October 31, 2003
f2f with dina in philadelphia...
sunny autumn day
the art of conversation
smoothly skipping stones...
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
inspired by meeting dina mehta in philadelphia today - a clear, warm fall day, a simple meal and simply wonderful conversation... dina and i were instantly comfortable - like old friends picking up on an ongoing chat with confidence, ease, and trust...
knowledge worker news...
[there are five news stories in this post.]
The Globe and Mail :: Workers better educated, StatsCan says
...OTTAWA - University graduates invaded not only high-tech industries, but also a variety of high-knowledge jobs in the 30 years between 1971 and 2001, a Statistics Canada study indicates.
Even in the mining, oil and gas sector for example, the percentage of workers with high-knowledge occupations almost doubled, to 26 per cent from 14 per cent.
In general, 34 per cent of knowledge workers had university degrees in 1971, compared with slightly less than 3 per cent of other workers, the agency reported Thursday.
"By 2001, 52 per cent of all workers in knowledge-intensive occupations had a university degree, compared with less than 10 per cent of those in other occupations."
The study found that the shift toward a knowledge-based economy was not a new phenomenon that emerged only in the 1990s when the information and communications technology sector experienced explosive growth.
"In fact, the proportion of knowledge workers increased steadily over the past three decades, reflecting a growth trend that began long before the high-tech boom of the 1990s," the agency said.
In 1971 about 14 per cent of the workforce had high-knowledge occupations. By 2001 that proportion had almost doubled to 25 per cent.
The study also found that:
While knowledge-based occupations pay significantly higher wages, the wage advantage enjoyed by knowledge workers relative to other occupations did not increase significantly from 1971 to 2001.
In 2001, some of the largest concentrations of knowledge workers were in business services at 66 per cent and finance and insurance at 42 per cent.
In the 1990s, the proportion of workers who were knowledge-based grew faster in service industries than in goods industries.
University degrees were most common in professional occupations. In 1971, slightly less than 45 per cent of professionals had university degrees. Thirty years later, this proportion was 66 per cent.
Growth in knowledge-based occupations has occurred in all regions of the country...
...PHILADELPHIA, Oct. 29 (AScribe Newswire) -- More and more employees are surfing the Web for personal reasons during work hours, and according to Saint Joseph's University's Dr. Claire Simmers and Drexel University's Dr. Murugan Anandarajan, it could be beneficial for employees and employers. In a new book entitled "Personal Web Usage in the Workplace: A Guide to Effective Human Resources Management" (Information Science Publishing), they explore the constructive side of personal Web usage.
Better time management, reduction in stress, adding to skill sets, and helping to achieve a balance between work and personal life are some of the advantages cited in the book.
"Personal Web usage in the workplace has a negative perception, especially among administrators who often see it as inefficient and creating a decrease in work productivity," said Dr. Simmers, associate professor of management.
The book suggests that personal Web usage can contribute to employees' continuous learning by helping them stay current on world events and business news, as well as provide support for education through formal classes and professional associations.
"Today, organizations demand more human capital and 'knowledge workers' who can perform at a higher level, but they are reluctant to view personal Web usage as a tool that could help employees perform their jobs more effectively," added Dr. Simmers. "If there is a level of virtual trust built between employees and organizations, then the use of the Internet can prove to be productive."
The study conducted by Drs. Simmers and Anandarajan, one of several presented in the book, analyzed 316 surveys of employees who were either part-time M.B.A. students from a northeastern university, or one of three contacts of each student; all of them had Web access at work.
Founded by the Society of Jesus in 1851, Saint Joseph's University advances the professional and personal ambitions of men and women by providing a demanding, yet supportive, educational experience. One of only 137 schools with a Phi Beta Kappa chapter and AACSB business school accreditation, Saint Joseph's is home to 3,900 full-time undergraduates and 3,400 graduate, part-time and doctoral students. Steeped in the 450-year Jesuit tradition of scholarship and service, the university challenges students to exceed their highest aspirations, fosters the mature development of values and deepens a desire to help shape the world...
allAfrica :: South Africa: Number of Full-Time Telecommuters Doubled Since 2000, Says Meta Group
...Teleworking policies continue to change as cultures and technologies mature, providing the framework for expansion from the travelling salesperson to the enterprise knowledge worker. Currently, more than 90% of enterprises use dial-up services to support such workers. However, functionality requirements for knowledge workers include the ability to access all relevant corporate and customer information, which demands reliable broadband access via cable modems, DSL, and other always-on Internet solutions for the remote workstation portfolio.
"By 2004, 40% of Global 2000 (G2000) companies will have an always-on broadband services policy that encompasses acceptable use, sourcing, payment/reimbursement, and service-level expectations (to include required quality of service for VOIP) for small, fixed remote sites and teleworkers. By 2006, 60% of G2000 organizations will have adopted such technology policies," added Ussher. "Among the reasons enterprises are considering convergence (eg, voice, data, video) are remote access by telecommuters to telephony features (including voice mail and station-to-station dialling) and access to non-telephony applications (eg, corporate applications), underlining the need for an enterprise-wide telecommuting strategy to include support."...
The Financial Express :: Not Limited To Consumer Space
by S SADAGOPAN
...Microsoft InfoPath is a neat application to capture business process re-engineering. MS One Note is a convenient tool that permits knowledge workers to capture multitude of bits and pieces of information, particularly using Tablet PC features. On the server side, Share Point Server has been fully integrated with MS Office permitting collaboration, publishing and controlled distribution available to ordinary users without having to learn/install additional pieces of software. To get the full benefit of Office System, one should have many of the server products installed too. In a sense, this upgrade of MS Office targets organisations (in fact, large organisations) that are focused towards productivity, process improvement, performance improvement, scalability and security...
ebizQ :: Informatica Aligns With IBM, webMethods
...Informatica Corporation, a provider of data integration and business intelligence software, has reached an agreement with IBM under which the two companies will jointly integrate, market and sell business intelligence solutions worldwide. The agreement will help Informatica more tightly integrate its entire product line with key IBM hardware and software platforms, "enabling customers to significantly speed development, increase effectiveness and reduce the cost of their integration and business intelligence environments," Informatica says.
The new agreement enhances the companies' existing relationship, and will enable collaborative solutions to be implemented as an integrated whole. "This will empower customers to more efficiently utilize their full range of information assets, deliver comprehensive business intelligence to wider sets of knowledge workers, and respond more quickly and intelligently to business opportunities and change," Informatica notes...
October 30, 2003
knowledge management news...
[there are eight news stories in this post.]
Mentioned in this article, in order of appearance:
Northrop Grumman Corporation, American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC), Tacit, Air Products, Honeywell, Intel Corporation, and Schlumberger.
...EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Oct. 30, 2003 (PRIMEZONE) -- Northrop Grumman Corporation (NYSE:NOC) has been selected as a "best-practice partner" by the American Productivity & Quality Center (APQC) for its leadership in developing software tools that allow the expert knowledge of its employees to be shared effectively throughout the company.
Northrop Grumman was one of several companies featured in a recent APQC-led study designed to measure the extent to which American businesses are now using these so-called knowledge-management tools to enhance productivity, reduce operating costs and increase customer satisfaction.
APQC's study, entitled "Expert Locator Systems: Find the Answers," recognizes Northrop Grumman for its development of XRef, a Web-based software tool that stores the expert skills and knowledge of company employees in a database accessible by employees. XRef allows Northrop Grumman employees to locate, at the click of a mouse, other employees who possess the expert knowledge or skill sets required for a new product development, project team or market research activity. APQC also recognized the company for its work with Tacit ActiveNet, a commercial knowledge-management product...
IT-Director.com :: Open Text doubles its size with the acquisition of IXOS
...Consolidation amongst Enterprise Content Management vendors proceeds apace. Following EMC's recent announcement of its acquisition of Documentum, Open Text has announced it is to acquire IXOS in a business combination agreement for approximately 200M Euros.
The acquisition of IXOS puts Open Text firmly on the European map as well as making it the largest, purely software based, enterprise content management vendor. Following the merger the combined company will have approximately 2,000 employees and a total turnover of about $320 Million...
m-Travel :: Xybernaut expands mobile/wearable computing
...Under terms of the teaming agreement, Cap Gemini Ernst & Young and Xybernaut are already working together to develop and deploy mobile technologies for customers in various industries. Initial units of Xybernaut wearable computers have been sent to the Cap Gemini Ernst & Young Mobile Solution Center for integration with Cap Gemini Ernst & Young wireless networking and mobile workforce solutions.
Xybernaut mobile/wearable computers are PC-equivalent computers that support open source and industry standard protocols, such as hardwire and wireless communications (PCMCIA/Compact Flash/WiFi), advanced operating systems (such as Windows, Linux, and others), application/development software and peripheral devices (through USB, FireWire and serial/parallel ports). A unique differentiator of the platform is that Xybernaut computing devices are worn on the body by employees at the point where information is needed to perform business operations.
For example, American Trans Air (ATA) employs Xybernaut mobile/wearable computers in a variety of applications related to aircraft maintenance. These units are currently deployed at ATA's primary maintenance facility in Indianapolis.
"Xybernaut mobile/wearable technologies are becoming an integral component of our aircraft maintenance and repair processes," said Kevin Allen, systems engineer, Information Services for ATA. "Our ability to be competitive is directly related to aircraft reliability and efficiency of our technical teams. We have upgraded through several generations of Xybernaut devices since 2000 and have realized tangible results in several key areas of our operations. Most notably, increased technician productivity, higher accuracy in technician data gathering and delivery, greater knowledge management for decision makers and shorter turn-around times for aircraft during regular maintenance."...
CORDIS: FP6 poster session: Poznan, Poland
...A Sixth Framework Programme (FP6) projects poster session will take place from 21 to23 April 2004, in Poznan, Poland.
The session, which will be held during an international conference on business information systems, is aimed at providing potential project proposers with an opportunity to present their early stage projects and obtain technical support and advice from leading experts in the field.
The main goal is to help individuals or organisations search for partners, with a view to developing consortia capable of building an FP6 proposal in the area of information science and knowledge management.
For further information, please contact:
E-mail: a.bassara@kie.ae.poznan.pl...
Business Wire :: Thinkpath Announces the Award of a Contract Worth Approximately $1M US
...TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 30, 2003--Thinkpath Inc., (OTCBB:THTHF), a global provider of technological solutions and services in engineering knowledge management, including design, build, drafting, technical publishing, and consulting, announced new commitments exceeding $1 million US with an existing client for engineering work on land-based combat military vehicles.
"We are delighted to have received this award from a long standing client with whom we have had many years of service. Thinkpath's business is increasingly expanding and we are meeting the challenge as demand grows. It is especially gratifying to gain this new business while simultaneously improving our margins," stated Declan French, Chairman and CEO of Thinkpath Inc...
Business Wire :: Prophet 21 Releases Knowledge Management Center 3.5 for CommerceCenter
...YARDLEY, Pa.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 30, 2003--Don Ireland, president of the Terre Haute, IN-based Industrial Supply Co., knows the importance of accurate, timely business information.
"You can't manage a business by the seat of your pants," said Ireland. "You need real data."
With the needs of distributors like Ireland in mind, Prophet 21 has released an enhanced version of Knowledge Management Center for CommerceCenter. Version 3.5 of this executive information and data warehouse solution features easy access to turn and earn data, the ability to track sales by order taker ID, and the power to view open quotes.
Knowledge Management Center quickly summarizes sales, inventory, accounts receivables, accounts payables, and open orders, and allows distributors to set alerts whenever an activity falls outside a range the user predetermines. Executives can respond to changes in the marketplace in real time and make accurate forecasts when planning for the future, and key personnel can better manage their business objectives with access to key performance indicators.
"To stay competitive in today's economy, businesspeople must access, analyze, and respond to information in seconds," said Chuck Boyle, Prophet 21 president and CEO. "Knowledge Management Center 3.5 will help distributors make key business decisions as the market changes." ...
The Times of India :: Straight Answers
by VANDANA SHUKLA
...Research scholar of Vedantic philosophy Amit Kinikar speaks on training the young in Vedantic philosophy.
You surrendered your Canadian citizenship for propagation of Vedantic philosophy, why?
I had a spark for my spiritual growth from the very beginning, but it remained latent. I pursued an MBA and set up a family business in Canada. This is when I happened to listen to a discourse of Swami Parthasarthy and this changed me. I started visiting Vedanta Academy in Pune and then came a point when I decided to explore it fully leaving aside all other engagements of life. To commit oneself to a life of selfless service is one thing and to sustain it is another.
How do you manage it?
Since we serve society, society pays it back by looking after us. Someone or the other comes up to take care of us. Divinity shapes our ends. I am given a roof over my head and three square meals, this is all I need. I am here on an invitation by concerned people who want me to spread the knowledge of Vedanta in Punjab.
So, how do you spread the word?
Work is done at three levels: we conduct Vedanta programmes for the corporate sector, youth and for public. For addressing the young I take lectures at DAV college twice a week. The other day I spoke to them about knowledge management the Vedanta way. For the public I conduct study classes every Sunday.
Vedanta is nothing but the truth of life, the higher values of life which when followed lead to higher identity and happiness. When you are evolved, your dependence on external gadgets is reduced. The young need to be told that the insignia of life is action, they need to be pitched up to higher ideals of life that gives sustained stamina. I talk to the young in their idiom and they lap up the concept. You cannot talk to the young in the language of dos and don'ts. You have to appeal to their reason, and leave the judgment to them...
eWeek :: Cash for Code: Does it Work?
By Sunil James
...In August 2002, iDEFENSE announced its unprecedented and controversial Vulnerability Contributor Program (VCP). Established to meet market need, the VCP protects the critical information infrastructure within organizations of all sectors against an unprecedented incidence of cyber attacks. The model was designed because there was - and for the foreseeable future will be - a need for timely and proactive solutions to prevent damage before it occurs.
The VCP taps into the abundance of security knowledge about as-yet-undisclosed vulnerabilities, exploits and malicious code found by individuals and security groups. Some of this may be disclosed on an information security-related mailing list, or as the result of a post-mortem analysis of a compromised computer system. In the simplest terms, the program solicits information on new vulnerabilities from researchers willing to trade their intelligence for payment.
Since the program's launch, the debate among industry watchers, security organizations, members of the hacker underground and vendors has raged loud and wide. Now, more than a year later, the VCP is no less controversial, as I experienced first-hand while attending the 2003 Black Hat Briefings and DefCon 11 events. These two security conferences provided me with a wonderful forum to speak with the program's advocates and critics alike, and to discuss frankly the benefits and risks of the program in the spirit of a shared commitment to a more secure Internet. ...
To date, the VCP has been very successful; the program has unearthed more than 200 new vulnerabilities that have been submitted by dozens of contributors around the world. As the number of vulnerabilities increases each year, today's technology-only approach, i.e. the use of firewalls, intrusion detection systems, and anti-virus software, will not suffice. The VCP offers a window on the evolution of information security solutions, providing a fair and responsible program that allows for the disclosure of new vulnerabilities. It is a cornerstone of tomorrow's multi-tiered security platforms and knowledge management frameworks - providing cutting edge intelligence to defend organizations, increasingly important as zero-day exploits loom on the cyber security horizon...
October 29, 2003
weblogs in the news...
[there are four news stories in this post.]
OJR article :: Free Content Becoming Thing of the Past for UK's Online Newspaper Sites
by Daithi O. hAnluain
Mentioned in this article, in order of appearance:
OJR article: UK News Sites:Free and Subscription Services, Times Online, Financial Times, Guardian Unlimited, Telegraph, Nielsen/Netratings, The Association of Online Publishers, Online Publishers Association, LexisNexis, ABC Electronic, mbites, Reuters, The Press Association, Bloomberg, CNN, Google News, EL PAIS, Hollinger Telegraph New Media, OJR article: The Guardian of the Web, Robert Fisk, Independent Digital, BBC, and BBC News Online.
...Just 18 months ago, the United Kingdom was the land of free online news: Readers surfed from site to site and read every word, searched every archive and subscribed to every news alert -- all for free.
Now everyone's charging for something: With ad sales producing nowhere near the revenues needed to support news sites, every major newspaper site in Britain has decided it's time to bolster sagging income by charging for content.
In March 2002, Times Online started charging for its crossword; the Financial Times started charging for parts of its news site in May. Guardian Unlimited and Telegraph joined the fray in June, leaving their main news product free, but charging for special services like an ad-free version of the site, and for special news alerts.
"Now, it's serious," said Tom Ewing, European market analyst with Nielsen/NetRatings. "There's a real market developing."
But while British press barons are united in their bid to squeeze cash out of their consumers, they all follow different strategies. Basic access is still free -- no one in the United Kingdom has cut off their readers cold turkey. ...
The Telegraph is the most fee-free British broadsheet on the Net, charging for a digital edition aimed at overseas readers and for fantasy football -- though registration is required to access the free content. The Guardian plans to introduce registration soon, though they are anxious to keep their critical mass of deep links from blogs and Google (see OJR's Q&A with Emily Bell)...
In These Times :: From the Screen to the Streets
By Howard Rheingold
...Blogs and moblogs, such as the international network of Independent Media Centers, South Korea's influential OhMyNews and MoveOn.org's misleader.org are signs of what San Jose Mercury-News columnist Dan Gillmor calls an emerging "we journalism." Each of these sites offers up-to-the-minute news alerts, provided by a combination of citizen-reporters and trained staff. While the owners and administrators of such sites range widely - from passionate individuals to collectives to upstart nonprofits - these blogs are markedly more democratic than their corporate-run, top-down brethren.
Internal and external forces, however, threaten to undermine "we journalism" before its impact is fully realized.
Misinformation, disinformation, incredulity and magical thinking all are problems on the supply side of these new reporting modes. Aggregators of blog postings - which rank blog listings by popularity, similar to Google's page rank technology - already serve as a filter for this flood of amateur journalism. And reputation systems, filters and syndication services also could develop into useful tools for assessing the veracity of information sites. But political activists and those who sponsor progressive projects also have a role: For "we journalism" to have long-term credibility and lasting impact, progressives must fund, staff and promote media literacy - teaching users to create and consume this new journalism...
The Register :: Mac fan's blog leads to layoff in Redmond
By Ashlee Vance in Chicago
...A temp worker at Microsoft's in-house print shop appears to have lost his job as a result of his two biggest passions - Macs and blogging.
Earlier this week, Michael Hanscom posted a picture of several Power Mac G5s being off-loaded outside of the MSCopy print facility. Four days later, someone at Microsoft caught wind of the blog post and asked that Hanscom be removed from his position doing temp work for Xerox in the Microsoft shop.
"In the end, what it boils down to was a slight misjudgment on my part," Hanscom wrote in a fresh globule. "While I (and many other people) may find Microsoft's reaction to be extreme and unnecessary, chances are they had every legal right to make the decision that they did. I would certainly have preferred that they simply request that I take the offending post down (which I would have done in a heartbeat), but for whatever reasons, they chose not to take that route."...
Byte and Switch :: Info Overload! Billions of Bytes Born
...If you created 800 MBytes of new information last year, congratulations: You're as prolific as the average person on the planet.
That's according to a team of University of California at Berkeley researchers who claim there were about 5 exabytes of new information stored in print, film, magnetic, and optical storage media in 2002. And because nobody's volunteering to do a recount, we'll take their word for it.
How much is 5 exabytes? It's 5 million terabytes -- or 5,000,000,000,000,000,000 bytes -- which is enough data to fill the print collections of the entire Library of Congress 500,000 times. And that's twice as much new information as was created in 1999, when the Berkeley researchers first conducted the study. The team, led by Peter Lyman and Hal Varian of UC Berkeley's School of Information Management and Systems, estimated that the storage of new information has grown about 30 percent each year since 1999...
Some other interesting highlights of the report:
...The Internet is the fastest-growing new medium of all time. The volume of information on the Web grew from between 20 and 50 TBytes in 1999 to 167 TBytes in 2003. There are about 2.9 million active Weblogs, containing a total 81 GBytes of text...
lilia efimova - lost in the matrix...
We are all very happy that Lilia Efimova and her Mathemagenic weblog are back online! You were definitely missed Lilia!
Lilia's post today on "What Matrix Persona Are You?" inspired me to take the Matrix quiz. My results:
You are Neo, from "The Matrix."
You display a perfect fusion of heroism and compassion.
What Matrix Persona Are You?
brought to you by Quizilla
the gender genie...
Today on misbehaving.net Caterina Fake published a post on the outcome of running a number of the "misbehaving.net" weblog entries through The Gender Genie, a tool that "uses a simplified version of an algorithm developed by Moshe Koppel, Bar-Ilan University in Israel, and Shlomo Argamon, Illinois Institute of Technology, to predict the gender of an author."
And so I was curious and fed one of my longest self-composed posts into "The Gender Genie" and received the following results:
Female Score: 103
Male Score: 1038
The Gender Genie thinks the author of this passage is: male!
[Great article on the Gender Genie concept at nature.com: Computer program detects author gender: Simple algorithm suggests words and syntax bear sex and genre stamp.]
October 28, 2003
layer 3 vpn...
Light Reading :: Kompella Backs BGP
by Marguerite Reardon, Senior Editor
...WASHINGTON, D.C. - Kireeti Kompella, Distinguished Engineer at Juniper Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: JNPR - message board), is on a mission to set the record straight on Border Gateway Protocol.
Today, during the MPLS 2003 conference, he gave a presentation urging his colleagues to take another look at BGP as the signaling and setup protocol for VPLS, rather than extending Label Distribution Protocol (LDP).
Virtual Private LAN Service or VPLS is an emerging standard that creates a point-to-multipoint Ethernet network using Multiprotocol Label Switching (MPLS) . The biggest technological debate in the working group is over which signaling protocol to use: BGP or LDP (see VPLS Standard Debated ). Both camps have their zealots, and for awhile it looked as if the LDP draft, co-written by Kireeti's brother Vach, was taking the lead (see Kompella vs Kompella ). But the tide seems to be turning.
Kireeti Kompella says that BGP already does many things that carriers want a VPLS network to be able to do, like auto-discovery and provisioning. These are things that would have to be added to LDP.
"BGP has some flaws," he admits. "You have to tweak this or that. But it's a much more pragmatic approach than building a new, solve-everything protocol."
He also seeks to dispel what he feels are misconceptions about BGP -- in particular, that BGP is overloaded and that the protocol is trying to do too much.
"The whole premise of multiservice is to put multiple services on one box," Kompella says. "It will use the same amount of CPU and memory whether you're running six protocols or one."
"I think carriers might be more comfortable with this BGP overload issue if they knew that routing processes like this were implemented in a resilient way -- using totally isolated memory areas, for instance", says Geoff Bennett, chief technologist of Heavy Reading, Light Reading's market research division. "Right now, if BGP goes down, it takes a lot of functions with it and tends to take a long time to recover. Graceful restart will help, but better code would help a lot more."
Many large long-distance carriers are very interested in BGP signaling because they're already running BGP in their networks, Kompella says. What's more, many of them are already offering Layer 3 VPN services, so it makes sense to use the same signaling protocol for their Layer 2 VPNs as they would use for their Layer 3 VPNs.
Loa Andersson, co-founder of the consultancy, TLA-group and chair of the Layer 2 virtual private network (VPN) working group in the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF), says that he hopes both protocols will be a part of the final draft.
"There's no reason not to progress both approaches," he says. "BGP is used in deployments where carriers are already using BGP routers. And LDP is used in networks already doing Layer 2 point-to-point VPNs."
While the standard is still a long way from being finalized, many vendors have already put their money behind LDP signaling. In fact, that's one reason Isocore, which is sponsoring the conference, chose to use LDP signaling in its live VPLS network demonstration. Boxes from Cisco Systems Inc. (Nasdaq: CSCO - message board), Extreme Networks Inc. (Nasdaq: EXTR - message board), and Alcatel SA (NYSE: ALA - message board; Paris: CGEP:PA) are providing wireless Internet connectivity to attendees at the MPLS 2003 conference via a VPLS network.
"I really wanted to be able to test both LDP and BGP VPLS signaling," says Rajiv Papneja, manager of validation and product evaluation for Isocore. "But it made more sense to just run LDP, since I%u2019ve been testing it for a year. I know it's stable, and there were vendors able to donate products."
But Yakov Rekhter, another Distinguished Engineer at Juniper and the father of BGP, says that these debates are irrelevant.
"You know what they say about the pudding," he says. " 'The proof of the pudding is in the eating.' In the end, the market will decide."
"Yakov is absolutely right about the market deciding; that's the classic IETF approach," says Heavy Reading's Bennett. "The problem is that vendors end up dissipating resources in developing and supporting both mechanisms until the market really does give a clear indication. It took CR-LDP a couple of years or more to die, and that's a lot of wasted effort. But, like it or not, that's the way the IETF does things." ...
f2f conversations with dina...
dina mehta's blog
on california and friends
fine face to face fun...
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
can knowledge be reaped?...
if you aspire to
reaping a knowledge havest
switch your metaphor...
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
read denham grey's harvesting knowledge - can we really do it? post...
knowledge management news...
Hold onto your socks - there are fourteen knowledge management 'stories' in this post. From iPhrase's One Step application, to Kent State's collaboration with Sheffield University, United Kingdom, to Line56 Media and Plumtree Software's new survey results, to articles on Content Management, the UN, Document Management, to the release of new enterprise suites by both Hummingbird and Generation21 Learning Systems, Global Knowledge's new CEO, Primus' first profitable quarter, and the list goes on... Enjoy...
SearchCRM.com :: A better search creates a site for sore eyes
By Barney Beal
...The difference between a frustrated customer slogging through a maze of site links and one quickly finding the necessary information can be the difference between a sale and someone logging off.
That has companies taking a closer look at enterprise-search technology for their customer-facing applications.
Countrywide Financial Corp., in Calabasas, Calif., recently invested in the One Step application from iPhrase Technologies Inc. Countrywide, a mortgage lender that is branching out into banking and insurance, wanted to create a common style for its 110 external-facing Web sites. Much of the firm's business goes through the online channel, including about 45% of its mortgage lending, according to Larry Gentry, first vice president of business technologies.
Countrywide bought into One Step in May and has rolled it out on its corporate communications and investor relations sites.
"So far, it looks great," Gentry said; "iPhrase has a good reporting module, so you can instantly see what people are searching for [and] the number of clicks. It's insight we never had before."
Already, the company has seen unexpected traffic for job listings and career information. Additionally, many users are looking for branch locations. Armed with that information, Countrywide was able to move the link to that information further up the FAQ site, saving customers a step.
Customer-facing search technology is just one segment of the overall enterprise-search market, according to Tim Hickernell, an analyst with META Group, Inc., in Stamford, Conn. Others include traditional, enterprise-wide search technology and categorization, and there's also information-discovery technology, such as that used by large agencies such as the CIA and FBI.
Laura Ramos, a director with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass., said the market for search technology is just beginning to sort itself out.
"Enterprise search is still very crowded with vendors and crowded with technology," she said. "There's a lot of opportunity for growth. It's difficult to sort out the players."
Analysts say Verity, Inc., Sunnyvale, Calif., and Autonomy Systems, San Francisco, are two of the bigger players in the overall enterprise-search arena...
...KENT, Ohio, Oct. 24 /PRNewswire/ -- The Center for Executive Education and Development (CEED) at Kent State University announces an exclusive collaboration with ThinkTank Consortium, an Action Learning Consortium working with Sheffield University, United Kingdom. This first-time alignment between the two consortiums will launch a new block of training programs and global best practice initiatives never before available to businesses. The combination of practical knowledge and implementation strategies created by this venture is unprecedented. Businesses will have the opportunity to access these global best practices through new programs and initiatives offered by CEED. Courses will begin January, 2004 with curriculums such as Innovative Thinking for Management, E-Business: Global Best Practices, Knowledge Management Fundamentals and Process Management for Healthcare. A complete course schedule is available at: ThinkTank Consortium: Partners in Best Practice.
"The benefits of synergy from this collaboration between ThinkTank and CEED are incalculable and obviously desirable to any business" states Richard Jackson, principal of ThinkTank Consortium.
Mr. Richard Jackson recently spent two weeks on the Kent State University Campus for meetings, presentations and keynote addresses. Mr. Jackson has implemented quality systems in business, the classroom and healthcare. Holding MSc's in both Operational Research and Business Intelligence, Mr. Jackson's premier expertise lies in the field of healthcare. (Note: European MSc's are equivalent to U.S. based PhD. degrees) He is currently in collaboration with the UK's National Health System (NHS) on the development of an automated knowledge management system for NHS.
"Combining the capabilities of these two organizations will, unequivocally, result in the invaluable sharing of global intelligence" states Lucinda Welch, Outreach Manager of CEED. "We are proud to present this caliber of knowledge, application and research to our clients."
CEED specializes in customized training and consulting services. Located at Kent State University, Kent, Ohio USA, CEED helps today's executive leaders rise to the challenges of this highly competitive marketplace. CEED strives to provide business clients with highly targeted and effective training/development programs and consulting services that focus on growth, productivity and organizational excellence. For more information regarding CEED, contact Lucinda (Cindy) Welch, Outreach Manager at 330-672-1176, lwelch@bsa3.kent.edu or visit CEED - Kent State's Center for Executive Education and Development.
...LOS ANGELES and SAN FRANCISCO, Oct. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Line56 Media and Enterprise Web leader Plumtree Software (Nasdaq: PLUM) today published the industry's first comprehensive survey of organizations deploying Enterprise Web software. Survey results indicate that the average mid- to large-sized organization supports over four development standards, nearly three application servers and over three content repositories. The survey also found that organizations are using this heterogeneous infrastructure to build
an enormous number of applications, averaging over 120 applications per respondent. The report, which also includes market-share and ROI data, is available at Line56.com | E-Business Research Reports. Line56 and Plumtree will discuss the survey results in an online seminar this Wednesday, October 19th at 11:00 a.m. PT with registration at Line56 and Plumtree Discussion Registration.
eWeek :: Content Management is King
By Dennis Callaghan
...Enterprises with diverse content management needs will have new options from IBM and Open Text Corp., following announcements from those companies regarding new products and an acquisition, respectively.
IBM last week rolled out new content management software for small and midsize businesses and Linux shops, as well as new content management integration offerings and records management product enhancements. ...
Meanwhile, Open Text last week acquired German enterprise content management software developer Ixos Software AG, which is expected to add content management and archiving to Open Text's core strengths in collaboration and knowledge management. The $225 million deal comes on the heels of Open Text's August purchase of another German content management software developer, Gauss Interprises AG...
UN News Centre :: UN reform proceeding on many fronts, Frechette tells General Assembly
...A new report on providing technical cooperation identifies UN system agencies active on certain issues and clarifies roles and responsibilities to eliminate duplication, she told the Assembly. "It is hoped that this compendium will be a useful source of information for programme countries and the donor community."
The UN's work in developing countries "is being made more effective through simplification and harmonization of procedures, joint programming, the pooling of resources, better knowledge management and improvements in the (development) Resident Coordinator system," she said.
This year's UN budget proposals represent "a major effort to realign activities with priorities and to increase attention to development issues, in particular the Millennium Development Goals," she said.
The goals, approved in 2000 by a summit of world leaders, aim to eliminate extreme poverty by 2015.
