EXPERIENCE-BASED SOCIAL AND COLLABORATIVE

PERFORMANCE IN AN ‘ELECTRONIC VILLAGE’ OF LOCAL

INTEREST: THE EKONEΣ FRAMEWORK

D. Akoumianakis, N. Vidakis, G.Vellis, G. Milolidakis and D. Kotsalis

Department of Applied Information Technology & Multimedia, School of Applied Technology

Technological Education Institution of Crete, Estavromenos, Heraklion, Crete, Greece

Keywords: Virtual organization, experience factory, user interfaces.

Abstract: We present the baseline of a framework called eΚοΝΕΣ, for building electronic villages of local interest. An

electronic village is considered as a virtual organization formed by representatives of different sectors who

work together during a period of time to realize a common goal. We assume tight coupling between the

virtual organization and a physical space to differentiate the electronic village of local interest from the

notion of the global electronic village. In this context, the paper focuses on two primary issues, namely the

stimulation and organization of collaborative work by virtual teams and the design of electronic artefacts

which facilitate collaborative feedback and feedthrough in an exemplar case in the context of eΚοΝΕΣ-

Tourism – a pilot electronic village on regional tourism.

1 INTRODUCTION

In recent years, virtual community fabrics have

matured to the extent that allows the establishment

of novel virtualities and new concepts, which

characterise on-line communities by function and

scope rather than technological character. Examples

include the virtual classroom, the electronic city, etc.

In the majority of these cases, the distinction is

drawn around functional rather than technological

characteristics. A virtuality, which has recently

received substantial attention, is the electronic

village of local interest. The electronic village is a

virtual organisation tightly linked to a physical

space. In the literature there are various examples of

electronic villages / cities (e.g., Carroll et al., 2001)

acting as catalysts to local community social and

economic life.

In the context of on-going collaborative research

and development, we are developing technology and

tools for building local electronic villages as unified

collaborative spaces for managing electronic

services of local interest / scale. This definition

makes a sharp distinction between an electronic

village of local interest and the notion of the ‘Global

Electronic Village’. The distinction amounts to the

fact that the former concept emphasizes a tight

coupling between virtual and local physical

activities, while it affords opportunities to develop

alternative forms of productive social relations

between members.

eΚοΝΕΣ is a collaborative R&D project, which

seeks to extend the conventional connotation of an

electronic village so as to provide an operational

model of a virtual organization with strong social

links between members and focus on performing

tasks to yield added-value products and services.

The project will demonstrate its outcomes in the area

of tourism by developing and operating eΚοΝΕΣ-

Tourism – a regional electronic village on local

tourism – as a pilot. In its basic form eΚοΝΕΣ seeks

to facilitate community problem solving by fostering

tight collaboration between multi-sector community

groups, frequently referred to as coalitions or

collaboratives. Such coalitions may be permanent or

temporal depending on the set targets. For example,

in the tourism sector coalitions may be formed on-

demand to facilitate transportation, local

accommodation and entertainment of a group of

people interested to visit archaeological sites in a

region for a specified period of time. The distinctive

characteristics of such services are that they

represent added-value for all parties concerned

including the end user; they are owned by the

117

Akoumianakis D., Vidakis N., Vellis G., Milolidakis G. and Kotsalis D. (2007).

EXPERIENCE-BASED SOCIAL AND COLLABORATIVE PERFORMANCE IN AN ‘ELECTRONIC VILLAGE’ OF LOCAL INTEREST: THE EKONEÎ

FRAMEWORK.

In Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Enterprise Information Systems - HCI, pages 117-122

DOI: 10.5220/0002381101170122

 SciTePress

coalition for as long as the service is offered; and

finally they are dynamically created through the

collaboration between members to fulfil a temporal

problem (or demand).

In this paper, we present initial findings and

work in progress with regards to the organizational

model of eΚοΝΕΣ-Tourism and the architectural

underpinnings of the virtual organization. To

illustrate the concepts we present a working

scenario. The next section provides a contextual

account of an eΚοΝΕΣ electronic village. Then we

focus on design-oriented aspects of the running

prototype emphasizing interactive embodiment of

eΚοΝΕΣ communities and collaborative work

practices. Finally, we draw some conclusions and

discuss on-going R&D activities.

