1 Auditing your personal information management Mark Gregory Teacher and Ph.D student ESC Rennes School of Business An action guide for the perplexed or.

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Auditing your personal information management

Mark GregoryTeacher and Ph.D student

ESC Rennes School of Business

An action guide for the perplexed or merely curious

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An Healthy Uneasiness I

Did you ever feel … How many times have you felt … When was the last time you felt …

… that you did not have the right means to store, organise and retrieve your personal data?

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An Healthy Uneasiness II Do you have an effective system of folders and

sub-folders on your computers?• Could you change it to make it better? How?

Do you use more than one computer and/or "platform" (e.g. Windows PC; Mac; smartphone)?• How do you synchronise them?

• How do you protect them? What happens to you when (not if!) you lose your

smartphone? your hard disk contents?

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Good news…

You are not alone! In fact, you are a knowledge worker

• Peter Drucker (1999) You work in knowledge networks as part of

(real or virtual) teams Alvin Toffler (1990) observed that knowledge

workers must have at their disposal systems to create, process and enhance their knowledge and that of their subordinates

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What is Personal Information Management?

Knowledge and information workers work as individuals within team structures to get work done

Computer-based tools can assist in the storage and management of the information they acquire

However, little is understood about • How people use these tools

• How they learn new ones

• The ways in which the tools constrain the ways in which people work and think

• How best to educate people to make the right choice of the right tools

Lots of tools (e.g. spreadsheets) – few people use them well!

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Research context: a Ph.D in progress TOPIC: “Towards a better understanding of how

individuals and small groups use computer-based information and knowledge representation tools”

COLLABORATOR: Dr. Mario Norbis, Quinnipiac• We work together as KIMSPAG: Knowledge and

Information Management Supporting People And Groups

OPEN UNIVERSITY SUPERVISOR: Prof. David Weir, Liverpool Hope University

INTERNAL SUPERVISOR: Dr. Dirk Schneckenberg

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Our Aims and Yours Part of our aim is to help you to become more

efficient and effective by managing your personal information better

As you do this, we want you to tell us what works for you and why• So that we can improve our understanding of what

works and why on the basis of your experiences and those of others

• 1 + 1 = 3, win-win…• You are invited to participate in our Action Research!

Before you can do this, here’s some background…

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Structure of this presentation

What PIM is Productivity paradoxes How to “do” PIM using your office suite How to “do” PIM using specialist PIM programs Researching PIM: our overall agenda Auditing your personal information

management: a suggested agenda for you Challenges

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“Err… Put it more simply, please…”

Q: • What is personal information management?

A1: • Storing the information you need to Get Things Done GTD

• Examples: diary (agenda), to-do list A2:

• Keeping information in a way in which you can find it again and evolve it – Keeping Found Things Found KFTF

• Keeping it up-to-date

• Restructuring it when that’s necessary

• Example: your Contacts / Address Book

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Sample PIM (Ecco): Contacts + To-Do + Appointments

Folder hierarchy – itself an outline

Contacts / address list

Details of highlighted person

Appointment with highlighted person

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Working better We are motivated by or paid for what we do,

what we achieve: for our work Doing things involves processes, resources,

information and knowledge Doing bigger things in accordance with

deadlines and budgets may require projects Work is usually done in a competitive context –

where we as individuals or as part of an organisation have to do and be better than others

Increasingly it is done collaboratively

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The role of information management in work

Knowledge and information workers work as individuals within organisational departments • But departments are a relatively (and increasingly?)

unimportant organisational convenience More significant are work processes

• Work processes require information which the worker stores in a large number of arbitrarily complex ways

• Some are paper-based• But they’re increasingly computer-based• And they’re moving to the Web

• Processes are sometimes individual but very often involve collaboration, implying shared information

Some of the time we work in virtual team structures to do one-off particular tasks• This way of working is called project work

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Processes and Projects Aims, objectives, goals… are achieved by processes and/or

projects Business process (or method)

• A collection of related, structured activities or tasks that produce a specific service or product for customers (external or internal)

