Synergy; Knowledge-oriented Collaboration assessment and research

SYNERGY (Supporting Highly-adaptive Networked Enterprise Collaboration 
through Semantically-enabled Knowledge Services) is a new 3 year 
European-funded Seventh Framework Research Project which commenced on 
the 1 February 2008. It will research the knowledge sharing and 
collaboration support needs of stakeholders working collaboratively both 
internally within organisations, and within partnerships and new virtual 
network and business models. The project offers end user organisations 
an opportunity to participate in this leading edge research to address 
their unique requirements, to undergo a knowledge assessment of their 
collaboration needs, and the potential to pilot and test utility-based 
services developed during the project. The research will be carried out 
by a collaborative consortium of eight business and academic teams from 
England, France, Germany, Greece, Serbia and Switzerland.

SYNERGY aims to (a) provide semantic ontology-based modelling of 
knowledge structures on collaborative working; (b) develop the 
service-oriented self-adaptive SYNERGY holistic solution for 
knowledge-based collaboration services; and (c) facilitate the testing 
and evaluation of the efficiency and effectiveness of the SYNERGY 
solution in concrete case studies in business and industry.

An Open Source approach to project-related software development will be 
taken.

The life science and healthcare sector will be one primary focus area 
for the project.

The project will have assessment, development and application phases:

   1. we will analyse and assess how various kinds of groups share their
      knowledge currently and, where there are gaps, what would their
      requirements be for improved collaboration support in future
   2. we will develop a highly intelligent and dynamically adaptive
      technological system based on collaboration patterns and the
      numerous knowledge flows between systems and knowledge workers
      that exist within networked organisations
   3. we will pilot and test the utility-based services developed in
      Phase 2 in real-life situations, in a variety of groups of smaller
      companies and larger organisations

We are currently opening the selection process for companies, groups or 
teams who have a need for knowledge-oriented collaboration and would be 
interested to undergo a detailed assessment of their knowledge-sharing 
practices and future collaboration support needs.

A more detailed summary of the research project is available at:
http://barryhardy.blogs.com/theferryman/2008/02/knowledge-orien.html 
<http://rs6.net/tn.jsp?e=001ZExloIgvdwwyBmEZYn4UDA9fv5ZcfFYvlWKzRZKgwelkx5OYgdjZZvfGY8SuNI-NILPbjDVTXMj9x-wbW7sYE8PPpE2lvIbgSXLYPd5pnQ8HD6X-I7JRcbOYSXI1RQs3NyBEyf56ihid1HI6o2-bvmtiEfgfOGUHTDQGOBq2LKeL7iqEueOKDw==>

We will hold an information meeting and Knowledge Café in Basel, 
Switzerland on March 6th:
http://barryhardy.blogs.com/theferryman/2008/02/synergy-knowled.html

If you would be interested in participating, and you would like to 
attend, please contact nicki.douglas -(at)- douglasconnect.com to 
request a guest pass.

If unable to attend, please contact me using an email to barry.hardy 
-(at)- douglasconnect.com to initiate a discussion.

The SYNERGY project website is located at   http://www.synergy-ist.eu/

best regards
Barry Hardy
Douglas Connect
Switzerland