[Apologies for multiple submissions]


                                PAKM2000:
                    Third International Conference on
                Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management

                           30-31 October, 2000
                           Basel, Switzerland
                   http://research.swisslife.ch/pakm2000

                          -- Call for Papers --


  Sponsored and supported by:

     ACM SIGGROUP  (approval pending)

     SGAICO (Swiss Group for Artificial Intelligence and
     Cognitive Science)

     Special Interest Group "Knowledge Management"
     of the German Informatics Society

     Rentenanstalt / Swiss Life



  Aims and scope of the conference
  --------------------------------

  To succeed in the accelerating business pace of the "internet age",
  companies must efficiently leverage their most valuable and
  under-leveraged resource: the intellectual capital of their highly
  educated, skilled, and experienced employees. The compression of
  communication cycles and the omnipresence of information forces
  enterprises to seek a faster return on knowledge - knowledge that
  ages rapidly in a market place brimming with innovation. One of the
  most important prerequisites in achieving this return is the
  systematic management of the key success factor "knowledge" -
  previously left to manage itself "somehow".  Thus next-generation
  business solutions must be focussed on supporting the creation of
  value by adding knowledge-rich components as an integral part to
  the work process. Therefore, an integrated approach is needed which
  combines issues from a large array of fields, originating from
  quite different areas such as business and organization sciences,
  cognitive sciences, and computer science.

  The PAKM Conference Series acknowledges the above situation and
  offers a communication forum and meeting ground for practitioners
  and researchers engaged in developing and deploying advanced
  business solutions for the management of knowledge and intellectual
  capital. We seek attendance and contributions from practitioners,
  researchers, and developers who work at the leading edge of
  Knowledge Management, pursuing integrated approaches which consider
  both, the technological side as well as the proper business side.
  PAKM is a forum for people to share their views, to exchange ideas,
  to develop new insights, and to envision completely new kinds of
  solutions to Knowledge Management problems. Like its predecessors,
  PAKM2000 will provide ample time for interaction and discussion.

  By explicitly addressing interdisciplinary approaches to Knowledge
  Management, the PAKM conference offers a unique and new kind of
  forum.


  Contributions sought
  --------------------

  The overall theme of PAKM2000 are next-generation business
  solutions and the role information technology can play in them.
  Thus, we seek original contributions in the triangle of business
  and organization sciences, cognitive sciences, and computer science
  that describe a true advancement in the state of the art of
  Knowledge Management:

     * Business and organization sciences give the overall framework
       in which to develop a knowledge management approach, which is
       first of all a business solution and not an information
       technology solution.

     * Cognitive sciences help to design a knowledge management
       solution such that it fits smoothly with the cognitive
       capabilities of the people involved and is optimally embedded
       in their work context - or, to phrase it differently, to
       ensure the situatedness of the knowledge management approach.

     * Computer science provides the technology needed to build the
       information systems which are often required to make certain
       aspects of a knowledge management solution work.

  Contributions to PAKM should show how the approach presented takes
  all of those three aspects into account. Additionally, paper
  submissions must clearly describe the (real-world) problem being
  tackled and point out the added value of solving that problem. The
  paper should give a clear description how the problem is solved and
  it should further make clear in which aspects the suggested
  approach is a new one.

  Submitted papers may be full papers with up to 12 pages and 30
  minutes presentation time, or short papers with up to 6 pages and
  20 minutes time for presentation. All accepted papers will be
  presented at the conference.

  Papers may address one or more of the following topics, or any
  other topic as long as it fits into the overall conference theme:

   * Building and maintaining an inventory of the knowledge available
     in the organization (with people, in files, databases,
     documents)
        o setting up appropriate communication links between people,
          groups, departments to communicate what skills and knowledge
          they have
        o meta information systems

   * Bringing the knowledge existing somewhere inside or outside
     the organization to those places where it is needed
        o aligning organizational structures towards a knowledge
          sharing community
        o group support systems
        o decision support systems, just-in-time knowledge delivery
          systems, electronic performance support systems
        o information retrieval: interest profiles,
          information filtering, automatic text understanding,
          searching the world wide web, personal web agents