Business project • A collaborative enterprise, frequently involving research or

design, that is carefully planned and executed to achieve a particular aim

Processes are repeated and ongoing Projects come into existence to address a specific

problem or issue and then come to an end• Social networking within and outside the enterprise is blurring the

distinction, which is still valuable however

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Managing projects - 1

A project can be defined as • A temporary endeavour undertaken to create

a unique product, service or result

• A management environment that is created for the purpose of delivering one or more business products according to a specified business case

The project objectives define target status at the end of the project

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Managing projects - 2 A project therefore needs

• Objectives

• Plan

• Execution

• Evaluation

• The evaluation (measurement) occurs at the project closure but also by continuously monitoring and evaluating during the execution of the project

Projects may be huge (build the Channel Tunnel) or they may be small (build an en-suite bathroom)

Smaller projects:• Don’t generally need complicated software like Microsoft Project

• But they do need managing – there may be sub-contractors (e.g. your partner!) and there are dependencies between tasks

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The challenge of organisational productivity

Strassman, Paul (1999) identified an organisational productivity paradox

• Increasing technological possibilities raise the hurdles all the time

• Although you can do some things quicker…

• Overall you don’t get much more work done! Why? Organisations have to do things better in order

to compete with others who are reacting to and benefiting from the same new possibilities

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Knowledge work

Drucker, Peter (1999) identified better knowledge work productivity as our most important economic need• He went so far as to warn that our long term prosperity

and even our economic survival depends upon it Knowledge work productivity is the measure

of the efficiency and effectiveness of the output generated by workers who mainly rely on knowledge, rather than labour, during the production process

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The challenge of personal and small-group productivity Individual knowledge workers face a personal productivity

paradox of the same kind• Increasing technological possibilities raise the hurdles all the

time• Although you can do some things quicker…• Overall you don’t get much more work done!

Why? • Individuals and the teams of which they form a part have to do

things better in order to compete with others who are reacting to and benefiting from the same new possibilities

• We vary considerably in our efficiency and effectiveness, as individuals and as collaborators

• Most of us are not lazy – we just concentrate on the wrong things at the wrong time!

We have to improve, OK?

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Auditing our processes, projects and information needs

We should audit the way we work and the way we manage our information in order continuously to improve them

• Better identification and understanding of the various processes of which we are a part

• Better managed projects

• Based (in part) on better information management

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Two Key Productivity Issues

Individuals, teams and organisations need to carry out business processes; they have to Get Things Done: GTD• Allen, David (2001)

To do this, they need to Keep Found Things Found: KFTF• Data

• Information

• Knowledge

• Jones, William (2007)

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What is the difference between Getting Things Done (GTD) and Keeping Found Things Found (KFTF) - 1?

GTD is about planning your work and doing it, as an individual and in the various teams of which you are part

Teamwork for students:

• Teams for coursework assignments

• Work or project teams when doing internships

• Student clubs and micro-enterprises

• In fact, whatever is done in small groups

• It includes things like diaries (agendas, personal and shared) and project plans

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What is the difference between Getting Things Done (GTD) and Keeping Found Things Found (KFTF) – 2?

KFTF is about keeping all the information you need to learn, to work, to live

• Lecture notes

• Reading lists

• Contact lists (address book)

• Shopping lists

• Recipes for meals Note that some things, e.g. “When your team is

playing football”, can be in either the GTD category or the KFTF category or both

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KFTF: Keeping Found Things Found

Searching is not always the best way to find things – if you have already found them and kept them organised

So we make lists (and lists of lists), such as:• Shopping lists

• Websites, perhaps using Google toolbar to store bookmarks on the Web

• Bibliographic references

Further reading: Jones, William (2007)

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Classifying and tagging things Classification schemes: giving names to parts of

lists• You can use simple keyword classification schemes, or

more complicated classification schemes such as those used by libraries

Recently, social networking sites have introduced tagging. Such sites include:• Reddit• Digg• Del.ici.ous

Semantic network services may well be the next generation:• Radar Networks Twine

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Classification versus tagging Classification decides where things are in a strict tree-

structured hierarchy• Advantage: it’s easy to find something because it can only

be in one place (or, of course, nowhere)

• Disadvantages:• Complicated, especially when more than one person classifies

• Unrealistic – Fred is both a professional footballer and a town councillor

Tagging permits the same thing to be found via different routes• But its anarchic!

