Personal Knowledge Models for More Productive Knowledge Workers

PKM2009 First International Workshop on Personal Knowledge Management (PKM) 1

Personal Knowledge Models for More Productive Knowledge WorkersMax VölkelFZI Karlsruhe, Germany

PKM2009, 26.03.2009, Solothurn, Switzerland


Abstract

We motivate how personal knowledge models can make knowledge workers more productive.

The external representation can help him to tackle typical cognitive limits.

They do so by allowing a knowledge worker to efficiently and effectively model her or his personal knowledge in a mix of informal and formal knowledge.

As a result, more knowledge can be re-used cheaper and hopefully more complex problems can be tackled.


More Productive Knowledge Workers

The knowledge-based organisation is no more effective than the sum of its knowledge workers' effectiveness. (Davenport)

Knowledge management is shifting from a focus on enterprise productivity to a focus on individual knowledge worker productivity (Gartner 2002)

Increasing the individual knowledge worker productivityincreases the productivity of the organisation


Personal Knowledge Management

PKM investigates the use of methods and tools to amplify the abilities of the individual to work better with knowledge. (Völkel)


Knowledge Work Today


Personal Knowledge Management...... communication with yourself

InternalisationExternalisation

CombinationCombination


Basic unit: A Knowledge Cue, ``a note to self'‘

A knowledge cue is any kind of storable symbol, pattern or artefact, created with the intent to be used by its creator, to re-evoke a previously experienced mental state (activated

knowledge), when viewed or used otherwise. Does it contain knowledge?

Physical cues: Limited modifiability and scalability Digital knowledge cues


Knowledge cues can vary in size and ...

Degree of structure Heiko works for the FZI. (Plain text)

– Query: „Heiko“ (Full-text search) Heiko works for the <company>FZI</company> (XML)

– Query: „//company“ (XPath) Degree of formality

(Heiko, works-for, FZI), (FZI, is located in, Germany) (RDF)– Query: „?who, works-for, ?company.

?company, located-in, Germany“ (SPARQL)

More structure, more formality

more automatic processing (queries, transformations)


Knowledge cues can vary in costs

More structure, more formality more costs

You Your Money - gone


Processes in PKM

Creation Organise, Formalize, RefineExternalisation

Retrieval (search own + others)

Usage

Share

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Based on works of Marc E. Nissen, 2006, WM Potsdam


Personal Knowledge Model

A personal digital knowledge model is a digital artifact, which represents a set of knowledge cues.

The knowledge cues can vary in size, structuredness and degree of formality.

A knowledge cue is either (a) a piece of content, containing

– plain text, – semi-structured text, or– arbitrary binary content such as images or desktop objects, or

(b) a connection between other knowledge cues. Such connections can be

– unspecified relations, – directed hyperlinks and – formal statements.


Requirements

Unified Model Import from a number of existing formats

Step-wise Formalisation Text more and more structured text Links typed links semantically typed links

Knowledge Model Refactoring Note: Ignored in many approaches and research papers

Knowledge Model Maintenance System should help user in removing or updating old

knowledge


Summary. The idea is to• Amplify the abilities of the individual

to work better with knowledge

• by managing a set of knowledge cues

• in a unified knowledge model with

• step-wise formalisation

• to let the user find the sweet spot between effort and benefit.


Thank You.Max VölkelFZI Karlsruhe, Germany

PKM2009, 26.03.2009, Solothurn, Switzerland

Personal Knowledge Models for More Productive Knowledge Workers

Technology

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