Management of Knowledge in Context
Speaker: Prof. Patrick Brezillon, Laboratoire d'Informatique de Paris 6, France.
When: 2007-11-01 14:00:00
Venue: 78-420
Host: A/Prof. Jaga Indulska
Abstract:From a person viewpoint, KM and ICT address different types of
problems, the former being about people, and the latter
relationships between people. Actors possess knowledge and
communicate information. We are concerned with knowledge. Actors
accumulate knowledge from their task realization in a given
environment, a particular context and specific conditions. This
operational knowledge embeds competences, skills, know-how,
etc. that actors use in their task realization in different
contexts. This knowledge is highly contextualized: operational
knowledge must be considered with its context of use. However, few
KM solutions propose to address the knowledge in its contextual
texture that is thus generally lost and operational knowledge poorly
reused later.
Contextual Graphs are a context-based formalism used in various
real-world applications. It allows a uniform representation of
elements of reasoning and of contexts for describing different human
task solving like diagnosis and interpretation. A contextual graph
represents a task realization. Its paths represent the different
methods to reach the realization, each method corresponding to a
practice (an effective task) developed by an actor realizing the
task. We revisit the classical distinction between prescribed and
effective tasks, procedures versus practices, logic of functioning
versus logic of use, etc. in the light of this formalism. We discuss
of the position of the model of practices with respect to the
prescribed task (a king of theoretical model of KM) through the
example of the diagnosis of a DVD reader and another example in the
collaborative building of an answer to questions.
Biography:Dr Patrick Brezillon defended his Thse d'Etat in 1983 on
"Mathematical Modeling of Self-Oscillating Nonlinear
Systems. Application in Biology to Serotonin and Calcium
Metabolisms" at the University Paris 6 (France). He then spent two
years at Electricit de France, the French National Company of Power
Systems. From 1992 to 1996, he was responsible of a team. He is now
in the SYSDEF team since the beginning of the Laboratoire
d'Informatique de Paris 6 (LIP6, 450 researchers, the biggest
Lab. of Computer Science in Paris) at the University Paris 6. Dr
P. Brezillon.s research focuses since 2002 on the modeling of
context, after a 5-years projects with RATP, the subway company in
Paris. He is one of the main instigators of the emergence of an
international community interested by the notion of context. He
proposes a coherent conceptual framework for defining and
identifying context. Now, his two main activities focuses, first, on
a software called .Contextual Graphs. for representing in a uniform
way elements of reasoning and of contexts describing
actors. behaviors in human tasks (http://www.cxg.fr); and, second,
on a Master specialization on .Management of Knowledge, Contents,
and Contexts. at the University Paris 6
(http://www.master.management.upmc.fr/specialites/mc3.htm) defending
the idea of the role of context in an efficient KM. The two
activities are interlocked because actors. behaviors rely on the
operational knowledge that is so difficult to capture in KM.
Type: EII Tutorial
Contact:A/Prof. Jaga Indulska, seminar host (jaga@itee.uq.edu.au)
or Guido Governatori (ITEE seminar co-ordinator)
(guido@itee.uq.edu.au)