KnowNet is a small software, research and web services company located in Wales. It was founded in 2000 to research and develop new architectures, ideas and internet software for collaborative knowledge development and learning.

Our research, and the research of others, has led us to believe that innovation, learning and new knowledge are developed in a social context - through interaction, sharing and discourse among individuals and communities. Our basic approach differs fundamentally from conventional ideas of knowledge management based on document repositories, and of e-learning based on the digital delivery of learning materials. We believe that online technologies could be great enablers of learning and collaborative knowledge development, but that mainstream technology developments are failing to tap this potential. New ideas and new technological developments are needed. KnowNet is developing systems, applications and ideas to facilitate and enhance discourse within and between communities of knowledge workers/learners, and to support the negotiation of meanings around shared objects.

KnowNet is unusual in being a research and ideas organisation that produces working software used by real clients, and in being a software-development organisation which is deeply involved in theoretical work to understand how people collaborate to develop knowledge. We believe that both strands must be developed in concert if fundamental progress is to be made in enhancing online environments for knowledge work and learning.

Our approach to working with clients and partners is close, incremental co-development. Our clients and partners work very closely with us to understand the needs of the communities they promote, and also to understand what is possible with existing software and to plan and execute the creation of new software to meet their requirements. KnowNet has been very fortunate to have worked closely with some wonderfully creative and committed partners who share our view that our best way forward is to create re-usable components and solid core architectures wherever possible. This means that the work we do for one project can usually be folded back into the core platforms and features available to others.

KnowNet is completely committed to Open Source Software, both as a developer and as a research and advocacy organisation. Software developed by KnowNet is 100% open-source. We participate in many collaborations in open-source development, research and dissemination, and lead the SIGOSSEE project - a Special Interest Group in Open Source Software for Education in Europe. We are particularly interested in open-source development of innovative systems to support communities, learning and knowledge work; we believe that the open-source movement is the best hope for creating the kinds of innovative system required for collaboration and learning.

We are also committed to interoperability standards - for enhancing user experience and enabling the iterative, distributed development of powerful systems for online knowledge work. We work hard to make our systems co-operate well with basic web standards and architectural principals, and also to further the development and uptake of pertinent 'higher-level' standards for interoperating among the components of collaboration environments for knowledge-building and e-learning.

KnowNet is an active supporter of movements to use open-source software and open interoperability standards to create better online environments for collaborative work and learning. Since 2003, we have based our development efforts on Zope and Plone , and have considerable expertise in extending those open-source systems to provide effective collaboration and learning sites. We are about to begin releasing some open-source products which extend Plone in important ways to enhance its support for collaboration. Watch the products area for news about releases of those products. KnowNet also leads the SIGOSSEE project; go there for information and discussions about open-source and open standards movements for improving online learning and collaboration.

KnowNet's plans for the rest of 2005 are largely concerned with the release of several large-scale open-source products for Plone. The products section of the site will provide some details of our development plans. In brief, we are about to release two products in November or early December 2004: knotes, which provides tightly integrated and efficient discussion services and weblogs for Plone, and KNFastFolders, which provides a very effective interface for browsing and interacting with hierarchically structured content such as discussion threads, weblog archives and site content. We are also in the early stages of planning and designing a resource repository and structured metadata engine for Plone, which we hope we can also make able to interoperate with other platforms.

We hope, in 2005, to do more writing, organising, and 'blue-sky' architectural work, and less core software development. We will, though, be continuing to work hard on the improvement of our community sites and of the open-source tools and platforms available to learning and knowledge community builders. In particular, we are eager to do more work towards leveraging interoperability standards for e-learning within open-source platforms, and towards better interoperability between the open-source platforms. We have a lot of ideas about how to improve the sense of presence and action in discussion environments, and how to relate discussions with other content-development activities. We are also interested in exploring effective interfaces for eliciting re-usable structured documents from ordinary end-users. A longer-range goal is 'knase/moomie', an abstract architecture for fine-grained object-oriented messaging among interactive content components.

KnowNet was founded in 2000 by Mike Malloch, Graham Attwell, Rich Edwards and Oggy (Dr S) East. Since then, we have developed several generations of architectures and platforms designed to address some key issues in online collaboration. We will be writing up some more historical notes soon; please watch this space.