Errr… both are needed

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Computers and productivity Computers can be used to

• Store and manage information

• Represent and manage knowledge Computers can be used to improve efficiency

• This was the original justification for introducing computers into businesses from the 1950s onwards

Computers can be used to increase effectiveness “There is nothing so useless as doing efficiently

that which should not be done at all.”• Peter F. Drucker

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Business information systems - 1

Most organisations identify and procure computer-based information systems

“Information systems are the means by which people and organisations, utilising technologies, gather, process, store, use and disseminate information” (UK Academy for Information Systems definition)

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Business information systems - 2

These systems generally support the main ongoing processes of the organisation

Example: in a school or university• A student resource planning system supports the

assessment process

• A learning management system (LMS) or virtual learning environment (VLE) supports the teaching and learning process

These are examples of large, corporate information systems

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Work Systems

Alter (2002) defined a Work System as:

A system in which people and/or machines perform a business process using resources (e.g., information, technology, raw materials) to create products/services for internal or external customers

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Information System = a work system that processes information, thereby supporting other work systems

An Information System processes data:• Capture (input) the data• Transmit• Store• Retrieve• Manipulate – calculate, collate …• Display

Information Systems

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Business Information System

Data Processing SystemSource Client

Data Information

Store Data

Retrieve Data

Database

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How to store data - 1

Data is typically stored in files• E.g. Word documents, Excel spreadsheets

But sometimes in databases• E.g. Access databases

Word, Excel and Access are programs included in the Microsoft Office suite that enable users to create, update and delete data

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Office productivity suites An office suite is a software suite (collection

of component programs) intended for use by people like clerical staff and knowledge workers

The components are generally distributed together, have a consistent user interface and usually can interact with each other• Best-known current examples of office suites are

Microsoft Office and OpenOffice.org

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What do they do?Office suite functionality

Focus on the production of documents of various kinds Also offer various tools for managing and sharing

personal information; the facilities typically include:

• Word processor• Spreadsheet• Presentation program

Many people use general office applications such as spreadsheets (Microsoft Excel) and relational databases (e.g. Microsoft Access) specifically for personal and small-group information management

• Database• Graphics suite• Messaging and email client

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How to store data - 2

Data is typically stored in tables: two-dimensional structures• In MS Office terms:

• Word tables (also PowerPoint)

• Excel worksheets

• Access tables

Tables can be linked, adding a third dimension• In MS Office terms:

• Excel worksheets

• These can cross-refer to each other, using functions like HLOOKUP, MATCH and EQUIV

• Access tables are related using primary and foreign keys

Storing data in Microsoft OfficeMethod

Advantages Disadvantages

Word Simple, well understood by people with weak computing skills

No formulae (or only very rudimentary ones)

  Excellent formatting options Not a safe place to store critical or long-life data

  Powerful built-in outliner for structuring lists (e.g. of tasks)

Excel Some degree of structure – rows and columns

Poor support for queries – searching is slow and finding information again is imprecise

  Very powerful data manipulation using formulae

Size limits – 65535 rows (until Office 2007)

    No design methodology or coherence

    Not a safe place to store critical or long-life data

Access Relational data model gives method and coherence

More difficult to learn

  Very powerful data structuring and querying

Requires thoughtful use and advance planning

  Safer critical or long-life data Not as safe as MS SQL Server, etc.Note: this slide is a two-dimensional PowerPoint table

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Outlining in Word – Table of Contents

Use Outline Mode (in French: “mode plan”)

Note that Outlining forces a strict tree-

structured hierarchy – a piece of text is

classified by where it is in the document

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Using Excel for bibliographic referencing

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Using Access to store details of paper documents - Tables

Note that here Docs are hierarchically

classified by subject – SubCategory within

Category within Context

Note that here Docs are hierarchically

classified by storage – Location within Unit

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Using Access to store details of paper documents – typical Form / Subform / Sub-subform

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Mindmaps – for those who prefer visual representation

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Group Information Management

Shared agendas – meeting scheduling• E.g. use a Google shared Calendar

Collaborative development of documents• Advanced versions of MS Office offer many

facilities to enable this Shared classification schemes

• Keywords• Which may be hierarchical

• Tagging

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Software for personal and small-group information management There are also a number of computer-based

tools, sometimes referred to as Personal Information Managers or PIMs which are intended particularly to assist in the storage and management of personal information, tasks and projects

PIMs are additional and complementary to the functionality of the so-called “office suites” (sometimes “office productivity suites”)

You may need both!

