131,741 research outputs found
Chief Kerry's moose : a guidebook to land use and occupancy mapping, research design, and data collection
Aboriginal peoples in Canada have been mapping aspects of
their cultures for more than a generation. Indians, Inuit, MĂ©tis,
non-status Indians and others have called their maps by
different names at various times and places: land use and
occupancy; land occupancy and use; traditional use; traditional land use
and occupancy; current use; cultural sensitive areas; and so on. I use “land
use and occupancy mapping” in a generic sense to include all the above.
The term refers to the collection of interview data about traditional use
of resources and occupancy of lands by First Nation persons, and the
presentation of those data in map form. Think of it as the geography of
oral tradition, or as the mapping of cultural and resource geography. (PDF contains 81 pages.
Computer technologies and institutional memory
NASA programs for manned space flight are in their 27th year. Scientists and engineers who worked continuously on the development of aerospace technology during that period are approaching retirement. The resulting loss to the organization will be considerable. Although this problem is general to the NASA community, the problem was explored in terms of the institutional memory and technical expertise of a single individual in the Man-Systems division. The main domain of the expert was spacecraft lighting, which became the subject area for analysis in these studies. The report starts with an analysis of the cumulative expertise and institutional memory of technical employees of organizations such as NASA. A set of solutions to this problem are examined and found inadequate. Two solutions were investigated at length: hypertext and expert systems. Illustrative examples were provided of hypertext and expert system representation of spacecraft lighting. These computer technologies can be used to ameliorate the problem of the loss of invaluable personnel
Bridging global divides with tracking and tracing technology
Product-tracking technology is increasingly available to big players in the value chain connecting producers to consumers, giving them new competitive advantages. Such shifts in technology don't benefit small producers, especially those in developing regions, to the same degree. This article examines the practicalities of leveling the playing field by creating a generic form of tracing technology that any producer, large or small, can use. It goes beyond considering engineering solutions to look at what happens in the context of use, reporting on work with partners in Chile and India and reflecting on the potential for impact on business and community well-being
Referent tracking for corporate memories
For corporate memory and enterprise ontology systems to be maximally useful,
they must be freed from certain barriers placed around them by traditional
knowledge management paradigms. This means, above all, that they must mirror
more faithfully those portions of reality which are salient to the workings of the
enterprise, including the changes that occur with the passage of time. The purpose
of this chapter is to demonstrate how theories based on philosophical realism can
contribute to this objective. We discuss how realism-based ontologies (capturing
what is generic) combined with referent tracking (capturing what is specific) can
play a key role in building the robust and useful corporate memories of the future
Metamorphoses of ONAV console operations: From prototype to real time application
The ONAV (Onboard Navigation) Expert System is being developed as a real time console assistant to the ONAV flight controller for use in the Mission Control Center at the Johnson Space Center. Currently the entry and rendezvous systems are in verification, and the ascent is being prototyped. To arrive at this stage, from a prototype to real world application, the ONAV project has had to deal with not only AI issues but operating environment issues. The AI issues included the maturity of AI languages and the debugging tools, what is verification, and availability, stability, and the size of the expert pool. The environmental issues included real time data acquisition, hardware stability, and how to achieve acceptance by users and management
Managing for Learning and Impact
Over the past three years, the King Baudouin Foundation has developed a more systematic approach for the evaluation of its projects, which FSG helped codify in the KBF Project Management Guide: 'Managing for Learning and Impact'. There is a growing interest of foundations in Europe to evaluate the intended impact of their projects and programs. Foundations invest in an impact-driven philanthropy and therefore develop specific strategies, activities and tools
Getting Things Done: The Science behind Stress-Free Productivity
Allen (2001) proposed the “Getting Things Done” (GTD) method for personal productivity enhancement, and reduction of the stress caused by information overload. This paper argues that recent insights in psychology and cognitive science support and extend GTD’s recommendations. We first summarize GTD with the help of a flowchart. We then review the theories of situated, embodied and distributed cognition that purport to explain how the brain processes information and plans actions in the real world. The conclusion is that the brain heavily relies on the environment, to function as an external memory, a trigger for actions, and a source of affordances, disturbances and feedback. We then show how these principles are practically implemented in GTD, with its focus on organizing tasks into “actionable” external memories, and on opportunistic, situation-dependent execution. Finally, we propose an extension of GTD to support collaborative work, inspired by the concept of stigmergy
Learning About Meetings
Most people participate in meetings almost every day, multiple times a day.
The study of meetings is important, but also challenging, as it requires an
understanding of social signals and complex interpersonal dynamics. Our aim
this work is to use a data-driven approach to the science of meetings. We
provide tentative evidence that: i) it is possible to automatically detect when
during the meeting a key decision is taking place, from analyzing only the
local dialogue acts, ii) there are common patterns in the way social dialogue
acts are interspersed throughout a meeting, iii) at the time key decisions are
made, the amount of time left in the meeting can be predicted from the amount
of time that has passed, iv) it is often possible to predict whether a proposal
during a meeting will be accepted or rejected based entirely on the language
(the set of persuasive words) used by the speaker
A Compass in the Woods: Learning Through Grantmaking to Improve Impact
The field of philanthropy is under increasing pressure to produce – and be able to demonstrate – greater impact for its investments. A growing number of foundations are moving away from the traditional responsive banker model to becoming more thoughtful and engaged partners with their grantees in the business of producing outcomes. In the process, they are placing bigger bets on larger, more strategic programs and initiatives.  What the field is striving to do now is to ensure that this evolution is based on validated theory, not wishful thinking or shots in the dark. The larger the investment, the more skilled foundations must become at managing risk – making informed decisions, tracking progress, adjusting action and learning – throughout the life of a program, so that foreseeable and unforeseeable changes do not torpedo an otherwise worthy collective effort. The traditional grant?to?evaluation?to?adjustment cycle is very long. Because many traditional grantmaking practices are proving to be too slow to adapt, these foundations are striving to better integrate real?time evaluation and learning into their operations in order to become more adaptive; more innovative; more impactful.We undertook this research project to inform how the tools and practices that support Emergent  Learning (described in the next section) can best help foundations and their communities – grantees, intermediaries and other stakeholders – improve the way they learn in complex programs and initiatives
Restructuring an Empire. A narrative study of the turnaround of the telecom company Ericsson.
The turnaround of the telecom company Ericsson is considered a unique chapter in Swedish business life in terms of complexity, size and speed. This paper focuses on how some of the interpretative schemes of the employees were transformed during the turnaround and the organizational setting restructured. Instead of making a conventional study of a change process this study uses narrative method and explores the transformation through the eyes of four people. In this way this study hopes to be able to present a broader picture of some of the organizational learning that takes place during events like this, since storytelling is crucial when people make sense of their everyday life. A narrative analysis approach will not result in the one “true” account of a phenomenon. However, narrative analysis can provide detailed insights into individual informants understanding of events and highlight similarities and differences in interpretations that are interesting also for outsiders to take part of. The findings indicate that not only the interpretative schemes for how to run the company were transformed but also how the employees view the world.interpretative schemes; management; narrative method; structuration theory; turnaround; telecom; Ericsson.
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