Sandia preserves knowledge on the desktop
A video content management solution is being used by Sandia National Laboratories to capture the knowledge of employees.
Sandia is using Screening Room software from Convera to manage electronic archives of videotaped interviews with staff.
In a recent press release, Convera says it has seen a trend among government and corporate entities toward the use of video as a means of preserving ideas and experiences. The idea of videotaping employees as part of a knowledge preservation initiative is gaining in popularity, the company maintains, because of the advent of streaming technology and media asset management software that enable organizations to manage, index and share such assets enterprisewide.
Sandia National Labs is operated by Sandia Corporation, a Lockheed Martin company, for the U.S. Department of Energy. It performs a wide variety of national security research and development work, including operating a training program for scientists, engineers and others tasked with designing, assembling and managing nuclear weapons. Several years ago, Sandia began to videotape conversations with many of its retired or soon-to-be retired nuclear weapons engineers so that future engineers and scientists could see and hear the specialists describe in their own words the systems and technologies that were developed to resolve complex problems.
Sandia’s new software digitizes, indexes and stores the videotape archives so that authorized users can access the content online, find the information they want in minutes and view the content from their desktop computers. Previously users had to travel to a central videotape library, pull the tapes they hoped would contain the right information, and then spend hours manually shuttling back and forth through the tapes.
“Many of the weapons and systems in use today will still be around long after the original designers are gone,” says John Tissler, Sandia’s Knowledge Preservation project leader. “We wanted the next generation of scientists and engineers, many of whom will be tasked with maintaining or disassembling these systems, to have information at their disposal that goes far beyond the basic manuals and diagrams.”
Sandia staff includes senior scientific advisors, weapons engineers and technicians, experts in nuclear safety and high-explosive safety, health physicists, radiation control technicians, industrial hygienists, physical scientists, packaging and transportation specialists and other experts from the Department of Energy weapons complex.
According to Convera, Screening Room provides access to any video asset, whether analog or digital, from a Web browser. Users can capture video; browse visual summaries called storyboards; catalog content using metadata, annotations, closed caption text and voice sound tracks; search for precise video clips using text and image clues; create rough cuts and “Edit Decision Lists” for further production; and publish those video assets to the Web for streaming.