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Why can’t I manage my work using Outlook, Excel, Access?

You can, to a large degree; but:• Outlook rigidly distinguishes messages from tasks

from contacts and doesn’t greatly help you to organise or link them

• What you have to do is partly in a task list, largely in your email in-tray!

• Using Excel or Access requires you to structure your information very carefully – and most of us will spend more time doing that than we can save!

• Not everyone is good at Do-It-Yourself!

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Ready-made PIM or Do-It-Yourself? Need a new information system? Bespoke (custom-built)?

Packaged? Integrated-component system building? An analogy:

You need a new kitchen - What alternatives exist?• Bespoke (custom-built)?

Get A Man In (GAMI)!• Totally customised• Expensive• Depends on a partnership between client and supplier and on accurate

transmission of requirements• And then the client changes their mind…

• Packaged? Buy a kit - IKEA

• Integrated-component system building Do It Yourself (DIY) – Brico Depôt, Mr. Bricolage

Put more simply, Make or Buy?

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Problems associated with approaches based on using particular programs in a suite

An analogy:• A carpenter who only uses hammers and

nails tackles badly, or not at all, problems which need screws and screwdrivers!

Similarly:• Someone who uses spreadsheets to do what

should be done with a database! Having a good toolbox doesn’t make you

a good carpenter…

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Recap: we MUST manage our information better…

Some information belongs to organisations and has to be managed by them: they procure corporate business information systems

Employers also enable individual productivity by providing PCs together with an office suite

However we all store and manage information (and knowledge) which is personal to us and represents our own competitive advantage – it’s ours, to manage and to profit from• Implies our own PC + office suite + PIM:

personal information management

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Ways of managing your personal information

Write your own PIM program?

• Not a sensible option! Life’s too short… Build your own customised approach

• By integrating parts of an office suite, e.g. using Outlook together with Excel or Access – fine for individuals, OK for small groups

• But if you and your collaborators need a shared, web-accessible, database, note the arrival of “Situational Applications” – briefly discussed later in this presentation

Select and procure one or more ready-made PIM program(s)

In practice: some combination is common

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Using office tools for personal information management

Email, contact and event management software (e.g. Microsoft Outlook)• Many people manage what they have to do by

leaving uncompleted work as emails in their in-box

Hierarchical outliners (e.g. Microsoft Word / PowerPoint outlines)

Mind-mapping software (e.g. MindManager)

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PIM and PIM programs

Specific computer-based tools (sometimes referred to as Personal Information Managers or PIMs) have been created in order to assist in the storage and management of personal information

Programs:• E.g. Ecco, EssentialPIM, InfoQube

Web services:• E.g. Basecamp

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Getting smarter: Auditing your current approach to PIM

Why not set yourself the task of improving your personal information management?

You can ask for help from a friendly neighbourhood PIM specialist…• E.g. the authors of this presentation!

Or you can help yourself by carrying out a Self-Audit• And here are some suggested first steps…

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Think about the personal information management style that suits you

Think about, describe, analyse and even write notes on:

How you Get Things Done (GTD)• That is, how you keep details of what you need to do

and when, and how you plan and organise your time How you Keep Found Things Found (KFTF)

• That is, what you do to store and manage all the personal information you need in order to learn well and to live well

• How should you classify things in order to be able to find them again? On paper? On your computer and other devices (phone, music)?

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First necessity:Use folders and sub-folders

To group like, related, things together• Hierarchical classification

Organise your computer-based files better• Use Windows Explorer

• Not the same thing as Internet Explorer

• Or Apple Finder etc.

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Think about group tasks Describe and analyse how you (plural) Get Things Done, that

is, how you keep details of what your various workgroups need to do and when, and how you plan and organise your time in that group• How might you use computer software (such as the programs you use

as an individual, or others) in order to improve this management of time? Can you get group “buy-in” (commitment) to your suggested approach?

Describe and analyse how you Keep Found Things Found, that is, what you do to store and manage all the information you need to work together effectively in groups

• How might you use computer software (such as the programs you use as an individual, or others) in order to improve this management of information?

