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In the past I’ve written quite a bit about expertise location and knowledge mapping . Expertise location is about supporting people to find people with certain expertise they’re looking for. In larger and multi-nationals organizations this is a big issue. One aspect about expertise location is also finding out where the person is. This can be a static location (e.g. the person works in room 3, building 4). This is difficult enough, but it can be done as I wrote some time ago. However, the workforce is more mobile than ever. Less and less employees have a fixed space they’re working in daily. They work in several rooms in an office during the week, they work from home, in the car, etc. Supporting expertise location in this context is even harder. In theory it can be done. I wrote about this as well. But I never saw a company actually connect the dots and make it work. Until recently. I had the pleasure to visit Qbengo . Qbengo is currently focused on connecting people at larger confer...

Outdoor maps are great. Google is doing a wonderful job with Maps . But what about indoor maps? I've been tracking posts about this topic for some time. And just recently Google announced it's taking Google Maps indoors . Here's a short video about his initiative: I think this will have huge implications for companies as well. Just think about adding maps to your internal intranet employee directory.

Looked at LinkedIn Skills . Interesting extension to Linkedin. Although it isn't really new functionality. All users could already fill in the expertise they (think they) have based on their work experience. To me this is one of the limitations of LinkedIn. Isn't it much more interesting to hear what others think of you? What expertise do they think you have ? Who is the go-to person when you need someone with skill x? LinkedIn Skills basically only says: I think I'm the person you're looking for.

Michael Gotta of Cisco wrote an interesting post some time ago about "Expertise Location: Don't Forget Process & Cultural Factors" . He relates to the fact that Enterprise 2.0 is often sold by saying that social tools help find experts in the organization more easily. However what's the assumption underlying this? The general assumption includes two primary ways of identifying "experts". The first method assumes that employee use of social tools (e.g., blogs, wikis, micro-blogging, communities) and social applications (e.g., ideation), enables their talent and business insight to be more visible and therefore more discoverable by co-workers. The second method revolves around the employee profile created as part of an enterprise social network site. It is assumed that employees will readily create and maintain rich profiles where they willingly share information about their job history, interests, hobbies, education, and areas of expertise. Rich emplo...

Luis Suarez recently pointed me to this. IBM set up an Expert Network on Slideshare , giving us a way to see all the slides produced by IBM-ers. Adam Christensen has a post explaining why this was done . This got me thinking. I think this is a smart move.  Isn’t this a great way to implicitly show the expertise of IBM-ers? Of course LinkedIn tries to do the same, the other way around. You set up your profile. And you can connect Slideshare to your profile. Problem is, nobody says that profile is correct. And clicking through to the proof (e.g. your presentations) is not that easy. Furthermore you can´t see if that person is the only expert in that organization or the organization as a whole has expertise in a certain area. I think if you’re looking for someone from IBM to help you out, the Expert Network on Slideshare will get you to the right man/woman much more quickly. What do you think of this move? And do you think such a network in Slideshare is a better expertise locat...

Location-based web services are hot these days. Even though the amount of people is limited, but growing rapidly . I enjoy using and experimenting with Foursquare . Currently I can't give you many examples of how location-based services have helped me (except for the fact that I'm Mayor of six places and I was awarded some cool badges...). But I'm sure I will be able to soon. I think it's just interesting to use follow this area and see how others are using it to generate business. For companies I think there are many ways it can be useful. For one location-based services can be used as a people finder. And if you relate interests/expertise to those people, it's also an expertise finder. At least you could know where to find a person with/without a certain expertise. Current location-based applications will give you a 2D map telling you where to find that person. One thing I hope will happen is that location services will also be available in 3D ( Layar with Fo...

Some time ago I pointed to an interesting company , Micello , who's focusing on mapping the inside of building. They start where Google Maps and Street View stops. It looks like they weren't the only one's that thought this was a good idea... Google seems to be working on this too. "According to a new rumor, Google could soon take Street View indoors and allow its users to walk into virtual stores." - Is Google Planning to Take Street View into Stores? (Updated) ( view on Google Sidewiki ) UPDATE March 26, 2010: Also refer to this post . UPDATE 15-10-2011: Why is indoor navigation so hard?

Just commented on an interesting by Ross Dawson on "Expertise Location: linking social networks and text mining" . I agree that using "intelligent text mining" is an interesting approach to expertise location in companies (and on the internet). We experimented with this some time ago in the company I work for with interesting results. This experiment was set up because - as we all experience - employees fill in their Yellow Page profile, but don't keep them up to date. (In our company 10% filled in their profile and 3% of that 10% kept it up-to-date...) Relating the filled-in profile to mining could trigger employees to keep it up to date. And it could also (partially) fill in their profile. We also combined this with a more social approach, which is now being capitalized in Guruscan . Because using mining to find and define expertise limits you to what's in databases. And when we write reports about a tool, for instance, we don't mention we're v...