Alongside the efforts to reform the international civil service, General Assembly President Julian Hunte of St. Lucia has been campaigning to improve the working of the 191-member body.
Speaking at the opening session of the Inter-Parliamentary Union hearing today, he said, "We seek to foster the building of a 'global parliament,' more efficient in its decision-making process and more capable of taking effective decisions. Above all, we need a United Nations General Assembly whose decisions are respected and have a decisive influence on the actions of member states."
In the General Assembly later, he appointed "facilitators" to move the process of gathering reform proposals along and he asked delegates "to demonstrate a combination of imagination in proposing solutions and of willingness to be flexible during the process of negotiation."...
Transform Magazine :: Document and Content Services: From Plain Vanilla to Super Deluxe
by Sam Diamond
...Things sure have changed at service bureaus. It's not that they're offering 39 flavors of service; they're more like the new "old fashioned" ice cream stores that start with plain vanilla and then mix in toppings to create whatever concoctions customers want. Most service bureaus still start with basic document-oriented services, such as scanning and data entry, but it's the added services that really bring value to customers.
"The role of service bureaus has evolved from one of just enabling companies to save space by making electronic copies of documents, to one of empowering them to leverage the content in those documents," explains John Solomon, president of Input Solutions, an imaging-oriented service provider in Gaithersburg, MD. "Increasingly, companies want value-added services like database design, sophisticated indexing schemes and knowledge management capabilities." ...
Service bureaus understand that to remain successful, they must offer a range of services that match the changing needs of the market. What does the menu include so far? Conventional document services include scanning, data entry, database design, indexing, creating sub-databases for specific interest groups within an enterprise, knowledge management, and delivering images on secure Web sites, via secure transfers or on CDs or DVDs.
In the content-oriented services arena, taxonomy development, content tagging, and XML/HTML transformation services are commonplace, and value-added services now include integration services and site hosting. Outsourcing, too, is gaining popularity, with companies turning to service providers to take on complete business processes.
"Businesses today are trying to meet increasingly complex information needs with manual and fragmented document and records management practices," says Larry Wash, vice president, managed services operations at Rochester, NY-based Xerox Global Services. "To address this issue, organizations are focusing on how to more effectively capture, manage and deliver unstructured information in order to facilitate productive collaboration among employees, make more effective decisions and reduce embedded process costs."...
Transform Magazine :: Moving Closer to True ECM
by Marvin Pyles
...Hummingbird Enterprise 5.1, the latest version of Hummingbird's suite, is aimed at meeting compliance mandates as well as most, though not all, of the challenges of enterprise content management (ECM). While it's not a major upgrade, release 5.1 offers many improvements in usability and application performance that will translate into better productivity for end users.
Hummingbird Enterprise is a suite of integrated applications including document management, records management, knowledge management, collaboration, search, business intelligence (BI), data integration and a unifying portal. Hummingbird was among the first ECM companies to integrate records management functionality, so it can draw on extensive experience in meeting today's heightened compliance demands. The company's records management technology is DoD 5015.2-certified, and the company has more recently added an Automated E-Mail Management solution to provide classification, indexing, search and retention of messaging content in Exchange public folders and Lotus Notes repositories. ...
Hummingbird's strongest customer bases include legal, professional services, government agencies, financial services and utilities. According to Shruti Yadav, an analyst with Wellesley, MA-based Nucleus Research, "Companies seem to choose Hummingbird because it has the most out-of-box functionality you can use without excess consulting or customization costs. This gives companies a shorter implementation time and can have a huge impact on ROI."...
Business Wire :: Global Knowledge Appoints Joseph W. Cece President and CEO
...CARY, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 28, 2003--Global Knowledge Inc., a worldwide leader in IT education and learning solutions, today announced the appointment of its president and chief executive officer, Joseph W. Cece. A seasoned senior executive with more than 20 years of experience growing and managing companies in highly competitive sectors, Cece was selected by the owners of Global Knowledge -- New York investment firm Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe -- to lead Global Knowledge's future strategy and growth in the worldwide IT education and learning marketplace.
Before joining Global Knowledge, Cece served as the CEO of BTI Telecom Corp., a Raleigh, N.C.-based telecommunication provider that recently merged with West Point, Ga.-based ITC DeltaCom. Prior to his tenure at BTI, Cece held executive management positions at Digital Access, Suburban Cable, Cablevision Systems Corp. and TV Guide...
...GOLDEN, Colo., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire/ -- Generation21 Learning Systems, a leading developer of enterprise learning software, has completed load testing on its new Generation21 Enterprise Version 5.0 and the results are unprecedented. Generation21 Enterprise version 5.0 will be released in November at TechLearn in Orlando.
The load test, conducted on Generation21 Enterprise Version 5.0 baseline product, simulated 66,299 users and 397,794 transactions over the seven-day testing period resulting in zero errors. Performance on the application server and database server were monitored over the seven-day period with memory usage never exceeding 25 percent of capacity, with the exception of a couple of spikes at 40 percent.
"We have made great strides with Generation21 Enterprise Version 5.0," said Dale Zwart, Generation21's founder and chief technology officer. "But all of the new advances would be for naught if we weren't able to offer a stable system to our customers. The results of our testing have been phenomenal."
Generation21 pioneered the use of Universal Knowledge Objects -- "nuggets" of right-sized information -- and continues to enhance enterprise learning with innovations including performance support with context-based retrieval of knowledge outside of the classroom and on-the-job. Generation21 allows organizations to capture and share knowledge to generate measurable results in improved efficiency and productivity by allowing a company's knowledge base to be easily accessed by employees in diverse locations, thus allowing learning to be constant. Generation21 Enterprise Version 5.0 will be unveiled November 2-5, 2003 in Orlando, Fla. at TechLearn 2003...
RealMarket CRM News Release :: SupportSoft
...SupportSoft's Knowledge Center Suite Automates Self-Service for 25,000 Cox Employees
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- SupportSoft (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), Inc. (Nasdaq: SPRT - News), a leading provider of real-time service management software, today announced the successful deployment of SupportSoft's Knowledge Center Suite(TM) within Cox Communications, a Fortune 500 and leading cable communications company. The Knowledge Center Suite leverages SupportSoft's Real-Time Service Management (RTSM) software platform that allows problems to be automatically put into context, their cause to be diagnosed and, once determined, resolved -- or even avoided altogether -- in real time...
...DULLES, Va.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 28, 2003--Guardian Technologies International, Inc. (OTCBB:GDTI), an Intelligent Systems Solution Provider (ISSP), announces that it has reached an agreement to purchase the Intellectual Property (IP), which includes the radiology imaging, compression, and feature enhancement technologies of Difference Engines Corporation (DE), a privately-held company in Columbia, MD.
According to Michael Trudnak, CEO of Guardian Technologies, "we have long thought of Life Sciences as one of Guardian's primary markets for its advanced Intelligent Reasoning Information Systems (IRIS). This intelligent solution combined with imaging technologies, has applications across all areas of medical information."
"We feel this transaction provides Guardian with the most advanced platform currently available for penetrating the market for HIPAA compliance. This market is estimated to have a potential size of $160 billion. Our platform allows medical providers to store all medical records, documentation, and medical images in a secure 'point & click' software platform. It will be a significant contributor to our revenues in 2004," Trudnak continued...
...SUNNYVALE, Calif. and NEW YORK, Oct. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Factiva(TM), a Dow Jones and Reuters Company, and Verity Inc. (Nasdaq: VRTY), today announced an agreement that will help global enterprise customers to effectively and easily organize their intellectual capital assets.
The companies will jointly offer enterprise customers the opportunity to integrate a set of Factiva's industry-specific taxonomies with Verity's intellectual capital management software, K2 Enterprise. In addition, customers can gain access to Factiva's global collection of nearly 8,000 content sources, and engage the taxonomy and technical experts of Factiva Client Solutions.
Under the terms of the partnership, Factiva will offer its content and taxonomy expertise, including strategy and implementation -- adaptable to the specific needs and rules of an organization -- for use with Verity's flagship intellectual capital management solution, K2 Enterprise. Factiva will offer its established general business taxonomy for companies, industries, regions and subjects, as well as its recently announced specialized pharmaceutical and healthcare taxonomy. Factiva Client Solutions, including its taxonomy specialists, will now be available to assist with Verity implementations...
...ARLINGTON, Va., Oct. 28 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- CACI International Inc
(NYSE: CAI) announced that it has been awarded two prime contracts by the Department of Defense (DoD) to support TRICARE, the military's healthcare program. One contract calls for CACI to provide management planning and resources to help centralize TRICARE's marketing and education capabilities, while the second calls for CACI to support TRICARE's customer call center.
With a total estimated value of $60 million, both contracts have a duration of one base year and four option years. The awards increase CACI's DoD client base and support the company's growing business in DoD healthcare services...
Business Wire :: Primus Knowledge Solutions Reports Quarterly Profit and Revenue Growth
...During the quarter Primus added several new customers, including a significant wireless provider, First Consulting Group, Genentech, Red Hat and others and had repeat business with Airbus, Eastman Kodak, Hewlett-Packard, IBM, Washington Mutual Bank and others.
Also during the third quarter, Primus received the 2003 STAR Award for "Best Support Technology Vendor" from the Service & Support Professionals Association (SSPA), the leading industry association for IT support professionals...
October 27, 2003
notable judiths - judith ortiz cofer...
Judith Ortiz Cofer is the author of Woman in Front of the Sun: On Becoming a Writer, a collection of essays, of a novel, The Line of the Sun, of Silent Dancing, a collection of essays and poetry, of two books of poetry, Terms of Survival and Reaching for the Mainland, and of The Latin Deli: Prose and Poetry. Her work has appeared in The Georgia Review, Kenyon Review, Southern Review, Glamour and other journals. Her work has been included in numerous textbooks and anthologies including: Best American Essays 1991, The Norton Book of Women's Lives, The Norton Introduction to Literature, The Norton Introduction to Poetry, The Heath Anthology of American Literature, The Pushcart Prize, and the O. Henry Prize Stories.
A PEN/Martha Albrand Special Citation in non-fiction was awarded to her for Silent Dancing, also the Anisfield Wolf Book Award for The Latin Deli, and her work has been selected for the Syndicated Fiction Project. She has received fellowships from the NEA and the Witter Bynner Foundation for poetry. A collection of short stories, An Island Like You: Stories of the Barrio, was named a Best Book of the Year, 1995-96 by the American Library Association. It was awarded the first Pura Belpre medal by REFORMA of ALA in 1996. La linea del sol, the Spanish translation by Elena Olazagasti-Segovia of The Line of the Sun, was published in 1997 by the University of Puerto Rico Press. In 1998, The Year of Our Revolution: New and Selected Stories and Poems was awarded a Paterson Book Prize by the Poetry Center at Passaic County Community College. The Spanish translation by Elena Olazagasti-Segovia of Silent Dancing, Bailando en silencio was published by Arte Publico Press in 1998.
She is the 1998 recipient of the Christ-Janner Award in Creative Research from the University of Georgia. The Rockerfeller Foundation awarded her a residency at the Bellagio, Italy Conference Center in 1999. During spring 2001, she was Vanderbilt University's Gertrude and Harold S. Vanderbilt Visiting Writer in Residence. Judith Ortiz Cofer is the Franklin Professor of English at the University of Georgia.
building a knowledge society...
UNDP News Bulletins :: UNDP Launches second Arab Human Development Report in Amman
...Amman, Jordan, 20 October 2003:The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) today launched its groundbreaking new Arab Human Development Report in a ceremony attended by leading Arab intellectuals and opinion leaders and hosted by the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
The new report - titled Arab Human Development Report 200- Building A Knowledge Society focuses on the current state of learning and intellectual inquiry in the Arab world. "In today's world, knowledge has become the key to progress and growth," said Dr. Rima Khalaf, UN Assistant Secretary-General and Director of the Regional Bureau for Arab States in UNDP. "Knowledge increasingly defines the line between wealth and poverty, between capability and powerlessness and between human fulfilment and frustration."
Dr. Khalaf, who supervised the writing of the report, made her remarks at an event this morning attended by senior Jordanian officials, Arab and international diplomatic missions, distinguished Arab personalities, the report's advisory board, and the media.
Dr. Khalaf was joined by H.E. Dr. Marwan Muasher, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Jordan and Dr. Clovis Maksoud, Vice President of the Report's Advisory Board. Minister Muasher in his speech added: "Jordan is convinced that the Report provides an effective basis for addressing contemporary challenges to the Arab world. Our faith is reflected in the adoption of its core messages by His Majesty King Abdullah II and Her Majesty Queen Rania."
Muasher said that Jordan is committed to working in the framework of the Report's recommendation to pursue its own human development plans, and believes that Arab countries should not respond defensively to the report's findings or deny that some aspects of the status quo called for action. "We have to work courageously and with commitment to put right what is clearly wrong and build on our positive achievements," he said.
The Report, which is published by UNDP and co-sponsored by the Arab Fund for Social Development is written by Arabs for Arabs and outlines a vision of self-determined change, based on internal social reform and scrupulous self-criticism. The team concluded that successful reform of the region can only be initiated from within.
In order for the Arab region to achieve a knowledge society, the team of writers concluded the report by offering the region five strategic steps, dubbed the "five pillars":
* Guaranteeing the key freedoms of opinion, speech and assembly through democratic governance, supported by a legal framework
* Universal access to high quality education
* Making science an integral part of Arab societies, encouraging research and development and joining the information revolution
* Shifting rapidly towards knowledge-based and value-added production
* Developing an authentic, broadminded and enlightened Arab knowledge model
The landmark ceremony was followed by a press conference with the AHDR 2003 team and a presentation by Dr. Nader Fergany, the lead author of the Report. ...
For more information visit the Arab Human Development Report 2003.
UNDP - United Nations Development Programme is the UN's global development network, advocating for change and connecting countries to knowledge, experience and resources to help people build a better life.
To receive more UNDP news bulletins about development issues and projects around the world, please subscribe to UNDP News Bulletins...
layer 3 vpn...
...NAPERVILLE, Ill., Oct. 27 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Tellabs' expertise in IP/MPLS data services was proven at the Isocore Internetworking Lab's industry-first IP-optical integration test featuring IP services delivered over an optical core. This test, which included the new Tellabs(R) 8820 multi-service switch router, the Tellabs(R) 5500 NGX-S transport switch and the Tellabs(TM) MetroWatch element manager's GMPLS software, demonstrated an IP/MPLS application delivered over a fully-dynamic, intelligent optical core that was built using a GMPLS control plane with routing. By using a single control plane to integrate an IP/MPLS application with an existing optical infrastructure, carriers will be able to simplify provisioning of network connections, increase network efficiency by allocating capacity on demand and significantly reduce the operational costs of optical networks.
"Tellabs is demonstrating for service providers our expertise in IP/MPLS data services and optical networking interoperability," said Greg Nulty, senior vice president of technology planning for Tellabs. "During Isocore's industry-first IP-optical integration test, Tellabs showed how Layer 1 through Layer 3 networking, multi-vendor interoperability and dynamic network signalling protocols can help our customers save money."
During the Isocore testing, the Tellabs 8820 multi-service switch router uniquely combined the functionality of an edge router, ATM multi-service switch, Frame Relay switch and Ethernet edge switch into one compact platform. Designed to provide carriers with tremendous flexibility to cost-effectively address several data service applications with minimal investment, the Tellabs 8820 multi-service switch router seamlessly interoperated and enabled three MPLS-based applications during the Isocore multi-vendor testing:
-- Layer 2 virtual private network (VPN) application using the Internet
Engineering Task Force's (IETF) Martini draft, which defines point-to-
point MPLS connections that support virtual local networks or frame
relay/ATM;
-- Layer 3 VPN application using the IETF's RFC-2547bis specification,
which enables IP/MPLS-based IP VPNs to help carriers offer new, high-
quality IP services over their network; and
-- Virtual Private LAN services (VPLS) application using the IETF's VPLS-
over-MPLS draft, which enables carriers to offer point-to-point or
point-to-multi-point WAN extensions of customers' LAN-based Ethernet
networks at costs lower than other WAN-based alternatives.
The Tellabs 5500 NGX-S transport switch, a multi-bandwidth management system that helps carriers reduce their capital expenses by integrating wideband, broadband and Ethernet-over-SONET into a single compact, scalable platform, supported the Isocore test. The Tellabs 5500 NGX-S transport switch provided interoperability with four other vendors' equipment and established information flows through the core SONET infrastructure.
The Tellabs MetroWatch element manager's GMPLS software enabled the first- ever interworking between the IETF's GMPLS and ITU's OIF-UNI specifications for signalling between the IP routing network and optical transport network.
"There were several significant achievements in this testing, including running IP/MPLS applications over a dynamically configured optical transport network, evaluation of the two basic architectural models for the IP optical control integration, namely the peer and the overlay models and their interworking," said Dr. Bijan Jabbari of Isocore. "Tellabs was a key participant in this testing and helped facilitate the interworking between these two architectures."
The Tellabs equipment that was part of this integration test will be showcased in a live interoperability demonstration at the Isocore headquarters in McLean, Va., on Oct. 29, 2003, following the MPLS 2003 International Conference. During the conference, Andrew G. Malis, research fellow for the Tellabs Advanced Data Products group, will present "MPLS Beyond Service Provider Cores" on Oct. 28, 2003, at 4:45 p.m. In addition, Tellabs representatives will be available at the MPLS 2003 International Conference in booth 104.
The goal of Isocore's Internetworking Lab is to advance internetworking through technology validation and product verification and to promote development and rapid deployment of innovative networking technologies. For more information about the Isocore's Internetworking Lab visit isocore.com .
Tellabs (Nasdaq: TLAB) provides innovative data switching and bandwidth management solutions to help carriers around the world move communications traffic efficiently, effectively and profitably. The world communicates through Tellabs(TM); more than two-thirds of telephone calls and Internet sessions in several countries, including the United States, flows through Tellabs equipment. Tellabs customers include many of the world's largest and strongest carriers. Tellabs experts design, develop, deploy and support our solutions throughout telecommunications networks in more than 100 countries worldwide. For more information, please visit tellabs.com...
knowledge economy news...
Eleven stories today on the continuing global conversation on the knowledge economy and the growth and maturation of knowledge societies. This topic has been burgeoning in coverage lately. Enjoy.
Business Day :: China third in R&D spending: OECD
...SHANGHAI - China has jumped to third in the world in the amount of money it spends on research and development, a report by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) shows.
Total research and development spending in China in 2001 reached nearly 60 billion dollars, behind only the United States and Japan who had expenditures of 282 billion and 104 billion respectively, said the Paris-based group in a report published every two years.
China came in ahead of Germany's 54 billion dollars, while India spent about 19 billion, putting it among the top 10 countries worldwide. The OECD data, which measures trends in the knowledge-based economy, said that spending in China has grown rapidly, from 0.6 percent of gross domestic product in 1996 to 1.1% in the latest year.
Most of the rise in research and development expenditure is due to higher business investment, a sign that China has moved quickly towards developing its knowledge-based industries. In China, 60% of the spending in 2001 came from domestic and foreign companies, with the rest coming from the government.
In the past two years multinationals such as Alcatel, General Electric and computer chip manufacturers such as Infineon have set up research centres in China in order to take advantage of lower costs and a comparatively cheap, educated labour force.
Most of research goes into applied technologies, such as the development of new cell phones or auto technology that then uses conventional engineering techniques.
China now has the second highest number of researchers in the world with 743,000, behind the 1.3 million in the United States but ahead of Japan and Russia, with 648,000 and 505,000 respectively.
For the group of 30 OECD countries, spending as a proportion of total output in 2001 was 2.3%, with major non-OECD economies currently accounting for 17% of global research expenditure.
Among individual OECD members, Sweden topped the list with spending at 4.3% of total output, while the US was on 2.8 percent and Britain 1.9%...
Business News :: Australia-US talks turn tense
...Talks on an Australia-US free-trade agreement resumed yesterday with the hardest issues yet to be negotiated and opposition rising among union, consumer, film and TV industry groups.
Key issues remain agriculture, Australia's pharmaceutical benefits scheme, local content rules for film and TV, and services and investment arrangements.
A deal must be finalised by the end of the year to meet the deadline set by President George W. Bush and Prime Minister John Howard, and to enable ratification by the US Congress before next year's American elections.
As negotiations began yesterday, unionists protested outside Parliament House against a deal they said would destroy Australian jobs.
"Thousands of jobs will be lost in our manufacturing industries if we go ahead with this agreement," said Australian Manufacturing Workers Union national secretary Doug Cameron. "Our Government is trading away our future capacity to be part of the knowledge economy by destroying our capacity to manufacture." ...
vnunet :: Human factors key to success in IT
By Rachel Fielding
...IT professionals must develop good interpersonal skills and emotional intelligence if they are to succeed, according to experts at a recent IDC technology forum in Paris.
Chief information officers (CIOs) attending the event were told that companies that ignore the human factors in IT projects leave themselves at greater risk of failure.
While innovation and technology enhancements have the potential dramatically to improve business processes, speakers at the conference stressed that failing to recognise the impact of IT on people could render investments at best wasted and at worse counterproductive. ...
it is not just the feelings and perceptions of internal users that IT professionals need to take into account.
"Customers are taking control," said Patricia Seybold, chief executive of Patricia Seybold Group, a US-based e-commerce consulting company.
"Thanks to the internet and mobile devices customers can be much more demanding about comparing products. Customers are voting with their feet in that they have not all chosen to do business direct."
Searching for information and purchasing products, whether face-to-face, over the phone or online, can be challenging for customers.
Seybold insisted that IT departments must have the customers' experience uppermost in their minds when developing channels to market.
In an increasingly competitive environment, where customer allegiance lasts only as long as the experience is positive, the risks for firms that don't account for customers' needs and wants are obvious.
Seybold believes that this approach should also be applied to internal staff.
"In a knowledge economy: the quality of talent firms employ and the ability to retain 'knowledge assets' become critical to success," she argued. "Helping staff do their jobs by offering easy access to data is a key step."...
2theadvocate :: San Diego's experience shows research is key to development
By CHAD CALDER
...Baton Rouge's dream of a thriving biotech industry rests on university and community leaders recognizing that scientific research and discovery is an essential component of economic development, a San Diego academician says.
Dr. Alan Paau, assistant vice chancellor for technology transfer and intellectual property at the University of California at San Diego, said the philosophy of his university and the political establishment has been crucial to making San Diego the fourth-largest city for biotechnology and biomedicine.
"UCSD is here to serve the community," Paau recalled the university's chancellor once telling him, "and industry is an important part of the community."
Paau said the top biotechnology centers that cities across the country are trying to emulate are all home to research institutions.
First-ranked San Francisco has Stanford, UC San Francisco and UC Berkeley; second-ranked Cambridge, Mass., has Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology; third-ranked San Diego has UCSD; and fourth-ranked Raleigh, N.C., anchored by Research Triangle Park, has Duke University, the University of North Carolina and North Carolina State. ...
Paau said physical proximity is the key to building a closely knit, knowledge-based economy. Employees working near the university will spend time there, meeting visiting researchers, attending lectures and integrating themselves into the culture of academia, he said. And researchers will be more apt to serve on boards and act as consultants, he added.
"If you're 30 miles away, it's not conducive to that kind of environment," Paau said. Paau also said researchers are sensitive to how much their political leadership truly values their work.
A research community that sees its city and state taking tech development seriously will start to produce technology that is commercially viable. If it hears only talk -- or nothing at all -- researchers will be more likely to conduct research for knowledge's sake, he said...
The Nation :: Business ethics stressed at Apec event
by Kitipong Urapeepatanapong
... I have recently been highly critical of a lack of effective enforcement as undermining the "knowledge-based economy" (KBE). Apec made three key points on this. Firstly, make the standards simpler. This is a point I have already made. Second, concentrate on capacity building, which means that special investigation bodies need to be established and given the required resources as the normal police do not have the necessary expertise. This also needs to include judicial and prosecutor training. Thirdly, regulators must be strong, active and independent...
eTaiwanNews :: Conference on competition laws to start tomorrow
...Taiwan's Fair Trade Commission (FTC) has organized the International Conference on Competition Policies and Laws - the Future Development of Competition Framework. Tomorrow and Wednesday, experts on globalization and the development of a competition framework will deliver speeches on the topic at the Howard International House.
"This conference will dwell on issues that impact the public good," said Dr. Tzong-leh Hwang, chairman of the Fair Trade Commission. "These include globalization, intellectual property rights and a competition framework for financial reform."
Twenty-nine scholars and experts from 13 countries plus delegates from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) will speak on various topics such as Harmonization of Competition Laws, Regional Cooperation between Competition Authorities and Globalization and the Development of Competition Framework.
"Since our establishment in 1992, the Fair Trade Commission has actively carried out initiatives in accordance with law, promoted economic development, safeguarded the public interest, and kept in step with international trends," said Hwang. "But rapid technological development has propelled the world into the age of the knowledge-based economy and a number of issues need to be discussed within a global framework." ...
Telecom.paper: Flemish research center for broadband technology gets subsidy
...The Flemish government has officially approved the foundation of an interdisciplinary virtual research center for broadband technology, as part of its priority to encourage a high developed knowledge society. The center will have no special focus, but is to develop and research all aspects of broadband technology. The initiative will be launched before the end of the year and will receive an annual subsidy of EUR 15 million. The Flemish governments points out a number of fields in which broadband technology research can be conducted: interactive digital television, availability of ICT in health care, tourism, and teleworking...
The Scientist :: Euro research area agreement
By Stephen Pincock
...The European Research Area project was launched at the European Council at Lisbon in March 2000 in an effort to strengthen the competitiveness of Europe's knowledge-based economy by creating a research analogue for the "common market" that exists for goods and services in the European Union.
Last year, the European Council meeting in Barcelona set the goal of attaining a level of 3% of gross domestic product for research and development investment in the European Union by 2010, to achieve the objectives set out at Lisbon.
Euroscience, an association that aims to influence science and technology policy, welcomed the announcement with some reservations.
"This is an excellent idea," said Jean-Patrick Connerade, president of Euroscience. "In principle, what it does is open up the Commission to organizations which are external to it, and therefore it is a welcome development because it achieves a greater integration of the European scientific community."
But in line with Euroscience's grassroots perspective, he noted that the statement focuses on integrating institutional, "top-down" research.
"Many of us feel that bottom-up research, or blue sky research, at the European level is still not really very well organized," he told The Scientist.
"Some of Europe's best scientists are in the organizations listed, but not all of them. What we're concerned about is to make sure we do not forget individual scientists of very high quality pursuing projects which perhaps are not within such institutional structures," Connerade said...
WISH News 8 :: Changes at State Universities Signal Economic Shift
...Five of Indiana's seven public universities have replaced their presidents since 2000. At the state's 31 private colleges, nine have chosen new presidents since 2000.
The wave of new presidents comes as the state undertakes a transition from a manufacturing-based to a knowledge-based economy. Colleges are being called on to support new ventures in life sciences, advanced manufacturing and information technology...
4NI - Northern Ireland :: Two Curriculum bodies meet in Armagh
...Ireland's two main Curriculum Bodies are to meet in Armagh today and tomorrow to discuss education issues of common interest across the island of Ireland.
The Council for the Curriculum, Examinations and Assessment (CCEA) and their Southern Irish counterparts, the National Council for Curriculum and Assessment (NCCA) will meet in the City Hotel, Armagh to discuss developments in e-learning, education for employability and reviewing the primary and 16 - 19 curriculum.
Welcoming the NCCA delegates, Chairman of CCEA, Dr Alan Lennon said: "It is striking to note the similarity of the challenges facing our two organizations and thus more important than ever that we share ideas and approaches."
Dr. Catherine O' Brien, Chairperson of NCCA, added: "As the leading development in education north and south, both Councils face a range of common challenges, not least of which is ensuring that young people are ready to contribute to and participate in the knowledge society. Both Councils are committed to moving our schools and students into the forefront of this development."
This is the sixth occasion on which the members of the two Councils have met in joint session...
Gulf News :: Education key to reforms
By Mohammed Almezel, Bureau Chief
...Investing in education and promoting knowledge are the fundamental keys to address the lack of basic freedoms in the Arab world and empower its women, a prominent Gulf academic said yesterday.
"We have to admit that there is a huge knowledge gap between the Arab world and the so-called developed world," Dr Rafia'a Ghubash, President of the Bahrain-based Arabian Gulf University, said.
"Education budgets in most Arab countries are minimal when compared to countries in other parts of the world," she noted.
She said the region which is under military and cultural attack needs to invest in and promote knowledge because it is the first and the main line of defence."
"Defending our culture and language, to me, is far important than the military defence," Dr Rafia'a said. Knowledge is also the key to reform the political and social systems in the region, she added.
She was speaking at the UN House in Manama following the official launch of the 2003 Arab Human Development Report (AHDR), the second of a four-part series of reports that aim at "building human development in the Arab world."
The report, written by a group of Arab scholars and opinion leaders, is at once descriptive and prescriptive, with bold recommendations for change and detailed analyses of the current state of education, scientific research, the media, the publishing industry, culture encompassing religion, intellectual heritage and the Arabic language, and other building blocks of a "knowledge society" in the Arab world, said Dr Khalid Allouch, the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) resident representative in Bahrain...
October 25, 2003
knowledge worker news...
Four stories today on knowledge work and worker issues in the news. The news buzz on knowledge work has been sparse recently, and focusing on the negatives rather than the positives of the globalization of knowledge work and workers.
MSNBC News :: In Virginia, India seen as job-napper
By M. Kalyanaraman
A GLOBAL PULL
...Steffanie Wilk, assistant professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School of Business, says these call centers, whether in the United States or abroad, tend to migrate to economically depressed areas with an educated population.
"Companies can close down a center at a flick of a switch and shift their computers to other places," she says.
In the early years of the telecommunications industry, these call centers went to the South and to cities like Phoenix in the West and the Dakotas in the Midwest. Eventually they migrated to English-speaking foreign countries with well-educated workforces and lower wage costs - Ireland and Australia and now India - where some of the largest call center outsourcers are now located.
These jobs fall under different categories, and the exact figures on job losses in the United States are not available. Officials at the Department of Commerce said they did not have the job figures and are trying to analyze the impact of outsourcing of call centers. However, Bureau of Labor Statistics figures show that since January 2001, 35,000 jobs have been lost in telemarketing bureaus alone.
Chris Slevin, a spokesman for Global Trade Watch, a consumer advocacy group founded by activist Ralph Nader, says the loss of these jobs should really be looked at in terms of foreign trade.
"When most people think about trade, they think of tariffs and quotas on trade in goods," he says. "Today's trade agreements are increasingly focused more on the service industry, which includes the trade in actual people, workers and granting foreign companies new rights and privileges within the boundaries of other countries."
There have been attempts to bring legislation to prevent outsourcing of these jobs. The New Jersey state Senate passed a bill in December 2002 seeking to restrict outsourcing of jobs in government contracts, but the state Assembly has so far not voted on it. A bill that requires people who handle calls to identify themselves and their location was introduced in the Assembly in May.
Saffo, the analyst from the Institute for the Future, says such legislation is out of step in a globalized economy, but he expects similar bills to come up even in Congress.
"Any knowledge work, including law clerks, software, secretarial work, is fair game in cyberspace," he says...