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Questions to ask yourself about personal information management - 1

What “platforms” (computers and mobile phones) do you currently use in your work and personal lives?

List the computer programs you use for personal and work-related purposes

List the web services you use for personal and work-related purposes

• Have you ever considered alternatives? Which? How do you keep a list of favourite web sites? Do

you use bookmarks in Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari etc.? Do you keep an online list of favourites (e.g. Google Toolbar bookmarks)? Should you?

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Questions to ask yourself about personal information management - 2

List the ways in which you store and manage personal information at the moment• How do you keep your agenda (electronic diary) (if any)? How

often do you lose it?• Which email clients do you use? Do you synchronise them?

What personal information matters to you? Make a list of the various kinds (or types) of information you store, and how you currently do it• Examples include shopping lists, inventory of possessions, bank

account details, references of books and articles you want to read…

List the processes you carry out to maintain and use this personal information

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Kinds of data: What data do you keep?

These are the kinds of documents that people keep:• Contact management, address books, etc.

• Diary: Calendar and meeting scheduling

• To Dos: task management for self and others• Errands to run, films to see...

• Journal: a record of the use of your time

• Document creation and management• Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc.

• Message management• Emails, instant messages, etc.

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Rôle-specific information There is an overlap between personal information

and shared small-group There is also an overlap between

• Generic information – the information that almost anyone might keep

• Agenda, contacts, etc.

• Rôle-specific information

• For a lecturer: references / bibliographic details, shared agenda, student results etc.

Why? Different groups of knowledge workers (Drucker (1999)) keep different kinds of personal information

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Processes associated with personal information: What processes? - 1

Among the processes associated with personal information are these; which matter to you? Describe them, in some detail. The items in bold italics are further

described on the next slide. Capture Store Secure Communicate / synchronise between devices and platforms Finding things again

• Classify• Find

Show Present Share Reuse Publish Reorganise

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A bit more detail on such processes Capture: of text, pictures, audio, video, web clippings… Store for easy access

• Handheld, on PC, stored on the Web (“in the cloud”) Secure storage

• Keeping secrets – showing to some (but not others)

• Preserving investment• Potentially across decades

Finding things again• Classifying them when found or created/modified

• Searching for them later

• Filtering your lists to show only relevant items Presentation

• Visual aspects: getting a message across

• Communication and Sharing (read-only, or shared-update) Reuse: using material again: in a new presentation, book…

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Processes associated with personal information: What processes? - 2

At a more detailed level, do you need: Journalising or Diarising: record “anything and everything”

• Personal notes/journal, annotations and note-taking in multiple media: a kind of electronic jotter

Transcription between media, e.g. handwriting recognition, voice recognition, scanning and OCR

Search across email, e-docs and other information forms, across multiple media types

Hypertext Authoring: writing documents that make links between each other Synchronisation between computers: Mobile/PDA devices and inter-

device synchronisation Coordination between people in hierarchies and in projects Visualisation of information resources

• Graphing, charting, mind maps etc. Export, e.g. to PowerPoint

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Now get real… What are the really big frustrations in your personal information

management?• Do you forget where you’ve put things on your computer? How do you

find them again?• Do you have difficulty keeping and synchronising files between

computers?• Do you find it difficult to manage documents that you store locally on your PC

and the same or similar documents stored on work file servers, web services, etc?

• Do you end up with multiple, incompatible versions of more-or-less the same information?

• Do you succeed or fail in coordinating / synchronising address books, diary, etc. between computers?

• Do you succeed or fail in managing multiple email services (e.g. work/school, home Hotmail, home Gmail…)?

• How do you coordinate your activities when you work in groups / virtual teams?

What are you going to do to improve the situation?

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Understand your style of work: How do you work best? - 1

How organised do you like to be? Do you thrive on organisation, or find that it

stifles your creativity? People oriented towards structure may

favour databases, or PIMs which offer powerful data structuring.

People oriented towards spontaneity and personal creativity may prefer more visual approaches – or to stick with paper!

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Understand your style of work: How do you work best? - 2 What kinds of computer software do you

like, feel at ease with, or want to master? Are you at ease with classification and with

rigour? Try database. Do you enjoy a numeric, quantitative,

algebraic approach? Try spreadsheet. Do you think visually? Try mind mapping. Are you brave enough to try novel

approaches? Try a specialist PIM program, choosing one which suits you.

