FGWM Manifesto

FGWM is the Fachgruppe Wissensmanagement (knowledge management working group) of the German society of computer science (GI). It organizes a yearly workshop.

This is the space for creating a manifesto for this workshop, to better support its future organization

• Why does this workshop exist?
• What is its purpose?
• What are its selling points?

[edit] Manifesto

• Informal nature
• Low entrance barrier (low participation fee etc.)
• Opportunity for young researchers (even master students)
  • publish fresh ideas and preliminary work, discuss/present work in progress
  • get feedback, improve work, then submit to higher-level events
  • get used to scientific events
• Mixed audience: students as well as senior members of the community
  • fostering the next generation of researchers (like a doctoral symposium), quality assurance (service to the community); act as mentors
  • seniors can see fresh ideas
  • bring fresh researchers, see what feedback they get, how they are accepted by the community
  • recruiting (this year's PhD students are next year's postdocs)
• On the other hand: possibility to present top-notch papers already presented at international venues, to make this knowledge accessible to a wider audience (e.g. students from Germany)
• Connecting the German knowledge management community
  • connections between PhD students from different universities
  • connections between PhD supervisors from different universities and research institutions
• Ample discussion time: this is a workshop, not a mini-conference
• Try-out for new ideas (by junior or senior researchers), starting point for serious papers on those new ideas --> test case for seriousness of such ideas when writing and feedback when presenting

[edit] Text Snippet addressing young researchers

The FGWM offers a unique opportunity for the promotion of young researchers. The LWA's low participation fee and the workshop's informal nature provide a first platform for young PhD students and advanced MSc students to present their projects and theses to a larger audience and thus gain first experiences in scientific practice and exchange. The possibility to take part in scientific discourse already at an early stage is very valuable to young researchers and a unique feature of the FGWM in the field of knowledge management.

Additionally to getting useful feedback on their work from senior researchers outside their own research group, the LWA provides young researchers with the additional opportunity of an exchange of experiences with fellow PhD students from other universities.

[edit] Text addressing senior researchers

TO DO: complete the text

FGWM provides senior researchers with a platform for not only presenting their own research interests and discuss presented work. FGWM offers the opportunity to share best practices on PhD supervision among different universities and research institutions. Senior researchers can pass along experience on project proposal writing, project management, and evaluation. At this venue senior researchers are easily approachable and can help with issues PhD students might not want to discuss with their supervisors and students can easily ask questions about a career in academia.

(proposed by Thomas-Roth Berghofer)

[edit] Here is the proposal for the final text written from the snippets above

(added by Ulrich Reimer, comments are welcome)

The Special Interest Group on Knowledge Management (Fachgruppe Wissensmanagement) – in short FGWM – of the German Society of Computer Science (GI) annually organizes a workshop “Knowledge and Experience Management” within the LWA workshop series (see LWA2009). Here we have compiled the main reasons why attendance to that workshop is attractive and why it is unique among the many existing conferences and workshops on topics related to knowledge management:

• The workshop is not a mini-conference but a real workshop because
  • there is ample discussion time for each of the presented papers,
  • it gives the opportunity to present work in progress, possibly in its early stages only,
  • there is the possibility for break-out sessions on topics to be discussed more deeply.
• Therefore the workshop provides the opportunity for young researchers (even excellent master students) to
  • present and discuss preliminary work,
  • get feedback on their work from a larger audience with people having quite different viewpoints,
  • get accustomed to presenting and defending their work at scientific events.
• The workshop is a forum for testing the viability of new ideas (by junior as well as senior researchers) before more effort and resources are put into them.
• Since the workshop attracts students as well as senior members of the community it plays a vital role in
  • fostering the next generation of researchers (like a doctoral symposium but across institutions),
  • helping to maintain a high quality of PhD work,
  • recruiting research staff (master students looking for PhD positions, PhD students looking for postdoc positions).
• The workshop is enriched by including a few top-notch papers already presented at international venues. Since nobody can attend all relevant conferences any more this is a good opportunity to catch up on missed papers.

• The workshop is the forum for connecting with the German knowledge management community.

• Last but not least, the workshop has a very low participation fee and is thus much more affordable than pre-conference workshops which can usually only be attended when also registering to the main conference (with the full conference fee).

[edit] A statement from a young researcher why she finds the FGWM workshop series attractive:

The FGWM workshop offers a unique opportunity for the promotion of young researchers. With its low participation fee and the informal nature it provides a platform for young PhD students and advanced MSc students to present their projects and theses to a larger audience. It is thus an excellent opportunity to gain first experiences in scientific practice and exchange. The possibility to take part in scientific discourse already at an early stage, is very valuable to young researchers. In the field of knowledge management, this is a unique feature of the FGWM workshop. Besides getting useful feedback on their work from senior researchers outside their own research group, young researchers profit from an exchange of experiences with fellow PhD students from other universities.

[edit] A statement from a senior researcher why he finds the FGWM workshop series attractive:

The FGWM workshop provides senior researchers not only with a platform for presenting their own research interests and discuss presented work, but also offers the opportunity to share best practices on PhD supervision among different universities and research institutions. Senior researchers can pass along experience on project proposal writing, project management, and evaluation. At this venue senior researchers are easily approachable and can help with issues PhD students might not want to discuss with their supervisors. Further, students can easily investigate career opportunities in academia.