Subject: [fg-db:] PAKM98 - Second Int. Conf. on Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management
From: Ulrich Reimer <[email-masked]>
To: [email-masked]
Date: Mon, 16 Mar 1998 18:21:38 +0100

Please accept our apologies if you should receive this message several
times.

           The Second International Conference on Practical Aspects
                       of Knowledge Management (PAKM98)
                             29-30 October, 1998
                             Basle, Switzerland
                  http://research.swisslife.ch/pakm98.html

                                Supported by
   SGAICO (Swiss Group for Artificial Intelligence and Cognitive
Science)
                                  and the
    Special Interest Group "Knowledge Engineering" of the German
Computer
                                   Society

                            -- Call for Papers --

Aims and scope of the conference
--------------------------------

It is widely acknowledged that knowledge is one of the most important
assets
of organizations. Especially companies in industrialised countries with
high
wages can only compete on the global market when offering products that
are
based on advanced technology or when trading the technology itself, thus
having an advantage over companies in countries with low salaries. These
companies depend on highly educated and skilled employees as well as on
short innovation cycles, high flexibility and creativity. One of the
prerequisites to achieving this is a systematic management of the key
success factor "knowledge".

Knowledge Management is primarily an issue of enterprise organization
and
enterprise management but there are many central and important issues
which
can be supported or even enabled by state-of-the-art information
systems.
Consequently, approaches to Knowledge Management need to be rooted in
business and organization science as well as in computer science.
However,
conferences and workshops on Knowledge Management typically either cover
approaches from the first or the second area only. Although such events
are
certainly worthwhile we feel that bringing together people from both
areas
and giving them a forum for exchanging ideas will lead to Knowledge
Management solutions that are much more useful and effective.

The PAKM Conference is dedicated to that quite challenging aim. It will
bring together people from both areas, namely

   * people who have an organizational perspective on Knowledge
Management,
     e.g. have practical experience in introducing Knowledge Management
in
     organisations, or are concerned with more theoretical approaches to
     managing the resource "knowledge"

   * people with an information technology point of view on Knowledge
     Management who, e.g., have developed tools for Knowledge
Management, or
     are investigating on a more theoretical level technological
frameworks
     for Knowledge Management

Several sessions with a workshop-like character will serve as a forum
for
interaction. Each workshop will deal with a certain Knowledge Management
problem that calls for solutions on the organizational as well as on the
technological side. In this way, PAKM enables and supports interactions
and
information flows of the following kinds:

   * Organizational and management solutions often include processes or
     structures that hold a potential for employing computer-supported
     approaches to increase efficiency and/or effectiveness. Sometimes,
an
     information system is even mandatory for the whole Knowledge
Management
     approach to work. Thus, participants from the information
technology
     area get the excellent opportunity to learn about real-world
     requirements, to identify the organizational framework certain
kinds of
     information systems must take into account, and get new ideas about
     what specific kinds of Knowledge Management systems are needed.

   * Technological solutions are useless unless they fit into a given
     organizational environment. Participants presenting their
technology
     approaches can get feedback on how well their systems meet reality.

   * Organizational solutions often can benefit from making use of
     information technology. Thus, participants from the area of
     organizational and management solutions may find it valuable to get
     feedback on where an additional usage of information technology
could
     lead to improvements in their solutions.

   * Participants from the organizational and management solutions area
have
     the opportunity to learn what kind of systems are technologically
     feasible and may be inspired to envision completely new kinds of
     solutions to certain Knowledge Management problems.

Additional to the workshop sessions each of the two conference days will
start with an invited talk. The conference will close with a plenary
session
where the main results from the workshops will be presented to all
participants.

