WSG Newsletter: Information Highways Conference 2002 - A ReportIssue: April 11, 2002(All links open in a NEW window) Information Highways Conference 2002 held in Toronto March 25-27 was about "e-Content: discovering and driving value". Program streams were focused on managing knowledge and content within the enterprise: Enterprise Content Management, Information ROI, Knowledge Sharing, and E-learning. There was also a pre-conference seminar on Virtual Value with discussion of knowledge management, meta-data, information visualization, relational browsers, and portals. Many of the presentations are available for online viewing at http://www.informationhighways.net/conf/cindex.html. Select the links to the Virtual Value seminar or the program. Being a Web Searcher, I was most drawn to sessions on information visualization, browsers, searching, and to some degree meta-data. Information VisualizationDavid Modjeska is Assistant Professor at the Faculty of Information Studies of the University of Toronto. As part of the panel in the Virtual Value seminar, he spoke about his research into Information Visualization. Simply stated, it is difficult to get a sense of structure on a topic simply from viewing text listings. Several have developed visual approaches to representing information: the hyperbolic star tree from Inxight, the geographic/topographic representation of Antarcti.ca's Visual net. 3D presentations are especially popular for virtual worlds and simulations. Modjeska undertook to study the effectiveness of 3D representations compared to the 2D for visualizing hierarchical data. [Map.net has 2D and 3D views of the Open Directory Project. It is necessary to install the 3D viewer to really zoom around.] They found that while the 3D visualization was more entertaining, users had a harder time finding information. "It was bad for doing work and bad for system performance." Users worked more quickly and effectively with 2D graphics. Nonetheless, techniques for information visualization are promising for intranets, digital libraries, and have possibilities for adding value to real time, multi-user communications. Presentation (http://www.fis.utoronto.ca/faculty/ DocuverseArnie Guha of Phase 5 Consulting looked at the value of context in his talk on Relational Browsers, also part of the Virtual Value seminar. In the past the value of content was connected to the authority of the author. "How did the author want me to look at the document?" Guha sees a shift from this "predetermined context" following Vannevar Bush's Memex and later Ted Nelson's Xanadu and concept of docuverse. Suddenly material could be used in "unpredictable contexts". Content became more malleable by being connected over a network. Value shifted to the "situational needs of the content user". The operational emphasis has changed from the table of contents to the index. Browsers, Guha suggests, are still document bound. But there are some new tools that work with relationships showing conceptual nodes that can be defined by the user. The result is a docuverse. Examples include SemioMap , Themescape - now owned by Aurigin, and ThinkMap form Plumb Design. Of SemioMap, Guha said it allows one to "uncover the narrrative in an unstructured mass of text." There are demos of ThinkMap showing ways it can be used to connect objects. Guha recommended the Visual Thesaurus where like words are connected in a spray of lines and the Smithsonian Institute's Revealing Things. PortalsBrian Detlor, Assistant Professor, School of Business, McMaster University, examined the contributing factors to the success or failure of corporate knowledge portals. Portals can support knowledge work but their success depends on the ecology of the corporation. As in all information systems, the active participation of users is needed in the design. He presented two cases: one a troubled project in a corporation, and the other the much more successful government portal for youth - http://www.youthpath.ca. In his final few moments Detlor touched on intelligent agents as a way to assist in consumer browsing and searching. Here, the semantic web may make the difference, where agents can exploit the information structure provided through XML and Resource Description Format (RDF). Brian Detlor Presentation
www.business.mcmaster.ca/msis/ Smart SearchingThe conference program had one session explicitly on Smart Searching with Sheri Larsen, Director of Product Management at divine Inc, and Dan Romer, Directory of Product Development at Intelliseek. Each described the enterprise search solutions their companies offer. Sheri Larsen stressed the benefits of the Northern Light search technology for enterprises, especially those for more complex queries using Boolean syntax and the use of the custom folders based on a pre-built taxonomy of 17,000 nodes. As a whole, enterprise search systems have not matched the capabilities of the popular web search engines. Divine seeks to redress that by offering customization of the well proven Northern Light search technology. The taxonomy can be modified to include topics specific for a company. The Advanced Search Form can be customized for the company's business and its information interests. The spell check on search terms can be augmented for terms and names used in that company. Search Alerts may be set up to search the Web, newsletters, headline news, and even email. Logs of searches will show the kinds of searches people are doing, what resources they are using and what not. Users may attach notes to documents. Subscription management is also supported as part of the overall integrated search solution. Presentation is not available but there is more information about enterprise
solutions at
www.northernlight.com/ Dan Romer described the enterprise search framwork developed by Intelliseek. In one bank are the many search and analysis tools for tracking, categorization, adaptive personalization, and in the other administrative functions to tune relevance, ensure security, apply metadata etc. Intelliseek's Enterprise Search Server provides this system information architecture based on a "federated search of brokering, indexing, bridging, and cataloging". Intelliseek has two consumer products well known to Web searchers. Profusion, a meta directory and meta search engine combined, organizes databases by their main subject and supports multi-database searches. It demonstrates an aspect of ESS capabilities (or so it is said at the web site). There is also the BullsEye search software, notable for searching the "invisible web", managing search results, and tracking change. Again the presentation is not available but there is an excellent white paper about True Enterprise Search: Leveraging Knowledge from the Extended Enterprise at the Intelliseek web site. ConclusionThere were many more interesting sessions at the conference. Check the web site for the complete program. Especially note the keynote spakers. |
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| Newsletter by Gwen Harris a devoted attendee at the Information Highway conferences.
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