational database tables.

This article “Collaboration: a case for ontological commitment” describes some basic approaches used in group settings that I believe are a bit inadequate. It seems the author is generally discussing projects or activities which require time extended participation. She also states that she is not discussing semantic ontology per se, but isn’t that what is suggested be developed, or have I missed the point?

By using tools like Bibisonomy, the use of folksonomies provide an opportunity for group semantics to emerge during online project/group exercise life cycles rather than needing to be explicitly established beforehand.

The following two references I found extremely relevant. I have included links which are current to the best of my knowledge.

Hotho, A., Jaschke, R., Schmitz, C., and Stumme, G. (2006), BibSonomy: A social bookmark and publication sharing system, In de Moor, A., Polovina, S., Delugach, H. ed, Proceedings of the first Conceptual Structures Tool Interoperability Workshop of the 14th International Conference on Conceptual Structures, pp 87-102, Aalborg University, Denmark from the publication home or the Bibsonomy website.

Longva, T. (2004), Sharing knowledge using rich representations, Retrieved on 19 June 2007 from here

This is a comment to a blog post on Cognitive Edge. It is a really concise, interesting summation of an approach to leadership that I have been considering more recently, and that demonstrates some of the most powerful elements represented in emergent and collaborative knowledge management.

Perhaps one of the problems here arises from thinking of leadership communication solely in terms of ‘getting the message across’ – whether or not story is used as the way of pursuing this. Organizations comprise people talking, acting, interacting and transacting with each other continuously through the medium of conversation. As people get together, both formally and informally, they make things up. That is, they perceive, interpret, evaluate and share their views of what’s going on and decide how, in the light of that, they should act. Through these everyday interactions, ‘stories’ are jointly crafted which, in turn, tend to channel ongoing conversations down familiar, ‘cultural’ pathways.

Outcomes, in the form of the sense that is made and the use that this is put to, are co-created by those in the conversation. These can’t be handed down by leaders – or by anyone else for that matter. From this perspective, a leader’s task is to actively engage in the joint sensemaking process – both directly and indirectly – to build active coalitions of support around themes that are organizationally beneficial. Others who participate in the process will do so from their own perspective and with their own agendas in mind – coalescing informally around particular themes, either to advance a particular cause or to frustrate it.

From this “informal coalitions” view of organizations, the future is being perpetually constructed in the present, through this dynamic network of self-organizing conversations. Sometimes these conversations serve to reinforce the existing patterns, ‘deepening the channels of meaning’ (in the form of openly articulated stories and taken-for-granted assumptions) that are currently influencing the nature and outcome of everyday conversations. At other times, the conversations shift the patterns in new ways, creating new ‘channels’ that begin to divert sensemaking in new directions. As the pattern of conversations change, so do the stories that are told. And so does the organization.

Update: I cam across this really cool post with another take on the difference between knowledge management and social/organisational interaction.