Newindpress.com :: Concern over outsourcing, but no solutions
...WASHINGTON: Concern was expressed at a hearing before the US House Committee on Small Business on the outsourcing of high tech jobs to countries like India and China. All those who testified noted that US companies were moving more service jobs overseas because of some crucial advantages to expand globally. However, those who testified before the committee differed in their views on how to prevent or even reverse the trend of high-tech jobs going overseas.
They pointed out that trade barriers were falling because India, Russia and China and many other countries had technological expertise and because high-speed digital connections and new technologies made it far easier to communicate from afar.
Besides this, for instance, a Java programmer in India, fresh out of college can be hired for $5,000 a year versus $60,000 a year in the US. The technology is such that why be in New York, when you can be 9,000 miles away with far less expense, they said.
Witnesses before the committee, headed by Don Manzullo, Republican-Illinois, were Harris Miller, president of Information Technology Association of America (ITAA); Ron Hira, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-USA); Robert Dupree, vice president of American Textile Manufacturers Institute (ATMI); and Natasha Humphries, a software engineer from Santa Clara, California.
Committee chairman Manzullo said moving American jobs offshore could have "serious consequences for the long-term economic viability of this country. The U.S. is in danger of losing its competitive advantage in the technology sector".
"Even though the U.S. economy has recovered from its most recent recession, it has largely been a jobless recovery," he added.
To combat the phenomenon, Manzullo urged passage of a bill that would exclude domestic manufacturers and producers from taxation of up to 10 percent. He also advocated a more US-centred purchasing plan for the Department of Defence (DoD).
"It is imperative that Congress strengthen and fight for stronger 'Buy America' legislation," he said. "These provisions include increasing from 50 percent to 65 percent the amount of US content required in major DoD purchases."
But Harris Miller, the ITAA president, was sceptical that legislation would solve the problem.
"ITAA believes that the US cannot legislate or regulate its way out of this perplexing situation," he said in his written testimony. "At the same time, to do nothing ... is to risk an ever-increasing number of knowledge-worker jobs disappearing overseas."
Miller advocated "detailed analysis of the situation, examination of various policy and programmatic approaches to address identified challenges, and a plan of action to implement critical policies and programmes."
Miller said "We also need an increased spending by the federal government on Information Technology and R&D."
Ron Hira, who chairs the research and development policy committee at the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE-USA), disagreed, saying investment in education would fail without "reasonably secure" career opportunities for graduates.
Himself being of Indian ethnicity, Hira mentioned how Indian students largely opt for mathematics, science, engineering, R&D, software, chip design and computer technology. So much so they have built a vast pool of highly qualified technical personnel, making India, a country of more talent than capital.
"And while overseas outsourcing cannot be blamed for all of the unemployment facing American engineers, it certainly is a major contributing factor."
Natasha Humphries, who was laid off recently as a senior software quality assurance engineer, narrated her own personal experience of facing tough competition from H1-B visa professionals and from the offshore technical team in India.
Saying how "off-shoring has created a devastating economic climate throughout the US", she suggested that Congress quickly revise current legislation and enact new legislation with incentives to maintain high tech jobs in the US...
Boston.com :: Fearing brain drain
By Diane E. Lewis
...High housing costs, a tough job market, and a perceived lack of urban vibrancy are discouraging many recent college graduates from staying in the Boston area, according to a joint report released yesterday by the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce and the Boston Foundation.
The report, "Preventing A Brain Drain: Talent Retention in Greater Boston," indicates that 50 percent of graduates in 2003 who received associate, bachelor's, or graduate degrees from 10 institutions in the metropolitan area left the state.
That statistic is of real concern to business officials, who fear Boston, long known for its knowledge workers, could lose its economic edge as other cities vie for bright young talent.
"If this continues, the loss of college graduates will have a serious impact on Boston's economy as it begins to pick up," said Paul Guzzi, the chamber's president. "We want to retain the talent that will create the new software companies and the new high-tech companies."
The report concluded 20 percent of the graduates -- 2,100 were polled -- would have left anyway. But the other 80 percent might have stayed if the Boston area offered more job opportunities, rents and home prices that are more affordable, and a more diverse and vibrant atmosphere, the study said. A separate study released yesterday, from the Boston Redevelopment Authority, also underscored the importance of young people to the area's economy.But it sounded an optimistic note, pointing out that Boston has retained more young people than most other major US cities. The BRA report, "Boston's Dynamic Workforce: Attract, Retain, Absorb," said young adults -- defined as 20- to 34-year-olds -- made up 33 percent of the city's population in 2000, down from 36 percent in 1990. It attributed the decline to demographic shifts that are taking place around the country.
Despite the drop, Boston is second only to Austin, Texas, in terms of the percentage of young adults. Young adults make up 34 percent of Austin's population, the BRA said...
ARNnet :: Intel's Barrett warns IT execs on brain drain
by Robert L. Mitchell, IDG News Service
...In a wide-ranging keynote at Gartner's IT Expo, Intel chief executive officer, Craig Barrett, cautioned the audience of corporate IT professionals that their companies risked falling behind global competitors if they didn't ramp up IT spending.
He also slammed the state of California's political system as "anti-business," blamed the American primary school education system for a shortage of computer scientists and warned of a continued migration of American IT jobs overseas.
Barrett said the current political crisis in California was the result of years of anti-business legislation.
The California-based chip-maker had more US employees outside California than it did in the state.
"We are diversifying out of California," he said.
When asked about future investments in California, Barrett replied, "It's very simple," emphatically shaking his head 'no'. "There's not much incentive at this time." While Barrett said he didn't expect Governor-elect, Arnold Schwarzenegger, to repeat those policies, he didn't say whether the change in leadership would affect Intel's view of the California business climate.
Barrett's assessment of public education was equally blunt.
"The K-12 system in the US does an excellent job of weeding out anyone who's interested in science," he said.
Barrett also criticised public education's seniority-based system.
"Meritocracy should rule, not seniority," he said.
Barrett also dismissed the idea that bringing more technology into schools would solve the problem.
"If technology was a solution to the education problem, we'd [already] be far ahead," he said.
The end result of the current educational system was a shortage of US talent and a situation where 50 per cent of all advanced degrees were awarded to foreign nationals, he said. US-funded colleges paid to educate them.
"And then we send them home and the jobs follow them," Barrett said.
To reverse the brain drain, Barrett said the US should "staple a green card to every diploma. [That] would do wonders for the US economy." While he said the ratio of domestic Intel employees has remained constant at 60 per cent during the past decade, increasing competition from US-trained IT professionals in Russia, China and India and the "dwindling number of IT graduates in the US" could change that.
"There is huge competition coming for jobs," he said.
Those three countries could produce between 250 million and 500 million knowledge workers.
Barrett said that while European and Asian companies continued to spend on IT, dthe U.S. enterprise market was "the weakest we see today". While Intel had seen "a bit of strength" in the market after two-and-a-half years of flat sales, US global competitiveness would suffer if enterprises waited much longer, Barrett said.
"The US is still the most powerful economy in the world," he said. "If you want to maintain that, you have to continue to invest. The world is the economic play space going forward."...
October 24, 2003
notable judiths - judith kelman...
Judith Kelman has published thirteen books, is the recipient of the 2002 Mary Higgins Clark Award, and her articles and essays have appeared in Redbook, Ladies' Home Journal, McCalls, Bride's, Seventeen, WorkingMother, Glamour, Publishers Weekly and The New York Times among others.
Judith has an online Writers' Room - recipient of the Page One Award for Literary Contribution - where she addresses the queries and quandaries of aspiring writers.
October 23, 2003
happy belated blogiversary...
jim mcgee's musings
fine fodder for fomenting
knowledge work wisdom...
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
in celebration of jim's two year blogiversary and his generous 'virtual' accessibility...
knowledge economy news...
[there are nine news stories in this post around Beijing, Taipei, Virginia, UK, Calcutta, Auckland, New Jersey, New Zealand, and Glasgow.]
Xinhuanet :: WEF to hold 22nd Business Summit in Beijing
...GENEVA, Oct. 23 (Xinhuanet) -- The World Economic Forum (WEF) is to hold its 22nd annual China Summit in Beijing on Nov. 6 and 7.
WEF said in statement on Thursday that this year's Summit is unique in that it brings together international organizations and the Chinese government in close partnership.
The meeting, "China Business Summit 2003 and the World Economic Development Declaration," with more than 600 participants from foreign and Chinese companies, will tackle discussions around the Summit theme of China under New Leadership.
International partners include the International Finance Corporation (IFC), United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and the World Trade Organization (WTO), while the local partner for the Summit is the China Enterprise Confederation.
As China's leading forum for local and foreign business, the Summit will draw upon a rigorous program that captures and charts China's growth and development.
WEF said the program will also benefit from the participation of the Chinese government at all levels, led by Executive Vice-Premier Huang Ju, who will give a special address to update participants on priorities and strategies for sustaining economic growth and developing the environment for business.
Other topics of discussion at the Summit include: the outlook for the Chinese economy, including foreign direct investment, growth in the western regions, the knowledge economy, agriculture and state enterprise reform...
Taipei Times :: Council promotes science with a new radio program
By Chiu Yu-Tzu
...Believing that popularized scientific information is the driving force behind a knowledge-based economy, the National Science Council (NSC) plans to launch a mass media program later this month to help ordinary people better understand the world of science.
Wei Che-ho, minister for the NSC, said at a press conference yesterday that people's daily lives have been deeply influenced by ongoing scientific and technological developments. To most laypeople, however, the technical terms used to describe the developments are incomprehensible.
"Our new science education program will translate scientific jargon into plain language, shortening the distance between the public and scientific development," Wei said...
Collegiate Times :: Warner, partners celebrate Institute
by Tiffany Hoffman, Managing Editor
...Gov. Mark Warner, representatives from Virginia Tech and several other businesses and colleges are meeting in southside Virginia today to celebrate the progress of their collaborative project - the Institute for Advanced Learning and Research.
Warner will speak about the necessity of focusing on smaller job employers in southside Virginia rather than taking the 'rifle approach' and basing the whole economy on the large manufacturing companies, said Ellen Qualls, Warner's spokesperson.
"It needs to be a place where research, tourism, racing teams and track work capture the imagination and dollars in Southside Virginia without counting on one big company to provide all the jobs," Qualls said. "The Institute is a way to train the workforce to be entrepreneurial and (make people) able to function in a knowledge-based economy."...
Times Online :: Making things should be the springboard for future growth
By Graham Searjeant, Financial Editor
...In the UK, services have been exposed, by one means or another, to most of the competitive and price pressures that drive the thingmakers to ever greater productivity, innovation and cost-cutting. Our top economic challenge is somehow to achieve comparable gains in monopoly public services such as healthcare, which make up an ever-growing proportion of the economy but are imprisoned behind bars of artificial restrictions and regulations and locked doors of habitual practices that even German banks might find bizarre.
Across the board, however, service industries are unlikely to be able to drive living standards forward at the same pace as those that transform raw materials into goods. Factories take the lead, even in the information revolution.
Over the past three years, for instance, output per hour worked in the UK economy has grown 3.8 per cent. Over the same period, output per hour worked in manufacturing grew 9.5 per cent. Other production industries such as energy were not far behind.
These were not vintage years. The thingmakers have been suffering from global economic stagnation, relatively high interest rates and a relative high pound. The CBI's latest survey found that two thirds of the sector was suffering from excess capacity. In spite of the the euro strengthening, order books and prices have fallen relentlessly and there has been little respite from years of falling output. If the thingmakers had enjoyed a better run, the whole economy would have grown faster.
The US economy is healthier than ours to an important extent because, after a short but worse recession, its knowledge-based high-tech manufacturing is stronger. We cannot achieve that by intervention or subsidy. The City is perennially hostile to thingmakers because risks are often higher and results less predictable than those of the more solid consumer services.
We can, however, choose patent and labour laws, taxes, business rates, planning guidelines and transport policies more conducive to manufacturers who have to compete in volatile markets...
The Telegraph - Calcutta :: Kalam tip: calculated risk
...Sofia, Oct. 23: Into the final lap of his week-long three-nation tour, President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam strongly advised policy planners, decision-makers and business leaders in India to take calculated risks if the country is to realise the dream of becoming a developed nation by 2020.
"Nobody has succeeded without taking a risk; if you want to succeed you will have to take calculated risks," the President said yesterday while flying from Sudan to the Bulgarian capital. Kalam was sharing his impressions of the visit to the United Arab Emirates with the reporters accompanying him.
If there is one dominant lesson that India could learn from the Emirates' march to development and prosperity, it is that anything can be accomplished if vision and determination are backed by the courage to take risks, Kalam said...
Scoop :: Doctoral top achiever to aid medical research
...The Auckland University of Technology's first Top Achiever Doctoral Scholarship winner is helping power New Zealand's emerging knowledge economy with research he hopes will help to find new ways of fighting disease.
PhD candidate Paulo Gottgtroy is studying at the Knowledge and Engineering Research Discovery Institute (KEDRI), located at AUT's Technology Park in Penrose.
The scholarship, worth $28,000 per year over three years, was awarded by the Foundation for Research Science and Technology, a government funding body that invests in innovation with a view to fostering the creation of new knowledge.
Paulo Gottgtroy's research involves building an ontology, or conceptual framework, that makes biomedical knowledge and concepts that are sharable over computer applications and reusable for several purposes.
The ontology will bring together different techniques including statistical analysis, neural networking and ontology to find correlations in the information discovered.
Information collected from clinical patient data, geographical and demographic data, epidemiological data, pharmaceutical, and therapeutic data may be examined to form a clearer picture when correlations between the different types of information are discovered...
CourierPost :: The merger proposal
...Research universities support the educational, cultural, social, and economic needs of their regions. Such universities create the conditions for robust knowledge based growth. ...
Southern New Jersey can - in fact, must - evolve to compete in the knowledge economy. The region already has many assets: a hub for shipping and transportation, proximity to major markets, and good inventory for offices.
However, historic strengths in manufacturing and agriculture no longer provide the level of employment that South Jersey demands, and so we must look toward the knowledge economy to spur the continued vitality of this region.
We cannot move forward in the knowledge-based economy until the research capacity of the region's institutions is significantly expanded across a wide area of disciplines.
South Jersey needs a constant flow of science and technology research that can be adapted for commercial purposes.
That requires a sizeable mass of scholars producing these innovations and, collectively, becoming a magnet for attracting new enterprises.
South Jersey requires added research capacity in a wide array of disciplines.
Systems biology, information technology security, genomic research, geriatric medicine, nutraceuticals, nanotechnology, environmental science, molecular biology, biochemistry, software engineering, culturally competent health care and pharmaceuticals are prime examples of fields that will create new approaches to combating bioterrorism, developing new technologies, reclaiming brownfields, and improving healthcare and the quality of life for all residents.
In addition, we must add research strength in existing programs such as public policy, business, humanities, social sciences, and law...
New Zealand News :: GM release a gamble not worth the candle
by Joanna Goven
...The Prime Minister, Helen Clark, consistently characterises her refusal to extend the moratorium on applications for the release of genetically modified organisms into the environment as "rational".
The Environment Minister, Marian Hobbs, derides those who oppose lifting the moratorium as Luddites who are anti-research. Decisions around GM need, she says, to be made with rational consideration.
But who is being irrational here? It is increasingly difficult to discern a rational argument for lifting the moratorium next Wednesday.
We have been told that lifting the moratorium is the only economically responsible path. But where is the evidence that pursuing a GM path will result in economic benefit?
We have spent millions building a clean, green image. Research carried out by Lincoln University for the Ministry for the Environment indicated that GM release would substantially devalue that brand. ...
Is it rational to sacrifice our existing agricultural and tourism market advantage for the advantage of intellectual property ownership that may well end up overseas? Where is the policy work to ensure that this does not happen?
We are told that extending the moratorium will lead to a drain in scientific expertise vital to a knowledge economy. Scientific expertise is diverse...
AUF | Agenda scientifique des membres de l'AUF
Conference 2004 : The Knowledge Economy in the Long Seventeenth Century - L'économie du savoir, 1580-1715 (Appel à communications jusqu'au 1er mars 2004)
Domaine : Langue française, francophonie, diversité linguistique
du 16 au 18 septembre 2004 à l'Université de Glasgow, Royaume-Uni
Organisation : The Society for Seventeenth-Century French Studies
...Résumé : The 27th Annual Conference of the Society for Seventeenth-Century French Studies Celebrating the 25th Anniversary of Seventeenth-Century French Studies
The University of Glasgow, September 16-18, 2004
This conference will explore the economic power of knowledge. Is it fair to claim that the knowledge economy of the twenty-first century has a lengthy genealogy which includes early modern France?
'A knowledge-driven economy is one in which the generation and exploitation of knowledge play the predominant part in the creation of wealth' (United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry, 1998). Knowledge workers are 'symbolic analysts', workers who manipulate symbols rather than machines. They include architects, fashion designers, researchers, teachers and policy analysts, and their product is what economists call 'non-rivalrous':
'He who receives an idea from me receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine receives light without darkening me.' - Thomas Jefferson...
October 22, 2003
weblogs in the news...
[there are five news stories in this post.]
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: ONA Invites Esther Dyson, Top Editors to Forecast Future of Online News
...CHICAGO, Oct. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- The Online News Association will bring together seven of digital media's most forward-thinkers -- including Esther Dyson, a foremost authority on emerging technologies -- for a bold look into the future. The experts will give their views on where online news is headed during the ONA Annual Conference Nov. 14 and 15 in Chicago. Leonard Apcar, Editor in Chief of The New York Times on the Web; Richard Deverell, Head of News Interactive, BBC News; Mitch Gelman, Senior Vice President and Executive Producer of CNN.com; Ruth Gersh, Editorial Director of AP Digital; Retha Hill, Vice President for Content, BET.com; Dean Wright, Vice President and Editor in Chief of MSNBC.com; and Dyson, Chairman of EDventure Holdings and author of "Release 2.0: A Design for Living in the Digital Age," will come together for a conference-concluding "super panel" titled "Back to the Future." They will address such questions as what role the "amateur" journalist may play and what the next "killer app" will be for news presentation and delivery.
"We've assembled a group of digital pioneers and editors who can provide insights on the current state of online journalism and scenarios for the future," said the panel's moderator Bruce Koon, ONA President and Executive News Editor, Knight Ridder Digital. "They, along with our audience, will have a lively discussion to help working professionals view news and technology in new and fresh ways."
The conference, which will be held at the historic Omni Orrington in Evanston, Ill, will also confront some of the most critical issues facing online journalists today. More than 20 online media experts will be on hand to participate in panel discussions focusing on everything from Weblogs to war coverage. Among the highlights from this year's panel line-up:
* FLOGGING THE BLOGS -- Bloggers and editors from four media sites will debate such questions as whether Weblog entries should be edited and if journalists should be allowed to blog about the same news they're reporting on...
WorkingForChange-BuzzFlash interview :: Tom Tomorrow
...If you are a fan of "This Modern World," you will love this BuzzFlash interview with Tom Tomorrow (if you want to know Tom's real name, you'll have to buy the book, as they say). BuzzFlash chats with Tom about politics, the art of composing cartoons, FOX News, the endless "material provided" by George W. Bush, and coming up with creative ideas in the shower.
Tom has a new collection of cartoons out called "The Great Big Book of Tomorrow: A Treasury of Cartoons." The Forward to the book answers the question, "Who is Tom Tomorrow," in more ways than one. Anyone living in "This Modern [Absurd] World" knows that you can't get enough of Tom Tomorrow...
BUZZFLASH: Moving away from politics a little bit, in terms of the creative process, do you get ideas in the shower? In the car? While you're sleeping? Or do you just sit down to a board? Writers always talk of writers' block. Is there a cartoonists' block?
TOMORROW: Yes, there absolutely is. And yes, sometimes the ideas do come to me in the shower, or when I'm walking the dog or whatever. That's ideal, because sometimes it's just like being hit by lightning. I see the whole thing. I see all four or six panels. I see exactly how it's going to go. It's almost like a flash. Boom -- right there -- got it. But I wish that happened more often, because my life would be considerably easier if it did. More often than not, I sit down on Monday morning and I read through the newspapers and I read through the news sites online. And I look at the blogs. And I just try to find that intersection between what's going on and what I can do with it and make it interesting and funny. It's the diagram where you have the overlapping circles. I try to find that space in the middle that leads to a cartoon. Frankly, sometimes it can take a long time. Sometimes I can have bad Mondays where I sit there for eight hours and I've got nothing. And those are bad days...
...PDC pre-event buzz already is receiving extensive attention in weblogs, with some 200 bloggers participating through PDC Bloggers, a clearinghouse for bloggers interested in PDC and associated technologies. PDC Bloggers serves as a place where bloggers can connect, whether or not they are attending PDC in person. Widespread blogger coverage is expected throughout PDC, as well as on MSDN(R)...
...MONTREAL, Oct. 22 /CNW Telbec/ - It's a first in Quebec! Since yesterday, around ten graduate students and their professors have been posting real-time updates to a weblog about the presentations and workshops at the joint RISQ-CANARIE conference being held in Montreal this week. The public can access the blog to follow the unfolding of the conference by visiting RISQ 2003 - CANARIE ANW2003. Visitors can also post questions and comments in real-time.
"RISQ is very pleased to be part of this novel experiment. By opening our conference to cyberspace, numerous Internet users will be able to keep a close eye on the presentations and workshops being given by world-class researchers and experts," said Mr. Pierre Bouchard, CEO of RISQ (Réseau d'informations scientifiques du Québec)...
Wired 11.11: The Connectors
By Jeff Howe
...In 1974, a Harvard sociologist made a seemingly unremarkable discovery. It is, in fact, who you know. His study asked several hundred white-collar workers how they'd landed their jobs. More than half credited a "personal connection." Duh. But then it got interesting: The researcher, Mark Granovetter, dug deeper and discovered that four-fifths of these backdoor hires barely knew their benefactors. As it turns out, close friends are great for road trips, intimate dinners, and the occasional interest-free loan, but they suck for job leads and blind dates - they know the same people you do. In other words, it's not so much who you know, but who you vaguely know. Granovetter called the phenomenon "the strength of weak ties." He had discovered the human node.
THE TECH NODE
Clay Shirky: Consultant, writer, and adjunct professor at NYU's graduate Interactive Telecommunications Program.
Node Cred: Shirky, 39, is one of the handful of people with justifiable claim to the digerati moniker. He's become a consistently prescient voice on networks, social software, and technology's effects on society. He publishes everywhere from the Harvard Business Review to The Wall Street Journal, but his most influential essays (like last February's "Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality") appear on Shirky.com.
Operating system: "I like to use email to broker introduction. There are three levels of email introduction: One is when you just provide a party with the other party's info. The second is when you say, 'Yeah, and use my name.' The third is sending email to both, CC'ing them. You have to be careful about which level you use. If you do it right, it's just enough of a spark to get people close."
Node wisdom: "The most important person you know is someone you haven't met. There was this urban myth rocketing around the Valley in the '90s that 500 people - certain CEOs and venture capitalists - ran the world. Then Shawn Fanning came along."...
km & blogging in the news...
CNET :: Blog on
By Stefanie Olsen
...Forget whistling while you work. Many Googlers are blogging while hard at work on the world's largest search engine, thanks to a simple technology Evan Williams developed. Nearly eight months after Google bought Blogger creator Pyra Labs, Williams is helping Google deploy the technology he built only as a side project in 1999--which is now part of a revolution in personal journaling.
As it does for thousands of people who use the Web logging (or blogging) tool to publish online, Blogger enables Google employees to update personal pages within seconds to the company intranet. Blogs are continually updated Web pages that often turn out to be personal journals or digital diaries, but they can also be news or politically focused. And they've caught on like wildfire: There are roughly 3 million active U.S. blogs, according to a report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project.
Williams, a Nebraska native, moved to the Bay Area in 1997 and worked on intranet Web development for O'Reilly & Associates. That liaison would prove fortuitous. Tim O'Reilly, the company's president and an early investor in Pyra, had friends at Google, and in October 2002, he suggested that the two companies meet.
Williams recently talked to CNET News.com about Google and the future of blogging...
How many people blog at Google?
Not sure what the count is, but I know there's a couple hundred or more. It's really interesting to see the network grow from scratch.
Do you use that to get to know one another or to keep up-to-date on projects?
A lot of people use it to keep up-to-date on projects and to share pointers or expertise. I've heard people comment on how it's way easier to know what's going on internally now. You can find out what's going on when you go there or when you're curious about it, but you don't have to be deluged or distracted from your normal day.
Do you think that's a viable area for knowledge management?
It's really interesting for internal communications. The term "knowledge management" has gotten a bad wrap, but some people say that's because systems have gotten too complicated. A Blogger-like system is the lowest common denominator to putting stuff up, which may be its benefit. If you can easily search over that stuff or follow topics of interest, I think it could be interesting, but it's not yet well explored...
October 21, 2003
social network news...
National Post :: Fast times at Friendster.com
by Mark Evans
Mentioned in this article, in order of appearance:
Friendster, Match.com, CMGI, Jupiter Research, Google, Yahoo!, Sequoia Ventures, Kleiner, Perkins, Caufield & Byers, Tribe.net, LinkedIn, IAC/InterActiveCorp, Evite, Microsoft, and Time Warner.
...In many ways, Friendster's popularity is similar to that of Google Inc. Both services are useful and user-friendly. Much like Google's early days, Friendster is looking for a viable business model.
This has not deterred angel investors and venture capitalists from getting excited about Friendster's prospects. The firm has raised money from several high-profile investors, including former Yahoo! Inc. chief executive Tim Koogle and Ram Shriram, a Google investor and board member.
There is also speculation, on which Mr. Abrams declined to comment, that Friendster has closed a US$10-million deal with Sequoia Ventures and Kleiner Perkins -- the two Silicon Valley venture capitalists that backed Google. The deal reportedly would give Friendster, which competes against Tribe.net and LinkedIn.com, a valuation of US$40-million.
Friendster's ability to attract a large amount of capital despite little revenue and no profit could be proof the dot-com boom is still alive and well. It also makes one think Friendster may be more of a financing play than a business plan. With so much traffic, it is an obvious target for an e-commerce firm looking to gain access to consumers with a lot of disposable income.
The most likely candidates are Barry Diller's InterActive Corp., which owns Match.com and the Evite.com invitation service; Microsoft Corp.; Time Warner Inc. and Yahoo!, which also has a large dating service. Conspiracy theorists would get plenty of ammunition from the fact Mr. Abrams happened to have a copy of Business Week magazine on his desk featuring Mr. Diller, who has quickly built an e-commerce empire through a series of acquisitions...
Business Wire :: Socialtext Unveils First Enterprise Social Software Collaboration Platform
...PALO ALTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 21, 2003--Socialtext Inc.(TM), a leading developer of enterprise social software, today introduced Socialtext Workspace 1.0(TM) the first social software collaboration platform to bring weblog and wiki-based technology into the enterprise.
Using easy-to-use, web-native tools, Socialtext Workspace provides a secure intranet website that anyone on a business team can access and edit without knowing HTML and with minimal training. Socialtext Workspace is designed for workgroup collaboration and project communication.
"We have developed a simpler way for people to work together," said Socialtext CEO Ross Mayfield. "Traditional enterprise software fails to serve users' needs for informal collaboration. As a result, people use email and attachments for most tasks, even though email itself is a victim of its own success. By channeling collaboration to a shared space for many-to-many interaction, people get their work done faster -- and the emergent link structure allows the best content and expertise to naturally rise to the top."
Socialtext Workspace 1.0 includes wiki and weblog functions adapted to the needs of the enterprise, including:
-- simple creation and administration of multiple workspaces for multiple groups and projects
-- secure, password-protected access with single sign-in to multiple workspaces
-- seamless integration with traditional, email-centered workflow
-- easy personalized navigation
In addition, Socialtext provides enterprise-level service, support and training. The company also announced the availability of an open source product, the Socialtext Kwikspace(TM). Socialtext Workspace and Socialtext Kwikspace inherit their modular design and open plug-in architecture from Kwiki, a well-respected and actively developed open source wiki core. Teams with technical skills who don't mind bearing the administration and support costs of an open source wiki can take advantage of easy installation, modularity and extensibility of Kwikspace. To reduce in-house costs and take advantage of enterprise security, scalability, and manageability, Kwikspace teams can seamlessly upgrade to the Socialtext Workspace, with its full-fledged business features.
Socialtext offers both a hosted service and a pre-configured appliance. Prices start at $30 per user per month or a Starter Package for five users for $995 for one year. Companies can experience Socialtext with a 30-day free trial at www.socialtext.com.
Socialtext Workspace is currently deployed with customers ranging from Fortune 500 companies to smaller startups to online communities...
Oakland Tribune Online :: Men hold the edge on gender gap odds
By Justin Pritchard, Associated Press
...Courtney Johnson of the San Francisco-based social networking company Emode, which launched an online dating service in the spring, recently gave a public talk on meeting your match.
"They're saying, I moved here because I know there's all these geeky guys who are waiting for the right person, but they can't find anybody," Johnson said. "People are too busy."...
The Straits Times :: Friendster takes Internet by storm
By Eugene Wee
...THINK of it as a warped pyramid selling scheme where, instead of cosmetics or health supplements, the commodity is people.
Only in this case, it's legal and costs nothing. Nobody gets cheated and everyone has a blast doing it, making new friends along the way.
If you're lucky, you might even score yourself a date. Friendster.com is taking the Internet by storm the way Napster first did four years ago...
The Straits Times :: Here you can make pals and get business partners
This article lists:
Friendster, Vanity Date, Pretendster, Tribe.net, and LinkedIn.
October 20, 2003
no boundaries?...
Then get yourself some 'boundary objects.' Courtesy of Denham Grey in his Knowledge-at-work: Boundary objects and KM post. Denham inspired me to do some research on 'boundary objects.' My preliminary research on this subject is included 'below the fold' in this post. If you are not receiving my full rss feed, you might want to. (^:
2002 - Whelton, Ballard, Tommelein: A Knowledge Management Framework For Project Definition
2002 - Orlikowski: Knowing in Practice: Enacting a Collective Capability in Distributed Organizing
2002 - Cushman, Venters, Cornford, Mitev: Understanding Sustainability as Knowledge Practice
2000 - McKegney, Shepard: Design Patterns and Real-time Object-oriented Modeling
1999 - Kuncheva, Jain: Nearest Neighbor Classifier: Simultaneous Editing and Feature Selection
1999 - Fischer: Symmetry of Ignorance, Social Creativity, and Meta-Design
1998 - Perry, Sanderson: Co-ordinating Joint Design Work: The Role of Communication and Artifacts
1997 - Mambrey, Robinson: Understanding the Role of Documents in a Hierarchical Flow of Work
1997 - Bannon, Bodker: Constructing Common Information Spaces
1992 - Goguen: The Dry and the Wet
1991 - Shashua: Correspondence and Affine Shape from two Orthographic Views: Motion and Recognition
October 19, 2003
weblogs in politics...
Fast Company | Joe Trippi's Killer App
Sidebar: Trippi's {TIPS} for Building a Better Campaign -- or Company
* Design the organization to be nimble from the start. A decentralized workforce can respond to local challenges more quickly if it doesn't have to wait for clearance from higher up the food chain. Be willing to let go of total control.
