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Distinguished Speaker Series 2007-2008

Kumiyo Nakakoji

Kumiyo Nakakoji

Professor, RCAST, University of Tokyo
Senior research fellow, SRA Key Technology Laboratory Inc., Japan

 

Personalized, Task-specific, Ad Hoc Expert Communities for Effective Knowledge Collaboration

November 2, 2007

Friday
Refreshments and Networking: 1:30 - 2:00
Presentation: 2:00 - 3:30

 


Faculty Host: David F. Redmiles, ISR

 

RSVP: Email RSVP required to Jessica Garcia at by Monday October 29.

Location:
UCI Calit2 Auditorium (Building #325)

Cost:
No cost to attend.

Directions and parking information
are available.

 

Abstract:

We propose an approach to dynamically formulate an "ad-hoc knowledge community" for practitioners to obtain the "right" information from their peers at the "right" time. While acknowledging that knowledge workers inevitably need to ask the peers for help to solve their task at hand, the situation is not as simple as Help Desk where there is a clear separation between askers and experts; rather, those who ask and those who answer are both professional practitioners within an organization, where each member's job is not to answer to questions but to get the task done. The challenge, therefore, is to balance the needs of those who ask and those who are asked within a knowledge-intensive work organization. Based on who is looking for what, our proposed mechanism would dynamically identify a small subgroup of people within an organization, who are likely to provide attuned advices and information in a timely manner. We use social relationships to formulate such a personalized, task-specific, ad-hoc knowledge community in addition to expertise profiles of each member of the organization. The mechanism would be a step forward to build an information-enriched software development environment where practitioners could seamlessly access both artifacts and peers as relevant knowledge resources.

 

About the Speaker: Kumiyo Nakakoji is a full professor at RCAST, University of Tokyo, where she directs the Knowledge Interaction Design (KID) Laboratory. She also works for SRA Key Technology Laboratory, Inc., Japan, as a senior research fellow. She received a BS in computer science from Osaka University, and a MS and Ph.D. in computer science from University of Colorado, Boulder. Before joining the University of Tokyo faculty in 2002, she worked as Adjunct Associate Professor at NAIST, Japan, where she headed the CCC (Culture, Communication and Creativity) group. Her current research interests include designing and developing computational tools for creative knowledge work, and understanding cognitive and social factors of software development as knowledge-intensive practices.