My thesis currently has around 100 pages, yet a few chapters to come. It is constructed through several different documents that are included into one. All that worked fine so far, but I started noticing some hick-ups. The creation of the complete document and its indexes takes longer and longer. And one time, the structure messed up and I had to rework the master document.

Finishing my thesis with word is surely possible. But I don’t want to risk troubles. I therefore began having a look at Latex. Seems legit. It’s always good to have options.

Now, I have to confess, that I never worked with Latex until recently. Converting my Word-documents into Latex-files took some effort. The main problem for me was the library of my references. I handled the sources of my work in Word. There are probably better solutions, but it’s easy to use and provides everything I need.
Except for an export feature…

No way I would create all the entries manually for my Latex bibliography. Instead I wrote a stylesheet that makes Word create a bibliography in BibTex format (Details regarding the Bibliography Management). Now I can simply copy and paste my library from one system to the other. The only problem is, that the library is full of characters that have to be escaped in Latex. Because I didn’t want to do that manually either, I created a script for that, too.
Here’s how you can export your MS Word sources and references and import them to a BibTex library:

1. Download this stylesheet: Word2Bibtex
2. Save it here: C:\Program Files\Microsoft Office\Office14\Bibliography\Style
3. Start Word and change the style of your bibliography to “Bibtex Export”.
4. Copy the bibliography that word creates for you.
5. Substitute the special characters using this script: The Substitutor
6. Use the result for your BibTex library.
7. Done.

I hope it helps you, as it helped me. Find both also on my stuff-page.

Anyhow, a wiki system, as it is called now, allows users to add and edit content of web pages in a very easy and quick way. The users however do not have to be afraid that any changes might delete content. Every saved version of a page is stored in a history and users can easily step back to an older state of the page.
This carefree editing became known as the wiki way, a term that stands for simplistic collaboration without demands of page ownership or other restricting principles.

While the original wiki is still online (the WikiWikiWeb), other people and organizations published systems on their own and developed the idea to further levels (find an overview in the wiki matrix). Especially in the open source community wikis were often used for group collaboration. But soon the industry discovered the power of this simple tool. Today, wikis are commonly used for knowledge sharing and information exchange in many organizations. There’s a nice introduction to wikis in the workplace, even best practices are described in wiki patterns.

When I talk to people about wikis, coming from industry, one concern is formulated way more often than anything else. The management level is often really afraid of wiki vandalism, i.e., users posting wrong information. There are usually two replies to that:

1. Users in a corporate wiki have to log in. Hence every change carries the name. And usually people don’t like being spotted as vandals.
2. Different studies (e.g., by IBM Research) on the english Wikipedia show that other users fix wrong information on pages, within minutes.

Especially the first argument shows that wikipedia is not a good example for a wiki in an organization. It is by far the most popular one, but hardly any of the users have ever edited a page. The second one however shows that the community effect is strengthened through a wiki. And even though statistics show that Wikipedia is of higher quality than traditional dictionaries, there is always a degree of uncertainty. I want to tell the story of one of these, beacause I actually find it hilarious. It also describes the danger of wikis that is sometimes overlooked.

Berolinism is more than just a dialect, it covers also specific words for buildings or sign, like “washing machine” for the chancellor building or the “palace of tears” for the buildings of the border crossing Friedrichstraße. Many of these, claiming insiders, are used by the tourism industry only. One of these insiders is Andreas Kopietz, journalist for the Berlin news paper “Berliner Zeitung”.

On February 16, 2009, his “second glas of red wine” entered the following fact:
Before the Berlin wall came down, the Karl-Marx-Allee was known as Stalin’s Bathroom, due to its significant tiles.

He decided to leave the joke and observes what happens. It got approved by a content administrator from another part of Germany and since then the term began to spread. In the beginning it was mostly tourism companies that used it, later blogs and travel guides jumped in. Then in 2010 even the bigger news portals mentioned the term. But when his own paper used it in early 2011, the author tried to correct his hoax, it was not allowed. Wikipedia admins undid his changes with the reason: That term can be found everywhere, it is true!

His article in the Berliner Zeitung: Wie ich Stalins Badezimmer erschuf German
The Wikipedia page: Karl-Marx-Allee German

There is a nice cartoon summing up the process: xkcd – Citogenesis

The principle behind that is that a software developing organization should gather the gained experience and make it accessible to learn from it in the future. To archive that, the whole idea builds upon a division of responsibilities. On the one hand there is the project organization, which covers the project work and tasks. On the other hand is the experience factory, which encapsulates the whole experience recording and leveraging for the whole organization.