* Find ways to let supporters -- or customers -- talk to each other. Make it easy to connect, then step out of the conversation.
* Encourage ways for ideas to bubble up from the field. Understand that the more brainpower that is applied to a problem, the better the solution. Unleash the power of the people to be creative.
* Recognize that it's not about the technology. True, you need a basic level of technical sophistication to make things work, but the technology should be in service to the idea, not the other way around.
October 18, 2003
knowledge management news...
[there are sixteen news stories in this post.]
The Financial Express :: Forgetting Ethics Leads To Trouble
...Rajat Kumar Gupta, former CEO and currently senior partner of US-based McKinsey and Co, is spending a good amount of time in India these days. Still six more years to go for his retirement, Mr Gupta became one of the youngest CEOs of the firm worldwide to serve the maximum permissible three terms of three years each that saw the global consulting firm take unprecedented growth. Today, he is engaged in a variety of roles at McKinsey - even though he is not on the hot seat - engaging himself in knowledge management and mentoring at McKinsey and also in other educational and philanthropic activities. He was one of the prime movers of the Indian School of Business (ISB) in Hyderabad. Kolkata-born Mr Gupta, one of the early India-born CEOs of global corporations, has been in the consulting field for over 30 years. In one of the rare interviews after he stepped down from the top job at the firm, he spoke in an exclusive interview with George Skaria, Sangeeta Singh and Ajay Jain of FE. The IIT-Delhi and Harvard Business School educated management guru talked about how the consulting business will shape up in the future as well his own personal plans...
Business Wire :: Salesforce.com Announces SureShot Migration Program for Siebel UpShot Customers
...Salesforce.com, the world leader in delivering software-as-service, today announced the immediate availability of free, seamless migration for Siebel's (Nasdaq:SEBL) UpShot customers to salesforce.com. Salesforce.com is launching the SureShot Migration Program in response to Siebel's decision to acquire UpShot, whose 1,000 customers have invested in the software-as-service customer relationship management (CRM) business model. After migrating, customers will be able to take advantage of the award-winning features and functionality of salesforce.com's industry-leading CRM service at no cost for three months, after which salesforce.com will honor the terms of their existing contract with UpShot...
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: Longview Solutions Asks: Today's CFO: Steward or Strategist?
...TORONTO, PHILADELPHIA and MADRID, Spain, Oct. 18 /PRNewswire/ -- Finance executives from nine international, industry leading companies joined a roundtable this past summer to discuss the changing role of today's Chief Financial Officer and the imperatives facing global organizations wanting to win the confidence of their key stakeholders.
"The theoretical answer to the question, CFO: Steward or Strategist?" said Dave Murray, CFO, Longview Solutions, "can be found from a 1st Century Rome example in Janus, god of gates and portals, the patron of beginnings and endings. Take responsibility for the past, get your numbers in order, close your books. But, like Janus, focus on beginnings and endings, balance your hindsight with foresight on business strategy."...
Washington Technology :: CACI finishes acquisition of C-Cubed
By Gail Repsher Emery, Staff Writer
...CACI International Inc. completed its acquisition of C-Cubed Corp., officials of Arlington, Va.-based CACI announced Oct. 16.
Terms were not disclosed, but a CACI statement said the transaction is expected to boost the company's performance for the fiscal year ending June 30, 2004.
Springfield, Va.-based C-Cubed provides support for command, control, communications, computers, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance initiatives for clients in the Defense Department and civilian and intelligence agencies.
The acquisition strengthens CACI's capabilities in command and control and expands its client base, said Jack London, CACI's chairman, president and chief executive officer.
"C-Cubed is a good fit with CACIs core strengths," London said. CACI's capabilities include engineering, simulation, information assurance, knowledge management, systems integration and managed network solutions.
C-Cubed offers solutions in five areas: network enterprise solutions, systems integration, integrated logistics support, combat systems and deep submergence engineering. Most of its 400 employees hold high-level security clearances...
...CHAPEL HILL, N.C.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 16, 2003--Dow Chemical saved more than $1 million in just 18 months by implementing a best practice knowledge management program; Lucent Technologies boosted productivity levels by 10% in eight months and saw a six-fold ROI after two years by identifying engineering best practices. The benefits of benchmarking are manifold - from education of executives and realized performance improvement operations to strategic growth opportunities.
Executives can now access benchmarked tactics of leading-edge companies through the Best Practice Database. Best Practices, LLC - the leader in primary benchmarking and best practices research - is offering a 10% discount on licenses to the Best Practice Database licenses until October 31, 2003. A license gives you instant access into the minds of executives at world-class companies, providing proven tactics to eclipse the competition. Originating from research conducted by Best Practices LLC, this information enables you to maximize revenue, enhance productivity and optimize costs!
We've just updated the database with new, groundbreaking studies. Sample the Best Practice Database for free - download a complimentary database document, "Competitive Intelligence: Turning Information into Strategy," at http://www3.best-in-class.com/dr52.htm .
Through the Best Practice Database, busy executives can quickly access real-life examples of winning tactics drawn from interviews with executives across the world's most respected companies. The Database contains the latest, leading-edge research about the most pressing issues in the following topics:
-- Human Resources
-- Customer Service
-- Internet and e-Business
-- Sales and Marketing
-- Knowledge Management
-- General Management (supply chain, finance, quality, etc.)
To receive a 10% discount on an unlimited license to the database, visit http://www3.best-in-class.com/dr51.htm and enter OCTOBERSALE in the coupon field during online checkout...
MarketWire :: FGM, Inc. Achieves CMM Level 2 Goal
...DULLES, VA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 10/16/2003 -- FGM, Inc. announced today that the company's headquarters achieved Software Capability Maturity Model (CMM) Level 2 as appraised by The Process Group, a world-class appraiser certified by the Carnegie Mellon University Software Engineering Institute (SEI). A CMM distinction is a standard for assessing a company's software development capability. By achieving CMM Level 2, FGM demonstrates well-known, repeatable ways of performing software lifecycle activities, improving quality and efficiency. FGM's over 60% growth in both revenue and staff over the last three years makes this achievement particularly significant. ...
GM works as a trusted partner with the US government, international agencies, and businesses by engineering software and systems to share, track, and control critical information. As a thriving employee-owned company, FGM delivers sophisticated, customized software solutions that support national security and international initiatives, and improve business efficiency. Through knowledge management, data integration, enterprise architectures, and Web-enabled solutions, FGM provides the results...
Canada NewsWire :: Federal Government Contributes $7.5 Million for Research on Distance Learning
...MONTREAL, QC, Oct. 16 /CNW/ - Yvon Charbonneau, Member of Parliament for Anjou-Rivière-des-Prairies, on behalf of Allan Rock, Minister of Industry and Minister responsible for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council today announced a contribution of $7.5 million to LORNET, a new NSERC research network that will develop tools needed to create effective, interactive web- based training courses and programs.
"Telelearning means accessing knowledge and instruction where and when they are wanted, and it is essential if Canada is to successfully meet the challenges of the global knowledge economy," M. Charbonneau stated "Canada has invested a great deal in providing access to an on-line infrastructure, but this strategy can be effective only if combined with the development of electronic content," he added.
LORNET's research will be carried out in collaboration with six universities: the Université du Québec's Télé-université, the University of Waterloo, Simon Fraser University, the University of Saskatchewan, the University of Ottawa, and Ecole Polytechnique de Montréal. In addition, to validate the technologies developed by this network and ensure their transfer, over thirty partners from the public and private sectors will contribute close to $1 million to the project. They will also contribute expertise and resources to ensure that the research results are disseminated widely. The network plans to provide training each year to some 40 graduate students and six postdoctoral fellows...
Yahoo :: ePeople Recognized for Delivering Business Results With KMWorld's KM Promise Award
...SANTA CLARA, Calif., KMWorld & Intranets 2003, Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- ePeople, a leading provider of knowledge and expertise management solutions for resolving business-critical situations throughout the enterprise announced that it has received KMWorld Magazine's KM Promise Award, an honor that recognizes the company's success in helping organizations realize positive business results.
"ePeople is a standout in the tangible business value it delivers to its customers," said Hugh McKellar, editor-in-chief of KMWorld Magazine. "We were particularly impressed by the fast deployment and seamless integration of ePeople Teamwork into work processes and how quickly results were obtained. ePeople is credited with taking a fresh approach to the challenge of capturing, sharing and effectively reusing knowledge, which in turn is delivering significant bottom line benefits to its customers."...
...FootPrints is an easy-to-use, 100% web-based service desk that enables organizations to proactively manage internal help desk and external customer support operations. It offers a comprehensive service desk to centrally track, manage, and control issues and service requests received from email, the Internet, telephone, and wireless devices. The system includes centralized customer issue tracking, self-service online, incoming and outgoing email management, knowledge management, and powerful reporting. FootPrints can be up and running in live production in just days without any programming, consulting, or database administration...
...Sun originally embraced Honeycomb in January of 2002 when it sought a visual tool for encapsulating the data generated through SunTRAQ, a corporate knowledge management initiative designed to gather and combine data from suppliers, manufacturing, installations, sales, etc. The infrastructure for SunTRAQ was built around Sun's corporate business intelligence platform. Honeycomb was added to create an executive reporting tool that could visually summarize massive amounts of information. With its deployment of Honeycomb 4, Sun has dramatically expanded the use of treemaps to other parts of the organization...
rediff.com :: Wipro gets most admired co award
...Wipro Technologies has received the 2003 Asian Most Admired Knowledge Enterprise (MAKE) award in a ceremony held in Seoul, Korea on Wednesday.
In the second annual Asian MAKE study, Wipro was recognised for creating a corporate-wide knowledge-driven culture and delivering knowledge-based products/services/solutions, according to a release issued by the company on Thursday.
The MAKE research program, conducted in association with The Know Network, consists of the annual global MAKE study -- the international benchmark for world-class knowledge-driven organisations -- and regional/national MAKE studies, the release said.
Rory Chase, managing director of Teleos, which conducts MAKE, said: "These organisations have been recognised as global leaders in effectively transforming enterprise knowledge into wealth-creating ideas, products and solutions. Organisations dedicated to growth through innovation and knowledge management create shareholder value twice as fast as their competitors, according to Teleos' new Asian Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises Study."
"Having a unified framework has helped build a cohesive knowledge base across the company accessible to the entire user community in Wipro and the benefits of this system are passed on to our customers. Our knowledge management framework captures our learnings and experiences of all our projects which allow us to share best practices with our clients," said Sambuddha Deb, chief quality officer, Wipro Technologies...
...GMSI specializes in providing government clients with IT and network services which advance communications, improve enterprise efficiencies, and increase the value and security of knowledge management systems.
GMSI's experience with federal defense and civilian agencies include the National Institutes of Health, Food & Drug Administration, National Science Foundation, Department of Justice, Department of Treasury - Internal Revenue Service, U.S. Coast Guard, U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force and others.
Founded in 1988 by engineer and CEO Hilton H. Augustine, Jr., GMSI is a small minority-owned business headquartered in Washington, D.C. GMSI has been recognized and ranked as a leading contractor with the federal government...
newratings :: Open Text downgraded to "reduce"
...NEW YORK, October 15 (New Ratings) - Analysts at Research Capital downgrade Open Text Corporation (OTEX) from "hold" to "reduce." The target price is set to $32.50.
Shares of Open Text, a company that develops, markets, licenses and supports collaboration and knowledge management software, are currently trading at $43.84...
...GENEVA - Interzen, a leading Italian developer of innovative solutions for the mobile wireless market, today announced the company will demonstrate two new applications - Traffico, an application that reports real-time traffic conditions and Tempo, an easy-to-use weather station application, developed for QUALCOMM's Binary Runtime Environment for Wireless (BREW) platform. Both applications will be demonstrated on GSM devices via a GPRS network at the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) Telecom World 2003 conference in Geneva, Oct. 12-18 in booth 205 (Hall 1) at the Geneva Palexpo in Geneva, Switzerland...
...The CIO Summit will explore four areas of interest:
- Leadership Issues: Knowledge management and the rapidly changing workforce.
- Collaboration Conundrums: Making relationships work.
- Integrating Enterprise: Losing the loose ends.
- Mobilizing the Machine: Untethering the organization...
...Today at Citrix iForum(TM) 2003 (http://www.citrixiforum.com), Citrix Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq:CTXS), the global leader in access infrastructure solutions, announced an expansion to the partnership to include a new integration with PeopleSoft, Inc. a leading provider of application software for the real-time enterprise. Citrix will make available via download a template "pagelet" that will make it easier for PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal customers to deploy non-PeopleSoft applications to the portal using the Web interface feature of Citrix(R) MetaFrame(R) Presentation Server.
The integration will provide end users with a single point of access to PeopleSoft(R) applications and other Windows(R), UNIX(R), legacy and Web applications, in addition to content and other enterprise resources, through any standard Web browser, regardless of client platform. The Citrix solution significantly reduces costs by enabling organizations to instantly integrate and publish non-PeopleSoft applications to the PeopleSoft Enterprise Portal without application rewrites. Centralized application deployment through Citrix MetaFrame Presentation Server also improves performance -- up to 250 percent(1) -- of applications accessed over the Web, even in low-bandwidth environments such as wireless networks. Customers will also benefit from SSL encryption of application data over the Web provided by MetaFrame Presentation Server...
October 17, 2003
smart small services...
The New York Times :: Cellular Phone Company Gains by Thinking Small
by WAYNE ARNOLD and CARLOS H. CONDE
Mentioned in this article, in order of appearance:
SMART, Smart Buddy, Citigroup, Northstream, Philippine Long Distance Telephone, Globe Telecom, Safe Taxi, Virgin Mobile, MasterCard, SMART Money, Unilever, and Procter & Gamble. An excerpt of this story unfolds below the fold...
...Ms. Gazo, a 33-year-old housewife who lives 600 miles south of Manila in Davao City, is one of more than 100,000 mobile phone users who re-sell SMART cellular services through a new prepaid service called Smart Buddy e-Load. With a special, $20 chip for her mobile phone, Ms. Gazo can transfer bits of air time to her friends' and acquaintances' phones - as little as 30 pesos worth (about 55 cents). For every 1,000 pesos she sells, Ms. Gazo collects 150 pesos in commissions, turning her mobile phone into a second source of income for her family of four. "If I can earn 150 pesos a day," Ms. Gazo said, "I don't have to work."...
Since Smart began the program in May, Smart Buddy has exploded in popularity, giving the company a more inexpensive way of distributing service to the country's poorest, most remote neighborhoods and villages. The first such service of its kind, Smart Buddy marries the latest in cellular commerce with a much older marketing concept of miniature packaging that helped bring middle-class amenities to developing countries decades ago.
Smart says 700,000 new customers started using its network in July and August, helping bring its total customer base to 11 million, half of them in rural areas, in a country of just 76 million people. Smart's growth is especially good news for its heavily indebted parent, Philippine Long Distance Telephone, or P.L.D.T. Smart contributed 6.1 billion pesos ($111 million) to P.L.D.T.'s bottom line in the first half of this year. ...
"Texting," as it is known, has cult status in Philippines, and everyone from the poorest student to the loftiest government official uses it. Executives tap out messages during business meetings. When hot news or juicy rumors erupt, they spread like wildfire over the country's text networks, which have become a kind of hand-held national chat room...
weblogs in the news...
[there are five news stories in this post.]
OJR article: NY Times Reporter Has Seen It All Before, and He's Still Pessimistic
by Adam Clayton Powell
OJR [Adam Clayton Powell] interviews ...John Markoff [who] has been writing about computers, technology and the Internet for The New York Times since 1988. Before joining the Times, Markoff covered technology for The San Francisco Examiner and Infoworld, and wrote a weekly column for the San Jose Mercury News. ...
John Markoff [on blogging]: it sometimes seems we have a world full of bloggers and that blogging is the future of journalism, or at least that's what the bloggers argue, and to my mind, it's not clear yet whether blogging is anything more than CB radio. ...give it five or 10 years and see if any institutions emerge out of it. It's possible that in the end there may be some small subset of people who find a livelihood out of it and that the rest of the people will find that, you know, keeping their diaries online is not the most useful thing to with their time.
When I tell that to people ... they get very angry with me ... I also like to tell them, when they (ask) when I'm going to start a blog, and then, 'Oh, I already have a blog, it's www.nytimes.com, don't you read it?'...
journalism.co.uk :: Digital journalism Latin-style
...Buenos Aires will host the 2003 Latin American Congress of Digital Journalism from 29 - 31 October.
The event takes place at the city's Museum of Latin American Art and is organised by Clarín, one of South America's largest media organisations. The corporation's charitable wing, the Noble Foundation, is also supporting the event.
The event is open to all professionals, students, graduates and tutors with an interest in digital journalism. Attendance is free, but applicants are required to apply in writing - students have until 17 October and professionals until 22 October to apply.
Speakers include publishers, journalists and academics from across the Spanish-speaking world, including Anna Garci'a of Barcelona's Pompeu Fabra University and Mario Tascon, content director of elpais.es.
Sessions will include seminars on using new technology, developing multi-media content and the role of web blogs in online journalism. Some debates will also be broadcast live on Clarín.com. ..
XML.com :: The Atom API
by Mark Pilgrim
...Atom is an up-and-coming format for editing, syndicating, and archiving weblogs and other episodic web sites. The final details are still being hashed out, but that's never stopped me before, having written several articles about XHTML 2. To understand the problems that Atom is designed to solve, we should look briefly at what came before it...
...WALTHAM, Mass., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- Terra Lycos (Nasdaq: TRLY and Madrid Exchange: TRR), the global Internet Group, today announced the launch of Angelfire Elements on Lycos Angelfire (www.angelfire.com), the number one site within the Teens category for teens (ages 13-17) and tweens (ages 18-24). Angelfire Elements give teens a choice of four very affordable subscription packages to meet all of their Web page building and hosting needs in one place. Each one of the packages includes access to Lycos's award-winning Blog Builder(TM) tool.
The new Angelfire Elements subscription plans are based on the table of elements, creating a fun, flashy and very distinct appeal, catering to the hip, tech-savvy Angelfire teen demographic. The four plans -- Ne (NEON), Ar (ARGON), Xe (XENON) and Kr (KRYPTON) -- range in prices from $4.95 a month to $14.95 a month. Each of the new subscription packages gives teens the ability to build and blog with no ads served on their pages...
smh.com.au :: Where websites go to die
...The National Library of Australia is a world leader in tracing the evolution of the internet. But, writes Lauren Martin, with the average life of a website now only 44 days, time and money are short. ...
PANDORA is an archive of Australia's part in a technological leap which, in a decade, has revolutionised publishing. And it is run by a white-haired librarian, Margaret Phillips, with a staff she can count on one fine-boned hand.
The National Library of Australia is a 20th century classical revival building, surrounded by columns on the shores of Lake Burley Griffin. More than 500 people work there, but the work of Phillips's five - helped by the technology experts who engineer their efforts and by associates they have trained in a growing number of partner institutions - are ahead of almost anyone in the service of internet archiving.
The Canberra library's PANDORA, begun in 1996, is a model for the massive project by the United States Library of Congress (called MINERVA), and still in its infancy. It may yet be a model for the British Library, where staff tried, a few years back, archiving about 100 sites and then decided it was too hard. It is now making a second attempt.
What's more, the National Library of Australia has spearheaded and continued its digital archiving - not just of websites, but pictures, manuscripts, maps and music - with no new money to do so. In contrast, the US Congress in 2000 designated $US100 million (to be doubled by leveraging it with non-federal funds) for the same job. ...
Phillips is concerned about what PANDORA cannot yet collect: webcams ("because it's an important commentary on how people are using the internet and their attitudes to privacy"); "blogs" (there are now a few on PANDORA), chat rooms, databases, even games. But for now her staff must concentrate on the limited areas of significance chosen in 1996: government publications, academic journals, conference papers, e-journals, and topical sites...
October 16, 2003
social network news...
[there are six news stories in this post, some interesting reads.]
ZDNet News :: Emode launches Friendster foe
By Paul Festa
...San Francisco-based Emode launched the Tickle Social Network after a two-month test, or beta, release. Designed to compete with Friendster, Tribe.net and other so-called social networking sites, Tickle lets people post profiles to help them make business and personal connections.
Emode said it is profitable already through its fee-based personality quizzes and matchmaking service. The company claims more than 6 million users of the latter service, and 500,000 of the Tickle beta, out of 15 million active members overall. Investors in Emode include August Capital...
rediff.com :: Indian to take on iTunes, Napster
by Tanmaya Kumar Nanda in New York
...Come November, a new Internet company hopes to go boldly where not many have dared. Srivats Sampath's company, www.mercora.com, is poised for launch, and will join a limited but growing number of online sites for buying and sharing digital music files.
Sampath, who cofounded McAfee and quit as its CEO when the network security and antivirus firm merged with Network Associates, decided to put his own money into what is seen by many as a still murky area of e-commerce.
"After the merger, I started to spend my time researching, among other things, copyright law, electronic marketplaces, social networking and the intricacies of the music business, and that's really what got me started," says Sampath, who read over 20 books on related issues.
He finally decided to go head to head with the likes of iTunes by Apple, which has taken the lead in sales of online music files, and Napster. "Our vision for Mercora is to create an alternate, highly efficient, Internet-centric marketplace that fundamentally rearchitects the existing recorded music business model," Sampath says of his baby. "Mercora will bring sellers and buyers of music together in a secure, trusted marketplace."
What Sampath has in mind is a peer-to-peer file-swapping service, but at a price. Additionally, he hopes to create unique online societies that will hang out together virtually based on their choice of music.
Sampath has the 99 cents-a-song model in mind. Additionally, he will use Windows copy-protection but insists they are "agnostic to the DRM (we) use - but at some point, we will also support the Real Networks Helix DRM."...
TheFeature :: RFID Zeitgeist
By Howard Rheingold
Mentioned in this post:
RFID Journal, Prada Epicenter, Wired, Gen. Tommy Franks, Benetton, Byron Reeves and Clifford Nass, and Mark Pesce.
...We have never before lived in a world where your telephone knows your name, social networks hitch rides on objects and places, doorknobs decide who gets into a room and know who has entered, and every place you go, every thing you touch, is more likely than not to contain a processor and a miniature radio.
"RFID" isn't a household word yet, but geeks are beginning to care about "Radio Frequency ID tags" because of the privacy implications. The cost and size of microprocessor technology had dropped to the point where a sensor, a computer, and a radio transponder can be woven into clothing or embedded in the packaging of consume packaged goods. The notion that your razor blades might be spying on you is scary, but privacy isn't all there is to it. RFIDs are only the beginning, just as the first microchip, suitable only for desk calculators, was only the beginning for chips and PCs in the 1970s. Think about what it will feel like to inhabit a world where every object we handle, consume, or wear is likely to contain computing gizmos...
Movie rental services charge into online battle
by Chris Lake
...The nascent online DVD rental market could emerge as one of the key growth sectors in the UK, judging by the recent launch of two new companies that hope to replicate the offline success of Blockbuster on the web. ...
Video Island's Saul Klein has been watching the UK market for more than a year and believes the increasing penetration of DVD as a medium (from 25% to 75% over the next three years) presents a "real opportunity to build a successful business".
The VC-backed company is using personalisation and social networking tools to create a community-based service, with users recommending and reviewing films to provide insight for others. Klein said: "Personalisation and community features are very important - we allow film fans to rate films and write reviews to help inform other users. And we have a management team with bags of expertise, which we believe differentiates us from the competition."...
...BELMONT, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 14, 2003--Entopia, Inc.(TM), a provider of information solutions, today unveiled Entopia Enterprise Social Networks Analysis, a diagnostic tool that enables managers to optimize information flow. By combining Entopia's dynamic expertise location with its visualization techniques, Entopia's latest application identifies the social networks within the enterprise related to a specific topic. These "people maps" instantly illustrate the subject matter experts, information bottlenecks and disconnected communities with an enterprise. Currently being exhibited at KMWorld & Intranets 2003, October 14 - 16, 2003, Santa Clara Calif., Entopia Social Networks Analysis is a solution built upon Entopia K-Bus, its enterprise knowledge infrastructure technology. Entopia Enterprise Social Networks Analysis harnesses the existing content in, and user activity around, various enterprise-wide repositories for use by the human resources, sales, mergers and acquisitions, compliance and customer support teams to identify experts, build teams, improve communication, identify displacement problems and avoid work duplication.
"Social network analysis has moved from an academic discipline to a critical business competence. New software tools provide real time analysis of knowledge worker networks," said French Caldwell, vice president of Gartner Research. "Who knows what and about whom is the most important knowledge for businesses trying to close a critical sale, launch a new product, or rapidly pull together a new project team." ...
Silicon Valley Biz Ink :: World's Largest Online Dating Network Launches JewishFriendFinder.com
...PALO ALTO, Calif., Oct. 16 /PRNewswire/ -- FriendFinder Inc., the world's largest operator of online dating and social networking communities, today announced the launch of JewishFriendFinder.com. Created to answer the unmet needs of busy Jewish singles looking for marriage, dating, and friendship, the new site focuses on values specific to the Jewish community that are not addressed by other dating resources. JewishFriendFinder is the latest addition to the market-leading FriendFinder network, a series of customized destination sites designed to meet the unique cultural, religious, or demographic needs of individual communities...
aok star series - melissie rumizen...
Please join AOK from October 20th - 31st, 2003.
In order to participate in this AOK Star Series dialogue you must be a member of AOK - membership is free.
Melissie Rumizen
Practical Curmudgeon Takes Us Forward to Basics
by Jerry Ash, Founder and Chief Executive, Association of Knowledgework
"The announcement of Melissie Rumizen as moderator for the STAR Series Dialogue for October has caused a bit of a buzz. Existing members are telling me they are looking forward to the discussion and new members are joining specifically to catch the conversations October 20-31.
Dr. Melissie Clemmons Rumizen, author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Knowledge Management," available through the AOK Bookstore, is the knowledge strategist at Buckman Laboratories where she developed and maintains its award-winning KM Website - Buckman Laboratories Knowledge Nurture.
Melissie also maintains a great sense of humor, evidenced by her "The Complete Idiot's Guide" title which is a registered trademark series of Pearson Education, Inc. Therefore, the choice of publisher finally puts KM in a mainstream publication where it needs to be more frequently. In her unofficial biography she describes her profession as "rabble-rouser," and if she were an animal in a zoo she would be a mongoose. In case you are not familiar with the characteristics of a mongoose, they are smallest of the lemurs with binocular vision and a keen sense of olfactory communication (smell). Mongoose lemurs have a very different behavioral pattern from most primates and the female is dominant!
In reality, Melissie began her career as a German and Russian linguist in the U.S. Army. Later, her language skills landed her a job with the National Security Agency (NSA) where she eventually transferred to the total quality management office. That led her to a KM conference where she and a colleague became convinced KM was an imperative for NSA to succeed. They became a team and by 1997 KM became a strategic goal. The team turned its attention to helping determine the first steps for implementation, but in 1998, Melissie joined former STAR Series moderator Bob Buckman at Buckman Labs.
In her discussion beginning Monday, Melissie would like to play the role of "Knowledge Curmudgeon," which she defines as someone who is stubbornly and determinedly grounded in the practical. I had originally asked her if she would help us return to KM basics, but as we have talked about the focus of the next two weeks it occurred to me that it isn't "back," but "forward" to basics because the basics have been changing as KM develops and matures.
However, whether it's backward or forward, our intent is to bring the conversations back down to where newbies can not only understand the dialogue but participate in it. Lurkers lurk for many reasons, but the one I hear most often is that learners are intimidated by the deep knowledge (and language) of both the moderators and participants and, therefore, they are uncomfortable engaging at the level of most conversations. So this one's for those who will enjoy a return to the basics.
At the same time, "forward" to basics suggests that those of us who have been on this trail for a long time have something to learn from a mongoose. We could all learn something from an animal with a keen sense of smell and binocular vision!
So, do your homework! Melissie's opening thoughts are in the STAR Series Web pages -- "Preparing for Conversations with Melissie Rumizen."
notable judiths - judith shatin...
Since 1979, Judith Shatin has been based at the University of Virginia, where she is William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor and Director of the Virginia Center for Computer Music. Educated at Douglass College she also holds degrees from The Juilliard School (MM) and Princeton University (Ph.D), where she studied with Milton Babbitt and J.K. Randall. Additional studies included two summers as a Crofts composition fellow at Tanglewood.
Ms. Shatin's music has been performed by such ensembles as the Denver, Houston, Minnesota, National and Richmond Symphonies; Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center, Ciompi Quartet and the New Performance Group of Seattle. Her 1492 for piano and percussion was presented at the Moscow Autumn Festival, and at the West Cork Festival. Her awards include four NEA Composer Fellowships, as well as those from the American Music Center, Meet the Composer, and the Virginia Commission for the Arts. Her music has also been commissioned by such groups as the Barlow Foundation, Monticello Trio, National Symphony, Virginia Chamber Orchestra, and the Women's Philharmonic. A two-year retrospective of her music in Shepherdstown, WV, was supported by the Lila Wallace-Readers Digest Arts Partners Program (1992-94). This project culminated in the premiere of her folk oratorio, COAL. Scored for chorus, Appalachian ensemble, electronic playback and synthesizer, with her own libretto, it reflects her efforts to musically touch an entire way of life.
text mining wisdom...
The New York Times :: Digging for Nuggets of Wisdom
By LISA GUERNSEY
Mentioned in this New York Times article [in order of appearance]:
Michael N. Liebman, Medline, SPSS, ClearForest, Google, K-Praxis, Randall S. Murch, Institute for Defense Analyses, Ballston Group, Marty Ellingsworth, Don R. Swanson - ARROWSMITH, and Marti Hearst.
...Dr. Liebman is convinced that new cures could someday emerge for breast cancer if only someone could read all the literature and synthesize it. So he has found a solution: enlisting a computer program to read the articles for him.
"The software is not going to get tired," he said. It also happens to be a speed reader: The product he is using, from a Chicago-based software company called SPSS, can zip through 250,000 pages an hour. Another product, from the text-mining company ClearForest, boasts a speed of 15,000 pages an hour, still far surpassing the human rate of a mere 60 pages.
Of course, no one, Dr. Liebman included, is arguing that these products are actually reading anything. What they are engaged in is "text mining,'' a technique that academics have been experimenting with for years but for which tools have only recently become commercially available. The prospect of rapidly scanning through reams of documents is stirring interest among researchers and analysts faced with more material than they can handle.
To the uninitiated, it may seem that Google and other Web search engines do something similar, since they also pore through reams of documents in split-second intervals. But, as experts note, search engines are merely retrieving information, displaying lists of documents that contain certain keywords.
Text-mining programs go further, categorizing information, making links between otherwise unconnected documents and providing visual maps (some look like tree branches or spokes on a wheel) to lead users down new pathways that they might not have been aware of...
world knowledge index...
FT.com :: Bay Area heads index of know-how economies
By Roger Blitz in London
...Heavy investment in the knowledge economy has pushed San Francisco and the Bay Area region of California into top spot in an index of world knowledge competitiveness.
Despite its economic downturn of recent years, the region scores highly in the amount of R&D expenditure by business and higher education public spending over the past year.
