Track Chairpersons:	Khalil Ahmed, Principal Consultant, Ontopia AS
	Daniel Koger, Director, XML Practices, Herrick Douglass Technology
Track Consultant:	Nikita Ogievetsky, President/CEO, Cogitech, Inc
The Web has brought us connectivity of information. Now we are all interested in moving to the next step by using technology to facilitate the synthesis of true knowledge. In this track learn what we mean by knowledge and what the new enabling technologies are.

INTRODUCING KNOWLEDGE TECHNOLOGIES

11:00 am
OPENING KEYNOTE:

RDF and the Semantic Web
Resource Description Framework (RDF) is a foundation for processing metadata; it provides interoperability between applications that exchange machine-understandable information on the Web. RDF emphasizes facilities to enable automated processing of Web resources and serves as the foundation for the "Semantic Web." This session focuses on RDF and how it will enable the Web of the future.
Tim Berners-Lee, Director, W3C

11:45 am
Memory Palaces, Escher, and XML
For at least a millennium before the invention of the printing press, the arts of memory were cultivated at the individual level, and prodigious feats of memory were reportedly commonplace. One device used to enhance an individual's memory is the Memory Palace, a mental image of a building (real or imaginary) in which thought sequences could be attached to eidetic images and traversed in sequence, allowing the memorization of long passages of prose or poetry. This talk describes how this concept applies to the information industry as it moves into the 21st Century.
by Leonard Rann, Principal Architect, Micromedex, Inc. and
Dale Hunscher, CEO & Principal Consultant, South Wind Design, Inc.

2:00 pm
Knowledge and the Web
The Web is rapidly becoming the dominant source of information and knowledge. As such, it has the potential of being a "brain extender", helping people to re-remember things once learned but now forgotten. This presentation proposes a general structure for representing knowledge, optimized for re-remembering. Demos are included, showing examples in the subjects of History and Biology, and examples from Company and Personal "memories".
by Hazem Elhagrasey, R&D Manager, Excosoft AB

2:45 pm
Bridging the Gap from Information to Knowledge
XML is a meta-language for representing all kinds of structured information. XML enables us to combine information in documents and information in databases in a seamless fashion. As XML tools and technologies evolve, XML moves toward becoming pure plumbing, a kind of ASCII for the Web. The next bridge to be built is between information and knowledge. The emerging Topic Maps standard and related technologies promises to be the answer to this challenging task of organizing information for knowledge navigation.
by Michel Biezunski, InfoLoom, Inc. and Co-Editor ISO/ICE 13250 Topic Maps

4:00 pm
Topic Maps and the Business of Knowledge
We have access to pentabytes of information and we are drowning in enormous quantities of it. What we need is an intelligent navigation in the knowledge pool exploring the topic of interest. The Topic Map technology is designed for structuring large information pools thus providing knowledge about the requested theme. The design, creation, and usage of Topic Maps offer a variety of new business models. The talk presents these models and explains why they will be of relevance.
by Hans Holger Rath, Director Consulting, STEP Electronic Publishing Solutions GmbH

4:45 pm
Future of Knowledge Technology
The use of technology can help organizations overcome barriers of space and scale. With the appropriate technology, people can more easily find others with needed expertise or common interests. Once connected, they can work together to share knowledge in virtual spaces, allowing for the discovery of valuable insights and the building of relationships. Using numerous examples of IBM Research Division projects and labs, this presentation reviews the progress and future of the key areas of technology that support KM now and will continue to support it in the future.
by Ann Wrightson, Sweet & Maxwell Ltd., KnoW Steering Group

THURSDAY • DECEMBER 7, 2000

KNOWLEDGE CAPTURE

11:00 am
The Question of Semantics
The use of XML for application interoperability and exchange of information critically relies on what is popularly called the “semantics of the data", where "semantics" is the definition of what the data means. Despite the widespread use of the term “semantics,” there has virtually no discussion or definition of what is meant by “semantics” or “meaning” with respect to data, information, and knowledge.  This presentation (1) examines outstanding questions and issues concerning semantics, data, and their relationship to human knowledge, and (2) proposes a definition for the "semantics" of XML data as a complement to existing syntactic XML standards.
by William C. Burkett, Senior Information Engineer, Product Data Integration Technologies, Inc.

11:45 am
Inferring Knowledge from Topic Map-based Semantic Networks
Topic Maps provide a powerful new capability to add intelligence to information without modifying the source. This presentation discusses how that intelligence, as well as the knowledge stored within documents, can be captured and used to build a knowledge base. A demonstration system shows how the knowledge base can be used in the management and presentation of information as well as the inferencing of new information through a Topic Maps based rules process.
by Eric Freese, Director of Professional Services, ISOGEN International/DataChannel, Inc.

