Digital Enterprise Research Institute www.deri.ie
Using Semantics to Improve
Corporate Online Communities
Alexandre Passant
Digital Enterprise Research Institute,
National University of Ireland, Galway
COIN@MALLOW - Invited Talk
09/11/2009, Torino, Italy
© Copyright 2009 Digital Enterprise Research Institute. All rights reserved.

Introduction
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 Postdoctoral researcher at DERI, NUIG
 Since September 2008
 Research interests
 Social Web and Semantic Web
 Especially the combination of both
 Ph.D. from Université Paris-Sorbonne
 Semantic Web technologies for Enterprise 2.0
 Industrial collaboration with EDF R&D
 The following talk is mainly based on my Ph.D. thesis and
its viva presentation
 More at http://apassant.net
2 of XYZ

Agenda
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 Enterprise 2.0 and corporate online communities
 Tools, applications and social implications
 Technical issues with Enterprise 2.0 ecosystems
 Using semantics to improve Enterprise 2.0
 SemSLATES: A social semantic middleware architecture
 Socio-structural metadata
 Collaborative ontology population
 Semantic tagging
 Building new applications
 Questions and discussion
3 of XYZ

Enterprise 2.0
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 Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social
software platforms within companies, or between
companies and their partners or customers
 [McAfee, 2006]
 Introduction of well-known services and practices
such as blogs, wikis, RSS feeds, tagging in the
professional sphere
 Serious usages of Web 2.0 applications
 A new Information Ecology
 [Davenport & Prusak, 1997]
 Users and online communities are as important
(sometimes more) than the IT components of such
ecosystems

The SLATES acronym
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 Search
 Mainly plain-text or tag-based
 Links
 Internal and external
 Authoring
 Simple user-interfaces (e.g. wiki syntax)
 Tags
 User-driven annotation
 Extensions
 Suggesting relevant content
 Signals
 RSS feeds, microblogging, etc.

Social aspects of Enterprise 2.0
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 New paradigms with regards to knowledge sharing
and communication patterns in organisations
 E.g. Anyone can edit / remove content from a senior
researcher in a wiki or publicly disagree with him by
commenting a blog post
 Social aspects are as important as the technical ones
 Breaking the “Knowledge = Power” schema
 “Enterprise 2.0 is a philosophy”
 Success depends on a company’s background
 A study by AIIM showed that 41% of companies do not have
a clear understanding of what Enterprise 2.0 is while this
percentage goes down to 15% in KM-oriented ones

Technical issues of Enterprise 2.0
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 Based on our experience within an Enterprise 2.0
platform deployed at EDF R&D
 Information fragmentation
 Knowledge modelling and re-use
 Tagging issues
 Some of these issues are not new per se
 But Enterprise 2.0 strengthens them by providing more
and more data, voluntary published by end-users
 Enterprise 2.0 eases the process of collaboratively
publishing information thanks to and within
corporate online communities
 But efficiently exploiting it is a complex issue

Information fragmentation
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 Heterogeneity of people, community, services,
needs and practices leads to various services and
applications being deployed in organisations
 Generally using different APIs, databases structure, etc.
 Information is fragmented over the company’s
network
 E.g. description of a project in a wiki, latest news in blog
posts, partners news in RSS feeds, etc.
 Getting the global picture of a given object (people,
project, etc.) is difficult
 Moreover, data integration is a costly task due to
heterogeneity issues

Knowledge modelling and re-use
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 Most of Enterprise 2.0 applications acts as
independent and closed-world data silos and
provide only plain-text information
 Information is not interoperable
 Information is limited to human consumption
 Complex queries cannot be answered, even when
the information exists !
 List all French companies involved in sustainable energies
 How many institutes are part of project X
 List the latest 10 blog posts written by Bob dealing with a
research institute working on Web-based technologies

Tagging issues
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 Tag ambiguity
 apple: fruit, computer brand, or record label ?
 Tag heterogeneity
 Semanticweb, semweb, web_semantique, etc.
 Lack of organisation
 No links between the tags SPARQL and RDF, while there is
obviously a link between the two domains
 Leads to various issues when searching for
information
 Noise: content not corresponding to the expected topic
 Silence: non-identified content as searched for using a
different keyword

Tagging and expertise
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 Expertise level in corporate online communities
 Based on their individual experience and background,
people have different ways to approach a domain and tag
related content (basic level [Takana & Taylor, 1991])
 Use-case at EDF R&D
 194 items tagged with “TF” (= Thin Film, a particular kind
of solar cell)
– Only 1% of them tagged with “solar” !
– < 0.5% of “solar” items tagged “TF”
– Clustering algorithms cannot be efficiently applied
 Another issue when searching for tagged content
 Valuable information (written and tagged by domain
experts) gets lost as non-expert cannot access it