These are two of the main measurements compiled by Robert Huggins Associates, the think-tank based in Cardiff, the Welsh capital, to compare the strengths and weaknesses of knowledge economy regions.
San Francisco remains one of the strongest regions in the world for employment in knowledge intensive sectors such as production of computers and high-technology devices, despite considerable job losses in Silicon Valley.
The World Knowledge Competitiveness Index underlines the dominance of US regions among leading centres of the knowledge economy.
The US has 43 out of the top 50 regions in the index, which uses 17 measures to gauge knowledge capacity, capability and utilisation of a region's economic performance.
Only eight of 45 European regions perform above the average, with only four in the top 50 - Stockholm (18th), Uusimaa, Finland (37th), Luxembourg (44th) and Switzerland (49th).
Regions that have improved considerably since Mr Huggins' first competitiveness index last year are Boston, New York and Rochester in the US, Brussels and Luxembourg in Europe and Kanagawa and Osaka in Japan.
But the biggest climber in the index is Tokyo, up 39 places to 15th, the highest-ranking non-US region.
The Chinese knowledge economies of Pearl River delta, Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin make it on to the list primarily because of high economic activity and rapid labour market growth.
Despite the ability of Hyderabad, Mumbai and Bangalore to attract knowledge-based investment, India lags far behind its US and European rivals...
knowledge economy news...
[there are twelve news stories in this post, some great reads.]
Islam Online :: Seven Reasons Why Women in Science & Technology Remain Invisible
By Deepa Kandaswamy [an engineer/writer/political analyst based in India. Her articles have been based in five continents and some of her writing credits include ABC News, Christian Science Monitor, PC World, Data Quest and Middle East Policy.]
...Most know of the Taj Mahal, one of the seven wonders of the modern world. We also know it was built in memory of Mumtaz Mahal. But how many know of her Aunt Nor who invented the device that performed attar distillation of flowers to make perfumes?
Despite 4,000 years of contributions, many are unaware of pioneering women like Empress Shi Dun who invented paper or Catherine Green who invented cotton gin, the patent of which is actually held by Eli Whitney.
Florence Nightingale is known as a famous nurse, but she was also a brilliant mathematician. Her contribution to statistics as the inventor of the pie chart used by businesses, technologists, researchers and governments throughout the world today is virtually unknown.
This continues even in the 'Information Age,' where we boast of living in knowledge-based societies. It took fifty years for Rosalind Franklin's outstanding contribution to understanding the helical structure of the DNA to be even acknowledged. The X-rays she used to discover the secret of life (DNA) probably killed her due to the lack of adequate protection from the radiation in the lab that made her contract cancer and die at the young age of 37. How many of us know of contemporary women like Helen Greiner, the president of the largest robot company in the world, or of Vanitha Rangaraju, the only Indian woman to win an Oscar for her technical work?
After research and interviewing several women and men in the fields of education, business and technology, I found there are seven primary reasons why women in technology continue to remain invisible - Social Myths, Conditioning, Media, Deterrence, Balance, Networking and Marketing...
...The Chinese nation has traversed an air flight road of thousand-year "dreaming", "breeding" and "delivery-expediting" period from the moving legend of the "Goddess Chang'e flew to the moon" to the flying Apsaras (as in the frescoes of the Dunhuang Caves), and from the air flight by thousands of homes in the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) to the "Dawn) airship. Until 1992, the CPC (Communist Party of China) third-generation collective leadership with Comrade Jiang Zemin at the core, with great foresight in making decision, began implementing China's manned space-engineering project, thereby spreading China's magnificent blueprint for sending man to the outer space. After 11 years of strenuous efforts of tackling difficult problems, the Chinese have finally fulfilled their dream of flying to the Ninth Heaven, or the highest of heavens on the basis of four unmanned test flights. This effort made China become the third country, after Russia and the United States, which independently develops manned space technology. At the same time, manned space-engineering project has also made China become an important member of the international space club, providing China with motive force for sustainable development in the impending implementation of the project of probing into the moon and deep-space exploration. ...
In the 21st century, profound changes are taking place in the world's political, economic, scientific and technical and military fields. Science and technology are developing and changing with each passing day, the knowledge economy has arisen quietly, manned space flights are in the ascendant. There exist both difficulty and hope and both challenge and opportunity, the new generation astronauts will seize the opportunity and meet the challenge, take up the heavy mission entrusted to them by history, comprehensively carry out the second-step task for manned space fight project focused on the development of space laboratory and its new carrier rocket, breaking out the cabin activity and the intersection and dock technologies, promote the sustainable development of China's manned space industry, render new meritorious services for the construction of a well-off society in an all-round way and the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation!...
(This article was written by Zhang Qingwei, general manager of the China Space Science & Technology Group Company and deputy general commander of the China Manned Space Flight Project, and translated by People's Daily Online.)
Telegraph :: What's wrong with being an elite?
Going private? It's where we're heading if UK plc is to hit its target of being the best, the chairman of the Russell Group of universities tells Liz Lightfoot
...Michael Sterling, chairman of the Russell Group of 19 leading universities, has defended academic elitism in his first interview. "People may say we are an elite, but if it is an elite based on academic merit, what's wrong with that?" he said.
When it was formed in the early l990s, the Russell Group was an informal number of vice-chancellors holding clandestine meetings at the Russell Hotel in central London to discuss their concerns.
The group, which felt the voice of the big, research-led institutions was not being heard in the rush towards mass higher education, refused to issue a list of members as it faced the animosity of the rest of the higher education sector. The vice-chancellors were accused of seeking to bring in an "Ivy League" system of privately-funded universities. ...
"If we are going to deliver the UK's mission for being a globally leading knowledge economy, which is the mission statement of UK plc, then we have to produce top-class graduates."...
KoreaTimes :: Toffler Calls for Decentralization of Capital
By Na Jeong-ju Staff Reporter
...South Korea should utilize its strong information infrastructure and further focus on developing medical, educational and other service sectors to brace for the changes that the future holds, a renowned futurist visiting Seoul said yesterday.
Sketching a broad picture of the ever-changing global economy, Alvin Toffler said many factors that helped South Korea emerge as a powerful industrial country will not work in a future where efficiency rules. ...
The author of "Future Shock," "Power Shift," and "Third Wave," which have become bibles for administrators looking for future strategies, Toffler said South Korea is making a successful transformation into a knowledge-based economy, but should avoid being caught in the downward spiral of competition from lower wage countries.
That competitive rivalry is coming from China and it will be stronger in the near future, he said...
allAfrica.com: PanAfrica :: Bridging the Digital Divide in a Communications Renaissance
...PROVIDING a basic communications infrastructure is one of the key sector priorities of the New Partnership for Africa's Development (Nepad), reflected in the phenomenal growth in cellphone networks across the continent.
Yvonne Muthien, group executive: corporate affairs for the MTN group, says countries and regions without access to information and communications technology will be at a considerable disadvantage.
"Bridging the digital divide is imperative to ensure that the marginalised people of the African continent participate in the knowledge-based economy of the future."...
Taipei Times :: EU leaders to examine ways to get economy moving
...EU leaders will this week tackle rival initiatives designed to kick-start economic growth after a prolonged slump that has strained the rulebook governing the euro zone. At a summit tomorrow and on Friday, EU heads of government will return to a long-running debate about how the 15-nation bloc -- which is expanding to 25 next year -- can better compete with the US.
The EU has set itself the goal of becoming the world's "most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy" by 2010. But performance on the ground has failed to match the rhetoric, with critics arguing that Europe remains fettered by too much red tape and rigid labor markets...
...Dr. Walter Doring, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Economy for the State of Baden Wurttemberg, Germany, will head a delegation of industrial suppliers who are taking part at a 'Buyer-Seller Meet' organised at Expo Centre Sharjah on 20 and 21 October 2003. ...
A knowledge-based economy renowned for the innovativeness of its manufacturing and industrial sector, the state of Baden Wurttemberg is one of the few regions in the world spending more than 3% of its GDP on research and development. Its GDP per capita was approximately 25,000 Euros last year, well above the German and European averages. Moreover, its export volume, at approximately 8 000 Euros per capita last year, is far above Germany's federal average and clearly surpasses the figure for other industrial nations such as Japan (approx. 2,250 Euros) and the USA (approx. 2,850 Euros). Approximately 2% of the world's exports come from this federal state...
AP Wire :: Forum examines future of higher education
...ABERDEEN, S.D. - The state's higher education system will have to adjust to changing demographics of fewer college-age students and more older South Dakotans, participants were told Tuesday night at a public forum on education.
Legislators, representatives from the Board of Regents, its staff and public university presidents attended.
With the number of residents ages 25 to 64 decreasing by 2010 and the number of those ages 65 and older increasing, "this is a long term problem if you don't attend to it soon," said Tad Perry, executive director of the regents.
By 2010 the state will have 28 percent fewer high school graduates and will have to produce 22 percent more college grads to compete in a knowledge-based world...
VNA :: Prime Minister to attend APEC leaders' meeting
...Ha Noi, Oct. 15 (VNA) - Prime Minister Phan Van Khai will attend the 11th leaders' meeting of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum to be held in Bangkok, Thailand, on Oct. 20 and 21.
The Foreign Ministry announced the PM's attendance in a communique issued on Wednesday, adding that PM Khai was invited to the forum by Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra.
The Ministry said that before the 11th APEC Summit, Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien and Deputy Trade Minister Luong Van Tu will attend the 15th meeting of APEC trade and foreign ministers on Oct. 17 and 18. An APEC senior officials' meeting was held on Oct. 14 and 15.
five major issues: developing a knowledge-based economy, ensuring security of human resources, building financial structures, supporting small, and medium sized enterprises, and implementing commitments on development...
BusinessWire :: Sweden Forecast as Europe's Major Economic Success Story Through 2010
...According to a recent report by Robert Huggins and Associates, Sweden's economy is forecast to be Europe's major success story leading up to 2010 with a 15% GDP increase. Other studies report Sweden also has the earliest adopters of new technology and the world's most advanced information society. These combined factors, along with Sweden's numerous science parks and technology clusters, make Sweden a unique and ideal test market for high-tech companies wanting to perfect their R&D efforts, technology implementations and business models.
"When you combine Sweden's advanced IT infrastructure with its society that readily adopts and embraces new technologies, you get an ideal environment and European launch pad for U.S. companies to test market their new technologies, applications and business models," stated Goran Eriksson, director, Los Angeles Branch Office - Invest in Sweden Agency. "As Europe's leading knowledge economy, Sweden has refined its strategic IT investment process with academic and corporate partners and is poised for strong economic growth throughout the next decade." ...
RSI :: Singapore employers lack vision and are self-interested
...A recent study sponsored by The Gallup Organisation, the Singapore Institute of Management or SIM, and The Gallup Leadership Institute, showed that Singaporean employers are anything but progressive.
The study rated Singapore bosses to be "less visionary, less optimistic, less willing to challenge old ways to doing things, less likely to sacrifice their self-interest and less likely to pay attention to the moral and ethical consequences of their decisions."
...speaking to Madam Halimah Yacob (HY), the Assistant Secretary General of the National Trades Union Congress, or NTUC, in Singapore, I first asked her how far she agree with the findings:
...I have not seen the detailed report yet, which represents, basically, perceptions of employees. But I think that management should not just dismiss them. This suggests to be that people today expect much more from their managers. They want managers that can inspire and motivate them to better performance and not managers who would just use the old "carrot and stick" command and control approach, which, really, no longer works. What people want now is for manager to not just manage, which is easy, but to be leaders at work. Our way of managing people have not changed much - pay people more and they will work harder, or be more productive. Pay people less and they will not slack or cheat on you. I think this kind of leadership is completely uninspiring and in a knowledge-based economy where value resides in a person's mind, you cannot expect the best from them through this approach."...
Canada NewsWire :: Government of Canada funds initiative by Literacy New Brunswick Inc.
...Literacy skills are linked to work skills, health and self-esteem. Higher literacy skills among Canadians enable them to participate more fully in our economy and our society. For instance, literacy skills help determine the kinds of jobs we find, enable parents to read to their children and help us understand technical jargon, allowing us to use tools and equipment safely. The National Literacy Secretariat works in partnership with provincial and territorial governments, business, labour and the volunteer community. The goal of these partnerships is to increase public awareness of literacy, help people share information, improve access to literacy programs, develop learning materials and advance research on literacy. This project supports the Government of Canada's Innovation Strategy and more specifically Knowledge Matters, a policy paper that addresses the national challenge of ensuring that Canadians possess the skills and knowledge required to fully participate in the knowledge-based economy...
October 15, 2003
power mac g5s - supercomputers...
Wired News: Mac Supercomputer: Fast, Cheap
By Leander Kahney
...The brand new "Big Mac" supercomputer at Virginia Tech could be the second most powerful supercomputer on the planet, according to preliminary numbers.
Early benchmarks of Virginia Tech's brand new supercomputer -- which is strung together from 1,100 dual-processor Power Mac G5s -- may vault the machine into second place in the rankings of the worlds' fastest supercomputers, second only to Japan's monstrously big and expensive Earth Simulator.
The Big Mac's final score on the Linpack Benchmark won't be officially revealed until Nov. 17, when the rankings of the TOP 500 Supercomputer sites are made known at the International Supercomputer Conference...
October 14, 2003
mt-comment spam blocker...
If you are a Movable Type weblogger then you need to install:
MT-Blacklist - A Movable Type Anti-spam Plugin, courtesy of Jay Allen.
step into the transmogrifier...
my thought for the day on "knowledge notes":
while indulging my current fascination with studying and publishing notes on the intersection of knowledge societies, economies, management, and work, along with social networking and software, semiotics, and weblogging, i have been experiencing something akin to the "wave" phenomenon popularized in large stadiums and arenas.
i can see and hear the "knowledge speak" as it ripples around the planet, transmogrify into either a deafening roar or an inaudible whisper as it reaches the opposite end of the stadium, only to return once again to the starting point with either vigor or vapidity - largely based on the results or outcomes of the players on the field... enjoy... (^:
Calvin and Hobbes transmogrifier panels property of - Bill Watterson
knowledge worker news...
[there are ten news stories in this post.]
..."Too often knowledge management projects failed to deliver on their promise. Since the beginning of the 90's, AGiLiENCE staff has been pioneering the area of knowledge-worker productivity, with impressive results. With EPS, we have packaged this experience from a large number of successful projects into a hands-on product. Thereby, we provide a unique combination of powerful technology and proven implementation experience to the market, going beyond pure technology or pure service providers. This is key for yielding measurable productivity and quality gains, turning the knowledge management promise into profit,' says Dr Christian Kurtzke, CEO, AGiLiENCE Group, Munich, Germany.
This year the company has opened offices in Dubai, serving as the exclusive hub for the entire Middle East region. AGiLiENCE ME has started acquiring regional resellers and distributors for its products...
Kubi Client 1.1 is a single product that delivers all the essential functionality teams need to revise documents, share knowledge, and collaborate on projects, whether they are connected to Kubi Server or operating in Client- only (peer-to-peer) configurations. It makes it easy for knowledge workers to spontaneously create secure, structured workspaces and share them with internal and external partners, without leaving the familiar Email environment (Microsoft(R) Outlook(R) or IBM Lotus Notes). This innovative approach to collaboration -- recognized with a DEMOgod award when it was introduced at DEMO 2003, and chosen as a "Trend-Setting Product of 2003" by KMWorld Magazine -- has been enriched with the addition of new feature enhancements most requested by Kubi Client users...
ITWEB :: Gauteng starts building R300m Innovation Hub
BY Stephen Whitford
...[Johannesburg, 14 October 2003] - The first phase of construction of the R300 million Gauteng Innovation Hub Science Park has begun, with a sod-turning ceremony at the construction site in Pretoria. The project is described as southern Africa's first science and technology park.
Gauteng premier Mbhazima Shilowa said at the ceremony that the Innovation Hub aimed to create a space where hi-tech entrepreneurs, businesses, education, research and venture capital would work and meet to enhance the innovative capacity and economic development of the province.
The Innovation Hub will house the incubation programme for hi-tech start-ups, which was launched in 2001 and is being run from the CSIR buildings. It will also contain a coach-lab leadership programme where post-graduate students will work on industry projects mentored by industry experts...
PCT Online :: Serious Labor Shortage Awaits U.S. Companies, Expert Says
...By 2010, the U.S. Department of Labor expects that U.S. companies will face a shortage of slightly more than 10 million workers. (That's partly because, while about 70 million baby boomers will retire - or at least reach retirement age - over the next 15 years, only 40 million new workers are expected to enter the workforce during the same period.)
"This has happened before," says Neil Lebovits, president and COO of a specialty-staffing firm called Ajilon. "But when the 2010 labor shortage hits, it will supercede the one we faced in the late '90s, when companies bowed to their employees' every need and desire to keep them from leaving."
Service industries that require knowledge workers with specialized skills will be hit the hardest, he adds. "There are more than 90 million Americans whose literacy and numeric skills are at the 10th-grade level or below," says Lebovits. "If you consider education and training, the coming talent shortage and 'talent wars' will be even more serious." ...
Entrepreneur.com :: Pining for a Paperless Office?
By Robyn Aber
...Q: What are the considerations, technologies and steps I should take to make our business paperless?
A: I take it that your business is buried in paper. That's no surprise. You've just hit on one of the most common complaints among both office workers and business owners.
Twenty years ago, the PC was introduced as a tool that would virtually eliminate the paper then choking the average office. But that hasn't happened. In fact, market analysts report that paper use continues to boom - by an incredible 6 to 7 percent annually.
It's no small issue. Hard-copy costs typically eat up 1 to 3 percent of a company's revenue. Meanwhile, worker productivity sinks, as knowledge workers spend 10 or more hours per week just sifting through paperwork...
Yahoo PRNewswire :: Multi-Tasking Employees Work Smarter With New FileMaker Tasks
...SANTA CLARA, Calif., Oct. 13 /PRNewswire/ -- FileMaker, Inc. announced today shipment of FileMaker Tasks, a full-featured tasks management application that helps business professionals more efficiently manage common business tasks, so they can focus on more important business objectives. FileMaker Tasks is the latest in a series of ready-to-use FileMaker Application business solutions that address common business tasks. Built on the popular FileMaker Pro 6 database software, FileMaker Tasks makes it simple to create, assign, and track everyday tasks and easily communicate deadlines and deliverables to all members of the team.
(Photo)
JS Online :: View grows that scenic beauty is invaluable
By John Torinus
...A consensus is building in Wisconsin about the economic advantage of land protection. Conventional wisdom has been that economic interests are 180 degrees apart from environmental protection. That adversarial picture is breaking down as citizens in the state come to understand that the state's scenic beauty, its rural character, land, forest and water assets are invaluable.
Surveys have shown that most people in the state - Republican or Democrat, liberal or conservative - regard themselves as environmentalists. People may strike different balances between protecting resources and growing the economy, but the common middle ground is much larger than the extremists would have us believe. ...
The next push will be for the trusts to seek funding for PDRs - purchase of development rights - so they can offer farmers an alternative to development. A farmer can use a PDR to partially cash out without having to get out of farming and subdivide. PDRs have seen limited use in Dane County as a way to preserve rural character and the agricultural economy.
In terms of economic development, business leaders have always stressed quality of life as an important ingredient in their decisions to locate and expand in the state. They know it's essential for attracting and retaining knowledge workers...
..."Although it is a new product, InfoPath 2003 really appealed to us because of the robustness of its development platform," said Adriaan van Wyk, chief executive officer of SourceCode Technology Holdings, responsible for the K2.net 2003 workflow software. "In a recent Meta study, 85 percent of organizations reported plans to implement BPM solutions by the end of 2004. We believe InfoPath 2003 can be a great tool in helping create BPM solutions for our customers, who are looking to empower knowledge workers in their organizations to take ownership of information and tasks. InfoPath 2003 has allowed us to extend the power of rapidly building workflow-enabled business forms into the hands of knowledge workers in the enterprise."...
Canada NewsWire :: eOptimize(R) Finds the "Suite Spot" with Exchange Server 2003
...NEW ORLEANS, LA, Oct. 10 /CNW/ - It's a software acquisition dilemma that most CIO's face at some point; go with standalone best-of-breed applications and glue them together with middleware, or select highly integrated collections of unremarkable solutions provided by a single vendor. Sound familiar? A fresh approach is to acquire best-of-suite solutions that address a set of generic business functions, but also have a rich integration strategy that supports facilitates niche custom or 3rd-party products.
"That's why the Microsoft Office System and Exchange Server 2003 are so important to us," explained Barry Baker, COO and CTO of eOptimize Inc. "I'm proud to state that our corporate scheduling product - About:Time(TM) for Exchange Server - couldn't exist without this very rich suite of knowledge worker and collaboration applications. Clients receive enormous benefit when vendors create more value out of the same data, and the same IT spend...
The Star :: The Asian ICT promise
By Edwin Yapp
PARTNERSHIPS, be it between individuals or corporations, have been regarded as perhaps the greatest fundamental need in today's interconnected world.
Todays partnerships, such as those fostered between the academia and industries, large multinational companies (MNCs) and smaller local Small Medium Enterprises (SMEs), suppliers and manufacturers, are but some examples that have reaped tremendous rewards.
And in an increasingly globalised world, the concept of partnership has gone one step further as it has now been extended beyond merely cooperation between entities within national borders.
One such initiative is Connected Asia, which is managed by the Singapore infocomm Technology Federation.
It defines Connected Asia as a virtual network made up of Asian nodes of ICT (information and communication technology) excellence, which together form an integrated and dynamic ICT community...
km & social software research notes...
Information Ecology References
[Full text PDF versions of the following papers and book chapters are freely available on the "Information Ecology References" link cited above.]
Published Papers 2003
McArthur, R. and Bruza, P.D. (2003) Discovery of implicit and explicit connections between people using email utterance: To be published in the Proceedings of the Eighth European Conference of Computer-supported Cooperative Work, Helsinki, September 2003
Abstract. This paper is about finding explicit and implicit connections between people by mining semantic associations from their email communications. Following from a sociocognitive stance, we propose a model called HALe which automatically derives dimensional representations of words in a high dimensional context space from an email corpus. These dimensional representations are used to discover a network of people based on a seed contextual description. Such a network represents useful connections between people not easily achievable by 'normal' retrieval means. Implicit connections are 'lifted' by applying latent semantic analysis to the high dimensional context space. The discovery techniques are applied to a substantial corpus of real-life email utterance drawn from a small-to-medium size information technology organization. The techniques are computationally tractable, and evidence is presented that suggests appropriate explicit connections are being brought to light, as well as interesting, and perhaps serendipitous implicit connections. The ultimate goal of such techniques is to bring to light contextsensitive, ephemeral, and often hidden relationships between people, and between people and information, which pervade the enterprise.
McArthur, R. and Bruza, P.D. (2003)
Chapters in Chance Discovery, Ohsawa, Y. and McBurney, P. (Eds), Springer-Verlag
Discovery of tacit knowledge and topical ebbs and flows within the utterances of online community
5.1 Introduction
This chapter will show how to derive post-semantic context ([2][3]) based on vector representations of words (described in Chapter 5). The core problem is to discover relevant word associations in relation to seed words in the utterance. This may involve uncovering implicit associations or re-weighting explicit associations more highly. In other words, the goal of the mining process is to provide highly weighted associations, firstly between a seed word such as "John", and words inherent to the background information surrounding "John" such as "Smith", "Microsoft" etc., and secondly with terms implicit in the original utterance (Note: we continue using the example framed in 5.2) It is our view that the set of such associations form a part, if not the basis, of Grice's conversational implicature [1]. The chapter describes techniques for computing associations in a dimensional space that have shown promise in the literature. The goal is to provide some initial insights as to their usefulness for mining conversational implicature by applying them to a small set of email utterances. The second illustration illuminates how the representation and techniques inform of association's changes over time capturing the ebb and flow of conversations in the community of a mailing list.
Dimensional representations of knowledge in online community
6.1 Introduction
Chance discovery in online communities has many facets. It is the serendipitous meeting of two people with a background or interest in common (the interest being subsidiary to the community's raison d'etre). It is a solution to some problem that the community has, but that solution must come from without.
In this chapter, we separate the area into three facets:
1. chance discovery of online communities;
2. between communities;
3. and within a community.
October 13, 2003
on albert einstein...
Have you seen the Albert Einstein Archives?
This collection contains the personal papers of Albert Einstein (1879-1955) and supplementary material collected at the Albert Einstein Archives. The material documents the life and career of Albert Einstein. The collection includes the manuscripts of Einstein's scientific and non-scientific writings, his correspondence with scientific colleagues and non-scientific contemporaries, his general correspondence as well as his personal documents and family correspondence. The collection also includes non-textual materials such as photographs, sound recordings and film footage. Enjoy!
knowledge management news...
[there are eleven news stories in this post.]
Portsmouth Herald Business News :: Swingtide partnering with CSC
...PORTSMOUTH - Portsmouth-based Swingtide Inc. has formed an alliance with Computer Sciences Corporation to help financial services firms realize the full value of distributed technologies such as Web Services and XML in next-generation software applications. ...
CSC and Swingtide will collaborate on four offerings: an industry-specific XML interoperability and education lab; a standards-based knowledge management community for XML and Web Services; a custom XML-readiness process that focuses on best practices for service-oriented architectures and deployments; and analytical software to track XML messages and provide business activity monitoring across a fully distributed enterprise application. The first set of combined offerings - training workshops and online access to a knowledge and collaboration system - will be available in October...
...Experts, Steve Letza, Giovanni Schiuma, Mohammed Zairi and Peter Fairclough, provided details of the one-day conference which is followed by two independent workshops designed specifically for public and private sector companies respectively. The entire program will be held at the Burj Al Arab from 12th to 14th October.
Over the coming days, these experts will offer key members of the Middle East business community advice and insights into the multiple benefits that effective corporate governance can bring to their businesses. The experts carry with them a wealth of academic and practical experience. Each will be offering delegates information on best practice as well as guidance on how to implement a robust systems of corporate governance into their individual company infrastructures.
Outlining the importance of corporate governance to the modern business, Steve Letza, founding Director of the European Centre for Corporate Governance, said: 'Good governance leads to good management and improved long-term performance. Wherever corporate entities exist there is a need to assess corporate governance. I strongly believe in the agents of change facing the new age boardroom structure. Open governance within knowledge-based companies is now the norm. Improved governance leads to improved performance and networks, rather than hierarchies, are the way in which much contemporary business is conducted.'...
FCW :: Maryland tech incubator opens
BY Michael Hardy
...With 80 percent of its space filled, the Chesapeake Innovation Center, a technology incubator for start-up firms developing homeland security technology, formally opened its doors with a ceremony yesterday.
The Annapolis, Md. incubator houses seven new companies, all hoping to develop markets with government agencies and in the private sector. Incubator officials selected companies based on a list of technologies needed by the National Security Agency -- a partner in the venture along with Anne Arundel County's Economic Development Corp.
Companies include wireless communications firms, security technology companies, a firm developing systems for first responders to gather information about chemical or biological exposure and transmit data and one biotech company developing a treatment for anthrax exposure.
Under NSA's guidance, incubator officials are looking for knowledge management, data mining and peer-to-peer communications firms to move in, said Director John Elstner...
India Inc. :: Pantaloon: Implementing A Balanced Approach To Employee Assessment
by Rajiv Banerjee
...Confirming the health of human being involves assessment on various parameters. The same holds true for a company also. Increasingly companies are realising the importance of linking employee performance to the overall objective and vision of the company. And employee performance is not merely achieving the financial objective, but also matching up to the internal processes, knowledge gathering and also customer satisfaction. That is Balanced Score Card for you at Pantaloon Retail India Ltd. After a year long assessment and study, employees are getting measured under the Balanced Score Card...
...The first intelligent planning and scheduling system that enables companies to easily encode and apply sophisticated decision-making rules was introduced today by Stottler Henke Associates, Inc., a software development firm based here. The Aurora(TM) scheduling system generates schedules more effectively than traditional systems by applying domain-specific knowledge and heuristics, constraints, and resource requirements. Using Aurora's graphical user interface, scheduling experts can easily configure Aurora with this planning and scheduling knowledge, as well as visualize and modify the automatically-generated schedules.
Aurora was originally developed to help NASA tackle difficult, mission-critical scheduling problems that previously required the judgment and experience of expert human schedulers. ...
Founded in 1988, Stottler Henke Associates, Inc. applies artificial intelligence and other advanced software technologies to solve problems that defy solution using traditional approaches. The company delivers intelligent software solutions for education and training, planning and scheduling, knowledge management and discovery, decision support, and software development. Stottler Henke's clients include manufacturers, retailers, educational media companies and government agencies...
EContent :: Kofax and Hummingbird Strengthen Partnership
...Hummingbird Ltd., a developer of enterprise information management systems, has selected Kofax, an information capture vendor, as a Strategic Technology Partner. As the highest partnership level in Hummingbird's Technical Alliance Program, Strategic Technology Partners are expected to focus on Fortune 500 customers, are global in reach, and have products that complement Hummingbird's offerings...
BusinessWire :: Company Profile for Locus Technologies
...Locus Technologies specializes in providing comprehensive consulting, design, and construction services for the remediation of sites contaminated by hazardous wastes. Locus also provides environmental data management that supports our more traditional consulting activities, which has formed the cornerstone of our Information Management Group, who are bringing our Internet technologies to a whole new level. ...
The LocusFocus(SM) environmental portal is rapidly evolving to meet the changing requirements of our customers, and collaboration and knowledge management have become essential for sites that have multiple PRPs. By integrating collaborative applications into LocusFocus, we are able to deploy comprehensive solutions that enable and foster collaboration and coordination across customers, employees, and regulators...
...IntraLearn Software Corporation, the leading supplier of configurable e-Learning software applications, and Recombo Inc., an industry leader in content integration for the learning, knowledge management and performance support, announced today a partnership to offer tightly integrated, well-tested content integration solutions to IntraLearn's partners and clients. These solutions will take advantage of IntraLearn's flexible product suite and Recombo's content testing, integration platform and services...
BusinessWire :: Keenan & Associates Teams With Enwisen to Launch Keenan Personal Choice
...Keenan & Associates, the largest privately held brokerage firm in California, has signed an agreement with Enwisen, Inc., to provide a rich suite of online employee benefits information and decision support tools to 350,000 of its employee benefits customers, including school districts, community colleges, and healthcare organizations.
Under the terms of the agreement, Keenan & Associates will offer employers, employees and dependents online access to a host of benefits information through Keenan Personal Choice(SM), a fully customizable portal that Keenan & Associates will establish for each of its customers.
Enwisen, a leader in mid-to-large market Human Resource communication solutions, will rapidly deploy its patented knowledge-management solution to every one of Keenan's employee benefits customers, putting critical information into the hands of employees to help them become more informed consumers. Full implementation will be complete by 1Q 2004...
Business Standard :: The knowledge corporations
by Shyamal Majumdar
...How do corporations maximise enterprise intellectual capital? "Pretty simple. Companies must build competency inventory to recharge their intellectual horsepower," says a leading HR consultant.
Cut out the management jargon and the answer actually is a rather straightforward one. The purpose of an elaborate knowledge management (KM) system is the belief that in today's information-driven economy, companies uncover opportunities and ultimately derive the maximum value from intellectual rather than physical assets.