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Choose software to improve your personal information management

One possibility is to use a ready made PIM

• We have already identified over 150 PIM/GIM (group information manager) programs

What if that is too restrictive, or you can't afford it?

• Another possibility is to "roll your own" personal information management using office tools

•Word processing

•Spreadsheet

•Database

• Etc.

Some examples of the kind of programs used for personal and small-group information management on different computer platforms

Platform PC Proprietary Open Source Mac Proprietary Cloud (SaaS, Software As A Service)

Type of program

Operating system, with connection to local area and global networks

Microsoft Windows

Mandrake or similar Linux distribution

Apple OS/X Glide

Web browser Microsoft Internet Explorer

Firefox Apple Safari n/a

e-mail client with built in basic PIM capability

Microsoft Outlook

Thunderbird Built-in n/a

Office productivity suite

Microsoft Office

OpenOffice.org; KDE

Microsoft Office for Mac; Apple iWork

Google Apps; Zoho

Word processing Microsoft Word

OpenOffice.org Doc

Microsoft Word; iWork Pages

Google Docs

Spreadsheet Microsoft Excel

OpenOffice.org Calc

Microsoft Excel; iWork Numbers

Google Docs

Relational database management program (RDBMS)

Microsoft Access

OpenOffice.org Base

FileMaker Pro Qrimp

Personal information manager (PIM)

InfoQube KDE Pim; OSAF Chandler

Tinderbox Basecamp

Group information manager (GIM)

Lotus Domino OSAF Chandler Lotus Domino Basecamp

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Some significant PIM approaches – examples only! find your own personal preference! Microsoft Outlook

• Appointments, contacts, tasks, emails…

Microsoft Office• See in particular, Word, Excel,

Access, Outlook, OneNote, Visio, SharePoint, InfoPath, Groove

Web Services• Backpack• Remember The Milk• Google Calendar• Plaxo• Digg, Reddit, del.ici.ous• Twine – semantic web

Mind mapping• VisiMap• MindManager

Group Information Managers• Lotus Notes

Specialist PIM applications• Chandler• Info Select• Tinderbox (Mac only)• Ecco and EccoExt• InfoQube

Semantic desktop – mainly research prototypes• Gnowsis• Haystack

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Important Note Most PIM and GIM tools are paid-for

software• Few are free-to-download or open-source

Many are available on a try-before-you-buy basis• Use this freedom

• Please don’t abuse it… “the labourer is worthy of his hire”!

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Standard PIM features

Personal notes/journal Address books (contacts) Lists (including task, “to-do” lists) Significant calendar dates

• Appointments and meeting

• Birthdays

• Anniversaries Reminders Archives of email, instant messages, fax

communications, voicemail, etc.

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Some advanced PIM features Example tool: InfoQube, IQ

• User-defined folders (IQ calls them fields) – so you build your own classification and cross-link information

• IQ permits:• Hierarchical classification – splitting things up into

categories and sub-categories• Multiple (network) assignment

• In IQ, one item can be classified by more than one field; this means that you can classify things in multiple, overlapping ways; the same thing can appear in more than one place. It also supports tagging.

• Auto-classification and auto-linking on the basis of rules Note implication: users only get the best from these tools as

they structure their data and also think about processes

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Situational Applications There exist applications builders which can be used by non-

technical users to build customised multi-user business information systems• Captive databases, available only locally: e.g. Microsoft

Access• Relational databases deployed on the Web: e.g. Qrimp

Such applications are increasingly “in the cloud”• On Web servers • Which may not be under the direct control or ownership of the

organisation which owns the information IBM has suggested a new name for this category of simple

applications builders: "situational applications builders“• See Cherbakov, L. & A. Bravery & B. D. Goodman & A. Pandya

& J. Baggett (2007)• See also Gregory M.R. & Norbis M. (2009b)

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Do you need a situational application?

Firstly audit your personal and small-group information needs, as above

Then list the “big” business information systems you use

Identify any gaps: do you and your colleagues / collaborators, in any context, need to procure a new system or build your own using a situational application builder?

