Example Abstracts

Below you will find some 'example' abstracts that are clearly written, illustrate correct format, length and structure. These proposals were accepted into the conferenc programme..

Setting up an online community as an enterprise information tool
Dr Miranda Mowbray, Technical Expert, Hewlett Packard, UK

Learning Points
1. Online communities within the enterprise usually fail if they are created using a top-down, hierarchical approach
2. Begin your online community with hand-picked members.
3. Make sure that you can demonstrate concrete results.

Proposal
When human beings access and process information, they normally seek out other people to act as guides, filters, editors and contextualizers for information sources.

In the past these people would be contacted face-to-face. Two recent developments, however, have highlighted the possibility of using online communities for these tasks within the enterprise. The first is the mainstream adoption of intranets and enterprise groupware. The second is the rise of weblogs, the driving factor of whose success is not their underlying technology, but their social characteristics. The authors of the most popular weblogs search and select information for their readers and give a human context to that information.

This paper will give practical tips to managers and information professionals interested in setting up an online community as an information tool within the enterprise.

Three key learning points of the paper are the following.
1. Online communities within the enterprise usually fail if they are created using a top-down, hierarchical approach.
Reasons for this include that senior managers may have an incentive to restrict the flow of information; the most useful information flows may run counter to an official hierarchical structure; and online communications tend to work best if their tone is that of a conversation between peers.

2. Begin your online community with hand-picked members.
Find out which employees are already performing informal information editing roles for their peers, and design the technology to support their needs. Start the online community with these employees, and other enthusiasts: don't publicize it widely until it has established useful content and positive norms of behaviour. Ensure that one or more of these employees has the task of moderating and maintaining the online community as an official part of their job.

3. Make sure that you can demonstrate concrete results.
Begin with a small, specific, collaborative task for the online community, based on an organizational need. When you design the community include tracking tools and metrics so that you can provide ongoing demonstrations that it's working.

Mobilizing Organizational Support for Personal Knowledge Management
Ms Monica Morrison, Independent Consultant, Switzerland

Learning Points
1. Managing the flow of information content through the enterprise
2. How to help organizations better manage information overload
3. New roles for information professionals
4. Collaboration strategies

Proposal
Most knowledge workers need to feel more organized, reduce the time they spend in production, efficiently find information and profitably share ideas with colleagues. Organization-wide information management systems facilitate this. Changing working environments, however -- an increase in mobility, more information flowing to the individual worker, reduced administrative support and steadily increasing information management responsibilities for officers and managers -- threaten to reduce organizations capture and potential reuse of their employees knowledge. In addition, staff members struggle to balance personal and current employment information management tasks. Lines have blurred; a clear definition of knowledge workers responsibility for contributing to their employers knowledge base, and of employers responsibility to supply tools and training for this purpose, has become more difficult.

Organizations can assist in finding solutions to these issues by complementing implementation of common good? information systems with active promotion of workstation-specific information management methodologies and tools that improve personal productivity and quality of work, while feeding the larger organizational pool of knowledge assets.
The first part of this presentation makes the argument for a new role for information specialists in driving personal knowledge management; the second part explores possible partnerships and entry points for personal knowledge management programmes in existing organizations.

The authors will draw on their experience in developing personal knowledge management work in international organization settings.

Linking KM with other organisational functions and emerging management themes
Mr Dominic Kelleher, Director, Halcyon, Belgium

Learning Points:
1. How KM links with other organisational functions (HR, Marketing, IT etc.)
2. How KM links with other emerging management themes (quality, outsourcing, innovation etc.)
3. Learnings from the front line - how real organisations are addressing these issues today.

Proposal
Halcyon and Warwick Business School have produced for the BSI/DTI a "Guide to Good Practice on linking Knowledge Management with other key organisational functions and emerging processes".

This guide is backed by original research that tries to address the following paradox: KM is claimed by its strongest advocates to be the discipline that will help organisations get rid of organisational silos, but there is abundant evidence that many KM projects have not only failed to deliver on their promises, but have actually added to overload and confusion!

This session, which will highlight key findings from the guide, will contend that one of the main reasons that such projects have failed is precisely because they did not make a strong linkage with other functions and management processes and therefore did not win the hearts and minds of all key stakeholders.

For example, organisational value is typically created through a number of key process areas, such as :

(a) Operations management processes - supply, production, distribution, risk management etc.
(b) Customer management processes -  selection, acquisition, retention, growth etc.
(c)Innovation processes  -  opportunity creation, R&D, design, launch etc.
(d)Regulatory and social processes  - environment, health and safety, employment and community etc.

Understanding how KM can enhance such processes is key to anyone working in the KM or wider information industry.

This session will try and offer tools and cases to help the audience better able to address such challenges within their own organisations in the future.

In short the session will try and join the dots between KM and the host of other daily pre-occupations of management by providing in the current parlance, some joined up thinking.