The best return from intellectual assets can come only if a knowledge data bank is created and shared with others. After all, the sustainable competitive advantage a company has, comes only from what it collectively knows...
Business Standard :: InterPro to invest $10m in subsidiary
S Kalyana Ramanathan, Sanjay Krishnan in Chennai
...InterPro Holding, the Washington-based $670 million business process solutions provider, expects to invest close to $10 million in India through its subsidiary, InterPro India. The company expects about 1,500 recruitments in the next one year. ...
According to Swami, the next year the company will focus on knowledge management and it has already put in place a 30-member team.
"We have grown fast and now it is time to take stock and learn from what we have achieved over the last nine years," Swami said with regards to the knowledge management initiative...
social network news...
New York Times :: To Whom May I Direct Your Free Call?
By Nicholas Thompson
...Mr. Zennstrom and Mr. Friis have reunited with the same team of Estonian programmers who wrote the code for Kazaa and have created a way to allow people to make high-quality phone calls over the Internet without having to pay a penny.
On Aug. 29, their new company, called Skype, released a preliminary version of the program. Already, more than a million people have downloaded it, the company's Web site says.
It is "a real opportunity to do something that is disruptive in a very positive way," Mr. Zennstrom said. "We have a big ambition with Skype: it is to make it the global telephone company."...
For the most part, Mr. Zennstrom is taking the same position with Skype that he adopted with Kazaa. He says that the company is just providing software; that users can do with it what they want; and that there are too many potential legal issues internationally to worry about them all.
"We don't know if Skype will be banned in Bhutan," Mr. Zennstrom said. "The only thing that we know for sure is that we are providing something very competitive that is very good for the consumers using it. If a country were to ban it, that would be very bad for consumers there."
Skype also faces a potential standoff with the F.B.I. Because traffic over Skype is strongly encrypted and distributed over wide-ranging sources, it could hamper authorities' ability to wiretap.
Paul Bresson, an F.B.I. spokesman, said, "It is legal; it is a concern; and it is something that we are looking into."
Mentioned in this article: Skype, Microsoft, Yahoo!, Cisco, The Pew Research Center, Legg Mason, MCI, Yankee Group, Vonage, and AT&T.
Pittsburgh Post-Gazette :: Why hurt feelings really do hurt
By Michael Woods, Post-Gazette National Bureau
...The old Scottish nursery rhyme was wrong. Sticks and stones can break your bones, and names can hurt you, too.
Researchers yesterday revealed the biology behind what every victim of a put-down, cheap shot or social snub knows all too well: social rejection hurts. They showed that hurt feelings affect exactly the same region of the brain as a broken bone or other physical injury.
"This study should make people more aware of the impact of negative words and gestures toward others," said chief researcher Dr. Naomi Eisenberger, a psychologist at the University of California at Los Angeles. The study will appear in today's edition of the journal Science, which is published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. ...
"Emotional pain is an undesired psychological state of affairs," said Pankseep, who was not involved in the research. "And the less there is of that in social networks, the more harmoniously people will interact."...
darknets light the way...
Clay Shirky :: File-sharing Goes Social
...The RIAA has taken us on a tour of networking strategies in the last few years, by constantly changing the environment file-sharing systems operate in. In hostile environments, organisms often adapt to become less energetic but harder to kill, and so it is now. With the RIAA's waves of legal attacks driving experimentation with decentralized file-sharing tools, file-sharing networks have progressively traded efficiency for resistance to legal attack.
The RIAA has slowly altered the environment so that relatively efficient systems like Napster were killed, opening up a niche for more decentralized systems like Gnutella and Kazaa. With their current campaign against Kazaa in full swing, we are about to see another shift in network design, one that will have file sharers adopting tools originally designed for secure collaboration in a corporate setting...
Mentioned in this article: Groove Networks, Shinkuro, and WASTE.
October 12, 2003
bridging the knowledge gap...
The Nation :: Electronic libraries in the works
...The government wants to develop a network of e-libraries with the ambitious goal of creating an information and knowledge bank for students nationwide. Marasri Boonroj and Patcharee Lueng-uthai report.
For years, government leaders have complained that Thais don't have the reading habit. Public and private organisations have lined up to attack this problem and implement campaigns through the nation's school libraries, but it is less clear what commitment is being shown at the national level. As information technology proliferates, the government is promoting e-libraries as a vital tool to stimulate learning.
In March, Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra ordered three ministries - Information and Communication Technology, Education and Culture - to establish a National Knowledge Institute to provide overall management for the library system. ... No one disputes the need to bridge the knowledge gap by moving libraries into the digital world, but experts raise concerns that many elements might be overlooked...
wkforum :: World Knowledge Forum, Oct. 14-17, Seoul
...Business leaders will remember 2003 as a year of well-founded worries. An omnipresent terrorist threat, the war in Iraq, the SARS outbreak, and North Korea's nuclear issue aggravated a situation already darkened by a protracted economic recession.
Yet as the year unfolded, the clouds had begun to dissipate. The vanquishing of SARS, the rapid overthrow of a hostile regime, and a gradual return of business confidence have all brightened moods in boardrooms around the world. Signs hint at a recovery in Europe following definite recovery in the United States, and heads of state of Northeast Asian countries are actively seeking ways to promote economic cooperation in the region.
Of course it is still too early to say that the dark days are behind us - outcomes in both the Korean Peninsula and the Middle East are still very uncertain, and there are many who warn that Europe and even the U.S. may succumb to the deflationary forces that have hurt Japan.
But there is much to be hopeful about, and many who wish to share hopeful signs. For them, there are many venues for discussion of the right path to global prosperity. What's missing from many of those venues, though, is the crucial mix of business insights, survival strategies, and diagnostics of present status and future trends.
In Asia, the World Knowledge Forum offers that vital mix. Hosted by Maeil Business Newspaper and sponsored by the Financial Times, Nikkei, CNBC Asia and Bloomberg, Reuters and SBS, the fourth World Knowledge Forum welcomes all business leaders, political leaders, and thought leaders to a discussion of a new future...
WIPO/PR/2003/363: 2003 Session of WIPO Assemblies Conclude
...The Assemblies of the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) concluded on Wednesday following a review of activities over the past year and agreement on the agenda of the Organization for the next year. The meetings of the Assemblies, which bring together the 179 member states of the Organization as well as representatives of a number of intergovernmental and non-governmental organizations, were chaired by Ambassador Bernard Kessedjian, Permanent Representative of France to the United Nations and other international organizations in Geneva. Ms. Dorothy Angote, Registrar-General, Department of the Registrar-General, Attorney-General's Chambers of Kenya and Mr. Wang Jingchuan, Commissioner, State Intellectual Property Office of China served as Vice Chairs.
The highlights of the meeting that took place from September 22 through October 1, 2003, include:
The General Assembly approved by consensus the 2004-2005 program and budget, which proposes a slight decrease as compared to 2002-2003 owing to the completion of major infrastructure projects in the area of information technology and buildings during that financial period. Member states approved a budget amounting to 638.8 million Swiss Francs (SFr), which reflects a decrease of 30 million SFr or 4.5 % as compared with the revised budget for 2002-2003 of 668.8 million SFr. ... The plan affirms that the economic health of a country and its success in meeting development challenges such as bridging the knowledge divide and reducing poverty will depend on an ability to develop, utilize and protect its national creativity and innovation...
October 11, 2003
knowledge domain visualization...
the knowledge landscape
superstring revolutions
explore in 3D
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
Visualizing a Knowledge Domain's Intellectual Structure
Knowledge Management and Knowledge Work are enhanced by effective information modeling and visualization tools. Knowledge domain visualization (KDV) assists in recognizing patterns of citation, not only in scientific journals but also in how organizations, industries, and the world at large refer to each other and give attribution or citation. Being a "visual" type, I find this area of study into visualizing a knowledge domain's intellectual structure in a three-dimensional spatial model compelling.
...To make knowledge visualizations clear and easy to interpret, the authors have developed a method that extends and transforms traditional author co-citation analysis (ACA) by extracting structural patterns from the scientific literature and representing them in a 3D knowledge landscape. Integrating citation and co-citation patterns provides a rich, ecological representation of a knowledge domain. Users can apply visualizations to discover patterns and make valuable connections among data. The authors' approach extends conventional ACA by integrating structured modeling and information visualization techniques to provide a 3D knowledge landscape based on citation patterns. Their four-step procedure introduces Pathfinder network scaling to replace multidimensional scaling. It also integrates Pathfinder and factor analysis to visualize specialties in the underlying domain knowledge and visualizes the citation frequency of scientists to track changes in their influence over time. This knowledge visualization approach identifies intellectual groupings based on extending the traditional ACA, augmenting the existing document- and concept-centered approaches to knowledge visualization. The 3D knowledge landscape has practical implications in knowledge visualization, digital libraries, domain analysis, and subject domains, providing powerful tools for tracking intuitively scientific knowledge...
For access to downloadable PDF papers in this area:
Dr. Chaomei Chen - is an Associate Professor in the College of Information Science and Technology at Drexel University. His research interests include information visualization, digital libraries, visualization of knowledge structures, and social dynamics in multi-user virtual environments. He is the author of Information Visualisation and Virtual Environments (Springer, 1999) and the Editor-in-Chief of a peer-reviewed international journal Information Visualization.
Katy Borner - is an Assistant Professor in Information Science at Indiana University. Trained as an engineer, her major interest has always been a concern with how existing technology can be applied to enhance and extend human capabilities. In particular, she focuses on information visualization and the usage of 3-D technology to build collaborative, intuitive and efficient human-computer interfaces to electronically available data such as text and image digital libraries.
For more information on Knowledge Domain Visualization, Google It!
integrating km and bi...
destinationKM.com :: Evolving Synergies
by Madanmohan Rao
...The disciplines of business intelligence (focused on structured data) and knowledge management (focused on unstructured data as well as human teams and communities) can powerfully leverage mutual synergies.
Business intelligence (BI) has addressed the processes, technologies and strategies for cleaning up transactional and operational data, analysing patterns in this data, discovering and extracting performance-oriented nuggets, reporting this information to a wide range of managers, and taking appropriate business action. Knowledge management (KM) addresses the cultures, tools and capacities for creating and harnessing knowledge stocks and flows in employee communities and their often "unstructured" communication (eg. emails) and documentation (eg. presentations).
The two fields complement each other well, and at higher strategy levels they can actually be planned and rolled out in tandem, particularly in larger organisations with high transactive flow and pace of evolution. BI tools can be deployed without KM practices -- as in many banks, and KM initiatives can be launched in organisations without BI implementations -- as in public relations firms, of course...
Mentioned in this article:
National Computer Systems Pte Ltd, Tata International, Frost & Sullivan, Airtel, SingTel, Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd, Hummingbird Ltd, Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals Inc, LG Electronics, Red Pill Solutions, Open Text, and NexLabs.
For more on the intersection of knowledge management and business intelligence, google it!
October 10, 2003
woolly bear legend...
thickly clouded sky
maple tree bursting orange
woollies seek shelter
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
knowledge worker news...
[there are four news stories in this post.]
vnunet.com :: Siebel works on .Net integration
By Robert Jaques
...Mark Armenante, group vice president of alliances at Siebel Systems, said: "Working together over the past year, Siebel and Microsoft have developed .Net-based solutions throughout our client, server and integration product stacks."
He added that the 7.7 version of Siebel's enterprise platform, using .Net, will include enhanced integration with Microsoft Office 2003 and Exchange for mobile knowledge workers.
Siebel 7.7 will allow users to link Office Outlook 2003 records to data in the Siebel database, and the Siebel Exchange Connector will allow users to synchronise calendar information, contacts and to-do lists between Siebel 7.7 and Exchange...
AME Info Business News :: Eighth World Congress for TQM closes on successful note
by Anne-Birte Stensgaard
...Speaking on Creating Employee Value in a Global Economy through Participation, Motivation and Development, Dr. Vora [Chairman and President, Business Excellence, Inc.] focused on the key factors required to create an environment for employee well-being and satisfaction, leading to improved participation and morale to achieve enterprise-wide success in a global economy. Dr. Vora also presented a general roadmap to effectively manage 'knowledge workers' in the 21st century...
The Times of India :: Balancing work and family
...Therapist of the new economy, Stephen Covey, defines traits of leadership and what works for today's CEOs. In the second part of his interview with N Vidyasagar and Vinay Kamat , Covey stresses the importance of the family and the workplace.
On what is missing in today's CEOs : Many CEOs are still stuck in the industrial-age business model, where the primary assets were "things". They don't recognise the reality of the whole person, the knowledge worker who possesses a body, mind, heart and spirit. Instead, several of them still think people must be controlled for results. And they often land up treating people as things...
The Globe and Mail :: Relax, the kids are doing fine
By Barbara Moses
...'I don't know what's wrong with my son. First he was going to do a BA in history, then he decided to switch to psychology. Now he's saying he wants to do a Masters in criminology, but he doesn't know what he would do with it."
I hear this kind of comment frequently from parents exasperated by their kids' lack of clear career direction. This is followed inevitably by the lament: "When I was his age, I was much more focused . . ."
If, as they say, 50 is the new 40, then 30 is the new 20. There are many reasons that young people today, from teenagers to those in their early 30s, are confused about what they want to do. The complexity of preparing for contemporary knowledge work means a longer and more expensive period of education than in the past, and the career outcomes are less predictable. During what is in effect a much prolonged adolescence, the traditional parenting role of providing financial and moral support becomes similarly extended...
knowledge research notes...
Journal of Knowledge Management Practice :: How To Make Knowledge Management A Firm's Core Capability
by Abdelkader Daghfous, American University of Sharjah
ABSTRACT:
If knowledge and its management are so important a determinant of firm performance and competitiveness, then making knowledge management a firm's core capability is likely to give that firm a sustainable competitive advantage. This paper uses the capabilities approach to guide those aspects of general management that materially affect the creation of distinctive and difficult-to-imitate advantages. The framework proposed in this paper extends beyond isolated KM interventions, activities, and physical systems and proposes an integrative approach to KM. Although core capabilities are firm specific and developed over time, a framework that guides general managers in turning KM into a core capability is proposed. The framework is extensively based on Leonard-Barton's (1995) four dimensions of a core capability and Davenport and Prusak's (1998) comprehensive overview of KM.
Journal of Knowledge Management Practice :: Use Of Ontologies To Enhance The Design Of A Framework For Multi-Party Collaboration And Decision-Making: The Case Of Situation Room Analysis
by Bob Roberts, Kingston University and Adamantios Koumpis, ALTEC S.A.
ABSTRACT:
Work presented in this paper forms part of a wider research in defining a methodological framework for Situation Room Analysis (SRA), and its deployment for complex (business enterprise) systems study. In our approach, we propose the use of ontologies as a powerful means to support the implementation of multi-party collaboration and decision-making activities that build on the paradigm of a Situation Room (SR). The approach is complementary to others in the area of business planning and is characterised as top-down in that the SR paradigm is conceptualised through three related models: the Situation Room Model (SRM), the Information Management Model (IMM) and the Situation Analysis Model (SAM). The ontology-based approach includes the semantic features of the exchanged decision-making information thus offering the integration of the SRA framework with existing corporate decision-making grids.
October 09, 2003
conspicuous consumption...
Star Light, Star Bright, Last Planet I Eat Tonight...[astronomy.com]
planet munching star
brightens upon swallowing
three planetwiches
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
knowledge management news...
[there are nine news stories in this post, please read 'below the fold' as some are most interesting.]
Computer Business Review :: Intelligence pool
...The saying 'a problem shared is a problem halved' may be a cliche. But there is now a consensus of opinion in business intelligence (BI) that two heads are better than one. Corporations have recognised that there is significant value to be gained from allowing users to effectively collaborate over analytic data.
Collaborative BI is a team-building exercise that capitalises on the collective insight and experience of all employees. It pools expertise and insights to enable, faster, better and more accountable decisions. BI can be used to reduce business activity cycle times by eliminating the lag between evaluation, decision and action - one of the key aims of knowledge management (KM).
Companies are, however, having to strike a balance between the algorithmic number crunching of BI tools and the 'human touch' inherent in collaborative interactions. "BI places a lot of emphasis on how to drive efficiencies through aggregation and data-mining techniques... but it lacks a human element of understanding," says Don Campbell, Cognos VP of innovation and technology. Collaboration also runs against human nature as people are not naturally 'programmed' to share information...
Mentioned in this article [links hand-coded by me... (^:]:
Cognos, Business Objects, Actuate, Gartner, SAS Institute, Microsoft Excel, Open Text, Microsoft Exchange Server 2003, IBM Lotus Notes, Intraspect, Microsoft SharePoint, Spotfire, Brio Software, and Sarbanes-Oxley [which seems to be out of business.]
for more information on "Collaborative BI" - google it!
Asia Times :: The rich world's disappearing jobs
By John Berthelsen and Indrajit Basu
If the North American Free Trade Act passes, "you will hear a giant sucking sound of jobs going south of the border". - H Ross Perot, 1992
...In the developed world and particularly in the United States, the scope of jobs disappearing overseas is widening beyond all imagining, to professions that almost nobody expected to be hit, and with far higher incomes than anybody thought possible as globalization bonds with the law of unintended consequences.
The catalyst is the Internet. As instant communication becomes more ubiquitous, the developed world's white-collar professions, from CAD/CAM (computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing) to accounting to medicine to architecture to aircraft design to research and development to engineering to equity research and financial management to knowledge management to revenue-cycle management - a whole panorama of high-income employment - are inexorably going...
...Sakhr Software Co., the giant Arabic IT company, has revealed that it is about to launch the comprehensive Arabic Information Monitoring and Management System, the first of its kind, in the Middle East, North Africa and the Arabian Gulf.
'When national and international security becomes an obsession, when safety and stability are the main objectives of governments, it is only natural that a need for a solution is born, a solution that has exceptional knowledge management capabilities to process information in both Arabic and English,' Al-Sharekh said addressing these needs. 'This is the solution that fulfils the demands of research centers as well as national security organizations, while complying with the trend of converting to electronic document management. This solution also fills the larger gap in information management that face many government administrations and organizations, regardless of their specialties,' Al-Sharekh added, 'It is now possible to own bi-lingual systems capable, as never before, of fulfilling very specific and very important needs.'
The company expects an escalation in demand for this solution by ministries, government administrations, research centers, decision making and national security authorities, as well as various organizations which require processing the various formats of information...
ZDNet UK :: UK's hottest tech prospect revealed
by Matt Loney
...Mike Lynch, founder and chief executive of knowledge management firm Autonomy, said many of the things predicted during the dot-com boom will come to pass, but perhaps just not as soon as everyone thought. "To say the dot-com boom didn't have an effect is wrong," said Lynch. "We are changing everything."
Lynch, whose company's success made him the UK's first software billionaire when its valuation soared in the late 1990s noted that some types of business never really stood a chance.
"There was one dot-com laundry company in San Francisco, which took your smalls away, laundered them for free and returned them," Lynch told his audience. "Their business model was to analyse your smalls, from which they could get an analysis of your lifestyle, which could then be sold." The main flaw (of many) with this plan, said Lynch, was that "everybody knows that civil servants like to wear women's underwear underneath their suits, so not only would this company have to cleanse underwear, but it would also have to cleanse the database afterwards. The data would simply be wrong."
Conversely, said Lynch, Tesco.com is a formidable dot-com business model. But the rise (or survival) of dot-coms with sustainable business models has not been as easy one: Lynch noted the rise, during the boom, of MBAs, "which popped up with no particular expertise."
A good analogy for MBAs, said Lynch, was eels, "not because they are slippery and slimy, but because no one knew where they came from. Now the MBAs have all disappeared again. I even looked under the investment banking rock and there is nothing there."...
ElectricNews.net :: Irish GPs, hospitals link up via the Web
by Frances Gleeson
..."The Healthlink Project is a clear example of the contribution that electronic knowledge management and communications can make to Irish healthcare," said Peter Lennon, director of GPIT (the national General Practice Information Technology group of the Department of Health and Children), which is collaborating with the Healthlink team on the provision of the service.
The system, which is funded by the Department of Health and Children, was developed over the past six years by the Healthlink Development Team. Until now the service has been e-mail based, but the new system integrates with existing systems used by GPs, such as GP Clinical, Medicom and HealthOne. The Healthlink Development Team provides training and support to GPs using the service.
A number of security features have been built into the system to ensure the security of patient data. Each GP using the service has a username, password and PIN code. Secure sockets layer (SSL) technology is used for data encryption and for server authentication, as well as server and browser certificates.
There are currently over 250 Healthlink Online users including GPs, practice nurses, practice staff and five hospitals: the Mater Hospital and Beaumont Hospital in Dublin, Limerick Regional Hospital, Ennis General Hospital and St. Joseph's Hospital in Nenagh.
Healthlink is currently in negotiations with other hospitals and health boards nationwide to facilitate anticipated demand from GPs, according to Marie Lalor, project manager of the National Healthlink Project...
The Economic Times :: Wipro launches IT consulting services
...BANGALORE: Wipro Infotech has launched IT consulting services for customers in India, the Asia Pacific and West Asia.
The company would offer its proven strategic consulting services in the areas of Customer Relationship Management, Supply Chain Management, Data Warehousing, Executive Information System, Knowledge Management and Web Services, the statement said...
The Morning News :: High School Honored For Commitment
...Rogers High School was honored Tuesday by being given the second level of the Arkansas Quality Award, the commitment level.
Gov. Mike Huckabee presented the award - which honors companies and organizations that have implemented a quality management system - to Principal Bill Stringer at an Arkansas Quality Awards banquet in Little Rock. ...
The high school filed an extensive report to apply for the award. The report included seven categories of quality principles, including leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, management, analysis and knowledge management, human resource focus, process management and business results...
finextra.com :: CSC and Swingtide in Web Services alliance
...Under the agreement, CSC and Swigtide will collaborate on four services - analytical software to track XML messages and provide business activity monitoring across the enterprise; an industry-specific XML interoperability and education lab; a custom XML-readiness process; and a standards-based knowledge management community...
Business Wire :: The Digital Enterprise Comes to Life At COMDEX Las Vegas 2003
...MediaLive International, Inc. (OTCBB:KMEDQ), the world's leading producer of information technology events, conferences, publications and related media and services, today announced expanded content around the digital enterprise at COMDEX Las Vegas 2003, taking place November 16-20. Through a series of conferences and panel discussions, COMDEX is teaching businesses to capitalize on the extended enterprise by capturing, integrating and analyzing the collective knowledge, whether in tangible form or in the form of employee expertise, in a digitized workplace...
google augments adwords...
ZDNet UK - News - Google factors clicks into AdWords
by Matt Hines
...Google on Thursday added three new features to AdWorks, most notably a conversion tracking tool that lets customers measure how effective their paid links have been in generating site traffic and online transactions. Other upgrades included expanded matching functionality -- allowing advertisers to cash in on keyword searches related to the terms they have paid for -- and a lowered click-through threshold, meant to protect certain ads from the perception that they are less relevant than they might actually be. All three features are free to Google's estimated 150,000 AdWords customers...
weblogs in the news...
[there are six news stories in this post, on politics and statistics.]
Correspondences.org :: News for the people by people: Lost: Voice of Youth. Reward if Found
by Melissa Blaustein
...As a 15 year old non fiction student, I'm one to read the news and know what's going on. Recently I've been extremely interested in the recall election and who will be the next governor of my state. However, I'm overwhelmingly alarmed by the complete absence of any sort of acknowledgement of California's youth opinion. Sure, I'm not 18 just yet, and I can't vote, but does this mean that my ideas, values and what I want for my country don't matter? I wonder why children are even mentioned if we are completely irrelevant to anything until we can vote. When I turn 18, I know that I'd be much more likely to vote for someone who cared about me and my peers when I was 15 then someone who miraculously notices me when I turn 18 and am able to vote. The truth is, those under 18 today are the people of tomorrow. Unfortunately, no one really seems to realize that until such a tomorrow occurs.
So now that Arnold Schwarzenegger is our governor (as of 11:14 pm with 46% of the precint reporting) what do the "people of California" have to say about it? I'm sure everyone has an opinion on this controversial issue of governmental recall. But what about those who did not yet qualify to vote? Are we still the people of California, even though legally we are not considered to be? Not only were we not allowed to vote, but no one in the general media and none of the canidates asked; we, the youth of california our opinion. Does this mean that politically speaking we don't matter? I myself can't help but feel that I am powerless.
As far as I've seen, according to modern politics, who am i to even be writing this story? All I can say is thank goodness for blogs such as correspondences which allow some of those who might not otherwise be heard to speak out. But in the main stream media, as far as anyone who matters is concerned, all I am is a "youngster".
Now don't get me wrong, I'm not criticizing all modern media and all political candidates. I simply pose the question; where do I as an adolescent stand? Do my words, my ideas, and my peers words and ideas matter to you? Because simply the sporadic mention of the children and better education just don't do it for me...
internet.com :: As The Blogs Churn
By Robyn Greenspan
...According to Perseus Development Corp., a significant number of Internet users jumped on the blog [define] bandwagon and then jumped off, as the company found that two-thirds of the 3,634 hosted blogs that were surveyed were inactive.
Interestingly, The National Institute for Technology and Liberal Education (NITLE) Blog Census finds almost the exact reverse: of the 1,372,266 Weblogs that are indexed by the NITLE, an estimated 905,695 are active...
Internet Magazine :: George W Bush weblog launches
...The Bush-Cheney 2004 Presidential campaign now has its own official weblog - and guess what? The regularly-updated diary seems to run on the open source weblogging software, Movable Type.
Although weblogs are often used as an opportunity for writers to post interesting links and opinions, many regard the Bush-Cheney weblog as a series of tacked-together press releases made to look like a weblog.
There's also no opportunity to comment under each post - usually part of what weaves weblogs together.
Whatever your opinion, there's no doubt that once the President himself has a blog, weblogging has gone mainstream...
MIT Technology Review :: Enter The Cybercandidates
By Henry Jenkins
...By now, you've probably heard that savvy use of the Internet has helped to push Howard Dean, the previously little known former governor of Vermont, into the front ranks of candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination. Dean has raised more money online than any other campaign in U.S. political history; his staff is using blogging technology to create a more intimate, real-time relationship with its supporters; and they are deploying "smart mob" style tactics to quickly launch rallies around the country. Dean won 40 percent of the vote in an online "primary" run by MoveOn.org - an event that attracted more voters than the 2000 Iowa caucuses and the New Hampshire primary combined. Pundits are calling Dean the cybercandidate...
Arkansas Democrat-Gazette :: Wesley Clark loses campaign manager over 'growing pains'
...Sterling Newberry, who helped lead one of the two major draft-Clark efforts, told Wired magazine last month that "there has been a tremendous amount of confusion and paucity of information coming from the campaign to blogs [Web logs], news sites and news people who have been Clark supporters."
Newberry said, for instance, that he had not been contacted by the campaign. "I have had some dealings with people who seemed to be associated with the campaign, but they were unproductive, and it wasn't clear what direction they were going."
Matthew Stoller, who publishes a daily Clark e-mail newsletter, told Wired, "A movement is a movement, and it can't be controlled through top-down hierarchical methods."
COURTING LABOR Fowler has ties to the tech world. He took leave from Tech-Net, a California political organization that represents the technology industry, to join the Clark campaign. Fowler was in charge of Democratic outreach for TechNet. Newsweek magazine has reported that Fowler's ties to Clark go back at least to the spring of 2002, when Clark sought his advice on a presidential run. Clark, meanwhile, was in Tulsa on Tuesday, where he criticized President Bush's war and economic policies while courting union voters. Speaking before about 200 people at the Transport Workers Union Local 514, Clark repeated his promise to repeal Bush's tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and use that money - $100 million - to create jobs. Information for this article was contributed by Kevin Freking of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and Ron Fournier and Clayton Bellamy of The Associated Press...
FOXNews :: Hollings Retirement a Big Win for Liberty
By Radley Balko
...Each time progress has dared to poke its head into the hallowed halls of the U.S. Senate, Fritz Hollings has been there to beat it back with a Billy club.
Thanks in part to nearly $300,000 in campaign contributions from the entertainment industry, he's become a tireless champion of the Luddites. Last year, Hollings introduced an outrageous piece of legislation that would have required every piece of electronics sold in the United States to come outfitted with a copyright protection mechanism. The bill would have significantly increased the cost of everything from car stereos to home computers, and would have thrown a wet blanket over further development of digital technology.
Also last year, also with backing from the Motion Picture Association of America, Hollings attempted to circumvent the legislative process and directly persuade the FCC to prevent consumers from recording broadcast television programs in their own homes.
Hollings' shameless shilling for the entertainment industry has earned him the title "the Senator from Disney," or "Sen. Ernest 'Fritz' Hollings, D-Disney" in blogging and tech circles...
October 08, 2003
on liz lawley's AoIR despair...
link aggregators
or electronic yentas?
people as filters
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
inspired by liz lawley's reference - in her desiderata and despair post - to Alex Golub's people as filters essay.
on techknowledgy...
stirring support soup
technology and knowledge
tasty winter brew
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
Today, in response to Dave Pollard's piece on "Techknowledgy", I posted the following comment on Dave's weblog:
When I was with SBC Communications' Internet Company, we called our group the "TechKnowledgy" group. The concept and practice - to embed knowledge into all of our technology initiatives. Our charter was as outlined in your post here Dave. Spooky, and yet validating.
We created an expertise locator, personal content management and collaboration tools, and we maintained a centralized bibliography or repository of tools and templates to effect solutions more quickly and with high quality. We did this for the front-line organizations and won a landslide of awards and praise from our customers, employees, industry pundits and publications.
We presented our "TechKnowledgy" vision to most of the C-level executives of SBC, with positive feedback. The challenge in socializing this vision more widely was in penetrating the more rigid operational silos of this large organization.
CIO magazine did a piece on some of our initiatives that you might find interesting: First Lines of Defense - Customer Service
knowledge management news...
[there are eight news stories in this post.]
CIO :: BI, CI, Oh!
by Beverley Head
...It was a US job advertisement that piqued the interest: A financial services company in Virginia wanted a business information officer - a supercharged go-between to shuttle between the business unit and the technology group. Does Australia need someone similar? Beverley Head shuttles between the experts to find an answer.
"It's typical of the US - creating a flashy title," says Malcolm Freame, director of infrastructure for Ernst & Young, based in Sydney. ... Ernst & Young has tackled the issue by appointing a director of business systems, who is separate from, but on a level with, the firm's CIO. Philip Langley is the director of business systems, reports to Freame and is both IT savvy and business aware. "The scope of his role is to look at the main business processes and the way that IT supports them," says Freame. "Stephen Arnold [the CIO] is involved in the development of infrastructure and support, They are peers and both report through me."
Interestingly, Freame does wear two hats. He is also the company's chief knowledge officer. and by acting as a funnel for both IT and business intelligence, he probably has a clearer perspective on the firm's knowledge management requirements and delivery capabilities...
dBusinessNews.com :: InfoStrength Applications Help Life Sciences in Challenging Economy
...Raleigh - InfoStrength, Inc. unveiled today version 3.0 of the InfoStrength Smart Enterprise Suite (SES). "The InfoStrength SES was in large part designed to help the life sciences industry as they face economic pressures to more efficiently leverage existing expertise and knowledge across the entire enterprise," said Rita Geiger, President and CEO.