Number of users

Degree of structure of the data stored

1

10

100

1000

Highly structured data, precise queries, limited

freedom to adapt

Semi structured knowledge representation, considerable

freedom to adapt

No obvious structure: interpretation depends on the (educated) eye of the

beholder

GIM: Group Information

Management

Text documents

Corporate transaction-

oriented applications

Situational Applications

Spreadsheets

Web 2.0 applications

1m

PIM: Personal Information

Management

A possible mapping of the Applications

Space

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Action – Now!

You and I have only one life to live Sometimes we have to collaborate, to

wait while others get things done for us But mostly, our destinies are in our own

hands Let’s stop procrastinating and act – now

– to improve our own information management and personal productivity

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Acting to improve your personal information management

Audit your information management, then act to improve it! Choose at least one software program which you will use over the

next few weeks in order to help you IMPROVE the ways in which you Get Things Done and Keep Found Things Found• Start to use it NOW• Set a time limit on your experiment – say five or six weeks• Do the necessary learning to get into the program• Take a LOG of what you do with the program, how you plan its

use, how you learn more about it, what your experiences are – good and bad

• A log is a list of things you have actually done – what they were and when you did them.

• At the end, complete your log with an EVALUATION of how effective your experiment was. What will you do in the future to improve?

• Maybe share the log online? Join our gang?

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Further help in improving your personal information management

The main points of this presentation are available in the form of a template questionnaire, which you can fill in and – optionally – share with others• Helps you to get things done because you’ve

made a visible commitment

• Potentially helps us in our research

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Making it easier to find things - Background

We nearly all classify things – that is, we group them by name or keyword (work, home, clubs and associations…)

A simple organization of kinds of things is to list them alphabetically. If we give a list a title which attempts to name or describe the items in the list, we begin to establish a vocabulary. If we make a list of football teams, each member of the list “is-a” football team.

Making items into lists, and deciding which list each member is a part of, is a process called taxonomic classification or just classification, and it is fundamental to science and to the communication of meaning: we are ascribing and defining a vocabulary, and grouping things by their classification or type• See Boardman, Richard (2004) for a fuller discussion, including the

limitation of hierarchical (tree) structures• See Golder, Scott A. & Bernardo A. Huberman (2009) for a

discussion of classification and tagging

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Making it easier to find things – Applying this to your information

How do you group files into folders on your PC? Can you, should you, improve this? How have your classifications changed in the past, and what changes do you anticipate?

Do you find the inherent limitations of the standard folder structure (which is strictly hierarchic, and is in fact a taxonomic classification) troublesome?• Do you need ways to store things in more than one place at a

time?

• Do you need to take this further as an ontology?

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Archives – finding old things

Have you previously used software and/or platforms which you no longer have or wish to retain?

Have you already exported the data / information to a current platform? Should you now do so?

Have you still got the use of the old software? Have you a way to access the old data / information?

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Relevance to your self-audit: Why is it important to classify things?

We need to store lists in a way in which we can find the lists and their contents easily, name them, classify their contents, and relate them

Your personal information management may need to evolve in these directions

It is therefore wise to choose programs which permit you to • Create your own lists and then to name them

• To classify them either by a keyword within a hierarchy of keywords or by more than one keyword (like tagging in social networks)

• To search them

• To enable you to link one item to another Unfortunately, very few programs do all of these things!

• And the ones that do demand self-investment

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Towards Personal Knowledge Management

What do your data mean? There is limited support in some PIMs for classification of

contents• User-specified keyword classification of information

structured in accordance with user design• Rule-based auto-classification, where the tool

automatically classifies items• Tagging

Semantic web approaches, such as semantic desktop, are just beginning to appear• Q: Why is this significant?• A: Emerging shared ontologies (shared vocabularies!)

should be a significant change enabler in groups of knowledge workers

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Our research hypotheses (Why do people choose not to use PIMs and GIMs?)

Hypothesis 1• The data-centred approach adopted by most PIMs is not necessarily well

adapted to the working methods adopted by knowledge workers. Establishing what styles and functionalities appeal to (or repel) different types of users is not yet well understood.

Hypothesis 2• Current PIMs tend to emphasise one particular information management

technique, to the exclusion of others. The absence of complementary information management techniques is one of the factors which cause knowledge workers to reject current PIMs. Why do we have to choose between databases and spreadsheets?

