Real-Time Economy Community - New ideas

The problem of undocumented knowledge

Simo HÃ€mÃ€lÃ€inen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 22:00:00 GMT

The problem of undocumented knowledge

SIMO S. HÄMÄLÄINEN, student, University of Lapland, Finland

HELEN HEINMAA, student, Tallinn University of Technology, Estonia

Organisations have huge amounts of undocumented knowledge. They employ
people with different experience and skills, who can keep things
running, but much of the information required for this is only in their
heads. This information is difficult to document, but it's vital to
keeping things running smoothly. Often, when a question arises, it is
even difficult to know whom to ask!

To access such information, we propose a social discussion channel built
around a chat service:

1. Users maintain a list of areas of expertise: general topics which
they know about.

2. When someone needs information on a particular topic, she logs onto
the chat and asks her question.

3. Using linguistic and semantic analysis, the system processes the
question and extracts keywords. These keywords are compared with
people's expertise to find out who may know the answer.

4. Messages are sent to the users who may be able to help.

5. Someone who knows the answer replies.

Unlike business emails which take longer to write, people are
comfortable sending quick, to-the-point replies in a chat. People are
also comfortable ignoring chat messages. Because the questions are sent
to many people, anyone who is busy can ignore the question. Less
distracting than a live chat session, the system is more instantaneous
than email.

Many fields could benefit from this system. Experts such as doctors,
developers and technical support personnel can share their expertise
efficiently. Informal sharing of information is an efficient way to tap
into the varying areas of expertise and also share information for staff
training purposes.

Questions and answers are stored in a searchable database. New questions
can be compared to previously answered questions and the system can
suggest solutions automatically. As a side product the system creates
new, high-quality documentation automatically.

Virtual lounges and communicating with your superiors

Sampo Remes — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 09:14:48 GMT

Some companies see social medias as bad thing that distracts the employees and lowers the working efficiency. But I think there might be some opportunities to improve flow of information within the company. Social medias could be customized to company's needs, for example block some features and make some of your own.

I think in many workplaces there would be benefits if employees could "brainstorm" in real-time chat rooms or lounges. E-mail and personal meetings are widely used for that but why not move some of that to social network?

Also work-related questions for employees closest manager could be sent when they come to mind, and if the manager was busy at some other activity he/she could answer those questions when they get back to their desk. Manager could then assess the situation and decide wheter to answer the question or get the answers from higher up. If managers had their own "chat room" where employees could send the questions (but could not read other peoples questions so that it would feel easier to ask knowing that only superiors can read them), any available other manager could answer the question right away. There would have to be some guidelines for managers what kind of questions can be answered on behalf of other managers. Stepping on someone elses toes isn't much improvement to general atmosphere.

Twitter-like newsfeed application could publish any important updates instantly. If someone was waiting for other peoples work to finish, that would cut the waiting times to minimum. Those newsfeeds could be customized so that those directly related to one's own work could be shown as some kind of pop-up messages. Maybe the working motivation would rise if employees would know that anyone can check if you have finished anything today. And managers would be able to transfer employees to other tasks if they have finished their own tasks earlier.

If such things could be implemented without employees getting the feeling of "big brother" wathcing over their shoulder I think there could be many good uses for social media at workplaces.

Striving for a real RTE

Juhani Anttila — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 13:17:54 GMT

I have been interested in finding links between Real-Time Economy and Social Technologies.

I understand RTE as organizations and communities carrying out effectively and efficiently the present duties and regenerating continuously for future challenges. It is essential to understand that organizations are living systems and learning through relationships with its environments. In this context key issues are conversations and language. Almost classical text for this topic is “The Little Grey Book” of Sun Microsystems. It is worth of reading it again. However, I have not seen much discussion or references to this text. Now, social technologies give real opportunities to reinforce “leadership and language” for regenerating organizations for RTE.