KIDMM

 
Knowledge, information, data
and metadata management


KIDMM home page Background to KIDMM MKM 2.0 – 9 Oct 08
Making & Organising Knowledge in Communities MetaKnowledge Mash-up 2007 6 March 2006
workshop report Documents & other resources BCS-KIDMM email list Radio KIDMM British Computer Society

 
KIDMM workshop, 6 March 2006

The workshop was held at the BCS meeting rooms in London. The list of participants can be viewed here.

Report from the workshop

Report of 6 March KIDMM workshop

This full account of the round-table discussions and presentations from the KIDMM workshop has been prepared from audio recordings by Conrad Taylor, who also chaired the event.

It is available from here as a PDF file.

The filesize is 484k, the document has 35 pages,
approximately 30,800 words and two diagrams.

This is how it is organised:

  • Chair’s introduction to the day: the chain of events leading up to the workshop, and some thoughts about what might be the outcomes.
  • Around the room: the 20 participants introduce themselves, and the interest of themselves and their organisations in the subject of the workshop. This was followed by an identification of some key issues.
  • Judi Vernau made a presentation about metadata in publishing.
  • Francis Cave made a presentation about international standards in knowledge and information management, and the standards-making process, including the competition between ISO, the World Wide Web Consortium and OASIS.
  • These presentations were followed by some discussion before lunch.
  • After lunch, Conrad Taylor presented some thoughts in the form of two wallcharts. For the purposes of this report, the details of that presentation have been moved to an illustrated Appendix at the end of the report.
  • This was followed by discussion of definitions of data and metadata, knowledge and information, which revealed large differences in how people use these words. Some concluded that getting agreement on definitions would be difficult because different communities of practice have their own terminology.
  • Some people advanced the idea that it would be better to collect some ‘use-cases’ which would illustrate how concepts are used in a number of different contexts and communities of practice. The idea of putting on an exhibition about these use-cases was proposed by John Lindsay.
  • The BCS Web site, and the taxonomy and metadata sets that are being used to categorise its content, were discussed at length, together with thoughts about its navigation structures. This ‘story’ was told by David Penfold, Judi Vernau and Carl Harris (BCS Webmaster).
  • Towards the end of the day, we focused on what outcomes we would like as a result of this workshop, and sketched some future activities including an email discussion list (now activated).
  • There was a final round-the-table evaluation of the workshop.