Knowledge federation after Knowledge Federation 2008

[Dino Karabeg]

Dear everyone,

What follows is a brief report about our Knowledge Federation 2008 conference that was held last October in Dubrovnik, and a proposal for how to proceed further. In between I will say a few words about the book I have just finished writing.

KNOWLEDGE FEDERATION 2008

A good way to document the Dubrovnik event is by photos. So here they are.

You will agree that we now have a suitable venue, sufficiently Mediterranean to invoke the spirit of the original Academia. And that we have an embryo of a community. 

What remains to be created is – knowledge federation itself. Or better said a clear profile. Having during the first two days presented and discussed our articles, we dedicated the last day of the conference to this key issue. What is knowledge federation? Is knowledge federation really a new research area? Do we really need a knowledge federation community? Without doubt, are working in a field where a lot of excellent work is being done within the existing communities. Why not join one of them, for example the Semantic Web, or the Global Sensemaking? Are we not risking to create just another small silo? I will come back to these questions in a separate posting. 

While taking a refreshing post-conference swim the next day and then flying through Zagreb to Split where my parents live, I thought about what had been said during that last day and the story continued to evolve. When that evening I summarized it to my father, he said “Someone should write a newspaper article about this.” So the following morning I contacted Drago Pilsel, a well known Croatian journalist. Our ensuing correspondence resulted in an article that was published in December in Novi List, a good Croatian daily newspaper, of which you may read a translation. Pilsel complained about the way his article was cut. I was not happy that the article was focused on me and that those parts of our correspondence that reflected everyone’s work and the Dubrovnik conference were not mentioned at all (two such paragraphs from an early version are translated and added at the bottom of this letter). My father thought that the article made me a bad federator.  Still this article is a good beginning of something that needs to be done – a draft of a federated high-level (accessible, inspiring, general) view of knowledge federation. More about this in a moment. 

BOOK ‘INFORMATION MUST BE DESIGNED’

Back in Oslo I focused on finishing my book draft, and neglected knowledge federation for a while. A reason, although not the main one, was that I wanted to conclude an intense past involvement before fully engaging in a new one. A more important reason was that this book may provide some building blocks for founding and profiling knowledge federation.

A draft of the book is now available online.  The Foreword and the Introduction are readable, the chapters are protected by a password which I will be glad to give to you on request. I will appreciate an opportunity to see the book through your eyes.

THE NEXT STEP

We have pretty much agreed to meet in Dubrovnik this year as well. I would, however, like to propose the following, based on our conversations: 

* Let us schedule Knowledge Federation 2010 for October 3 - 7, 2010. We would arrive to Dubrovnik Saturday, October 2nd, and have a (different) introduction to Dubrovnik on Sunday, then work for three days and depart on Thursday. 

* Let us use the intervening time to design knowledge federation, by completing our conference publication and our joint article(s), and in that way create a foundation for the further work and growth of this community. 

* Let us invite both technical people and people from other disciplines, and orient our meeting and our community work in part as a design project, as explained in my next mail.

MY PERSONAL PLANS

I am presently developing and teaching a graduate course “Socio-semantic Web and Knowledge Federation," which gives me an opportunity to systematize and learn the foundations. 

If I have your agreement and support, I will begin facilitating the creation of a joint article, which will federate our individual approaches and ideas and define knowledge federation and our way of working. 

As of August 10, I will be on a sabbatical at UCSC for one year, focusing on building a solid foundation for future work, extending the knowledge federation network, and writing articles. 

I will welcome any help that you may be able to provide.

Warm greetings,

Dino

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APPENDIX: Two paragraphs from my first letter to DP

The conference in Dubrovnik gathered eight invited experts from diverse parts of the world to dialog and work together. Most of us are developing technological and systemic solutions for knowledge federation, each in his own specific way. Professor Yuzuru Tanaka from the University of Hokaido developed “meme media” which make it possible to unite ideas or media (for ex. parts of Web pages) available on the Internet in one place and in that way facilitate creation of new ideas. Professor Simon Buckingham Shum from the Open University from Great Britain is making technical solutions which enable a structured debate and a joint search for solutions. Researcher Jack Park from SRI International is developing technical solutions for ‘knowledge gardening’, which enable creation of new insight through continuous participation of many people. In a ‘knowledge garden’ one person may ‘plant a seed’ i.e. contribute an insight on a specific subject, another one who is subscribed to that subject may read the insight and combine it with another, the third may find an application etc. We in Oslo (Roy Lachica and myself) are developing the ‘key point dialog’ which enables a group of people to change their basic understanding of a situation or condition or ‘gestalt’. Lachica has also developed Fuzzzy.com which enables organizing Internet resources as a network.

 

At the same time, progress was made towards a theoretical foundation for knowledge federation. Alexander Sigel, researcher from Cologne, showed that recent developments in the traditional field of knowledge organization, which developed from library science, point towards flexible organization based on multiple points of view. Hendrik Thomas from the University of Dublin and Bernd Markschaffel from the University of Ilmenau showed how the classical semiotic theory (‘semiotic triangle’) may be adapted to the situation where there are multiple worldviews that need to be reconciled. Lachica and I outlined the main elements of a federated organization of an academic discipline.