   * Making sure that available knowledge is reused and not reinvented
        o documentation and annotation of knowledge to facilitate its
          being assimilated by people who did not provide it
        o ontologies and enterprise data models to provide a common
          terminological framework
        o automatic text summarization to facilitate selection of
          relevant texts
        o group support systems
        o automatic indexing and abstracting of texts

   * Capturing and securing knowledge to avoid it from getting lost
        o designing business processes such that knowledge generated
          in ongoing work is easily and immediately captured
        o implementing lessons learned processes
        o organizational memories: knowledge integration,
          knowledge sharing, versioning, contexts,
          high-level modelling languages for non-computer scientists
        o knowledge extraction from texts

   * Developing new knowledge
        o organizational measures for supporting and stimulating
          innovation
        o information systems for supporting creative processes
          (exploration of data spaces, visualization tools, etc.)
        o data mining (from data, text, and the web)


  Invited Talks
  -------------
  October 30:  Mario Raich (Raich Ltd., UK)  - topic to be announced -
  October 31:  speaker and topic to be announced


  Registration
  ------------
  Details about the registration procedure will become available end of
  April.

  Conference fee (including lunch for both days):
    before September 15:               310 CHF
    afterwards but before October 15:  350 CHF
    afterwards:                        380 CHF


  Important dates
  ---------------

  Submission of papers by June, 30, 2000
  Acceptance notices mailed by August, 18, 2000
  Final, camera-ready papers due by September, 22, 2000


  Submission format
  -----------------

  Full papers may have up to 12 pages, short papers up to 6 pages,
  both in an 11 point font and single-spaced. We accept either
  electronic submission in Postscript, PDF or Word format, or paper
  submissions (in 4 copies) to the following address:

  Ulrich Reimer
  Swiss Life
  Information Systems Research Group
  Postfach
  CH-8022 Zurich, Switzerland
  Email: [log in to unmask]


  Special journal issue
  ---------------------

  Selected papers from the conference will be considered for
  publication in a special issue of the International Journal of
  Intelligent Systems in Accounting, Finance and Management.


  Program committee
  -----------------

  Co-chairs:
  Dirk Mahling (Primix, Inc., USA)
  Ulrich Reimer (Swiss Life, Switzerland)

  Members:
  V. Richard Benjamins (Univ. of Amsterdam, The Netherlands; Intelligent
  Software Components (iSOCO) S.A., Spain )
  Eric Darr (Ernst & Young, USA)
  John Davies (British Telecom Labs, UK)
  Rose Dieng (INRIA, France)
  Udo Hahn (University of Freiburg, Germany)
  Manfred Jeusfeld (University of Tilburg, The Netherlands)
  Ann Macintosh (Napier University Edinburgh, UK)
  Frank Maurer (University of Calgary, Canada)
  Katharina Morik (University of Dortmund, Germany)
  Brian (Bo) Newman (Founder, Knowledge Management Forum, USA)
  Daniel O'Leary (University of Southern California, USA)
  Rajkumar Roy (Cranfield University, UK)
  Beat Schmid (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland)
  Patricia S. Seemann (Group 21, Switzerland)
  Steffen Staab (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
  Rudi Studer (University of Karlsruhe, Germany)
  Ulrich Thiel (GMD-IPSI, Germany)
  Eric Tsui (Computer Sciences Corporation & University of Technology,
  Sydney, Australia)
  Gertjan van Heijst (CIBIT, The Netherlands)
  Georg von Krogh (University of St. Gallen, Switzerland)
  Karl M. Wiig (Knowledge Research Institute, USA)
  Michael Wolf (UBS, Switzerland)
  (to be extended)


  Organization
  Ulrich Reimer (Swiss Life, Switzerland)


  Conference secretariat
  Annemarie Nicolet (SI, Switzerland)


  The Venue
  ---------

  Basel, a city canton with nearly 200,000 people and 2000 years of
  history, is located at the elbow of the Rhine on the borders of
  France and Germany.  It is easily reached by train, air
  (EuroAirport Basel-Mulhouse-Freiburg), or car.