Gary Goldhammer has an interesting thought on the future Intranet . Why not base it on Facebook ? He says: Facebook is the New Corporate Intranet – Why not? Create a Facebook Group, set it up as “Secret” – so it’s not visible to search, only invited members can participate and the group is invisible on members’ profiles – and voila, instant Intranet. Members can post, discuss and share information, even upload photos or host audio or video podcasts (and don’t forget the ability to create custom applications.) Simple to be sure, but for some companies simple is good enough. Goodbye HTML, hello FBML. At least it's the basis of a modern Intranet, I would say. Most corporate Intranets are company publishing platforms. Not really useful for daily work. But what do employees use Intranet for? To connect to other (possibly unknown) colleagues (who is who!). That's why I would say enabling 'connect people to people' is fundamental for every Intranet. And that's exactly w...

Dennis D. McDonald has an interesting post on "Google OpenSocial, Collaboration and Expertise Location" . The remarks on "expertise location" triggered me most. He quotes Forrester’s Charlene Li saying: I’m going to closely watch LinkedIn, as collaboration and expertise location applications built on top of its professional business networking social graph will make the site more relevant to me. Further down Dennis says: Using social networking techniques to make it easier to locate and share knowledge and expertise has long interested me as shown in this slide presentation . Actual adoption of such systems so far has been spotty. (...) Potentially, a system that makes it easier for members of different social networks to publish details of their knowledge and expertise should be able to support applications that promote significantly expanded collaboration and problem solving. This is a major opportunity for people to engage in social and intellectual activiti...

Our paper for the I-Know '07 was accepted! Here's the abstract: Title: ExpertFinder: Collaborative Expertise Localization Abstract: Straightforward expertise localization is crucial for personal and organizational efficiency and productivity. Common issues with existing approaches are the amount of effort required to build up the database and keeping it up-to-date, and the difficulty of establishing a complete coverage of the organization. The ExpertFinder system employs the concepts of referral chaining, social networks and user-generated data to enable a fast, low-effort and thereby low-cost approach to building an expertise localization database. At the same time, ExpertFinder provides a number of views on this database. We describe the design of the system and discuss in detail two pilots conducted at Océ-Technologies and the Telematica Instituut, the findings of which show high user participation and a good coverage of individual employee expertise and overall organizati...

Just a week ago I contributed to Wikipedia for the first time in my life. Quite exciting! I wrote an entry for "knowledge mapping" , based on a definition used in several papers I contributed to. I also added 'knowledge mapping' to the "knowledge management" entry. I was (and am) very curious what would happen with the entry. So, I put a "watcher" on the entry, but that didn't seem to work (no alert that the entry was changed or moved...). Today I checked my entry and to my surprise I was redirected to the entry "knowledge management". My entry was removed and incorporated in this entry for several reasons (refer to "discussion" page of the entries). That wonderful! Within a couple of days this topic, that was missing in the knowledge management entry and in Wikipedia all together, now exists! Samuel

This month an article I co-authored with Wolf Huijsen and Marjan Grootveld, titled 'A framework for evaluating knowledge-mapping tools', was published in the Journal of Knowledge Management . Here's the abstract: Abstract Purpose This article describes the Knowledge-Mapping Framework the authors designed based on their theoretical and practical research on knowledge mapping. It also shows the practical use of the Framework for companies interested in knowledge-mapping tools. Methodology/Approach In the first place the authors position their research in the context of knowledge management and knowledge-mapping research and practice. An example of their practical research on knowledge mapping is given as a preliminary step to describe their Knowledge-Mapping Framework. The use of this Framework is illustrated. Finally, the authors validate their Framework against a number of commercially available tools with knowledge-mapping functionality. Findings ...

A couple of days ago IBM annouced their new collaboration suite: IBM Connections . It's planned to be shipped in the first quarter of 2007. What's in it? "The IBM package includes five applications: profiles, where employees post information about their expertise and interests; communities, which are formed and managed by people with common interests; activities, which are used to manage group projects; bookmarks, where people share documents and Web sites with others; and blogs, where people post ongoing commentaries. "The business market is showing a lot of interest in using social networking tools to improve productivity. It's about helping people find experts and the information they need to get their jobs done," says Steve Mills, the general manager of the software group at IBM ( IBM ). The commercial version of the package is to be delivered in the second quarter. (...) During an IBM demonstration of Lotus Connections, it was clear that the product is e...