In the experience factory all kinds of experience that can be externalized and made available are analysed and synthesised. That includes the outcome of project reviews or documentation. This is then taken and bundled into standardized packages, in order to make the experience easier to access. Developers can thus access these experience packages in the experience base, once they feel the need for further input. At the end of every learning process, the developer has to feed the gained insights back into the experience base, to make it richer. The methodology thus applies the two basic activities in knowledge management: collecting experience and learning to improve.

The experience factory is a widely known concept and implemented in different organizations. The most famous one is the Software Engineering Laboratory at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, which documents a dramatic increase of reuse across different projects [2]. It can be seen though, that it is difficult to implement and contains a huge organizational overhead. But the principles applied make a lot of sense. It is worth thinking about it, I suppose.

[1] Victor R. Basili. »Software Development: A Paradigm for the Future«, Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Computer Software and Applications Conference (COMPSAC 89), 1989.

[2] Victor R. Basili and Gianluigi Caldiera. »Improve Software Quality by Reusing Knowledge and Experience«, Sloan Management Review, Fall 1995.

Parts of the KiWi core development were the so called Enabling Technologies. These provide certain features to the KiWi platform, namely Information Extraction, Personalization & Adaptation, Querying & Reasoning and Reason Maintenance.

Since March 1st is the project over. The KiWi has landed. I was part of the consortium’s representatives at the final review meeting on Monday at the European Union’s buildings in Luxembourg. And even though their final official statements will be part of a report that is yet to come, I believe that generally the project can be valued quite positive and successful.

Not only has the KiWi project been very exciting, it also provided a lot of opportunities. I was able to meet and work with all these interesting people across Europe. And I also got in touch with (for me) new and fascinating topics. I’m grateful for that and say: Thank you KiWi!

The KiWi however is far from dead. During the project a community began to be formed. Moderated by the people at Salzburg Research the KiWi system takes off to its second version soon. If you want to participate in the open source world, have a look at the KiWi Community.

In the field of my studies, knowledge is hardly defined, but described and delimited from information and data; you can’t really separate one from the other. That is also why it is commonly referred to as the pyramid of knowledge, as one builds up to the other.

Data is raw information. When you fill out a form, you insert data; numbers and values. Data is usually handled in tables or lists, be it in databases, in spread sheets or form-based applications. Note that data is always pure. It can be the measurement results, without being aware of the context. The data itself does not contain any hint on what was measured, how or why that was done.

Information is data in a context. When you draw a diagram utilizing data, you create information; data sets with their connection and meaning. In order to make sense out of data a background or a context is needed. This correlation can be expressed in articles or diagrams, but also speeches. Note that though the content of a piece of information might be subjective, information as such is the same for anyone and thus objective. It presents description of the data.

Knowledge is processed information. When you access information and understand it, you create knowledge; personal insight. Knowledge is always something individual, which you sometimes cannot even express (tacit knowledge). Relating information to personal experience or understanding creates new knowledge, this process has names like learning, practicing, organizing or judging. Note that knowledge always happens within or between human beings. It is therefore always subjective and cannot be shared or transferred directly.

The data-information-knowledge chain can be accessed in both ways. Contextualizing will get you from data to information and from information to knowledge, while abstraction will get you back.
Generally is the use of language restricting, when we use the concept of knowledge. The English grammar forces us to use knowledge as something you can own. But knowledge should be seen more as a process that needs to be used.

[1] Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Pruzak. »Working Knowledge: How Organizations Manage What They Know«, Boston: Harvard Business School Press, 1998.

KiWi is a wiki that combines technologies like the semantic web, information extraction, a recommendation component and a rules engine. The project’s target was knowledge management for software companies; the system addresses the domain problems and assists in solving common problems. But during the development KiWi became much more than that. It is now an open-source development platform for building semantic social media applications.

To make sure, that KiWi does not die, once the funding is over, the project makes some effort to form a community. The release party was thus also an opportunity to get in touch with the project team. We want everybody to be part of KiWi. So, if you feel like, use your creativity and skills to make that bird fly or simply use it, we are here to motivate and support you.