Hypothesis 3• PIMs are not much used because PIMs either impose an ontology which does

not correspond to the user’s ontology, or do not permit that ontology to be made explicit and/or shared. The incorporation of explicit knowledge representation mechanisms which are tailored to their users’ (plural) needs will make a PIM more useful: by beginning to turn it into a small-group knowledge manager. Knowledge is about classification and association; let’s make that explicit!

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Radically rethinking your personal information management: Ontology

An ontology defines a set of representational primitives which model a domain of knowledge

Ontologies extend taxonomy by applying a larger variety of relation types than just “is-a” • The representational primitives are typically classes (or

sets), attributes (or properties), and relationships (or relations among class members)

An ontology is a data model that represents a set of concepts within a domain and the relationships between those concepts; it can be used to reason about the objects within that domain

Ontologies are used in artificial intelligence, the semantic web, software engineering and information architecture as a form of knowledge representation about the world or some part of it

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Ontologies generally describe Individuals: the basic or "ground level" objects Classes: sets, collections, or types of objects Attributes: properties, features,

characteristics, or parameters that objects can have and share

Relations: ways that objects can be related to one another

Events: the changing of attributes or relations• http://www.owlseek.com/whatis.html checked 26/03/2009

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Ontology 101

So what is your ontology? Start off with a hierarchical classification,

and see if that works well enough for you If you or a project of which you are a part really

needs a full ontology, consider using an ontology editor

Much interest centres around Stanford’s Protégé open source ontology editor and knowledge-base framework• See http://protege.stanford.edu/

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Post-implementation audit

After a suitable evaluation period, please revisit your original personal information audit and evaluate the extent to which your personal and small-group information management has improved• Good experiences (and bad ones…)

• Areas for further improvement

• What help you needed, where did you get it, what further help do you now need?

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Self-Audit: A Summary

You should aim to Get Things Done You should aim to Keep Found Things Found Take into full consideration

• Personal work (and living, fun, e.g. music)

• Group work: work you do with others

Decide whether and how to self-audit We hope you’ll want to talk to us about your

experiences, and thereby contribute to our research

ReferencesAllen, David (2001) Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity. Penguin Books.Alter, Steven (2002) Information Systems: The Foundation of E-Business. Pearson Education, Upper

Saddle River NJ. Boardman, Richard (2004) "Improving Tool Support for Personal Information Management" - Abstract

of PhD Thesis in Human-Computer Interaction. Intelligent and Interactive Systems Group, Dept. of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, Imperial College London.

Cherbakov, L. & A. Bravery & A. Pandya (2007) 'SOA meets situational applications, Part 1: Changing computing in the enterprise' Found at http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/webservices/library/ws-soa-situational1/

Drucker, Peter (1999) 'Knowledge Worker productivity: the biggest challenge.' In: The knowledge management yearbook 2000-2001.

Golder, Scott A. & Bernardo A. Huberman (2009) 'The Structure of Collaborative Tagging Systems' Found at http://www.hpl.hp.com/research/idl/papers/tags/tags.pdf accessed 09/07/2009

Gregory M.R. & Norbis M. (2008a) 'Towards a Systematic Evaluation of Personal and Small Group Information and Knowledge Management'. Paper presented to 5th International Conference on Cybernetics and Information Technologies, Systems and Applications: CITSA 2008, in July 2008.

Gregory M.R. & Norbis M. (2008b) 'The business of knowledge.' Paper given at 8th International Conference on Knowledge, Culture and Change in Organisations, Cambridge University, United Kingdom between 2008/08/05 and 2008/08/08.

Gregory M.R. & Norbis M. (2009b) 'Evaluating Situational Applications Builders.' Paper accepted for CITSA conference in July 2009 in Orlando Fa.

Jones, William (2007) 'Keeping found things found: the study and practice of personal information management.' William Jones, University of Washington. Morgan Kauffman 2007

Strassman, P. (1999) 'Paradox revisited.' Computerworld, Vol. 33 Issue 36, pp. 40, 1999.Toffler, Alvin (1990). Powershift: Knowledge, wealth and violence at the edge of the 21st century.

Bantam Books, 1990.

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Or if you intend taking the Personal Audit Challenge(!);

Contact me: • Put your name on the list• Or email [email protected]

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