As a leading regulatory compliance advisor and developer of knowledge management applications for the life sciences industry, InfoStrength actively sought the input of dozens of life sciences companies during the process of enhancing the functionality of the InfoStrength SES. "The organizations we spoke with told us about their knowledge management practice needs in the R&D, legal and patents, sales and marketing, and external collaboration areas." said Rita Geiger, President and CEO. "They wanted a tool that satisfied their document management and information sharing demands, as well as meeting their project and partner management challenges."...
The Financial Express :: Create Knowledge, Patent It: Mashelkar
...NEW DELHI: Create knowledge and protect it through patenting. This is the only mantra to march ahead into the new millennium, according to Council of Scientific and Industrial Research (CSIR) director general, and secretary, Department of Scientific and Industrial Research, Dr R A Mashelkar.
Dr Mashelkar was speaking on "The New Knowledge Millennium: Perception, Reality and the Dream" in his award acceptance speech, after receiving the fourth Lal Bahadur Shastri National Award for Excellence in Public Administration and Management Sciences for the year 2002.
He dwelt upon the four types of revolution: Green revolution (that relates to agriculture), White revolution (that relates to milk), Blue revolution (that relates to space mission) and most importantly Grey Revolution that relates to the emerging significance of knowledge management.
Dr Mashelkar said the problem in India is not the lack of a sophisticated and knowledgable workforce, but the lack of an application-oriented approach.
Talking about the role of CSIR in promoting research and development, he claimed that research output has increased sharply in recent years and he is setting a target of doubling the output in the near future.
Dr Mashelkar also called upon the research community not to restrict themselves to research journals only. They should make them feasible for practical use...
...Ft. Collins, CO (PRWEB) October 7, 2003 - SoftOlogy IdeaWorksTM, Inc. today introduced two new versions of its computer-accelerated reading software, RapidReader® 4.0 for Windows and RapidReader 4.0 for Palm. These products utilize patented technology that significantly accelerates the rate at which text can be can be read and absorbed while reading from electronic screens such as desktop computers, laptops and handheld PDAs (personal digital assistants). In other words RapidReader is designed to let the computer do the reading work...
MarketWire :: XIOtech Licenses iXmatch Software
...MINNEAPOLIS, MN -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 10/07/2003 -- iXmatch Inc., a leading provider of matching, searching, and analytics software, today announced that XIOtech Corporation, a storage networking pioneer, signed an agreement to license its advanced search software. iXmatch will enable XIOtech employees and customers to easily find the information they are seeking.
iXfind, iXmatch's state-of-the-art search engine, incorporates innovative search methods to find, evaluate, and rank the most relevant results. iXfind then puts the content into context by dynamically clustering the search results into groups of similar documents. For example, a search for "magnitude", XIOtech's family of storage products, returns thousands of results that are clustered on the fly into contextually-relevant sub-groups such as benefits, configuration, capacity, scalability, and others. Employees and customers can better manage information overload and more easily navigate by selecting relevant content groups.
"Traditional searching no longer works for people serious about finding relevant content," said Bryan Scheuler, Director of Services, XIOtech. "We selected iXmatch because of its best-in-class technology, high quality results, outstanding performance and ease of integration. iXmatch's software will enable us to take full advantage of the content we now have available through our new content management system from Einsof. We're excited about this relationship." ...
...Endeca, an emerging leader in enterprise information access software and inventor of a breakthrough process for information retrieval and discovery in large data repositories, today announced the establishment of a strategic relationship with In-Q-Tel, a private, non-profit enterprise funded by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). In-Q-Tel's mission is to identify and collaborate with companies developing cutting-edge information technologies that serve US national security interests...
Computerworld :: Alphawest buys PowerPlus business
by Helen Yeatman, ARN
...Perth-based systems integrator and solutions provider, Alphawest, has acquired the information management business of PowerPlus.
PowerPlus' information management business supplies, implements and supports advanced knowledge management and information management solutions.
As part of the acquisition, Alphawest will take on eight former PowerPlus staff and about 20 key customers in the corporate and state government sectors.
Director of sales and marketing at Alphawest, Steve McNally, Steve McNally, referred to the deal as a "skills acquisition"...
...Who: FileNet Corporation announced today that they are hosting a Web seminar on utilizing Forms Management to improve the flow of information that can speed time to market, reduce corporate risks and improve customer service in manufacturing. What: Guest speaker, Jim Murphy, senior research analyst of AMR Research, will share how eForms technology can be used to improve the flow of information for manufacturing organizations by serving as a front end to supplier interactions, quality and production processes. As a senior research analyst of AMR Research, Jim Murphy is responsible for leading the research activities regarding information infrastructure. In this role, he studies the products and industry trends associated with knowledge management, content management, enterprise portal technology, search and retrieval, e-learning and collaboration...
knowledge economy news...
[there are five news stories in this post.]
CIO | Timing is Everything
by Beverley Head
...Derek Goh is the general manager of IT for Challenger Financial Services Group, which recently merged with CPH Investment, and he believes there are occasions when information systems innovation is essential, and other times when it is less appropriate. ...
"It's like the recent campaign in [Iraq] where you have an air, land and sea, all-in-one campaign; whereas in World War II these were all separate operations," says Goh. "Today [our effort] is coordinated. We have one campaign comprising legacy, growth and future systems; the management challenge is to make it move as a whole and maintain harmony." To achieve that, says Goh, demands a focus on the people. He believes he has a strong team, capable of helping Challenger quickly elevate its information systems capability, which he acknowledges is presently somewhat behind its major competition.
Goh believes there are three levels at which a financial institute can compete via its information systems. First, through its transaction capability and the efficiency at which it can run those systems; second, through information competition by use of data; and finally via knowledge-based competition, which is more about business intelligence. "Our goal is to move towards business intelligence competition," says Goh. Which, as the innovation statement suggests, will require an innovation culture to support it...
The Economic Times :: PM sells resurgent India to Asean
...Mr Vajpayee said the 21st century would belong to Asia, and India was determined to play a key role in its growth. "Our interest rates are falling, inflation has been kept down, and foreign exchange reserves are growing rapidly. India remained unaffected by the Asian financial. We have targeted an 8% growth over the next few years. As our economic base in large, there is considerable untapped potential for India's continued - and even accelerated - economic growth." He underlined six highlights of the India:
* An inherently strong economy driven by indigenous skills and domestic enterprise.
* A growing and accessible domestic market, with important and investment barriers falling away.
* A rich pool of human resources - English speaking, with R&D skills, technological and managerial capabilities.
* Special capabilities in state-of-the-art technologies. India is one of only three countries - the US and Japan - to have indigenously designed and manufactured supercomputers. It is one of only six countries that can build and launch its own satellites.
* Global leadership in technologies of the knowledge economy. India's pre-eminent position in IT and IT-enabled services had led global companies to set up captives in India or to outsource their operations to quality Indian service providers.
* A sound and transparent financial system, with well-managed banking and insurance sectors, and vibrant capital markets...
SFGate :: EU considers new growth plan while France comes under fresh fire for deficits
by Paul Geitner, AP Business Writer
...The EU finance ministers took up a new economic growth plan that foresees mobilizing euro50 billion ($58.5 billion) over the next seven years through the European Investment Bank for transportation and research projects.
"We need to go on the offensive," said Italian economy minister Giulio Tremonti, who chaired the meeting. EIB president Philippe Maystadt said a "quick-start program" was needed in the coming months "to have a more rapid impact" on economic growth.
The EU expects a meager 0.5 percent growth rate in the 12 countries that use the euro as their currency this year, improving to only between 1 percent and 1.5 percent next year.
With attention focused on France's repeated violations of EU budget rules, however, Tremonti and others voiced concern that increased public spending would lead others down that path too.
"If you're going to boost the knowledge-based economy, it's important to remain within the limits of the (euro's) stability and growth pact," Tremonti said...
The Virginian-Pilot :: Pharmacy college planned in Grundy as part of revitalization
...GRUNDY, Va. -- Buchanan County officials announced plans to open a pharmacy college in Grundy within three years.
The proposed University of Appalachia School of Pharmacy is part of a local effort to revitalize the coalfields of far Southwest Virginia through higher education. Opening in the fall of 2006, the new private college would ultimately enroll up to 300 students and generate upward of $20 million for the local economy, organizers said Monday.
Frank Kilgore, assistant county attorney and chairman of the school's board of trustees, said the goal is to eventually "transform the economy of Grundy from extraction to knowledge-based industries'' with the help of roughly 1,000 students studying in town...
The Business Journal of Kansas City :: Cerner unveils $191M expansion
by Charlie Anderson
...Cerner Corp. officials used the unveiling of a sparkling campus expansion Tuesday to serve notice that the company will embark on unforeseen territory, both globally and abroad. ...
North Kansas City-based Cerner (Nasdaq: CERN) is in the third year of its campus expansion, which includes the four-story, 123,500-square-foot building between two existing offices that was unveiled Tuesday. ...
Missouri Gov. Bob Holden used a short speech to highlight the need for better schools to feed companies such as Cerner in "the knowledge-based economy."
"This company and its workers are the classic example of the transition happening in Missouri's economy," Holden said...
October 07, 2003
denham grey's caution...
on knowledge landscapes
denham grey paints metaphors
hills and peaks to climb
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
knowledge management news...
[there are three news stories in this post.]
Computerworld | Sensis CIO searches for relevance
by Julian Bajkowski
...Sensis, Telstra's $1.2 billion telephone book subsidiary, will reveal a new strategic market plan next month and embark on a major consolidation and overhaul of its systems architecture to enable aggregated Web-based search-and-locate offerings across voice, wireless and digital television. ...
We are finding in the Web space and the SMS wireless space there is a language emerging unique to Web and SMS.
"You have to build a lexicon around that so that your searches really start to be effective around those channels.
"Equally you need to build that to different languages anyway. At the end of the day we are really investing in librarian-style ontologies.
"This is at the very heart of knowledge management. If you are trying to get a relevant search result, the heart of it is getting your search strategy right and then navigating to the right result.
"The more powerful you make the taxonomies, the more likely the result." ...
Korea IT News :: Fight Shaping Up For Fourth-Quarter System Project Orders
By Ohn Ki-hong & Kim Won-bae
...In the medical care sector, Shinchon Severance Hospital is poised to launch a large system setup project next month, spending 15 billion won to build electronic medical record (EMR), order communication, data warehouse and knowledge management systems. Kyunghee University Hospital is set to select a system company this month to set up picture archiving and communication system (PACS), OCS and EMR in a newly-built hospital in Godeok-dong, Seoul.
KT, having selected a system vendor to build 20 billion won-worth data warehouse system earlier, is now mulling launching a next-generation operating system in early next month, which will cost some 26 billion won over the next few years...
ebizQ :: U.S. Navy Upgrades KM Portal to Appian Enterprise
...Appian Corporation, a provider of real-time, enterprise Web solutions, announced that the U.S. Navy has awarded the company a multi-million dollar contract relating to its enterprise knowledge management and learning portal, Navy Knowledge Online (NKO). The contract includes additional scaling of NKO; on-going support and maintenance; the purchase of additional hardware; beta-testing of an at-sea version of NKO; and the development of Navy Knowledge Online SIPRNET (NKO-S), a classified version of NKO. Additionally, says Appian, NKO will be upgraded to Appian Enterprise v.3.0, the latest version of Appian's collaborative intranet solution suite...
social software report...
Wired News: Will You Buy a Car From This Man?
By Leander Kahney
...Tribe.net is among several new much-hyped "social software" services used for networking online. Examples include Friendster, which focuses on dating, and LinkedIn, which deals with business networking.
Currently in beta, Tribe.net has been described as "Friendster meets Craigslist." In the eight weeks that the San Francisco startup has been running, it has attracted upward of 18,000 users.
After filling out a detailed profile and joining a network, or tribe, of like-minded people, such as fans of TechTV or Burning Man, Tribe.net users are encouraged to engage in various transactions, from recommending dentists to selling cars...
Craig Newmark, founder of Craigslist, said social software is very important, but right now, no one is doing it right. "I like the idea but people aren't using (Tribe.net)," he said. "Just look at the numbers." Newmark compared Tribe.net's 18,000 members to the 1.3 million postings a month on the Craigslist network, which stretches across 24 cities. "A lot of real life depends on who you know," he said. "But we're focusing on democratizing the Net, and it seems to be working."...
social network news...
smh.com.au :: Text generation growing up online
By Deborah Cameron
...The prophets of the online world did not dream it up, the Jesuits did, but as mottos go it is hard to top: "Give me the child until he is seven and I will show you the man." And how true it is. With almost every girl and boy in Australia using the internet - 93 per cent, according to the latest reckoning - a new "kid society" is blooming.
Internet messenger services, email, text and mobile phones are broadening children's social networks and making them virtually inseparable from one another. As far as the online industry is concerned, internet use among young people is at saturation point. It is such a part of family life that 6 per cent of households report that they keep their computer in the dining room. A further 25 per cent have it in the living room, according to a new survey of internet attitudes by RedSherriff.
The surprise for RedSherriff's research director, James Burge, is how rusted-on child users are and how pragmatic their parents have been about it. The internet is regarded as second only to books as an educational tool by parents, he said...
weblogs in the news...
[there are five news stories in this post.]
...Future Image Inc., the leading provider of information and analysis on new trends in the imaging industry, today announced the results of its investigation into the geometric growth of a new form of multi-author web-based photo sharing. This hot new application, commonly referred to as "photoblogging," has registered tenfold month over month growth rates in both content -- number of images uploaded -- and users in recent months. It is closely related to the explosion in sales of camera- phones, which Future Image tracks closely through a series of research studies.
"Photoblogging is changing the way people share images in profound ways," said Myron Kassaraba, principal author of the report. "The immediacy, the interactive nature, and the ability for people who share a common interest -- whether families, or project teams in a business -- to communicate visually in a shared space, are breakthrough capabilities. The advent of these capabilities changes not only the photo sharing business itself, but also the broader scope of opportunities for imaging companies."
"Photoblogs: The New Paradigm for Photo Sharing" is based on extensive research of blogging, photoblogging and online photo journaling services, technologies and applications...
The Journal Times Online :: Blogging through D.C.'s fog
By Dustin Block
...When the scandal around President Bill Clinton broke back in 1998, I was sitting in my Madison apartment. My laptop was open on, well, my lap, and reports poured out - an intern had sex with the president in the Oval Office. The scandal was so fast that seemingly every hit of the reset button brought a new headline, a new twist in the coming national obsession.
This was the Drudge Report, a one-man Web site that introduced the world to Monica Lewinsky, stains on blue dresses and impeachment - and to the political power of the Internet.
Oddly, Drudge's big break, the one that brought him millions of readers every day, had nothing to do with the Clinton's sexual relations with "that woman." Instead, it was a media story.
Drudge reported that Newsweek magazine had a story about the Clinton-Lewinsky affair, but decided against publishing it. Drudge reported the magazine's decision - he did little reporting on the scandal himself - and ignited the biggest Washington scandal since Watergate. In the process, he changed the way news is reported - a change that echos loudly in the current scandal involving the Bush Administration.
Drudge was not, and still is not, the best at what he did or does. He's a miserable writer who is reckless with facts and openly slanted in stories. But he gets a few things right that others still do not understand. They include:
1. People love big headlines. If you go to Drudge's Web site (www.drudgereport.com), you'll see big headlines. For punctuation, he'll often add flashing sirens or post the text in red. Regardless, it's very clear what he thinks is the big story.
2. People want their Web sites to be simple. The Drudge Report's design is remedial at best, the type of thing a young programmer could do, but it's also easy to read.
3. People want to know what to read. That's his genius: Drudge, or his readers, sift through hundreds of Web sites everyday looking for the best stories. From this searching, the best few are compiled on an hourly basis with links to other Web sites. Drudge writes few of his "stories." Instead, he simply directs people to what's interesting, like a friend who lets you in on a secret. He puts the news in context, meaning anything that appears on his page must be important...
newsobserver.com :: Moblogging: The next big thing
By Rachel Leibrock, The Sacramento Bee
...Just when you got comfortable with the term "blogging" - i.e., publishing a regularly updated Web log of links and entries - along comes a new mysterious-sounding term: moblogging.
It's really quite simple, though. Moblogging is the latest way to update your Web log with text, pictures or sound via a properly equipped "smart phone," such as the Nokia 3650 or the Sony Ericcson P800, and a blog host such as Blogger (www.blogger.com) or Typepad (www.typepad.com) that supports the service.
Moblogging works like this: You're somewhere, anywhere, away from the computer, but you want to update your blog. So you whip out your celly, snap a picture, record some sound or message in some text.
Push a button to connect to your blog server and voila! - instant update...
MediaDailyNews :: Suppose You Hosted A Blog And Nobody Came
By Paul J. Gough
..."Apparently the blog-hosting services have made it so easy to create a blog that many tire-kickers feel no commitment to continuing the blog they initiate," said Jeffrey Henning, who wrote the study for Perseus Development Corp. The study said that abandonment rates were higher for Pitas, BlogSpot and Diaryland and lower for Xanga and LiveJournal; three other sites didn't have enough sample to compare.
The study fleshed out demographics on the blogging population, which it said with 90% being created and written by people between the ages of 13 and 29. Fifty-one percent of bloggers are between 13 and 19, and 39% are between 20 and 29. Just under 6% are between 30 and 39, with 1.3% or under between 10-12, 40-49, 50-59 and 60-69. A slight majority of bloggers (56%) are female, and the study found they're more likely to stick to it than males...
...Six Apart Ltd., the makers of the highly acclaimed Movable Type weblog software, today launched TypePad(TM), a hosted service providing powerful, yet intuitive tools for creating full-featured private or public weblogs. Built in response to the needs of the next generation of webloggers -- everyday people who wish to use weblogs to communicate with family, friends and topic-focused communities -- TypePad is designed to make it simple for anyone on the Internet to publish easily accessible, media-rich weblogs and photo albums...
knowledge economy news...
[there are eight news stories in this post, including stories on New Zealand, Ireland, Jamaica, UK, Canada, Texas, and Bangladesh.]
Scoop: Great quality of life in North Shore City
...New Zealand's eight largest cities (North Shore, Waitakere, Auckland, Manukau, Hamilton, Wellington, Christchurch and Dunedin) have clubbed together to find out how their residents feel about living in a large urban centre. And, on the whole, the results are positive. ...
"It's great that our community takes such pride in this city and cherishes the lifestyle here," says North Shore City's mayor, George Wood. ...
"We have a strong knowledge-based economy, highly qualified people and great educational facilities but there are gaps, and we need to bridge the divide. Our draft economic development strategy identifies a number of ways in which we can drive our city forward while embracing the qualities that make it special."...
CORDIS :: Irish business sector increases R&D spending, but not enough, claims study
...Speaking at the launch of the report, Martin Cronin, Chief Executive of Forfas, said that the rate at which the business sector was increasing its investment in R&D activities had to improve in order to place Ireland on a par with other Member States. 'EU Heads of Government have stated that Europe must become the most competitive and dynamic knowledge-based economy in the world. To achieve this goal, a target figure has been set of an average EU investment in R&D of three per cent of GDP by 2010, two thirds of which should come from industry,' he said.
'In the light of this, and the goal that Ireland has set itself of being a competitive and knowledge-based economy, we must ensure that Ireland is a location which is attractive for R&D both in our universities and in industry,' added Mr Cronin.'...
JamaicaObserver.com :: Teachers just have to prepare students better, trade expert insists
...JAMAICA'S teachers must do a better job of preparing their students for the global economy by emphasising "critical thinking" and getting away from rote learning, according to Rosalea Hamilton, a trade expert at the University of the West Indies (UWI).
Speaking Friday to 200 educators of the Mico Old Students' Association, Hamilton urged teachers to find "new ways" to prepare their students for a global economy in which innovation and creativity are prized as much as competitive goods and services.
"Education is key to building a knowledge-based economy," said Hamilton, the guest speaker during a luncheon at the Alhambra Inn Hotel & Restaurant in Kingston.
One way for Jamaica to remain competitive, she said, was for it to draw on its culture and creativity. Those strengths would be boosted by a single Caribbean economy, similar to the European Union's, she said...
Shout99 :: Ministers hear from small business
by Susie Hughes
...Philip Ross - working within Labour Philip chaired the meeting and opened the proceeding by raising the question in the title of the meeting: "Is Labour the party of and for small business?"
Philip said: "At last year's conference Gordon Brown said 'Let our party be the pro-enterprise as well as the pro-fairness party: Labour, the party of small businesses and the self employed in Britain'
"We are in part answering that call.
"At our Forum, a group of freelancers in attendance suggested that it was important that a distinction was clearly made between those who work as professional freelancers and those who work as temporary workers for both tax and employment purposes. And of course the distinction between employed and self-employed workers.
"To be a small business can take many forms. You don't have to employ people or manufacture goods to be in business, in our knowledge based economy the selling skills and knowledge on a freelance basis is forming an important and dynamic part of our economy and around 50 per cent of our group is made up of freelance workers.
"A recent survey indicated that about 10 per cent of the workforce is self-employed, many more operate small businesses or work as freelancers through their companies. I would say that a large number of our members are in a similar position.
"The aim of the Labour Small Business Forum is to give these members a voice within the Party. We say to the Party and Government that you don't need to look outside for help and advice on small business as there is a wealth of experience and knowledge within the ranks of our own members.
"Our long term aim is for the Party's small business manifesto to pass through the policy forum process."...
...Ms. Yolande Thibeault, Member of Parliament for Saint-Lambert, on behalf of the Honourable Jane Stewart, Minister of Human Resources Development, today announced funding of $18,000 for the project Pour un développement harmonieux in Longueuil. The Government of Canada is funding this initiative through the National Literacy Secretariat.
This project aims to define the organization's main directions; create a development plan for the short, medium and long terms; and implement activities that will stimulate reflection on a common vision for promoting literacy. Within the project's framework, the organization Le Fablier, une histoire de familles will develop an action plan, prepare a development plan
and organize four focus days.
"By making literacy one of its main priorities, the Government of Canada helps integrate Canadians into the knowledge-based economy," said Ms. Thibeault. "We are proud to support Le Fablier, une histoire de familles in its efforts to combat illiteracy."...
Dallas Business Journal :: UTD to launch arts-and-technology degrees
...While there are a handful of programs and institutes dedicated to arts and technology -- such as the Institute for Creative Technologies at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute for Technology -- there are no known majors that experiment with the synergies between arts and technology and combine digital arts with game and interactive studies in the same manner as UTD's offerings, the school said. ..
"I believe this is a significant moment in UTD's history," Linehan said. "These new majors combine three of the most powerful areas of the creative economy -- arts, science and technology -- and together those fields can create new, knowledge-based jobs, and, of course, more jobs ultimately means a better economy. It's a clear win-win."...
The Daily Star :: Acquire skill to face globalisation: PM
...Prime Minister Khaleda Zia here yesterday urged all to increase national productivity by acquiring knowledge based on moral values and time befitting modern technology.
"Education and only education can gives us the strength to sustain in the unequal stiff competition of globalisation and the power to go ahead further," Khaleda said while she was inaugurating the country's second women polytechnic institute at Halishahar in the port city of Chittagong...
...Allan Rock, Minister of Industry and Minister Responsible for the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC), today announced the appointment of Dr. Katherine Heinrich to NSERC's Council for a term of three years.
"Dr. Katherine Heinrich will be bringing her research experience and public outreach expertise to bear on the vital decisions that NSERC will be making in these areas," said Minister Rock.
Dr. Heinrich is Vice-President (Academic) and professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Regina. She has received many awards, honours and scholarships, has published widely in her field, and has been active in promoting science as a career, especially to young women.
NSERC is one of 16 Government of Canada departments and agencies that make up the Industry Portfolio. Together, these organizations are uniquely positioned to further the Government's goal of building a knowledge-based economy in all regions of Canada. As a member of the Industry Portfolio, NSERC is one of the primary Government of Canada agencies investing in people, discovery and innovation. The Council supports both basic university research through research grants, and project research through partnerships among universities, governments and the private sector, as well as the advanced training of highly qualified people. Its governing body is composed of a full-time president and up to 21 members appointed by the Governor-in-Council...
October 06, 2003
knowledge management news...
[there are ten news stories in this post, including stories on Brussels, KineMatik and Open Text, Lumina's Analytica, Primus, S&T System Integration, CollabNet, Xybernaut, Arbortext, and Canon.]
Computerworld :: Law Firms Open Up
...Losing a client is one of the costliest mistakes a law firm can make. So a growing number of them are using extranets as a collaborative tool to offer their best clients the best service and keep them in the fold.
This is a big change in the world of law firms, which have tended to be low-tech and secretive. But now legal staffs and clients that are dispersed across the U.S. and overseas can work together by accessing documents on extranet-based knowledge management systems. Such extranets give clients a window into billing, transactions, calendaring, depositions and pleadings, for example...
CORDIS: Designing work spaces of the future - EVENT
...A conference entitled 'designing work spaces of the future' will take place in Brussels on 16 October.
The conference will focus on knowledge management solutions, in particular one solution that is based on interactive large screens supporting informal communication knowledge-sharing between communities in different work practice situations.
The conference will feature experts in the field of knowledge management and future work scenarios. A representative will also be present from the European Commission to give an overview of current work space design activities.
The conference is being organised by MILK (Multimedia Interaction for Learning and Knowing), an EU research project funded under the Information Society Technologies (IST) programme of the Fifth Framework Programme (FP5).
For further information, please consult MILK...
..."The biotechnology industry worldwide is moving at a lightening pace. For Ireland's growing biotechnology industry to flourish, it must take advantage of information technology to enable more efficient and effective creation and dissemination of new knowledge," said KineMatik's CEO Richard O'Rourke. "Our efforts to date to demonstrate the value of a collaborative research network are starting to bear fruit and we are confident of its success. The work of Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Enterprise, Trade & Employment, Mary Harney, and Enterprise Ireland are establishing the kinds of global bonds that are linking Ireland to technology and research organizations worldwide."
"We are pleased to welcome Deputy Prime Minister Mary Harney and Enterprise Ireland to Toronto to deliver the news of this exciting partnership between Open Text and KineMatik," said Bill Forquer, Executive Vice President of Marketing at Open Text. "The research network we create will help scientists share knowledge in an integrated, secure online environment that combines leading technologies from companies in North America and Ireland. By helping scientists work together, we think the research network will be a place where important advances in biotechnology can occur." ...
MarketWire :: Lumina Decision Systems Launches New Business Analytics Tool
...Analytica 3.0 can interoperate with legacy spreadsheets in Microsoft Excel, employing OLE for live linking of table data in either direction. It supports common standards for integration with other enterprise software, including ODBC access to database systems. Analytica 3.0 adds web-links within models for integration with web-based business intelligence and knowledge-management systems. It uses an XML-based file format, to enable exchange of models with XML-aware editors and databases.
Analytica assesses risks using probability distributions to represent uncertainties, and efficient Monte Carlo and Latin hypercube simulation to compute their implications. It offers importance analysis to identify which uncertainties really matter to the results. Analytica 3.0 adds a range of new probability distributions to expand the range of ways to express uncertainties.
Analytica's Intelligent Arrays™ provide great flexibility in managing multiple dimensions -- such as time, geographic regions, products, or planning scenarios. The user can slice and dice over dimensions, according to interest. The model builder can easily edit, add or subtract dimensions, without the major surgery required by a spreadsheet. Changes to the dimensions of input arrays propagate through the model automatically without requiring any manual changes to downstream formulas...
..."Primus would like to congratulate Lexmark, Microsoft, and MAPICS for their organizations' exemplary abilities to provide first-rate customer service via the Web and in help desk and call center environments," said Michael Brochu, president and CEO of Primus. "We thank the industry experts that evaluated the applications and determined the winners. Together, we are pleased to recognize three outstanding organizations that are the best of the best." ...
Presseportal - Digitale Pressemappe - S&T System Integration&Technology Distribution AG
...We are now able to support our customers' knowledge-management processes with custom-tailored portal and Intranet solutions based on Microsoft standard products. Know-how from Epsilon allows us to respond to the continuously rising demand for mobile office solutions in cooperation with mobile communications companies. In the S&T Group, we now employ over 120 certified Microsoft software specialists, making us one of the biggest Microsoft partners in the region" says S&T CEO Karl Tantscher. An undisclosed amount in cash was agreed for the 100 percent takeover...
MarketWire :: CollabNet Joins Eclipse
...CollabNet has already begun to work with Eclipse technology. Recently, CollabNet announced it qualified Eclipse for use with the Software Configuration Management (SCM) repositories within the CollabNet SourceCast environment version 2.6. The CollabNet SourceCast environment integrates applications for: software development, knowledge management, and project communication. This unified environment is controlled through a Web-based project workspace with a centralized role-based permissions model and enables secure and cost-effective development across different groups within an enterprise or between multiple organizations. The CollabNet SourceCast environment supports all the phases of the application lifecycle, from requirements, through development and testing, to support. Developers can use Eclipse tools to check source code directly into and out of the SCM repositories in the CollabNet SourceCast environment...
Business Wire :: Xybernaut Adds TeleType GPS to Mobile/Wearable Computers
...TeleType's primary GPS receiver, the TeleType WorldNavigator GPS receiver, adds substantial value and functionality to Xybernaut platforms including Xybernaut Mobile Assistant(R) V (MA(R) V) and Atigo(TM) mobile/wearable computers.
"This joint solution will allow enterprise customers to obtain increased situational awareness or knowledge management related to their day-to-day business operations," stated Ed Friedman, president of TeleType Co. Inc. "For example, a service technician responding to a customer request for assistance will save time and expense by being able to immediately pinpoint a customer's location while on the move."
"The anytime/anywhere navigation and tracking capabilities of the joint Xybernaut-TeleType solution allows users real-time access to location and asset information," said Steven A. Newman, president of Xybernaut. "Providing critical situational awareness allows individuals and organizations to make faster and better decisions -- which adds considerable value to our MA V and Atigo platforms."...
..."We're thrilled to be Arbortext's first reseller in Latin America," said Edgar Castillo, President for EMC. "We're seeing some exciting and dramatic changes in the information technology arena. Arbortext software addresses a growing demand from organizations who need to create information that can be used, referenced and automatically published from a single source efficiently and cost effectively."
"EMC has continually demonstrated its leadership in bringing technology solutions to Latin America," said Daren Lauda, Regional Sales Vice President for Arbortext. "We've noticed an increased demand from organizations in that region needing to implement enterprise publishing solutions. Because of EMC's local presence, we believe they are the right partner to work with us as we address that exciting opportunity. This partnership supports our geographic expansion plans and provides additional support for our customers in that region."...
Business Wire :: Canon Launches MEAP-Enabled imageRUNNER 2220/3320 Series
...Through Canon's Universal Send(TM) network scanning and distribution capabilities, and integration with eCopy's suite of document distribution solutions, the imageRUNNER 2220/3320 models serve as a centralized office communications hub for information sharing and knowledge management across an extended enterprise...
weblogs in the news...
Cliques, Clicks, Bullies And Blogs (washingtonpost.com)
Rachel Simmons
...Say hello to the newest strain of the bullying virus, technologically updated for the 21st century.
