Expertise Systems
From [[http://cpsquare.org CPsquare]], the community of practice on communities of practice.
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Definition
A kind of social networking system that helps people locate experts in a specific knowledge area. Social network systems can function as Expertise Systems. Often called an "expert locator system".
Uses in communities of practice
Expertise systems may help a community of practice find its members or it may be a way to announce its existence. A community of practice might guide implementation, verify system parameters, or assess performance of the system. Expertise systems can sometimes be used to launch collaborations, find technical experts, to network with people of like mind or to recruit people for community projects. Use of an expert locator system may spread through a community and become a community norm. There are at least three strategies for capturing expertise:
- Profile-based systems that are skills-based and rely on user to populate and update profile their (like LinkedIn)
- Social-networking, profile-based system that relies on user to populate and update profile and provides the additional benefit of network building, where connections between people implicitly provide information about expertise
- Passive expert determination systems (like Tacit) that uses email messages, documents, and other artifacts to glean the expertise of each person (but each person to modify the system results).
Polarities
- Together/apart, Synch/Asynch: Use of a system can be global in scope or restricted to a specific organization. Mainly asynchronous.
- Interaction/publication: Mainly a publication mechanism, although some systems support connections and some interactions.
- Individual/group: Usually an individual describes their membership in a group of experts in one of these systems.
Key features
Storage and retrieval
- Ease of use (front end): system makes it easy to access the accumulated data when seeking an expert.
- Finding an expert needs to be "as easy as Google is for web content"
- Integrated into common business systems
- Ease of use (back end): entering data about experts into the system needs to be easy. Automation of the updated expertise data is desirable.
- Training people about the value and about standards for expertise description is important
Access boundaries
- Using public tools: common tools that are not captive of an organization (such as LinkedIn) can play an important role.
- Expertise may be distributed across organizations
- Employees may be more consistent in updating their profiles if they really own their profiles.
Examples
- LinkedIn is a popular social networking system that can work as an expertise system.
Related tools
See also:
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