Semantic Web Company

The IWIS Group at the Dept. of Computer Science, University of Aalborg, Denmark, have just opened up their evaluation of a tag recommender system they are building; the component is to be part of the wiki-based, semantic knowledge management system KiWi (itself based on IkeWiki). Anyone interested in participating, please send an Email to Fred Durão at fred@cs.aau.dk.

Hi,
We are conducting an evaluation of a tag based recommender system with personalization we have developed here at the IWIS group at Aalborg University (http://iwis.cs.aau.dk) and in the context of KIWI project (http://www.kiwi-project.eu). We would be very grateful if you could help us with this task.

The recommendater system is based on a set of algorithms we are evaluating. Later we are planning to plug it into the KIWI system and develop an appropriate user interface for it. Currently, we are evaluating it based on Delicious data (tags and content). The recommendations will be processed by our recommender system based on the tags you placed in Delicious.

As personalization is a crucial aspect to us, we will give you a generated username and password to log onto the Delicious Web site. Therefore please send an e-mail back to us that you would like to participate. You only have to tag a minimum 10 web sites of your preference. Tag as much as you can!

Afterwards we are going to email you a list of recommendations to web sites that you might be interested. These are computed by our recommender system. We will ask you to mark the recommendations by YES if the sites recommended suits your preference or NO if it does not.

The achieved results will be published to all participants after the end of the analysis.

People interested in participate of this evaluation please send an email to fred@cs.aau.dk.

Best regards,

Fred Durão and Peter Dolog

Here is link to the FAQ.

Peter Axel Nielsen, a researcher from Aalborg University who is working on the Logica usecase, started his report by giving us an overview of CMMI, a process improvement approach that is being used by Logica and that is thus going to be of eminent importance for the KiWi/Logica usecase.

CMMI stands for Capability Maturity Model® Integration, and, according to its inventors, “helps integrate traditionally separate organizational functions, set process improvement goals and priorities, provide guidance for quality processes, and provide a point of reference for appraising current processes.” CMMI was created by the Carnegie Mellon Software Engineering Institute, and has been adopted worldwide.

CMMI provides a framework for a 5-step path towards maturity in software process improvement – a path that can be expected to take years and which demands a company’s full commitment. Peter drew our attention to a volume, fresh from the printing press, which he edited together with Karlheinz Kautz: Software Process & Knowledge. Beyond Conventional Software Process Improvement.*) The volume contains an interesting CMMI case study, “The Road to High Maturity. How the first Danish company reached CMMI level 5 in 100 months,” in which the authors emphasize that software process improvement, in essence, is “an organizational change process, that is, the processes in an organization, and the behaviour and interaction of people, groups, projects and, in fact, the whole organization.” Some of the benefits reported by the participants in the case study were: reduction of overtime, increased satisfaction of employees, increased opportunities to delegate as a result of formal definitions of roles and greater ease to move between projects.

Switching to CMMI brings with it the benefits of a well-defined, ready to use conceptual model of knowledge – this is, of course, an invaluable asset when it comes to defining the requirements of the KiWi system, which is going to be used as a wiki-based, semantically enhanced knowledge management system for IT project management in the Logica usecase.

*) Peter Axel Nielsen, Karlheinz Kautz (eds.): Software Process & Knowledge. Beyond Conventional Software Process Improvement. Software Innovation Publisher. Aalborg. 2008. ISBN 978-87-992586-0-4 See also: website of the symposium on Software Process & Knowledge that preceeded the publication.

So here we go again, the KiWi and me: Today, tomorrow and Friday I am in Prague with my colleagues Andreas Blumauer and Matthias Samwald, attending the first Joint Workpackage Meeting in the EU-funded project KiWi – Knowledge in a Wiki. The present meeting is hosted by Sun Microsystems - Josef Holy and Inka Havlova gave us a very warm welcome, but thankfully the Sun offices are the direct opposite, namely perfectly chilled on this hot June day:-)

The day started with Sebastian Schaffert, project coordinator from Salzburg Research, giving us an overview of the actitivies of the first quarter in the project and a primer on the objectives of the meeting. The overall concern of this full meeting, in order to align core developments of the project early on, is to develop a common understanding of the functionalities and behaviour of the KiWi system, to define a core data model and to develop an outline for the upcoming dissemination plan.

An IT project is like herding cats, they say – in our case, we’ll be herding kiwis, and if we can enjoy it only half as much as these guys, I’ll be fine:-)

The first session is coming up: Peter Axel Nielsen’s report from Work Package 5, i.e. the usecase developed by Logica and Aalborg University. More updates coming up soon!

The third partner contributing to the second KIWI work package, Enabling Technologies, is a team from Aalborg University (AAU) led by Peter Dolog, Assistant Professor in the Information Systems Unit at the Dept. of Computer Science. “I found the KIWI project interesting especially because of its high relevance for the industry,” says Peter. “I am looking forward to learn about further advances in reasoning in the area of practical social knowledge management applications as well as about semi-automatic knowledge extraction which is very important for personalization research.” Peter has worked on numerous projects related to knowledge, learning and creativity management, for instance idSpace – Tooling and Training for Collaborative, Distributed Product Innovation or the ELENA – Creating a Smart Space for Learning project, an elearning project that integrated semantic technology into a tool for human resource management. Peter is joined by Peter Axel Nielsen, Andreas Munk-Madsen and Karsten Jahn.
Peter Axel’s research focus is on improving software processes and professionalizing information systems development as well as on object-oriented modeling and methodology (and more). Andreas has work experience as an IT-consultant and system developer, has published about using storytelling in the definition of project plans and on the classifciation of IS project problems. Karsten is a doctoral student hailing from Düsseldorf, who has a strong background in promoting the use of wikis in the industry and who is doing research on the personalization and acceptance of wikis.
Their task within the enabling technologies section of KIWI is going to be on the definition of personalisation methods, i.e.

• to develop appropriate user and group models for representing propeties and preferences of groups
• to refine user and group models based on automatic tracking of individual user behaviour
• to develop rules to dynamically adapt the presentation of content and user interfaces

Peter has also offered to involve the AAU usability experts in the evaluation of the KIWI usecases. Being an intelligent interface addict, I can’t wait for the outcome of their research!