2 THE VIRTUAL

ORGANIZATION

eΚοΝΕΣ in its basic form seeks to provide the

fabrics for community problem solving by fostering

tight collaboration between multi-sector virtual

teams. A multi-sector collaboration is a partnership

formed by representatives of at least two sectors

(non-profit, private, and public organizations and

community members) to solve problems that impact

the whole community. It is a form of a virtual

organization (Davidow & Malone, 1992)

characterized by the fact that its members belong to

different organizations, and that they all work

together during a period of time to realize a common

goal. A virtual organization is defined as a

geographically distributed organization whose

members are bound by a long or short-term common

interest or goal, and who communicate and

coordinate their work through information

technology and tools (Dustdar & Gall, 2003).

Members of virtual organizations assume well-

defined roles within the context of the virtual group

that are independent of their role in the organization

employing them. Recent studies show that with the

emergence of information technology, virtual

organizations become more and more interesting in

today’s form of business. Vartiainen discusses

dimensions types and characteristics of virtual

organizations (Vartiainen et al., 2001). Jarvenpaa did

empirical research on trust and communication

(Jarvenpaa et al., 1998) and Lethbridge proposed a

taxonomy of virtual organisations (Lethbridge et al.,

2001).

The design of eΚοΝΕΣ exhibits several novel

characteristics, which differentiate an eΚοΝΕΣ-

based electronic village from other forms of on-line

communities and virtual organizations. First of all,

eΚοΝΕΣ is not only concerned with computer-

mediated communication, but instead, it seeks to

provide an environment for harnessing knowledge in

collaborative settings. Consequently, its primary

focus is to enable virtual teams to reach high

stabilization and perform tasks. To achieve this,

eKoNEΣ builds on a range of technologies,

including semantic web technologies, groupware

and advanced Human Computer Interaction.

Secondly, eΚοΝΕΣ adopts a knowledge-based and

reuse-oriented model to attain high quality during

the performance of collaborative tasks. This model

is stimulated from the notion of software factories

(Aaen et al., 1997) and in particular the concept of

an experience factory (Basili, et al., 1993) extended

to facilitate social and collaborative workflows

biased towards information exchange, learning and

experience sharing and new product development.

2.1 eKoNEΣ as an Experience Factory

From a functional point of view, an eΚοΝΕΣ

electronic village operates as an experience factory

to facilitate the operation of eΚοΝΕΣ squads. The

basic architecture of such an experience factory is

depicted in and is adapted from the original

formulation of the experience factory (Basili, et al.,

1993). Parallels are to be drawn between the

software development organization and the

experience organization in the original formulation

of the experience factory and our notions of an

eΚοΝΕΣ squad and eKoNEΣ experience

organization respectively. However, the processes

being executed by an eΚοΝΕΣ squad are different

from those designated in the experience factory.

Similarly, the eKoNEΣ experience organization

depicts domain-specific functions and workflows as

shown in

Figure 1.

eKoNEΣ squad organization

Formation process

Storming & setting targets

Norming stage

eΚοΝΕΣ experience organization

eKoNES

administrator

Performing to achieve

mission using own tools

and practices

Performance &

execution plans

Workflows

• Initialize

• Elaborate

• Deploy

• Tailor

Experience

base

Analyzing experiences

Problem

description

Context-

specific

advice

Tools &

processes

Data

Feedback

Squad member’s environment

Figure 1: eKoNEΣ as an experience factory.

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2.1.1 eΚοΝΕΣ Squad Organization

The term squad is used to denote a small group of

people acting as a team for a specified period to

fulfil a particular mission. Members of an eΚοΝΕΣ-

Tourism squad typically come from different sectors

(i.e., transport, hotels entertainment, cultural

heritage) to provide owned resources towards

meeting a set target. Their work is mission-driven

and their mission either succeeds or fails, which

implies a clear measurability of their tasks. In due

time, an eΚοΝΕΣ squad may change in form and

structure depending on contextual and circumstantial

factors (i.e. a member may be temporarily

unavailable or unwilling to commit further

resources).

