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



Date: Thu, 13 Sep 2001 09:43:37 -0700

03 00050 61 01091301




Mr. Sanford B. Klausner
Founder and CEO
klausner@coretalk.com
CoreTalk Corporation
14537 Oak Street
Saratoga, CA 95070

Subject:   Comments on Eric's Review
CoreOne Progress Report

Dear Sandy,

Glad to hear you in your letter today that are making progress, especially under current circumstances. With restricted travel in the period ahead, advances like you are developing will be in great demand.

Had a little difficulty initially opening Eric's file, but finally was able to take a look. Something to think about when planning a DKR system is that pfd files take extra time to convert into something that can be integrated into the work stream for effective analysis.

The issues Eric raises (e.g., versioning, ratings, addressability, external markup, etc), have been given critical attention over the past 18 months by Doug Engelbart's group. Eric's specs reviewed on May 5, 2000, as revised on June 14, 2000, and Lee Iverson's update on 010620, called NODAL, do an excellent job of identifying such requirements. From my experience these are interesting refinements of the effort to use technology for saving time and money in accomplishing knowledge work.

Addressability is useful when integrated with other features that Eric does not discuss; but, in any case, the proof is in the pudding.

Would like to see examples of your work product, and scenarios explaining application that provides a new way of working, called out by Doug. Let's say we are on the job using your system. How would we work differently that saves time and money? We have 3 meetings, make 8 phone calls, send 15 email, etc. How would this work be improved by your system?

Eric has written to the group supporting Jack Park's recent idea to improve email, because email seems fast and easy, i.e., it allows people to graze on endless information, rather than do the hard work of creating useful knowledge. Eric's support reflects his proposal on January 20, 2000, and on other occasions the past two years, for the system Jack now contemplates, which can be summarized as webmail. This capability has been demonstrated over the past 18 months, but there has not been a lot of interest, because KM requires deliberative analysis that adds intelligence to information, while people prefer reactive, spontaneous commentary that produces more information, like this letter.

How, for example, can your system convert this letter into a structure of organizational memory that can be manipulated for continued use to grow the knowledge base. How much time does it take to organize this letter, so that bits and pieces that are relevant to past and future events can be connected into a chronology of cause and effect to guide daily action? How long will it take to remember, access and link relevant parts of this letter to new information received a month, a year, 10 years later, in order to discover, weigh and establish alignment with belief in cause and effect, and then hard wire alignment of such belief in relation to contextual experience? How long and with what processes will organic subject structure be formulated to manage context? How will new information from this letter be integrated into the work stream for timely and thorough follow up?

These two issues of understanding and follow up are not discussed in Eric's comments on your work, perhaps because they augment human intelligence that converts information into knowledge. The team decided on June 15, 2000 to forego work on a system to create knowledge, based on Eric's letter on May 3, 2000. To provide a productive new way of working, these issues need support.

We have just been notified to evacuate our building due to notice of a bomb in the area, so have to conclude; but, these are initial comments that reflect prior analysis of your system on June 8, 2000.

Sincerely,

THE WELCH COMPANY



Rod Welch
rowelch@attglobal.net


Copy to:

  1. Armstrong, Eric, eric.armstrong@eng.sun.com