Practical Aspects of Knowledge Management

The biennial PAKM Conference Series o?ers a communication platform and meeting ground for practitioners and researchers involved in developing and deploying advanced business solutions for the management of knowledge in - ganizations. PAKM is a forum for people to share their views, exchange ideas, develop new insights, and envision completely new kinds of knowledge mana- ment solutions. PAKM2008,the7thInternationalConferenceonPracticalAspectsofKno- edge Management, was held in Yokohama, Japan, for the ?rst time. Although all past PAKM conferences were held in Europe (Basel and Vienna), the PAKM Steering Committee decided two yearsago that the PAKM conferenceshould be "e;on tour"e;: it should be organized by di?erent people and be hosted in di?erent places all over the world. For this year's conference we received 62 submissions from 23 countries and 3 reviewers were assigned to one paper from the members of the Program C- mittee and the additional reviewers. Thus 23 good papers were selected. They cover a great variety of approaches to knowledge management, which tackle the topic from many di?erent angles. It is this very diversity that makes PAKM unique, while at the same time focusing on the one issue of managing knowledge within organizations. Many people were involved in setting up PAKM 2008. We would like to express our warm thanks to everybody who contributed to making it a success.