Putting things in context

Putting things in context

T: “Lizzzzzzz, what do ye mean by context?” (I ignore the question as I become automatically deaf to people calling me Liz)

T: “Oy!!, bird in red sitting beside MY fireside drinking MY tea, context, what’s that?”.

T is a best bestie mate from the homeland was reading the KnowledgeMill website as our sons lay belly down on his huge living room rug making up the rules of draughts as they went along.

‘What is context’ is one of those questions like ‘what is algebra’. The concept is simple enough but the application of that simple concept can get very complex. Ever since I joined KnowledgeMill, I have read an awful lot of interpretations of context, some of them more awful than the rest. Most make the mistake of over-complicating their answer by describing the usage of context rather than what it is in its simplest form. I mean, if someone asked you what algebra was, you would not answer: “Algebra is the system by which you work out equations like – (If (x)= 2x + 2 and g(x)= x to the power of 2 – 4x +2, what is the exact value(s) for which f(x)=g(x))f”  That is not the wrong answer, it is just over complicated.

Before I tell you what I told T (and how hard I slapped him for calling me a bird), can I time-machine you WAAAYYY back to a Maths class? In this class, I was 12 years of age. Our teacher was Miss McGuiness, she of the mad curly hair and madder Belfast accent. On the day of this seminal class, she came in like a small whirlwind of rapidly opened doors and striped clothes to introduce our class to algebra. “Listen to me now” she said “if you have never listed to me before and never listen to me again, it does not matter as long as you listen to me now and understand this simple relationship between letters and numbers”. She then taught our class to understand algebra A-Z and 1-10, most of it within 40 mins. She managed this feat by making the idea of algebra something easy to understand. She started by telling us that the letter in an algebra equation always represented an unknown number. She also taught me that the best way to teach a complicated concept was to start with simplicity and work up from there.

Did I say she was an amazing teacher? No, you’re right, I didn’t, that is because amazing would not have covered it. She was *the teacher* *the one* who made me (and 29 others in various states of nose picking and spot bursting slumber) get *it*. She was the teacher Robin Williams would have portrayed if Dead Poets Society had been called Dead Mathematicians Society and he was playing a charismatic six counties woman with a penchant for multicoloured knitwear.

So how does this relate to context and my answer to my friend with the recently thumped shoulder? Well, T. asked what context was in terms of our (KM’s) contextual tool. Yes, before you ask or wonder, I am the first in line to admit that “contextual tool” does sound like another way of phrasing ‘pedantic idiot’ but there you go. In comparison though, it is not the worst terminology that IT has lumbered the world with. I still have a small internal giggle over ‘dongle’ and ‘CRUD’. Don’t even get me started on how hard I have to bite my lip whenever anyone mentions ‘mounting a drive’ ….

Anyhow, coming back to the subject in hand (ok, ok, I’ll stop now) here was my answer: In IT, Context is a group of information that belongs together.

Expanding out the idea, Context is like a human body with a heart, veins, blood, skin, bones, eyes, teeth and hair. Everything in that context relates to each other, reacts to each other and interacts with each other. However, without the understanding of a person as a common denominator, the purpose of that interaction (the context) will not take place or make sense.

In the real world, the word context is used as a scale of proportion of related issues e.g. Someone closed the door on my hand and it hurt like cresus but taken in context against Ranulph Fiennes who had five fingers die slowly of frostbite, it was a nothing …. barely worth a mention ….

In IT, there is no scale of proportion. There is just the linking of related information. Once you decide on the basis of a link and start adding information to it you have the beginnings of a context. Once you have a piece of information linked, it is contextualised.

The start of the context could be an email, the middle is made up of more emails, forms, tasks, documents, Notes, RSS feeds, journal entries, blog posts, data files, legacy systems documents, IM conversations, Web pages and reports. There, you have your context in all its forms linked together by a common interaction. All you are missing is a way to present them all together for someone who wants to see the information displayed in the same place for simple understanding and complex analysis.

So how do you assemble all the information necessary to create a context? There are two ways – manually and automatically.

The manual method relies on all parties to a context sharing the information they have on that context in a common place like a file share. Obviously this method is subject to all the foibles and forgetfulness of the humans involved. Imagine a company newbie coming into a multi-million dollar project that has 2500 related emails, 1500 related attachments, 2000 project related documents, 1000 RSS feed items …. Also, imagine that that company are relying on human competence to ensure that all this information was saved to where it was expected to be. So in the case where 20 people are party to one email, either 20 copies of the email will be filed or none if everyone is expecting “Mr. Someone Else” (He has an office on the 13th and a half floor) to file it.

The automatic method is based on rules like the solution that KM have developed. You feed our product a call (the rules) on what do with nominated information (file or not file) You tell it how to file the information (which flavour of software to use) You tell it how to treat the information once filed (should it be linked to other relevant information) You tell it when to file the information and where to do it (how you want the information organised) You can also tell it who has access to all this information once it is organised. You also tell the system how long you want that information retained for. The system is also clever enough to de-duplicate all 20 copies of the email in the above scenario so only one copy is saved to the database cutting down 19/20ths of your storage costs for one piece of data alone. Job done. Yes really.

I am not saying our solution to email filing and contextualisation is the perfect one, far from it. I have read posts before with people claiming that their product was all that and more. These sorts of posts usually make me want to tear out my eyeballs and bounce them off the opposite wall. Our product has its shortcomings. For instance, our resident “geniuses” have yet to work out how to get KMCS to make you a fresh strong coffee when started up. Thinking about it logically, anyone with a huge volume of electronic data to organise needs two things; the software capable of doing the organisation effectively and efficiently and a mug of hot and caffeinated to drink while the software gets on with it.

I have logged a user story pointing this out and boy, am I looking forward to testing that stage of product development. Wonder if I can get mine with Devon cream?