The lifecycle of an eΚοΝΕΣ squad follows

typical stages indicated by sociological research into

small group activities (Tuckman 1965). A squad is

dynamically formed on the grounds of matching

mission-specific requirements against members’

deposited resources. Dynamic formation does not

ensure stabilization and effective performance.

Instead, empirical evidence suggests that group

stabilization is strongly correlated with the group’s

ability to effectively move from the initial forming

and storming stages into norming and performing. In

other words, a group’s degree of stabilization

becomes higher as the group progressively moves

from forming (i.e. trying out activities, expression of

opinions), to storming (i.e., resolving conflicts) and

into norming (i.e. enfolding group coherence, setting

group objectives) and performing (i.e. carrying out

activities towards the group’s mission).

To reach the performing stage, eΚοΝΕΣ squads

are engaged in a variety of computer-mediated

interactions. These vary in complexity depending on

the group’s lifecycle stage. Thus, as the group

moves from initial to more advanced stages, the

demands upon technological tools increase since the

type of exchanges and communication patterns

between group members become more complex,

targeted and task-oriented to address less well-

understood or ill-structured problems (Simon, 1973).

During these stages, information flows are more

complex, as they typically extent beyond simple

message exchanges (i.e., expression of opinion) to

encompass constructions and artefacts in a variety of

forms, including new models, packaged experience,

argumentation, etc.

2.1.2 eΚοΝΕΣ Experience Organization

The eΚοΝΕΣ administrator (see Figure 1 ), which is

typically a role undertaken by a human and

augmented by computer-based tools, serves two

supporting functions. The first is to act as an

experience broker mediating between the virtual

assets of an eΚοΝΕΣ electronic village and the

active eΚοΝΕΣ squads. In this capacity the eΚοΝΕΣ

administrator offers advice on problem solving

strategy, tools, and best practices, based on existing

experiences. The second function of the eΚοΝΕΣ

administrator is acting as a silent critic to mine the

data generated by a squad as it works to accomplish

its set targets and to codify these data in the form of

persistent new knowledge. The tools supporting the

eΚοΝΕΣ administrator’s work range from simple

communications-oriented tools to model building

and advanced activity awareness visualization.

The essence of the eKoNEΣ experience is

codified in an evolving domain-specific ontology,

using Protégé (http://protege.stanford.edu/). In the

current version of the eΚοΝΕΣ-Tourism ontology,

member categories such as residence, transportation,

entertainment, cultural heritage, etc., constitute the

electronic village’s community neighbourhoods.

Each category is specialized into sub-classes

representing structure of a neighbourhood. Shared

resources deposited by members are of two types

namely Advertisements and Packages. An

advertisement is either an Announcement or a

Question posed to the shared message board. A

question represents a variety of action-response acts

between squad members and is modelled through a

single parameterized template. On the other hand,

there are various templates for announcements. All

templates are instances of the Template_Layout

class and may comprise resources of various types

(e.g., images, text, etc) to facilitate device-specific

presentation of announcements or questions

depending on the user’s context of use. Of particular

interest is the eΚoΝΕΣ resource of type Package

which represents the collaborative outcome of an

eΚοΝΕΣ squad. These are resources, which do not

pre-exist, but are compiled to serve demand for a

new package. The knowledge of types Package,

Question, Announcement together with the

Presentation_layout_info constitutes the primary

reusable experiences of the currently operational

eΚοΝΕΣ experience factory.

eΚοNEΣ packages become persistent following

distinct package lifecycle stages (or workflows) as

identified in the eΚοΝΕΣ experience organization

(see Figure 1). In the package initiation stage, the

package subclass hierarchy is extended by creating

an instance of an abstract package. At the same time

eΚοΝΕΣ-Tourism forms an eΚοΝΕΣ squad

comprising all members with registered services

contributing to the package. During the package

EXPERIENCE-BASED SOCIAL AND COLLABORATIVE PERFORMANCE IN AN ‘ELECTRONIC VILLAGE’ OF

LOCAL INTEREST: THE EKONES FRAMEWORK

119

elaboration stage members of an eΚοΝΕΣ squad

seek to populate a designated package with all

possible or alternative offerings. The elaboration

stage resolves conflicts and collates alternatives into

concrete package offering. At the end of this stage

the package has been agreed and becomes an active

eΚοΝΕΣ resource. Following this, the package is

released and published to all registered end users.