SemSLATES
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 The SemSLATES methodology
 A social semantic middleware architecture for Enterprise 2.0
dedicated to solving the previous issues and bringing
additional and innovative services to end-users
 Middleware
 Add-ons to existing Enterprise 2.0 ecosystems, do not require
to rebuild the complete architecture
 Semantic
 Based on Semantic Web technologies [Berners-Lee et al., 2001]
 Social
 Online communities play a core role in producing and using
structured knowledge

The Semantic Web
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SemSLATES overview
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Browsing and querying interfaces
Semantic mediation architecture
(Ontologies, semantic annotations)
Enterprise 2.0 information system

Different layers of annotations
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Socio-structural
Ontology population Ontologies Semantic indexing
meta-data
Energy Company located in Country
Ontologies and Semantic annotations
is a is a
produces
EDF located in France
has topic
Blog post has link Wiki page 2
has author is part of
AP Wiki A
Enterprise 2.0 ecosystem
hyperlink
Blog post creates Wiki page 2
contains
has tag
EDF Wiki A

Socio-structural metadata
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Socio-structural
Ontology population Ontologies Semantic indexing
meta-data
Energy Company located in Country
Ontologies and Semantic annotations
is a is a
produces
EDF located in France
has topic
Blog post has link Wiki page 2
has author is part of
AP Wiki A
Enterprise 2.0 ecosystem
hyperlink
Blog post creates Wiki page 2
contains
has tag
EDF Wiki A

FOAF
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 FOAF – Friend-Of-A-Friend
 [Brickley & Miller, 2000]
 http://foaf-project.org
 An ontology for describing people and the
relationships that exist between them
 From online communities to semantically-enriched online
communities
 Particularly suited for social networking purposes
 FOAF in Enterprise 2.0 settings
 Model individuals, teams, relations between both, etc.
 As well as linking people to their interests and skills
 Identity unification across enterprise applications

SIOC
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 SIOC - Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities
 [Breslin et al., 2005]
 http://sioc-project.org
 SIOC - Semantically-Interlinked Online Communities
 A model to represent activities of online
communities and the related content
 Who is writing what, who is answering to who
 Relationships between documents (blog posts, wikis
pages) and their container
 One core ontology, several modules
 Published as a W3C Member Submission in 2007

The SIOC Ontology
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Producing FOAF and SIOC data
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 Automatically generated from existing Enterprise 2.0
applications
 Lots of applications / plug-ins already available
 Completely transparent for the end-user
 Use-case at EDF R&D: > 20000 instances of sioc:Item created

Collaborative ontology population
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Socio-structural
Ontology population Ontologies Semantic indexing
meta-data
Energy Company located in Country
Ontologies and Semantic annotations
is a is a
produces
EDF located in France
has topic
Blog post has link Wiki page 2
has author is part of
AP Wiki A
Enterprise 2.0 ecosystem
hyperlink
Blog post creates Wiki page 2
contains
has tag
EDF Wiki A

Defining domain ontologies
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 A need to represent particular objects that are
being discussed in corporate online communities
 Industrial domains, projects, agents, etc.
 Domain ontologies are required to represent these entities
 Depend on the use-casebut SemSLATES offers a set
of best practices
 Re-using existing models from the Web (FOAF, SKOS,
geonames …) to benefit from return on experience and
build semantic mash-ups
 Use-case at EDF R&D
 Developed several models, combining lightweight ontology
design and knowledge engineering [Masolo & al., 2005]

SKOS skos:Concept
Role Ontology
Geonames rdfs:subClassOf rdfs:subClassOf
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geonames:Feature role:Type role:Domain
rdf:type
rdf:type rdf:type
rdf:type http://
sws.geonames.org/
3017382/
athena:Producteur rdf:type athena:EnergieNucleaire
geonames:parentFeature
role:hasDomain
http:// geonames:locatedIn role:hasType
sws.geonames.org/ skos:broader Ontologies
2988507/
athena:Constructeur
athena:Role1 athena:CentraleNucleaire
Base de
connaissances
geonames:locatedIn
role:hasType role:hasDomain
role:hasRole
athena:Role2
role:hasRole
athena:PierreGadonneix foaf:member athena:EDF
partenariat:hasDomain
partenariat:hasMember
athena:Areva athena:part1
rdf:type rdf:type
rdf:type rdf:type
foaf:Person foafplus:Company
partenariat:Partenariat
rdfs:subClassOf rdfs:subClassOf
FOAFplus
foaf:Agent Partenariat
FOAF

Ontology population
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 Once the ontologies are provided, the related
knowledge base(s) must be created and maintained
 Usual applications for ontology population are dedicated
to advanced users; not suitable in many contexts
 Our approach: Semantic Wikis
 Using online communities and wiki philosophy to build
and maintain structured knowledge bases
 An open, collaborative and evolutive vision of
ontology population
 No technical nor knowledge engineering skills required
 Anyone can contribute

From wikis to structured knowledge
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hyperlink is a Enterprise
EDF
France
Ontologies and
Documents EDF Country
produces instances
located in
Energy
is a
hyperlink
Energy
France
Wiki Semantic wiki

