Archive for May, 2006
Today I joined the kick-off of one of our new projects entitled “heritage alive!”. Partners are
HeritageAlive! aims at bringing together World Heritage Sites. The list of partners is interesting due to its diversity: most of them are WH sites already (and Perperikon tries to get the status in 2007); there are small ones like Hollokö in Hungary which only has about 4000 inhabitants; and big(ger) ones, well established (such as Salzburg or Urbino); some face the problems of funding (such as Sigishoara), some face the problem of how to maintain their traditions (it’s not just a question of funding and buildings/monuments but also often how to keep the tradition in people’s heads alive).
More specifically, thre project addresses the issues of “awareness for CH sites”, “sustainable use” of these sites and finally, inclusion (and awareness) of the local people. See www.heritagealive.eu for further details.
May 29th, 2006
| A couple of colleagues (Gerti Kappel, Birgit Pröll, Werner Retischitzegger) and myself have edited a book on Web Engineering, by Wiley Inc. It is out now, I received my complementary copies today.
There has been a previous version of the book published in German by dpunkt Verlag, Heidelberg; the current (english) version is a major update following a similar structure. The core idea behind the book is to take “activities” of software engineering, such as requirements analysis, design, architecturual development, implementation, testing, maintenance, etc. and provide an analysis from a Web Engineering perspective.
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The text on the cover says
The World Wide Web has a massive and permanent influence on our lives. Economy, industry, education, healthcare, public administration, entertainment? There is hardly any part of our daily lives which has not been pervaded by the Internet.
Accordingly, modern Web applications are fully-fledged, complex software systems, and in order to be successful their development must be thorough and systematic. Web Engineering is the application of quantifiable approaches to the cost-effective requirements analysis, design, implementation, testing, operation and maintenance of high quality Web applications.
Web Engineers face the same traditional concerns as Software Engineers: the risks of failure to meet business needs, project schedule delays, budget overruns and poor quality of deliverables. But in the Web environment new and complicated issues demand attention, too. Web Engineering addresses the problems associated with shorter lead times which require rapid prototyping and agile methods, the interactivity and visual nature of the medium which make HCI and interface aspects highly significant, and multimedia features of Web applications.
This well-organized guide takes a rigorous interdisciplinary approach to Web engineering, covering business models and market drivers as well as Web development concepts, methods, tools and techniques, and is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students on Web-focused or Software Engineering courses, as well as Web software developers, Web designers and project managers.
The contents of the first chapter and the structure of all chapters are available at www.web-engineering.at.
May 26th, 2006
On Tuesday, May 23 2006, I was participant on a panel on “How does the current Internet influence our knowledge society?” (Wie beeinflusst das Internet mit seinen neuen Werkzeugen und Diensten unsere Wissensgesellschaft? – the panel was in German language.
Gerhard Rettenegger (ORF Salzburg) served as moderator; the panelists were
The discussion was lively – see a summary at Salzburg Research. To me personally, a comment by MR Dorninger was especially relevant: he pointed out that (active) participation, e.g. posting, etc. is important but that we should see the limits in that not everyone will be able to provide good content. I.e., with Web 2.0 we argue for broader availability and participation of people but still we’ll only see few people that write in way such that their postings will be read.
May 24th, 2006
| As part of the Social skills through social software, Symposium (organised by Salzburg Research in St. Virgil), Leif Pullich from Fern-Uni Hagen (Germany) organised a workshop on Weblogging.
Leif has recently posted a (German) entry on Weblogs and Learning. Part of the discussion is the relationship between forums and weblogs: Leif argues that the key difference (with respect to usage in learning) is that weblogs are centred around the users’ interests (rather than having the user keeping links to relevant web forums). |
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I found Stephan Mosel’s posting at twoday.net a good overview of weblogs for learning. Ferdig and Trammel argue in Content Delivery in the Blogosphere that “Blogs are useful teaching and learning tools because they provide a space for students to reflect and publish their thoughts and understandings. And because blogs can be commented on, they provide opportunities for feedback and potential scaffolding of new ideas. Blogs also feature hyperlinks, which help students begin to understand the relational and contextual basis of knowledge, knowledge construction and meaning making.”