2:00 pm
Knowledge Extraction Using Semantic Metadata Mining
XML’s self-describing hierarchy emerges from the ocean of diverse and formless information as the early vertebrate’s solid yet flexible skeleton, the extensible framework that evolved to dominate sea, land, and sky and even take the first small steps beyond. But without the concurrent evolution of the ability to learn from and adapt to diverse and dynamic environments, such mindless structures for information storage and transfer are evolutionary dead-ends. We present our own first small steps towards the goal of extracting semantic knowledge from the tidal wave of data and information that overwhelms us with unknown structures, semantics, quality, and consistency. This joint commercial venture and open-source project encompasses the design, implementation, testing, and application of the Transerver network coprocessor to transform diverse documents, data, and control flows on-the-fly using XML as the universal intermediary.

This autonomous “semantic router” maps, translates and transforms the implicit structures of legacy data sources to explicit XML syntax and semantics under control of dataflow and workflow rule derived by a process of semantic metadata mining. The ongoing document and data transformation process continually infers the data model from embedded interdependency patterns, expresses it as an XML hierarchy of declarative semantic rules, applies, validates, updates, and refines it and the corresponding transformation rules that map between models. This process synergistically supports data quality, data mining, and business intelligence functions, since any exceptions to the existing rule-base must be classified as an error, a potential rule-revision, or a possibly significant emerging pattern or trend. In an era of accelerating diversity and software complexity, of decreasing reliability, and of increasingly scarce and expensive technical talent, this approach replaces a recurring software development and maintenance task with a predictable, manageable, and maintainable data-communications function.
by Brian Boyle, Chief Technology Officer, Transerver Systems, Inc. and Project Coordinator, intermediary.net

APPLYING KNOWLEDGE

2:45 pm
Knowledge Delivery Through a Digital Dashboard
Microsoft's Digital Dashboard SDRK 2.0 provides personalized, team-oriented, corporate portal solutions. Using a digital dashboard enables a user, team, and/or enterprise to navigate the masses of information both internally and externally through an Outlook client or a browser. This talk focuses on the issues of creating a map of the knowledge that exists within a domain-specific or corporate portal - as a library of web parts.
by Jim King, Director, Technology and Business Strategy, Microsoft Corporation

4:00 pm
Topic Maps for Enterprise Information Portals
This presentation discusses Topic Maps from an applied and business- oriented perspective. Using the concept of enterprise information portals as an example, the author explores the impact and use cases of Topic Maps.
by Norbert H. Mikula, Chief Technology Officer, DataChannel, Inc.

4:45 pm
Creating and Using an Object-oriented Writing Model to Facilitate Corporate Knowledge Management
In this presentation, Doug Gorman, President and CEO of Information Mapping, Inc., discusses the need for modular, dynamic, manageable content that can be published in multiple media. He shows how implementing a general, comprehensive information architecture using XML can help facilitate effective corporate knowledge management solutions. The presentation discusses in detail how one company implemented an object-oriented writing model called the "Mapping Object Model" or "MOM" to create a comprehensive information architecture that works! In particular, the case study explains the hows and whys behind creating the MOM architecture for XML.
by Douglas W. Gorman, President and CEO, Information Mapping, Inc.

FRIDAY • DECEMBER 8, 2000

TOPIC MAPS TOPICS

9:00 am
Conceptual Exploration of Topic Maps
Topic Maps provide a bridge between the domains of knowledge representation and information management. Topics and topic associations build a structured semantic link network above information resources. However, this semantic network may contain millions of topics and associations; therefore, we need to select relevant information within the Topic Map itself, and display it efficiently. UNIVIT (the Universal Interactive Visualization Tool) is the first 3D interactive visualization tool capable of visualizing these Topic Maps. We describe UNIVIT concepts and architecture; then, present its use for Topic Maps visualization and explain how it enhances information retrieval and navigation within complex information systems.
by Benedicte Desclefs Le Grand, PhD Student, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie and Michel Soto, Associate Professor, Laboratoire de Informatique de Paris 6

9:45 am
Experiments using XSLT with Topic Maps
This presentation describes experiments determining where XSLT could be applied in the manipulation and visualization of Topic Maps. The goals and approaches are described and the results demonstrated.
by G. Ken Holman, Chief Technology Officer, Crane Softwrights Ltd.

11:00 am
Building Adaptive Classificators with Topic Maps
In this paper, the author describes the experience of building Adaptive Classificators with Topic Maps. Topic Maps enabled the author to maintain rich multi - hierarchical indexes and establish vertical and horizontal associations on all levels. A demonstration will include image browser able to represent rich taxonomy of professional graphics.
by Nikita Ogievetsky, President/CEO, Cogitech, Inc. and Vladimir Rodygin, Chief Art Technologist, Offsight Arts