A recent spate of lawsuits against underage music pirates has finally focused adults' attention on teenage ethics and the Internet, but the news about what's been happening while grownups weren't looking is alarming. The Internet has transformed the landscape of children's social lives, moving cliques from lunchrooms and lockers to live chats and online bulletin boards, and intensifying their reach and power. When conflicts arise today, children use their expertise with interactive technologies to humiliate and bully their peers, and avoid reprimand from adults or foes. As parents plead technological ignorance with a my-Danny-hooks-everything-up sort of pride and many schools decline to discipline "off-campus" behavior, the Internet has become a free-for-all where bullying and cruelty are rampant.
I've spent the past four years trying to uncover the hidden culture of aggression in America's schools. Students, parents and school administrators have all pointed to Internet bullying as the latest, most vicious trend in children's social cruelty...
October 05, 2003
knowledge economy news...
[there are eight news stories in this post, including stories on Malta, Ghana, UK, Bangkok, Scotland, Tallahassee, Florida, Brazil, Russia, India, and China.]
The Scotsman :: Scots innovators urged to abandon clan mentality
by Sharon Ward
...Mr Ogilvie is director of Hillington Innovation Centre in Glasgow, backed with public and private money, which has been described as a microcosm of innovation and indicates the potential that exists behind closed doors.
"It's not about winning more resources, but actually using what is already there. We need to get out of Division Two and into the Premiership," he said.
First opened in November 2000, the centre nurtures the development of new, high growth, knowledge-based businesses. Despite operating in a market downturn, 68 separate companies with a survival rate over two years of 90 per cent have graduated including Damovo, I-document Systems and Agripa.
Current innovators include Virtual Clones, who are set to revolutionise the interactive entertainment industry with 3D characters of living celebrities taking minutes instead of weeks to complete...
Tallahassee Democrat :: FAMU confidential
By Mary Ann Lindley
...it's both refreshing and astonishing these days to see President Fred Gainous and FAMU [Florida A&M University] board of trustees chairman James Corbin having increasingly public disagreements about what's good for FAMU.
Corbin is like a bungee jumper when he reads the state law describing the duties of trustees: He gives himself a lot of latitude to make his personal vision known. A couple of weeks ago, for instance, he single-handedly called a halt to a change in some admission standards - a unilateral call that his own fellow board members didn't see as his to make. Certainly President Gainous didn't; nor does state law.
But he says reducing standards is crazy "in our knowledge-based society" and his intervention was absolutely critical to save the day.
Corbin's equally unshy in his criticism of Humphries, who, he says, deferred campus maintenance to the point that some halls "are condemned and the campus is in shambles." He blames it on Humphries not being straightforward with the old Board of Regents, with playing the race card (when Corbin was on the BOR, too) and then finding that the Regents more or less took their marbles and went home rather than respond to racial showdowns.
Corbin also seems to be perpetuating a myth he says even he doesn't believe that Gainous has political orders to "crash signature programs" such as business, architecture, pharmacy and journalism by lowering the standards and diminishing them until it begins to make sense to talk about a merger of FAMU and Florida State University...
sunspot.net :: Falling rates of participation seen at colleges
Education Beat: Mike Bowler
Study: A commission points to a crisis in access to higher education as the country tries to compete in the global economy.
...according to the report from the Education Commission of the States, Maryland is going to have to find room for 101,000 additional students by 2015 if it wants to match the best-performing states. In Maryland, about 36 percent of people over 18 go to a college or university. In New England states like Rhode Island, the college-going rate is about 50 percent.
Why is closing this "participation gap" so important? Because in a worldwide knowledge-based economy, a high school diploma has lost much of its value. It's "not a ticket to a middle-class lifestyle in the 21st century," said Virginia Gov. Mark Warner, who looks at his state's 34 percent college-enrollment rate in terms of dollars and cents...
The Times, Malta :: Graduate unemployment: a tragedy or a good omen?
Ibn Campusino
...The University, along with other tertiary education institutions, public and private, has turned many an unemployable middle-aged person into a valuable resource for the country. And it is also tertiary education that trains trainers (a.k.a. teachers). When looking at numbers, the distinctions between a significant turnover on the register, of graduates in-between-jobs, a sign of job mobility, and those with low potential of employment, is often blurred, if not lost. So be not afraid of statistics showing a few graduates on the dole, it is only a natural phenomenon as we progress towards that ephemeral goal of "Malta a Knowledge-based Society".
But why invest in research when the economy is out for tea? Because, I shall claim without numeric proof, the investment in research is directly linked to the capacity for production of graduates by tertiary level institutions. It also affects the quality of such graduates, and makes the country more attractive to investment which yields a higher return...
Ghana News :: Desist from request for admission favours -Vice Chancellor
...the Vice-Chancellor said, that the University is to establish a Centre for Distance Education as a means to make University education accessible. Some of the programmes will be run in conjunction with other universities outside Ghana. He said quality education was necessary for national development and the universities had a prime role to play in providing the critically needed human resources in a knowledge-based economy. However, quality higher education, Prof. Asenso-Okyere said, needed to be paid for and appealed to students to realise its importance and desist from opposing any increase in fees. He expressed the hope that the students would help the University authorities by raising the current levels of fees, which he said, were grossly inadequate to be able to promote quality...
The Manila Times Internet Edition :: Bangkok to smell like roses for APEC summit
Thai foreign ministry officials have hinted to the local media that talks during APEC meeting will seek to revive some of the contentious issues that led to the collapse of the World Trade Organization meeting in Cancun, Mexico, in September.
"The meeting will discuss five subthemes, which [include] knowledge-based economy, promotion of human security [and] financial architecture for a world of differences," Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai told the UN General Assembly in New York last week...
FT.com : UK :: EU competitiveness: More enterprise, less state
By Dr Jürgen Strube, president of UNICE
...Europe does not spend enough on research. A knowledge-based society needs a constant input of new ideas and inventions in order to reach competitive edges. But inventiveness on its own is not sufficient. Greater cooperation between business and academic research should help to ensure that research results are translated into marketable products. Furthermore, we need a favourable legislative framework for innovation. The situation would also be improved if the cost of protecting intellectual property were brought more closely into line with what Europe's most important competitors have to pay...
Times Online : Get ready :: the BRICs are rebuilding the world
By Gary Duncan
...The recent course of world events has been more than usually distracting, with war and terror gripping the imaginations of politicians and electorates. But this only makes it more important than ever to pause to consider the world-changing trends that continue, ineluctably, in the background.
In the economic arena, the most powerful of these trends is the steady rise of four developing economies, Brazil, Russia, India, and China - "the BRICs". The enormous consequences of the emergence of these four big states as leading economic powers over the next 50 years is examined in a compelling new paper by Dominic Wilson and Roopa Purushothaman, of Goldman Sachs. Their analysis charts how the four emerging economies are poised to become a potent, perhaps dominant, force in the world economy and to eclipse the present developed economies - including Britain. ...
In the developed nations, anxieties are rising over the flow of skilled, knowledge-based jobs to India and other emerging countries whose cost advantage once counted only in the realm of manufacturing as they turned out cheap textiles, toys, and other goods. In the US, protectionist pressures are intensifying amid fears over the challenge from China’s rapidly expanding economic capacity. ...
For companies, the new world will be a demanding one, but one rich in opportunities. Many of these will still be in the present developed countries. Their economies will no longer be the world’s largest, but their smaller populations mean that they will still be home to the richest of the planet’s people, whose incomes per head will remain higher than those in the BRICs. Still, the shift in economic gravity will mean that the big emerging nations, and the spending power of their people, will become a key engine for growth — and profits...
October 04, 2003
social network news...
[there are two news stories in this post.]
Fortune.com - Fast Forward - I Get By With a Little Help From My Friends of Friends of Friends
by David Kirkpatrick
...There may be a new kind of Internet emerging--one more about connecting people to people than people to websites. The blog phenomenon, where blogs link to blogs, is another aspect of this same trend. Mark Pincus, an investor in Friendster and founder of Tribe.net, calls this the early phases of the "peopleweb"--a user-controlled network of identities and relationships that transcends any one site or company. How that web will take shape remains murky, but in the explosive growth of social networking we are surely seeing the future, using the Net to connect people with bonds of trust and friendship--and maybe sex...
CNET News.com :: McAfee founder joins chorus of music sellers
by John Borland
...With a pitch that evokes the heady days of 1999, digital music start-up Mercora is planning to launch a distribution service next month, inspired in equal parts by iTunes, Friendster and eBay.
Headed by former McAfee CEO Srivats Sampath, the upstart will edge into terrain that has already been staked out by the likes of Apple Computer, with iTunes, Musicmatch and Napster. But the newcomer is putting a twist on digital music sales, hoping to spur the creation of like-minded, music-loving minicommunities that can help sell new bands and artists to each other. ...
Mercora is adding a community element to simple downloading that it hopes will help it stand out from the pack. It's drawing on the "social networking" idea that has Silicon Valley aflutter: Mercora users can group themselves together based on what kinds of music they like and then use these rough groups as sources of content and recommendations...
October 03, 2003
weblogs in the news...
[there are five news stories in this post.]
WORLD :: Beyond the nightly news
By Mindy Belz
...The pencil came of age in the Civil War, the telegraph in World War I, and the transistor radio made tense early days of the Cold War bearable. War in Iraq will be known for popularizing the blogosphere.
Internet weblog chronicles have morphed under the police-blotter approach taken by traditional media in Iraq coverage. Instead of endlessly leading with what bleeds in Iraq, good bloggers are carrying raw footage from the front lines, letting servicemen and Iraqis chronicle the war unfiltered...
Forbes.com: Best Travel Blogs
Christina Valhouli
Forbes continues their "Best Blogs" series.
...While many travelers are able to keep journals on their trips, it is harder for most to update a blog from the road. It's one thing if the bloggers find themselves near a cyber cafe in, say, Amsterdam, but there are not many Internet connections in Outer Mongolia or the Amazonian rainforest...
California Aggie Online :: UCDefault: Campus a fail-safe for many
by Zachary Amendt
...Ivy League reject-ees like to share their dejection and euphoria in online weblogs, which are electronic diaries that replace the standard lock-and-key notebook.
This is what username "No Little Bears" said on the Calstuff blog:
"Never forget why you go to Berkeley. I never do. There's times I'll walk down Hearst or Bancroft and get hit with the odd, strange, joy that is remembering: I go to College here. I don't want to go anywhere else. I was lucky to be rejected from Harvard, from Columbia. Possibly lucky to be rejected from MIT."
But blogs are more than just places for people to vent or brag - they can also help high school students sort out the most appealing universities from the places they'll want to escape from after their first dining commons experience.
College undergraduates contribute their experiences and opinions to these blogs, which in turn rate universities based on food service, course difficulty, and - we in Davis know this especially - intensity of manure scents.
An entirely new layer of media, blog entries are efficient ways to communicate the strengths and weaknesses of universities...
...Blogs have helped soldiers in Iraq to provide first-person perspectives. Blogger Chief Wiggles (chiefwiggles.blog-city.com) wrote, "We feel like we are swimming in a sea of honey, hardly able to make any progress as we pull and push with every stroke, with every intention of moving forward along this journey but not sure if we have even moved an inch." Despite the difficulties, Chief Wiggles is optimistic: "We are still very positive about our efforts in the overall scheme of things, knowing deep down inside that each person we touch gets us that much closer to our goal of winning the hearts and minds of these people."...
peerfear.org :: NewsMonster is Hiring
...The NewsMonster team is hiring! Are you fascinated by blogs? Interested in RSS/RDF and aggregation? Think the next big thing might just be FOAF? Do you dream in Java and or C?
Then you should come work on NewsMonster and help us build a killer aggregator!
We're hiring one or two senior level engineers with a deep understanding of blog space...
knowledge management news...
[there are six news stories in this post.]
Computerworld :: HP, three other vendors, sign $500M right-to-sell deal with U.S. Army
by Linda Rosencrance
...Bruce Klein, vice president of HP Federal, said the Army is refocusing its IT vision and is looking to solve various enterprise problems through a single contract.
According to Klein, the Army has in the past used individual contracts to purchase technology, with one contract for PCs, another for low-end servers, another for higher-end servers and others for storage and even software and services.
"This is an attempt to consolidate all of those contracts into one contract ... so we can go in there and help them solve their complete mission-critical problems, and they can buy off one contract vehicle instead of multiple ones," Klein said.
He said the Army wants to move to a more agile IT operation and a concept called Network Centric Warfare. The contract is a key part of the Army's high-profile Army Knowledge Management transformation plan, aimed at moving toward a network-centric, knowledge-based force, he said...
BRW | Magazine :: The quality equation
by David James
...Toyota Motor Corporation has mastered TQM (called kaizen, or incremental improvement) and has also been effective at undertaking transformational change (called kaikaku, or radical improvement).
Kaikaku is typically attempted every seven years in Toyota, and the management strategy is to use a smorgasbord of engineering and social-science techniques. These range from the knowledge management and systems thinking ideas of Japanese thinkers Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, to the balanced-scorecard methods of measuring all aspects of company performance, to more engineering-based ideas of TQM and shortening of decision-making speed and cycle times.
Crucially, Toyota runs its kaizen and kaikaku programs simultaneously, implementing radical and incremental change. Innovation - a more qualitative, visionary process - is managed in conjunction with strict controls over production, which is more quantitative...
Yahoo News :: Flying J Selects Generation21 Learning Systems
...Generation21 pioneered the use of Universal Knowledge Objects -- "nuggets" of right-sized information -- and continues to enhance enterprise learning with innovations including performance support with context-based retrieval of knowledge outside of the classroom and on-the-job. Generation21 allows organizations to capture and share knowledge to generate measurable results in improved efficiency and productivity by allowing a company's knowledge base to be easily accessed by employees in diverse locations, thus allowing learning to be constant...
Yahoo News :: Nexidia to Enable Audio Search for Yahoo! NetRoadshow
...Using Nexidia's patent-pending technology and products for audio-video search, users can locate, index, and access specific passages within presentations with greater speed and precision than otherwise possible. Furthermore, users benefit from unsurpassed accuracy as the Nexidia solution is based on phonetic technology, enabling searches and mining to be conducted in a natural manner against the distinct phonemes or sound elements of human speech. This unique approach enables the identification of words, phrases and names regardless of accents, dialects, slang, recording quality, or even misspelling...
...Convergys continues its leadership in open standards speech solutions and is the first provider of outsourced speech solutions to select an open, third party service creation environment for VoiceXML. Convergys will integrate Audium's award-winning Audium 3 VoiceXML software tools into its open hosting environment for clients operating ASR applications on Convergys' outsourced SpeechPort platform...
Business Wire :: Health Language, Inc.
...Health Language, Inc., the world's leading supplier of medical vocabulary and concept-based software server technology, today announced a new relationship with the National Health Services Information Authority's National electronic Library for Health (NeLH). HLI's language engine technology LE will be used for implementing advanced terminology services, concept-based indexing and SNOMED-CT(R) support for NeLH applications and services.
The Health Language(R) Language Engine is a revolutionary technology that enables consultants, nurses, and others to interact and share medical information at a deep relational level despite varying terminologies. LE is based on a patent-pending knowledge management model and is currently the only software available to the healthcare industry that can accurately relate complex medical terminology from disparate databases of controlled medical vocabularies...
October 02, 2003
particle physics & cosmology...
in momentum space
magnetic monopole's mass
furtive fingerprints
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
knowledge worker news...
[there are five news stories in this post.]
CIO Magazine :: Putting It All Together Again - The New Work Order
by Tom Davenport
...My own hypothesis is that the best way to segment knowledge workers would be by the roles they perform within the organization. I would guess that determining whether you're a "field sales analyst" or a "midlevel marketing manager" would drive the type of work you do and how it could be done more productively and effectively. Of course, that will be difficult and perhaps expensive. Most organizations don't even know how many roles they have. I suspect the only role-based segments that might make sense are those in which there are many workers in a single segment, or in which better productivity or performance is mission-critical...
vnunet.com Email: The cholesterol of modern business
by Mark Raskino
...The proliferation of email is getting out of control and our inboxes are full of stuff that shouldn't be there. All this is symptomatic of something deeper: the detritus of poorly managed knowledge work.
We want to be a true knowledge economy, and not a data-processing economy. To achieve this, Gartner believes that the IT industry has to radically improve the productivity of knowledge workers and work teams over the next decade. ...
New strategic value to business will come from productivity advances in true knowledge work, including product design, risk management and analysis of customer behaviour. ...
We will need innovative work in sociology, psychology and anthropology to accompany the expected advances in hardware, software and telecommunications. Knowledge workers need new tools and techniques to create more wealth from fewer keystrokes.
There are signs that IT departments are starting to address the challenge. Gartner has received many questions about how to create and manage taxonomies for classifying and managing information. This suggests that organisations are starting to invest in more strategic knowledge management projects.
Such work, of course, is for the long term. And in the short term, the flood of emails can only grow bigger. It is likely to become a strategic issue.
These are some of the steps managers need to take to reduce the email burden on knowledge workers:
* Limit file sizes. Managers should set and maintain tough limits on email account sizes
* Promote advanced user training. Few people move beyond the basics of using email
* Move applications off the email system. Administrative tasks, such as time sheets or expenses, are better handled on corporate portals and intranets
* Offer alternative channels of communication. Instant messaging and telephone conferencing can lighten the load
* Establish policies and etiquette
* Lead by intervention
HBS Working Knowledge: Innovation: Why Managing Innovation is Like Theater
by Rob Austin and Lee Devin
A stage production and the development of your next product have a lot in common. An excerpt from Artful Making by HBS professor Robert D. Austin and dramaturge Lee Devin.
...There is an increasingly important category of work - knowledge work - that you can best manage by not enforcing a detailed, in-advance set of objectives, even if you could. Often in this kind of work, time spent planning what you want to do will be better spent actually doing (or letting others in your charge do), trying something you haven't thought out in detail so you can quickly incorporate what you learn from the experience in the next attempt. In appropriate conditions - only in appropriate conditions - you can gain more value from experience than from up-front analysis. In certain kinds of work, even if you can figure out where you're going and find a map to get you there, that may not be the best thing to do.
Forging ahead without detailed specifications to guide you obviously requires innovation, new actions. We take this observation one step further by suggesting that knowledge work, which adds value in large part because of its capacity for innovation, can and often should be structured as artists structure their work. Managers should look to collaborative artists rather than to more traditional management models if they want to create economic value in this new century.
We call this approach artful making. "Artful," because it derives from the theory and practice of collaborative art and requires an artist-like attitude from managers and team members. "Making," because it requires that you conceive of your work as altering or combining materials into a form, for a purpose.2 Materials thus treated become something new, something they would not become without the intervention of a maker. This definition usually points to work that changes physical materials, iron ore and charcoal into steel, for instance. But the work and management we're considering don't always do that. Instead they mostly operate in imagination, in the realm of knowledge and ideas. While artful making improves anything that exhibits interdependency among its parts, we're not primarily concerned with heating metal and beating it into shapes. We're more concerned with strategies, product designs, or software - new things that groups create by thinking, talking, and collaborating...
Excerpted with permission of the authors from Artful Making: What Managers Need to Know About How Artists Work by Robert D. Austin and Lee Devin. Copyright © 2003 by Pearson Education, Inc.
New Zealand's National Business Review :: Market survey rates Kiwi IT
by Stephen Ballantyne
...A report into the way New Zealand IT and financial professionals regard the uses of information technology has shed some interesting light on to differences between attitudes here and in Britain.
Prepared by market survey business NFO at the behest of Fuji Xerox New Zealand, the report summarises a survey of 200 professionals in New Zealand's larger companies. The survey questions repeated those already given to a similar group of British professionals. ...
...surprisingly few have much idea of what constitutes a "knowledge worker" -- the most preferred definition was someone "who applies their brain or brings knowledge to the company."
Fuji Xerox will hold a public briefing to discuss the survey and its findings in Auckland next Tuesday. To attend, register online at www.fujixerox.co.nz...
TechRepublic :: Vendors take two paths to XML-enabled office suites
By Rita E. Knox and Michael A. Silver
...Sun Microsystems and Microsoft have very different ideas about what they expect users and enterprises to do with XML. Sun underestimates the potential value of semantic tags and the growth of user understanding of how to exploit these tags. Microsoft overestimates enterprises' preparedness to develop XML schema. Some middle ground that provides general-purpose schema with semantic tags for frequently used document types (memos, e-mail messages) will be needed. ...
XML entered office suites in 2002. Through YE03, its presence will spread to other office applications and, potentially, will have a much greater impact on the general knowledge worker. The successful integration will require enterprise investments and user training.
Sun Microsystems shipped StarOffice v.6 in May 2002; OpenOffice.org v.1 (an open source version of StarOffice) was shipped in April 2002. These suites include word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation applications that import and export files in XML file format by default, but can also open and save Microsoft file formats by default.
Microsoft will make Office 2003 generally available in September or October 2003 (0.8 probability). Office 2003 will have improved XML support in Excel and add XML support to Word. Office 2003 will import and export XML data files, as well as save files in the .doc and .rtf file formats...
forming blogs to inform...
research, aggregate
synthesize and analyze
pollard's prescription...
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
inspired by dave pollard's october 1st post - How to Make Your Blog More Valuable to Readers
October 01, 2003
ephemeral epiphenomena...
powerpoint presents
slogans as your solutions
looknfeel folly
haitech haiku™
©2003 judith meskill
inspired by a comment posted today, october 1st, to my august 23rd post regarding tufte's powerpoint article [accessible through "looknfeel" link above]
don't be a 'deadlog'...
Independent.co.uk :: As easy as falling off a blog
by Andy Goldberg
In this article Andy Goldberg is all over the map in his estimation of weblogs and blogging, it is however apparent that blogging is not for him.
...Personal online journals are a dream come true for exhibitionists and computer geeks. But just how useful are weblogs? And how do you set up your own? Andy Goldberg joins the world of blogging. ...
...most blogs are, it must be said, badly written and poorly presented - the kind of drivel that gets read only reluctantly even by the authors' closest friends and family. Even so there are an awfully lot of good blogs - interesting, provocative, and passionate; direct, opinionated and informative. The best ones all have a unique approach or view that sets them apart, and engineer a sense of community among readers. They can be a great way of finding information too often ignored by the mainstream media.
Best of all, if you find a writer you like, one who speaks your language, shares your interests and is not overly verbose, it can be like having your own assistant to dig up the stories, sites and views that fascinate you...
Perhaps five of the world's bloggers make a living from it. And doing it as a hobby? No thanks - I spend most of my working day at the computer and in my spare time I prefer the hammering and sawing of my home-building project or coaching my daughter's football team.
To paraphrase the noted technology writer Clay Shirky, blogging is for those who seek "fame vs fortune" - for people more interested in reaching a wide audience by using cheap nano-publishing tools than in being rewarded financially for what they write...
weblogs in the news...
Business Wire :: FoneBlog -TM- Craze Hits Ireland
...The 'blogging' phenomenon has taken the world by storm over the last two years with millions of blogs or web logs created on topics as diverse as travel to politics to family events. With the massive success of Camera Phones, FoneBlog is bringing this hottest craze to the mobile phone user.
"Camera phone users are looking for new and exciting ways to use their phones. FoneBlog gives them their own personal website so they can send their pictures and share their views and experiences with people throughout the world," said Carol Clavin, Marketing Manager for www.foneblog.ie...
knowledge economy news...
[there are nine news stories in this post.]
Oswego Daily News :: Business Professor's Research Supports Homeland Security
...The National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense have joined forces to support research addressing management challenges faced by modern knowledge-based organizations -- including research by SUNY Oswego's Dr. June Dong, professor of management in the School of Business.
Their "Management of Knowledge Intensive, Dynamic Systems" program supports researchers investigating how information technology can help streamline processes for organizations that must respond rapidly to incoming knowledge, dynamic situations and uncertainty.
Dong is working on the project with Dr. Anna Nagurney, John F. Smith Memorial Professor at the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. ...
They have received an NSF grant "to study knowledge supernetworks and to develop models that examine the management of dynamic business processes under risk and uncertainty," Dong said. "The project will develop a new theoretical framework as well as computational algorithms." ...
Dong is the co-author with Nagurney of the book, "Supernetworks: Decision-Making for the Information Age," published last year by Edward Elgar Publishers, and the recipient of the President's Award for Scholarly and Creative Activity from SUNY Oswego last spring. She is an associate of the Virtual Center for Supernetworks (http://supernet.som.umass.edu/)...
MSN Money - Extra: Will your job move to India?
By Philipp Harper
...One of the most unsettling truths about the job market today can be found in two seemingly insignificant recent announcements by high-tech powerhouses Oracle and Hewlett-Packard.
Software giant Oracle (ORCL, news, msgs) said it's moving 2,000 developer jobs from the United States to India, doubling the number of developers it has on payroll there. Then Hewlett-Packard (HPQ, news, msgs) announced plans to close a customer-service operation in Florida and send the operation's 1,200 jobs overseas, again to India.
Though negligible when compared to the sheer numbers of job losses in manufacturing, the shifts by two technology companies are alarming for what they likely foretell: no less than the relocation of millions of high-end technology and service jobs from this country to less expensive foreign venues. In the process, there will be a redefining of what constitutes "safe" employment in America. ...
A study by Forrester Research predicts that U.S. companies will transfer 3.3 million service jobs overseas by 2015, compared with just 102,000 jobs shifted in 2000. Meanwhile, the payroll associated with those jobs will rise from $4 billion to more than $136 billion, according to Forrester projections. ...
As the trend gathers steam, Forrester predicts, other and more sophisticated types of knowledge-based work also will be exported...
The Times and Democrat :: Planting SEED against poverty
By LEE HENDREN, T&D Staff Writer
...SANTEE -- Pending legislation in Congress would give counties in the nation's "Black Belt" -- including Orangeburg, Bamberg, Barnwell and Calhoun -- about $1 million a year apiece to fight persistent poverty.
The House bill, HR 678, was introduced by U.S. Rep. Artur Davis of Alabama and is called the Southern Empowerment and Economic Development Act, or SEED.
"Consider every major index of social misery and grinding poverty, and you will find the congressional districts of the Black Belt will stand at the top of them," Davis said in an address to the House. ...
"Time is standing still for these communities, in a technological way," he said. "A knowledge-based economy requires a different method and a different approach and we have to move away from the conventional ways. The way they've been doing business has to cease. They have to come up with new strategies to make sure processes like this work."...
MyInKy :: While city procrastinates
By RYAN REYNOLDS Courier & Press staff writer
...David Audretsch, an economic development professor at Indiana University, ... argues that, despite the common notion that America's coastal cities are more European than its heartland, the opposite is actually true.
"We're very conservative, very European in that respect," he said. "The Midwest has the reputation of being the power behind America's economic might, and it takes a long time to get over that."
For a long time, that might was built on manufacturing. Evansville was a city where men lived in the neighborhoods of the factories where they worked. Small children listened every afternoon for the whistles that signaled an end to each shift, then went to wait along the sidewalks for their fathers to come down the street, ready to carry them on their shoulders back to the house, where a hot dinner waited. ...
An improvement in attitude could lead to the establishment of a more diverse spread of industries here. And as more and more companies move their manufacturing lines overseas, it becomes increasingly important to have other types of jobs to fall back on, Audretsch said.
"The places that do well are the places that are shifting toward more knowledge-based jobs," Audretsch said. And the areas that establish more of those jobs are those willing to accept change. Audretsch pointed to the Research Triangle of North Carolina and Austin, Texas, as examples...
ic Wales :: Data giant keeps faith with city
by Will Smale, The Western Mail
...GLOBAL IT and business services giant Electronic Data Systems is to build a new headquarters in Swansea. ...
"EDS not only makes a major contribution to the regional economy it also plays a key role in building and developing the knowledge- based economy that we need in Wales.
"Through working closely with EDS, regionally and internationally, we were able to provide a solution which will enable them to consolidate their position in Swansea and hopefully expand and strengthen their operations in the future."...
Croner CCH Webcentre :: Manufacturing jobs we can't afford to lose
...Workers from across the UK have been demonstrating outside the Labour Party Conference against manufacturing job cuts. The 2500 workers protesting yesterday represented the number of manufacturing jobs allegedly lost in the UK each week. Union leaders are calling on the Prime Minister to put jobs at the top of the political agenda.
Today a professor of manufacturing from Warwick University said Britain needs "grass-roots investment" to help develop new products that can be competitively marketed at home and abroad.
Writing in the Financial Times, Professor Kumar Bhattacharyya said the number of new manufacturing start-ups is going down and the cost of setting up a manufacturing business in the UK is prohibitive. He suggested a five-year tax holiday to help new businesses become established. He also recommended a training levy on the payroll or tax allowances to help plug the skills gap.
Professor Bhattacharyya sees investment in manufacturing as vital to Britain's economic health. He believes we are currently relying too heavily on a "knowledge-based economy" which faces severe competition from countries such as India...
...ATUG has supported competition in telecommunications since 1981 on the basis that a competitive industry would deliver better prices, service and innovation to users than monopoly providers. The government is laying the groundwork for a significant next step in the development of the telecommunications industry, with the introduction of the Telstra (Transition to Full Private Ownership) Bill 2003, currently under review by the Senate.
The decade since the beginnings of competition in telecommunications has seen the emergence of the information/knowledge based economy and society, with increased emphasis on the role of telecommunications connectivity and services. Economic growth, business productivity and opportunity, effective government service delivery and increasing community needs for information and communication, all depend on quality telecommunications at affordable prices...
...Speaking at the United Nations General Assembly, Mr Surakiart urged nations of the world to stand together and bridge their differences, using the upcoming Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation as an example. Thailand will host the summit from October 20-21.
Mr Surakiart also spoke about the agenda in Bangkok. "This APEC leaders meeting reflects the belief that despite the diversity and differences that exist across the region there is unlimited potential and benefit that can be tapped through effective partnership.
"The meeting will discuss five sub-themes which are knowledge-based economy, promotion of human security, financial architecture for a world of differences, SME's and act of development pledge. "In addition the issue of counter terrorism will also be underscored to promote economic stability in the Asia Pacific region and beyond," added Mr Surakiart.
Canada NewsWire :: BIOTECanada applies for intervener status before the Supreme Court of Canada
...Today, Canada's community of biotechnology innovators, represented by BIOTECanada applied to intervene before the Supreme Court of Canada in the case of Percy Schmeiser and Monsanto. Intervener status, if granted, would allow for BIOTECanada to speak to the importance of protecting the foundation for innovation - patent protection to all Canadians.
Since 1998, the Government of Canada has invested more than $11 billion dollars in the infrastructure of discovery and research. Canada is world renown for its scientific and regulatory excellence in support of technologies and product safety. BIOTECanada believes the Supreme Court must evaluate the merits of this case with a full exploration of what patent protection means, how it is applied and what is needed to include Canada in a knowledge-based society.
"The integrity of our patent system protects people who bring ideas to fruition and ensures Canadians can have access to new products and processes with potential to improve our daily lives," offered Ms Lambert. "Canadians have played an important part in the explosion of knowledge in recent years, and have a role in how the global community will adapt to the benefits biotechnology offers. Our patent system is essential to that role."...