| October 17, 2000 | 03 00050 61 00101701 |
Mr. Jack Park
jackpark@thinkalong.com
Street address
Palo Alto, CA Zip
| Subject: | KM Ideas Require Experience with KM |
Dear Jack,
Thanks for feedback in your letter today, commenting on Knowledge Space and other matters.
Knowledge Space was formulated to summarize advantages of SDS for adding intelligence to information, and to convey the prospects of mathematical modeling which you and I have discussed from time to time, and was recently presented to Cliff in a research proposal on October 13.
This application of Knowledge Space by SDS is substantially different in purpose, form and utlity from the reference in your letter today.
My sense is that the opportunity to strengthen human cognition, variously described as KM, business intelligence, Com Metrics, et al., is very real. Experience indicates that large scale pilot testing and research, proposed to SRI and LANL, may be helpful to overcome the disconnect between short term perspective of saving time by avoiding sound management practices, which entail routine, tedious tasks that provide critical "knowledge" that yields big rewards days, weeks, years later, as further explained in the letter to the DKR team on October 4.
Your work can contribute a lot by developing ontology, which you have championed, and by discussing opportunities based on presentations at SRI by Mary Keeler and Cliff Joslyn.
I had a constructive discussion with Eugene Kim last night. He seems to grasp the need for pilot testing to understand knowledege management, as a predicate to building tools. He indicated the team is natually following Doug Engelbart's lead, as you and I discussed on April 6. Possibly in a year or two there will an opportunity to make progress, as the huge need cited in the letter to SRI on October 13, comes into sharper focus.
THE WELCH COMPANY
Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net