Visit: http://www.kiwi-community.eu/

Any researcher’s target is to advance the body of knowledge, but also to enlighten practice of a profession. The gap between theory and practice is a sign that this did not always work satisfactorily. With engaged scholarship Van de Ven describes an approach that should help this dilemma. He wants to support the collaboration between researchers and practitioners. Engaged scholarship does not understand research as a solitary exercise, but as a combined effort.

the more complex the problem or the bigger the research question, the greater the level of engagement is required of researchers from different disciplines and practitioners with different functional experiences.
Page 18

Four research activities should take part during a research, according to his ideas: problem formulation, theory building, research design and problem solving. He points out that these are not held in any specific order. Sometimes, it even makes sense to have a two in parallel. Additionally it can be beneficial or even required to conduct several iterations and revisions of the research activities.

As space is very limited here, I can only provide a brief overview and point out to read the book. It’s worth it!

Problem Formulation. To describe the problem properly is a vital part of every research. The target of any problem formulation should be the research question. It provides the implications for the next steps and can be used later to evaluate the work. Not only is this commonly the first task in the engaged scholarship process, but also influences it the following ones strongly.

Theory Building. As the theory in engaged scholarship has to be connected to reality, it is very important to choose a fitting one. This usually involves three activities: Conceiving or creating a theory, constructing or elaborating a theory and justifying or evaluating a theory.

Research Design. It is important to understand, that the theory is not the same as the model. A research model instead acts like an instrument to link data with the theory. As theory cannot be observed directly, a research model is designed instead. Dependent on the research question two basic epistemologies can be used. One is the variance model, which is outcome-driven, and the other one is the process model, which is event-driven.

Problem Solving. The researcher’s present is organized that every research leads to a form of written and/or presentation. It is assumed that work will be used, if it is good/influential enough. It can be observed, that much research is hardly used by other researchers (low citations is common) and in practice (difficulties to find and to adopt). The important thing is thus to find appropriate ways to communicate the findings of a research by engaging the intended audience.

While the kind of research that Van de Ven describes as engaged scholarship might be a bit revolutionary for the American information systems research community, this is actually common practice in Scandinavia. Lars Mathiassen and Peter Axel Nielsen analyzed the articles in the Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems (SJIS) and compare their research process to the engaged scholarship process [2]. They found that the Scandinavian IS research tradition is in line with engaged scholarship and many papers applied its values and principles long before the book was published. For further information I would like to refer to the author and his blog entry.

Personally, I enjoyed reading the book. Not only because I noticed to be in an engaged scholarship myself, but also because Van de Ven describes the details of conducting the process in depth and comprehensive.

[1] Andrew H. Van de Ven. »Engaged Scholarship: A Guide for Organizational and Social Research«, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

[2] Lars Mathiassen and Peter Axel Nielsen. »Engaged Scholarship in IS Research«, Scandinavian Journal of Information Systems, Vol. 20, No. 2, Pages 3-20, 2008.

At this conference I presented a paper that I wrote together with my supervisor: Codified vs. Personalized – A Vertical Approach to the Dilemma of the Knowledge Management Strategies.
We introduce the principle and a prototype (based on KiWi) to make use of both knowledge management strategies in the same company, but each on different vertical organizational layers. While the top management level follows a codified knowledge management strategy is the development team able to apply a personalized approach [1].

It was my very first paper, so I was a bit nervous. This might also be the reason why I unintendedly extended the scheduled ten minutes for the presentation (see the slides below) slightly. The 32 people audience however seemed very interested and we had a nice discussion about the feasibility of a Wiki in a professional context afterwards.

The conference in general was a success for me. Not only gained I important experience of my first paper presentation for my PhD, but I also got to know many interesting people and had a number of fruitful discussions. Plus I had the opportunity to see the sun again.

[1] Karsten Jahn & Peter Axel Nielsen. »Codified vs. Personalized – A Vertical Approach to the Dilemma of the Knowledge Management Strategies«, 17th EuroSPI² Conference Industrial Proceedings, pages 3.11 – 3.20. Delta, 2010.

SCIS
The 1st Scandinavian Conference of Information Systems had the focus on engaged scholarship and was held in single track. Keynote speeches (by Brian Fitzgerald and Jan Pries-Heje), a panel discussion and paper presentations. For each presentation there was an opponent, that prepared comments and a discussion. Papers.

