As part of my job as government consultant and collaboration guru I support a XMPP/Jabber pilot program. I'm also busy thinking about the subject of expertise location, since its a big concern for a 'corporation' as large as the 5-million plus strong US Department of Defense. So naturally I have to talk about a company that involves both of those things - Qunu. Qunu provides a Folksonomy-based categorization of expertise and a XMPP-based chat (instant message) tool that lets people with questions connect in real time to people ("experts") with answers: http://www.qunu.com/en/buttons.html
What I find most interesting about this tool is that it enables synchronous ("real time") expertise. The web already does a great job of providing asynchronous (time-delayed) expertise through bulletin boards, articles, corporate websites, and blogs like this one. Even Google answers, which promises live researchers to answer your questions (for a small fee) only delivers a not-quite-real-time response in 24 hours or less.
This real-time question is an interesting capability because it better replicates the process a lot of people follow right now - a phone call or a conversation with someone they know and trust who is an expert in the area of concern. The new feature here is the ability to first FIND someone who has an expert, and then initiate that conversation right away.Cool idea, but it raised more questions than it answered for me. I think they still have a lot of flaws to work through:
- Self-Tagging Bias- just because you say you are an expert doesn't make you an expert
- No Trust - Online trust is the currency that drives person-to-person interactions online. There is no way in Qunu to peer review the experts, or rank the advise you got. Can you imagine ebay without the rating system? Slashdot without karma?
- Dumb questions - Have you ever worked a help desk? If so, you realize that 95% of questions are repeats of questions you've answered before. Where's the mechanism for participants to say "You idiot! RTFM!"
- Expert Overload - if you really are an expert, you're likely to be a busy person. So, I suspect this system self-selects to bad, unbusy experts only
- No Reward - people volunteer their time for a lot of things. But for most folks, they want something in return. For Google answers, it's cash. For the open source community it's reputation. Sure, there are people who just contribute for entertainment, or for hubris. But enough to sustain a business model?
Not to rain on Quru's parade - its one of the more novel thoughts I've seem come out of the philosophical question of "what could you do if chat were as standard and ubiquitous as email?" But its still not my silver bullet for locating and leveraging expertise. darn.
1 comment:
Hi Paula,
thanks for mentioning Qunu - always nice to see someone deal with relevant and pertinent issues in an intelligent manner.
You raised five points:
Self-Tagging Bias- that's what our rating (feedback dialog at the end of the chat session) is there for. It's already being used for the ranking, just not shown with visual clues. This will change shortly. Not only will there be an indicator for their overall competence and friendliness, there will also be one that shows how many people agree with the expert's self-rating.
No Trust - you can rank the advice you got through the feedback dialog. Experts shown at the top are usually the best bets, just like google shows the most relevant links at the top.
Dumb questions -
1) My math teacher once said: "there is no such thing as a dumb question, only a dumb answer. "You idiot! RTFM!" would clearly fall under the latter. ;-)
2) I doubt experts would sign up if they were hostile towards dumb questions. They sign up because they want to help, and with that attitude... see 1) On a related note, there are sufficient places on th Net where you get insulted and shunted aside. We're trying to make Qunu a friendly place where anyone with a question has the opportunity to learn from an expert, perhaps to become one herself later on. It's about creating more masters, not about gathering more students, paraphrasing that old Zen saying.
3) In my experience as an expert I haven't had a single dumb question, so I don't think this is an entirely valid point. Perhaps I don't judge questions as dumb; they're only questions to me. Every 'touch point' is an opportunity to make friends or at the very least leave a positive impression - something the Dept. of Defense could do well with. ;)
4) We'll soon be rolling out an extended expert profile where they can opt only to accept chat requests from registered users or above/below a certain self-assessed level. Not only that, they can then also rate _the user_.
Expert Overload - Hmmm... had to bite my tongue a little here when reading about 'bad, unbusy experts only'. If that's been your experience with Qunu, then we'd like to know about this, otherwise it falls into the realm of mere speculation (which doesn't really belong here). I can't speak for others, but although I'm pretty busy all day, I'm never too busy to help out when someone is in need - be it a phone call, an email or or a Qunu help request. No trumpet to blow (we use Vuvuzelas down here in S.Africa ;-) but yhat's the type of person we aim to attract to Qunu. And... ass like attracts like, chances are that those asking for help aren't really dumb either, which addresses point #3.
Qunu, although it still looks rather basic, is actually quite smart. For instance, experts who've just been in a help session bubble down the results list, allowing others to bubble up. If you are in an active session, you don't show up in the results list at all. Again, I can only speak for myself, but in the past two months there was really only one day when it got a bit much, and that's when we got dugg. My take is that most experts would LOVE to have more 'traffic', and that's what we're working on as we speak.
No Reward - what constitutes reward, I ask? Money for some, recognition for others, seeing someone else struggle a little less or provide a solution for a -say- software problem for yet others. The monetary part is under development right now - remember that it's alpha.qunu.com for a reason. ;-) So... what you see now is not what will be there in a few weeks time. Whether it's sustainable remains to be seen, but at least it'll be the best way (currently) possible for someone looking for freelance work (that's handled outside Qunu) to get in touch with the person providing it. We'll be making the tools available, and we're confident that they'll be as warmly accepted by existing and new experts as Qunu, the service itself.
To summarize: we're on the ball. :-) We're constantly looking for feedback and constructive criticism, because that's what made Qunu into what it is today. The baby is two months old; give it some time to grow and mature.
Helmar (and the rest of the Qunu crew)
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