Contributions sought
--------------------

We seek original contributions that describe approaches to solve a
particular Knowledge Management problem. The approach may be of a
technological nature, of a management/organizational nature, or a
combination of both. In any case, to avoid toy

problems and purely academic approaches being discussed, every paper
must
clearly describe the (real-world) problem being tackled and point out
the
added value of solving that problem. The paper should give a clear
description why and how the presented approach solves the problem. It
should
further be made clear in which aspects the suggested approach is a new
one.
A very important requirement is that at least the essentials of the
approach
must be presented in a way such that it will be comprehensible by all
participants, including those from the "other area" (e.g., information
technology people in the case you describe an organizational solution).

Submitted papers may be full papers with up to 12 pages and 30 minutes
presentation time, or short papers with up to 5 pages and 15 minutes
time
for presentation.

All accepted papers will be presented at the conference. They will be
grouped to (parallel) session according to the issues they address. The
sessions will be held as workshops, i.e. with one or two people
coordinating
the whole session, and with making sure that there is ample discussion
time.
Depending on the number of papers allocated to a session it may last a
whole
day or even longer. The proceedings with all accepted papers will be
available at the conference.

Possible workshop topics are the main topics listed below; papers may
address one or more of the subtopics given, or may address other topics
as
well as long as they fit into the overall conference theme:

   * Building and maintaining an inventory of the knowledge available in
the
     organization (with people, in files, databases, documents)
        o setting up appropriate communication links between people,
groups,
          departments to communicate what skills and knowledge they have
        o meta information systems

   * Bringing the knowledge existing somewhere inside or outside the
     organization to those places where it is needed
        o aligning organizational structures towards a knowledge sharing
          community
        o group support systems
        o decision support systems, just-in-time knowledge delivery
systems,
          electronic performance support systems
        o information retrieval: interest profiles, information
filtering,
          automatic text understanding, searching the world wide web,
          personal web agents

   * Making sure that available knowledge is reused and not reinvented
        o documentation and annotation of knowledge to facilitate its
being
          assimilated by people who did not provide it
        o ontologies and enterprise data models to provide a common
          terminological framework
        o automatic text summarization to facilitate selection of
relevant
          texts
        o group support systems
        o automatic indexing and abstracting of texts

   * Capturing and securing knowledge to avoid it from getting lost
        o designing business processes such that knowledge generated in
          ongoing work is easily and immediately captured
        o implementing lessons learned processes
        o organizational memories: knowledge integration, knowledge
sharing,
          versioning, contexts, high-level modelling languages for
          non-computer scientists
        o knowledge extraction from texts

   * Developing new knowledge
        o organizational measures for supporting and stimulating
innovation
        o information systems for supporting creative processes
(exploration
          of data spaces, visualization tools, etc.)
        o data mining (from data, text, and the web)

Important dates
---------------

Submission of full papers or short papers by July, 11, 1998
Acceptance notices mailed by August, 21, 1998
Final, camera-ready papers due by September, 25, 1998

Submission format
-----------------

Full papers may have up to 12 pages, short papers up to 5 pages, both in
an
11pt font and single-spaced. We accept either electronic submission in
Postscript or Word format, or paper submissions (in 4 copies) to the
following address:

Ulrich Reimer
Swiss Life
Information Systems Research Group
Postfach
CH-8022 Zurich, Switzerland
Email: [email-masked]

Program committee
-----------------

Chair:
Ulrich Reimer (Swiss Life, Switzerland)

Co-chair:
Michael Wolf (Swiss Bank Corporation, Switzerland)

Members:
Rose Dieng (INRIA, France)
Thomas Herrmann (University of Dortmund, Gemany)
Dirk E. Mahling (University of Pittsburgh, and Ernst & Young, USA)
Katharina Morik (University of Dortmund, Gemany)
Brian (Bo) Newman (Founder, Knowledge Management Forum, USA)
Patricia S. Seeman (Switzerland)
Rudi Studer (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
Gertjan van Heijst (CIBIT, Netherlands)
Karl M. Wiig (Knowledge Research Institute, USA)
- to be extended -

Organization
Ulrich Reimer (Swiss Life, Switzerland)
Michael Wolf (Swiss Bank Corporation, Switzerland)

Conference secretariat
Annemarie Nicolet (SI, Switzerland)
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