Package personalization and tailoring is the stage

where end users (i.e. customers) are exposed to the

package and adapt the package so as to reflect own

preferences.

2.2 eΚοΝΕΣ Architecture

Figure 2 presents the functional architecture of such a

virtual organization, distinguishing between three

types of knowledge, namely the shared resources

(eΚοΝΕΣ Content) deposited by members (content

providers), eΚοΝΕΣ packages (new artefacts and

knowledge resulting from collaborative activities)

and the eΚοΝΕΣ experience base (the accumulated

wisdom for reuse), all modelled through the

eΚοΝΕΣ ontology. The workflow layer implements

the eΚοΝΕΣ collaboration model which is used to

harness new content elements and to deliver them as

packages to potential customers.

eKoNEΣ

packages

Customers

eKoNEΣ message

board

eΚοΝΕΣ squad

XML, SOAP

eKoNEΣ

Content

Collaborative

objects

Collaborative

spaces

ekonEΣ experience factory and work flows

Multiple

User

interface

Multiple

User

interface

eKoNEΣ

experience

base

Persistent

Data S tores

Figure 2: eΚοΝΕΣ electronic village architecture.

3 REPRESENTATIVE SCENARIO

To illustrate some of the concepts described thus far

and to provide insight into the technical features of

eΚοΝΕΣ-Tourism, we will briefly describe a

representative scenario emphasizing the

collaborative exchanges undertaken by an eΚοΝΕΣ

squad to fulfil an articulated demand by creating a

new package. Our reference scenario is summarized

in Exhibit 1. Once such a request is registered,

eΚοΝΕΣ-Tourism triggers several parallel activities

to create an eΚοΝΕΣ resource to fulfil the demand.

Some of these activities reuse previously acquired

knowledge and available experience while others

require eΚοΝΕΣ member to engage in a variety of

collaborative exchanges through the eΚοΝΕΣ

squad’s collaboratorium (see section 3.2).

3.1 Package Development Workflow

The workflows involved in the package

development lifecycle aim to facilitate the

transformation of an abstract package description

into a concrete resource. Depending on the

workflow the demands placed upon the squad differ

both in terms of communication patterns and

content. We will first briefly review these workflows

and then describe the squad’s collaboratorium.

3.1.1 Initiation Stage

Once a demand for a new package is posed to the

eKoNEΣ-Tourism, a filtering mechanism constructs

an abstract package description in XML and assigns

to it a collaboration space where members can work

to fulfil the package details. Initially, the package is

assigned a name, creation date, duration and a list of

the domain-specific categories of interest (culture,

residence) as defined by the end user when

registering his/her interest. Further details are filled-

in as the package proceeds from initiation to

elaboration and deployment. The second parallel

activity, taking place during package initiation is the

creation of an eΚοΝΕΣ squad. Squad formation is

depicted in

Figure 3. The top left-hand side dialogue

lists the active packages. Upon selection of a

package, the XML-based package description can be

used to compile alternative views of a package (see

augmented tree-like view on the left and graphic

view on the right). At this stage the package is still

abstract, while squad formation is in progress.

Exhibit 1: Fred has just purchased a package for a two-

week vacation in a popular resort in Greece. However, as he

is interested in history and culture he would like to spend a

few days visiting archaeological sites nearby his vacation

destination. He comes across the eKoNEΣ-Tourism which

allows Fred to specify a request for a new package. Indeed,

Fred creates an account with eΚοΝΕΣ and subsequently

registers his request. In a few seconds, the system returns

back with a message confirming the registration of the

request and the initiation of a process to fulfil the request.

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Figure 3: A package in its initiation phase.

3.1.2 Elaboration Stage

In the elaboration stage, the objective is to populate

a package in terms of specific activities.

Figure 4

provides an instance of an interactive package

elaboration scenario. As shown for each day of the

package, the administrator assigns the activities to

take place. These activities may overlap depicting

package alternatives to be specified later on or

selected by an end user during the stage of tailoring

and personalizing the package.

