Knowledge Management Comes of Age
September 23-24, 2003 in
Washington, DC

special members' workshop
Managing and Assessing Risk
Monday, September 22, 2003

conference overview
The issues surrounding knowledge management (KM) are increasingly critical: how to get the right information to the right people at the right time. Information is ubiquitous and free and it resembles knowledge. Problems arise when we act on information thinking it is knowledge, or visa versa; knowledge in one context may only be information in another, and downright false in a third. Often, security and privacy concerns compete with the need for timely access and interchange of information.

We will examine both information and knowledge management. What new technologies will allow us to transform massive streams of unstructured information, such as free-form text and web-logs, into structured information? How will we deductively combine structured information? What about inductively? When and how will we see the impacts on KM of current trends in form (wireless, high-bandwidth, embedded computing, moving from operating on giga- to tera- to petabytes of data) and function (the Semantic Web, markup language mania, the renaissance of AI, etc.)? We'll also discuss whether and how to structure an organization more like the Internet, namely with multiple routes for information and less top-down information czardom.

In addition, we'll move from the more tactical questions to examine future standards and technologies affecting the imminent transition of KM from a human-driven effort to a computerized one.

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speakers
Dr. Daniel Bobrow, Research Fellow, Systems and Practices Laboratory, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center
Dr. Katherine Hammer, President and CEO, Evolutionary Technologies, Inc.
Dr. Nathaniel Heiner, Acting Chief Knowledge Officer, Department of Homeland Security and Acting CIO, U.S. Coast Guard
dr. David Jensen,D Director, Knowledge Discovery Laboratory, University of Massachusetts Amherst
Mr. Bobby Kishore, General Manager, Knowledge Interchange Incubation Effort, Microsoft Corporation
Dr. Elizabeth Liddy, Director, Center for Natural Language Processing, Syracuse University
Dr. Lucy Nowell, U.S. Government
Dr. Stan Rosenschein, CEO and Founder, Quindi Corporation
Dr. Zvi Schreiber, Founder and CEO, Unicorn Solutions, Inc.
Mr. James Thomas, Chief Scientist for Information Technologies, Battelle Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Dr. Stuart Weibel, Director, Dublin Core Metadata Initiative
Dr. David Weinberger, Consultant and Author, Small Pieces Loosely Joined

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workshop description
Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister, Principals, Atlantic Systems Guild
Risk management is strategic management for adults. In this one-day workshop, Tom DeMarco and Tim Lister will divide attendees into CIO-level management teams and simulate the experience of running an organization where risk management is the norm rather than the exception. Each team will make strategic decisions vital to their organization’s health and welfare, aided by risk management artifacts produced by a risk officer and the local risk management efforts going on inside the projects of each team’s domain.
Teams will be encouraged to use (and shown how to avoid abusing) such risk management tools as risk diagrams, Monte-Carlo simulation, metrics-based estimation and feedback, EVR (Earned Value Running) diagrams, and varying degrees of incremental project structures . . . up to and including XP. This exercise is all example and no abstraction. Each team will manage one of the “n” companies in a highly competitive market sector. Enterprises will learn and adapt as the workshop proceeds. A central simulation will arbitrate, essentially playing the role of the market. Success or failure of each team’s organization will depend on its mix of prudent risk management with audacious risk-taking. The object of the exercise is to give attendees the simulated experience of managing in an organization where risk management is alive and well and fully supported.
By the end of the workshop, participants should be comfortable applying techniques of risk management in their own organizations, and confident of reaping the benefits. Included among these benefits are:
• a posture of aggressive risk taking;
• reduced management vulnerability;
• maximum protection from risk for minimal delay and expense.
As an added bonus, each participant will receive a copy of Mr. DeMarco and Mr. Lister’s new book Waltzing With Bears: Managing Risk on Software Projects.

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