At some point in the workshop, we discuss the issue of weblogs and assessment/evaluation of performance. Leif argues for Felix Winter’s book Leistungsbewertung to be a good reference in general. Winter says that new learning culture (and tools) require new forms of assessment.
| For instance, following Helmut Bräuer (2003), we discussed a graphic (see on the right) that argues for different activities related to reflexive learning that each would need different tools. |
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Structured blogging is seen as an approach also to ease processing of blogs. The counterargument (see Paul Kedrosky) is basically that most people will be too lazy to structure their blog entries. I personally believe that one cannot generalise: I may be willing to use tags in some (perhaps many) cases whereas there will always be situations where I would probably use no or different tags.
May 23rd, 2006
Salzburg Research has just published its annual report. As for all non-commercial organisations, the real asset of institutions such as Salzburg Research lies in its Intellectual Capital; therefore, we publish an intellectual capital report (“Wissensbilanz”) as part of our annual report (since 2002, btw).
Originally, in 1994 Skandia AFS published a supplement to its annual report about talking about “hidden values in Skandia” (see the document Visualizing Intellectual Capital in Skandia).
ARC Seibersdorf and its former head of research, Günther Koch, have definitely promoted ICRs in Austria, see for instance a presentation to the World Bank entitled “IntellectualCapital Reporting (ICR) (“Wissensbilanz”) – Made in Austria”.
Stefan Weiß, Futurelab, discusses the (German) term “Wissensbilanz” and argues that it is misleading, as it does not distinguish between assets and liabilities (like a typical balance sheet does, see a blog entry on ICR vs. Wissensbilanz).
From our experience, I would argue that the core issues of ICRs include
- the definition of terms
- the methodology and process of generating the ICR, and
- the way to influence the indicators (because almost all indicators can only be influenced with indirect means)
A general terminology would be useful for monitoring and moreover benchmarking between organisations – Koch discusses some of the differences concerning the structuring of categories of intangible capital in major models in the presentation mentioned above.
The Fraunhofer-Institut für Produktionsanlagen und Konstruktionstechnik (IPK)has established a working group on promoting ICRs.
Daniela Gröbel/ Klaus North/ Günther Szogs provide a comparison of four different approaches.
May 18th, 2006
There has been an article in last week’s “Die Zeit” on the social web application “open_BC”: Das Vitamin-B-Netz, by Dirk Engelhardt, Die Zeit, 27.4.2006 (No. 18).
I would like to take this opportunity to discuss this type of applications as it is of particular interest: not too many years ago people argued about the Web being a medium where one would be exclusively anonymous (and that this feature was part of what makes the Web special). There is, for instance, Negroponte’s saying that “on the Internet nobody knows you are a dog”. Then, Rana Foroohar argues in a Newsweek special edition article on “Learning to Share” that the Internet was envisaged by the mother of all closed systems, the US Dept. of Defence and that the new type of openness could have hardly been imagined at that time (In: Newsweek, Special Edition “The Knowledge Revolution”, pp. 41, December 2005 – February 2006). Foroohar further argues that the image of the worker as a self-interested-only individual – as propagated by Adam Smith – is not correct any more.
One could add to that that applications such as Wikipedia are a good example of commonly creating and sharing knowledge, of not too bad quality as a recent article in Nature by J. Giles (“Internet encyclopaedias go head to head”) argues. BTW: a good definition of “Social Web” can be found on Wikipedia.
I personally believe it needs both: the opportunity for (almost) everyone (well: a high percentage of the population in Western society, anyway) to create and share; but in many situations we also need content that has been officially assured, has gone through several revision cycles, etc.
BTW: Salzburg Research organises a Symposium called “Social skills through social software”, May 23-24 2006 in Salzburg, St. Virgil.
May 5th, 2006