Figure 4: Package elaboration stage.

All activities in a designated day are represented as

selectable objects differentiated by colour depending

on their type. Activity details can be reviewed and

updated as a result of partner messages published in

the message board. New activities can also be

introduced, thus updating the specific package. At

any time during the elaboration phase an overview

of the entire package can be obtained.

3.1.3 Deployment Stage

In the deployment stage an abstract new package is

transformed into a concrete offering with clear

illustration of package options and offers per

activity. Typical squad contributions during this

stage may range from placing bids, making offers,

resolving conflicts, to depositing new resources, etc.

These exchanges take the form of announcements or

questions through the shared message board and

result in updates in the package description or

declaration of pending issues requiring agreement.

Such information is persistent and can be retrieved

as in

Figure 5.

Figure 5: Package deployment phase.

Once the details of the package are agreed and

finalized, the package is published as a new resource

through the eKoNEΣ portal using a suitable

template.

3.1.4 Tailoring and Personalizing

In this stage eΚοΝΕΣ-Tourism acts either as an

information service, presenting options to the

customer and processing further requests s/he may

have or as a B2C mediator undertaking transaction-

oriented services (e.g., booking, payment clearance,

etc). Specifically, once the package is published end

users can register their interest in the package. Since

the package is fully populated, end users can access

it through a variety of devices with clear indication

of the tailoring that the user can undertake. The user

may request further modifications of the package by

submitting requests through the message board and

asking the eΚοΝΕΣ administrator and the package

squad to consider specific issues. This process may

be iterated until a personalized package is created to

suit specific user needs and preferences.

EXPERIENCE-BASED SOCIAL AND COLLABORATIVE PERFORMANCE IN AN ‘ELECTRONIC VILLAGE’ OF

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121

3.2 eKoNEΣ Squad’s Collaboratorium

Having described the package development

workflow, we will now briefly examine the social

dynamics which characterize distinct phases of an

eΚοΝΕΣ squad as it moves from the forming stage

to storming, norming and performing (i.e.

contributing to the package development). An

eΚοΝΕΣ squad once formed meets virtually to

accomplish a variety of goals. These goals range

depending on the squad’s lifecycle stage resulting in

different actions on behalf of the squad members. It

is very important for administrators to be able to

review the squad’s achievements and failures per

lifecycle stage, thus complementing the package

workflow-oriented view presented earlier. For

instance

Figure 3 depicts the composition of a squad

at the package initiation phase. However, this may

change in due course as certain partners may have

decided to withdraw. For the administrator, it is

useful know why this has happened and what

implications it may have on the package. To this

end, the eΚοΝΕΣ collaboratorium (see

Figure 6) and

the message board, allow users to trace activities

realized across distinct lifecycle stages of the squad.

Figure 6: Review of forming stage.

4 DISCUSSION & FUTURE

WORK

In this paper we have attempted to sketch the

organizational underpinnings of eΚοΝΕΣ-Tourism –

a pilot effort aiming to build a local electronic

village on tourism. Our primary design target is to

set up an operational model for carrying out

mission-specific social and collaborative activities

and to support this model with appropriate software

platform and tools. In this effort, we have drawn

upon sociological theory describing small group

activities to understand the social dynamics in

virtual teams and recent models for experience-

based and reuse-oriented organizational engineering.

On going work covers a variety of issues of both

technological and organizational engineering

character. Some of the technological issues to be

addressed in the immediate future include scaling up

of collaborative exchanges across different platforms

(i.e. mapping schemes for platform-specific

presentation), improved visualizations for activity

awareness, and the development of multiple user

interfaces to allow concurrent access and review of

shared resources using different devices. On the

organizational engineering front, the issues pending

attention include operational aspects of eΚοΝΕΣ-

Tourism such as extensions in the basic

collaboration model to establish on-line quality

manuals, mentoring, support for negotiation, etc.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The project eΚοΝΕΣ is co-funded by the General

Secretariat for Research & Technology, Greek

Ministry of Development, (Operational Programme

of Crete).

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