IRIS
The 33rd Seminar for Information Systems Research in Scandinavia (IRIS) was divided into workgroups. Each participant had a paper handed in which was then discussed in the groups, consisting of one (or more) senior and the authors of six papers. Each paper was then discussed by a main opponent followed by a group discussion. Additionally, there were the experiences of recent PhDs presented. These provided a great insight into the doctoral-studies from the other side of the big deadline.
Proceedings.

Personally, I really appreciated the combination of a conference and a workshop like done here. As a junior researcher, that needs a lot of feedback, but also new input from different topics and views, I could obtain both, from the same community and in a short period of time. These four days were filled with interesting input, discussions and views. I got to know many interesting researchers from across Scandinavia and beyond, gained many new insights to and on the field of information systems and received a lot of feedback on my work.

As I mentioned before the whole book is very interesting and nice to read. I strongly recommend it to anyone interested in this field. For this entry I would like to focus on the first lecture in the book, as that is a strong influence to my studies.

we can know more than we can tell.
Page 4

Polanyi has a simple example what tacit knowledge is: When you walk around in the city, you might meet hundreds of people you have never seen before. But still, the moment there is someone you know, you recognize the person. Have you ever asked yourself how or why?

Polanyi defines four different aspects of tacit knowing:

1. The functional structure of tacit knowing is the attendance from features to a target. We recognize people (target), because we are aware of their looks (features).
2. The phenomenal structure of tacit knowing has a lot to do with apprehension. We are aware that we would recognize people on the street, if we meet them.
3. The semantic aspect of tacit knowing tends to displace all meaning away from ourselves. If we use a tool, and we are accustomed to it, we locate the tool’s effect (the meaning of its impact) on ourselves (e.g., our hand).
4. The ontological aspect of tacit knowing establishes the relation of what the knowledge the tacit knowledge is. This helps us understanding the comprehensive entity from relying on our awareness of its particulars. Once we recognize someone, we are aware to know that person.

Then Polanyi continues and explains that we can influence our tacit knowledge by practicing. If you start learning to play the piano, you have to concentrate to push the right keys with the right pressure and timing. Professional piano players push the right keys on the piano in an incredible speed while playing a piece. Musicians refer to it as “the fingers know their way”. If the player tries to focus on every aspect and to conscious play the piano, mistakes of many different kinds would arise. The player would lose (temporally) the naturalness. That counts for many thing we do in our everyday life: Walking, driving a car, typing on a key board, etc.
This action of rehearsing until something becomes tacit knowledge is called internalization. We gain the naturalness by practicing and comprehending the actions. There are many examples in our everyday life for this, like riding a bike or throwing a ball.

Throughout the whole book Polanyi adds many different views on the tacit knowledge. It is extremely well and interesting written; theories and ideas are explained in very colorful examples that are easy to comprehend.

[1] Michael Polanyi, »The Tacit Dimension«. London: Routlefge & Kegan Paul, 1966.

The two guests were Geoff Walsham (Cambridge Judge Business School, University of Cambridge) and Robin Williams (Research Centre for Social Sciences, The University of Edinburgh). Apart from their lectures (two each) they mixed with the rest of the faculty members, namely:

• Kim Normann Andersen (Center of Applied IT, Copenhagen Business School)
• Keld Bødker (Department of Communication, Roskilde University)
• Erling Havn (Department of Management Engineering Work, Technology and Organisation, Technical University of Denmark)
• Tina Blegind Jensen (Department of Informatics, Copenhagen Business School)
• Finn Kensing (Center for IT Innovation University of Copenhagen)
• Pernille Kræmmergaard (Center for IT-Management, Aalborg University)
• Peter Axel Nielsen (Department of Computer Science, Aalborg University)

I managed to talk to most of the faculty members and the other students in detail. The feedback that I gained was quite enormous and I actually learned a lot during that time.

One of the core statements that followed us for the whole week was a question asked by Geoff Walsham on the first day: So what?!
Researchers should always be able to justify their choices and be able to point out their contributions. Based on these thoughts were we discussing about methods and theory. I gained a lot of insights from different perspectives. The whole course led to a rather long list of fascinating topics, many interesting contacts and conversations and, not to be forgotten, to the idea of this blog.

Now I will work my way through the notes I made through the last week and start reading…

So in case you will find something appealing, I would be delighted if you left a comment and share your opinion, whether you agree or not.

Let’s communicate!

Cheers,
Karsten Jahn