THE WELCH COMPANY
440 Davis Court #1602
San Francisco, CA 94111-2496
415 781 5700




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Date: Thu, 07 Sep 2000 11:08:49 -0700

03 00050 61 00090701




Mr. Morris E. Jones
Business Unit Manager
Cable Network Operation
Intel Corporation
350 East Plumeria; Mail Stop CHP3-105
San Jose, CA 95124
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Subject:   SDS Standard Knowledge Management

Dear Morris,

Thanks for taking the time the other evening to find some documentation for Windows versions of DOS. I know this is not fun, and seems like a big waste of time, so your willingness to make the effort is greatly appreciated.
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Attached to this letter is a short note from Jack Park to the troops at SRI. He is citing another source, indicating it has elements of Com Metrics. The gravamen of this notice supports the proposition that SDS sets the standard for effective Knowledge Management. A big question is how big is the demand? Jack points the team to the Welch web site where there is a phone number people can call to get a solution.
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No calls.

A call doesn't take much effort, indicating lack of real demand.
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Some on the SRI team are putting in a lot of effort on Doug's KM project. On June 15 a concensus was cited during a meeting at SRI that Knowledge Management is too difficult to understand, and so the team decided to create a better email program, instead of Knowledge Management. As mentioned, on 000824, Eric reported that Doug proposes doing an SDS type email program. Of course work product on the Welch web site is only 10% of SDS.
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This supports your analysis that people don't want to do KM, they want to work on building a KM program to sell to others whom they hope want to do KM. But nobody else seems to knows how to do KM, so they cannot create technology for it. Is our knowledge and experience then an asset? How to exploit it to generate a revenue stream?
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The past month, have done a lot to make SDS easier for folks to use. Functions are more "intelligent" by doing tasks that are different, but seem similar enough at the conscious span of attention that it appears "logical" to use the same function key or menu description. Combining commands further reduce the choices people have to make to get things done. This makes SDS easier to learn, and to use doing daily work. As you mentioned before, the more we think about things the greater the insight about nuance. The same occurs in doing things over and over. We recognize patterns. These patterns can then be organized to give the appearance of "intelligence" in the tools. Of course the tools are not really intelligent, they are just wired to appear so by reducing the time and effort needed to accomplish useful tasks.
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In any case, that is why I want to get the utilities we have been discussing. They further reduce the steps people have to take to transfer records to the web. Fewer steps mean faster learning and early reinforcement of perceived value, essential to hold a customer, which you have been emphasizing is critical.
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Is there anything I can do to help? Is there anything in the new documentation that might provide interim relief, some kind of helpful work around, on the Medit memory problem?

Thanks.

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY




Rod Welch









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Jack Park



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Date: Thu, 7 Sep 2000 12:50:52 -0400


From:   Jack Park
Reply-To: unrev-II@egroups.com

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To:
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Subject:   When thought trains and web trains collide



Seth Russel put his web log up at:
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http://robustai.net/JournalOfMyLife/users/SethRussell.html

We get to this link by way of his egroups list called "emouth" and this post:
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http://www.egroups.com/message/emouth/15
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"We can look at web logs as trains of thought. Web logs and personal thought trains share some common properties. They are both sequences of events recorded chronologically; they both hair into a background of knowledge. Just like thought trains, some web logs are intentionally directed towards goals, while other's seem to meander across a tapestry which only characterize the interest of the particular author.
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I am interested here in the kinds of knowledge that can be gleaned by the intersection of web logs. An intersection is defined as when two (or more) web logs point to the same web page (or usenet article). How can we characterize these intersections and what kind of knowledge can we harvest from them? In some cases the intersection might only be evidence that the authors read each other's logs (spreading gossip); in other cases it might be evidence that two authors with common intention have both found a common resource; other cases might be evidence of behind the scenes (not public) collusion, collaboration, or conspiracy; other cases might be predictive of trends. As the popularity of web logs grow, I think this will become a fertile source for data mining."
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A home page where he begins the discussion is at:

http://robustai.net/ai/word_of_emouth.htm
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Shades of http://www.welchco.com/ here!


Sincerely,



Jack Park