UfoWiki
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 Various semantic wikis prototypes dedicate to
ontology population available as open-source apps
 However, none fulfilled all our requirements, especially in
terms of user-friendliness (i.e. not dedicated to SW-people)
 UfoWiki
 Ontology-based information modeling
 Simple form-based user-interfaces
 Modeling both domain and structure metadata
 Immediately using created knowledge
 Using public data to improve browsing interfaces
 Use-case at EDF R&D
 About 25 users, > 350 instances collaboratively maintained

Maintaining ontology instances
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Simple
autocomplete
field
Complex
instance field

Semantic tagging
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Socio-structural
Ontology population Ontologies Semantic indexing
meta-data
Energy Company located in Country
Ontologies and Semantic annotations
is a is a
produces
EDF located in France
has topic
Blog post has link Wiki page 2
has author is part of
AP Wiki A
Enterprise 2.0 ecosystem
hyperlink
Blog post creates Wiki page 2
contains
has tag
EDF Wiki A

MOAT
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 MOAT – Meaning Of A Tag [Passant & Laublet, 2008]
 http://moat-project.org
 Using ontologies to support free-tagging activities
 Using Semantic Web resources (from internal knowledge bases
and from the Web) to represent the meaning of tags
 From free-tagging to ontology-based semantic indexing
 A model and a framework
 A model to link each tag to its local and global meaning(s)
 A framework to collaboratively manage these meanings in
online communities
 Use-case at EDF R&D
 1176 tags linked to 715 resources, 39 URIs w > 4 related tags!

MOAT: Example data
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tag:RestrictedTagging
http://example.org/tag/
apple
rdf:type tag:associatedTag
http://example.org/
tagging1
tag:taggedBy tag:taggedResource Tag Ontology
moat:tagMeaning
http://example.org/ http://dbpedia.org/
post/1 resource/Apple_Inc.
foaf:maker dct:title
rdf:type MOAT + DBpedia
http://apassant.net/alex/ Nouvel iPhone
disponible
sioct:BlogPost
FOAF
SIOC + DC

MOAT: Framework
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User creates content and tag it Client queries the MOAT server
<http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple> Server returns the set
for global meaning URIs
User chooses local meaning URI <http://dbpedia.org/resource/Apple_Inc.>
<http://example.org/id/myappleresource>
tags:associatedTag
User saves the content
http://example.org/ http://example.org/tag/
tagging1 apple
moat:tagMeaning
Content enters
tags:taggedResource http://dbpedia/org/resource/
the Web of Data Apple_Inc.
tags:taggedBy
http://example.org/
post/1
http://apassant.net/alex

Building new applications
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 Use all the annotations
created from different tools
Browsing and querying interfaces
 Blogs, wikis, RSS feeds …
 Combine ontologies, socio-
structural metadata and
knowledge bases Semantic mediation architecture
(Ontologies, semantic annotations)
 For advanced querying
capabilities
 Hide the complexity of tools
to the end-users
 So that everyone can benefit
from it Enterprise 2.0 information system

UfoWiki macros
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 Embedding SPARQL query results in wiki pages
without the complexity of such queries
 Mapping between macro syntax and SPARQL (inspired by
Semantic MediaWiki)
 E.g. [onto|members] to list all members of a company
 Taking context into account
 E.g. Listing related blog posts from a wiki page (via MOAT)
 Support a subset of RDFS inference
 E.g. Listing enterprise and research institutes when asking
for organisations in general
 Different ways of browsing the results
 XHTML snippets, Geolocation, Faceted browsing

Semantic mashups
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 Re-using RDF data from the LOD cloud internally
 Low-cost Semantic mash-ups
 E.g. Geolocation of internal wiki data using Geonames

Semantic Search
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 Solving the information fragmentation issue
 Delivering all information about a particular object in a
single page
 Using different level of annotations
 Hiding RDF(S)/OWL and SPARQL to the users

Solving the Expertise Gap
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 Defining rules to extend information retrieval by
suggesting nearest entities for a given search
 Solving the issues of free-tagging related to heterogeneous
expertise levels in online communities
Ontologies
skos:Concept sioc:Post foaf:Person
rdf:type rdf:type rdf:type
athena:Solaire moat:taggedWith :post1 foaf:maker :NonExpert
Non-expert level
skos:broader
athena:TF moat:taggedWith :post2 foaf:maker ::Expert
Expert level

Conclusion
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 Enterprise 2.0 enables interactions in corporate
online communities and ease content-generation
 But introduces new issues / emphasizes existing ones
 Semantic Web technologies can help
 Various ontologies for distinct levels of representation
 Lightweight software add-ons for semantic annotations
 New applications can be build on the top of it
 Consuming RDF(S)/OWL data to solve the initial issues
 And bring new services to online communities
 Some more challenges need to be solved …
 Trust, context-awarness, privacy, etc.

Thank you !
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 Questions and discussion
 Contact
 alexandre.passant@deri.org
 http://apassant.net (blog, papers, etc.)