VIRTUAL FIRE-PROTECTION COMMUNITY

In the first part of the paper, the authors presented the problems which our subjects from the fire-protection area in their beginnings, development and work encounter. As a solution which the authors suggest is the use of the Internet, as a medium that provides a simple, easy and cheap overcoming the geographical and time barriers in the flow of the (necessary) information. While building the site that should offer assistance to the FP subjects, it is necessary to define the goals and to build a strategy to achieve the goals through internet site. In this paper the authors suggested several possible approaches: Web site with statistic contents, Web site with dynamic contents, Web site with dynamic contents and two-way flow of information and Web site for knowledge management. VFPC (virtual fire-protection community) would be a legal counsel, a dot-com company, and basically a community of all stake-holders considering FP. So, VFPC does not have its own premises or assets. It is situated in a "virtual reality", i.e. it is a Web portal which exists owing to joint activity of several subjects.


Introduction
At the European summit held in Lisbon in March 2000. [1], and at the Summit of Europe held in Barcelona in March 2002. [2], it was concluded that in the modern society which is based on the knowledge and in where the organizational environment is changing with hectic pace, information and knowledge are the key factors in promoting innovations in order to achieve competence and success. In the conclusions brought in Barcelona it is said that one of the goals of Europe is to achieve "a competitive society based on knowledge", concentrating on the education through systems of training, quickly adjusting to "the demands of the knowledge society and needs to improve the quality level of the employees". These goals have to be achieved with the improvements in "qualification basics, development of computer literacy and lifelong training". Similar conclusions can be found in the UNICE Benchmarking Report 2000 (see ex. [3]). As opposed to everything mentioned above, our subjects from the fire-protection area meet with a lot of problems in their beginnings, development and work where they would need an adequate help:

How
to provide above mentioned assistance in an adequate way to those who need it? It is possible to follow the business logics of our government concerning the development of small and medium companiesfoundation of (business) incubators, i.e. centers that would support the development and growth of the subjects from FP area. This demands significant financial investments in the infrastructure of the centre, business premises, equipment and staff. Besides this, geographical distance between the centers and those who would use their assistance makes the efficiency and efficacy of the work of the centre difficult and raises the question of its appropriateness.
The possible solution is the use of the Internet, as a medium that provides a simple, easy and cheap overcoming the geographical and time barriers in the flow of the (necessary) information. While building the site that should offer assistance to the FP subjects, it is necessary to define the goals and to build a strategy to achieve the goals through internet site. The following approaches are possible:

 Web site with statistic contents:
Information interested to the FP subjects would be put on this site, and they would be classified in the appropriate areas that would be occasionally updated with the help of the information technology staff. The purpose of this site is offering necessary information.  Web site with dynamic contents and two-way flow of information: from the technical aspect, this site functions as the previous one, except that the goal is qualitatively new: it is no longer offering information to the users, but exchanging information between site editors and users, and users with each other. Thus, the direction of information is multiple through this site, and there is a full (two-way) interaction among the users of this site.
 Web site for knowledge management: In order to define what are the goals and tasks set for a site like this one, it is necessary to define the notion of knowledge, and knowledge management. Knowledge is as old as the human race. But the story about the knowledge management begins in the late 90s of the 20 th century. A great interest and the practical maker of this whole story was the book written by the authors Nonaka, I., and Tekeuchi, H., "The Knowledge-Creating Company", Oxford University Press, New York, 1995. [4]. Under the influence of these two authors, as well as Tomas Dawenport, Karl Erik Svaiby, Edna Levinson, and many others, all in search of a way to accelerate technological progress and the progress of human society in general, knowledge has been identified as the main resource. There comes a change of the paradigm in most developed countries of the world -from the era of acquiring competitive advantage based on the holding information, developed world moves to the era of acquiring competitive advantage based on the ability of creating new knowledge. And the knowledge results in:  Basically, knowledge defined like this is the information that changes something or somebodyor it becomes a basis for an activity, or it makes a person (or an organization) capable for different or more efficient performance.
[8] The goal of knowledge management is to keep balance between implicit and explicit knowledge, and to direct them in order to achieve more innovations or better effectiveness (doing the right things) and efficiency (doing those things in the right way) [8]. www.japmnt.com In order to provide sharing of knowledge, and not only information on this web site, it is necessary that it serves for sharing complete (organizational) processes in which information are used, and for constant analysis, valuation and use of information and knowledge in order to create new knowledge that can lead to better effectiveness, efficiency and innovation. [9]  Virtual community is actually a Web site for knowledge management which sets qualitatively new goal: initiatives for knowledge management in a certain area are no longer partial and separate, but broad in all their dimensions. A site like this provides constant «on-line» sharing of all activities, processes, information and knowledge between all the participants in the chain of creating values from the domain to which virtual community belongs (in this case FP). In this way, knowledge that is otherwise «invisible» since it is divided into segments between different participants while creating new value in FP area, is now made visible [9]. Members of the community do not share only data, nor just information (information is a data put in the context). They also share knowledge (information «sunk» in a certain context), and business and organizational processes, routines and practical work, enabling faster creation of new knowledge, automation of innovation process and they also find new, more efficient products and services, and more efficient ways to deliver them to the user. This can be done by working together, and with everybody trying to perceive, define and solve problems.
[7]. VFPC-virtual fire-protection community would be dealing with all the above mentioned things with the aim defined specifically for virtual communities. VFPC would be a legal counsel, a dot-com company, and basically a community of all stakeholders considering FP. So, VFPC does not have its own premises or assets. It is situated in a "virtual reality", i.e. it is a Web portal whish exists owing to joint activity of: Web portal would consist of all those seven areas. Each of them would represent a separate portal page, and one permanently employed person as an editor and a needed number of parttime associate-editors would be responsible for each one of them. The number of permanent and part-time employees would change according to the need, the market interest and resources provided for an area.
www.japmnt.com One part of the contents of each area would be publicly accessible, and one part would be accessible only to those who have paid regular dues (monthly, or even annually). There would also be "safe-private" parts of the portal which would be accessible only to representatives of FP organizations who would ask for assistance and to the consultants who would provide them assistance. Therefore, the privacy of data and information would be divided into three safety levels:  Management -New Technologies, International Vol. 8, No3, 2020. 8 www.japmnt.com  All resources are better and used more qualitatively It is obvious that in a poor society which is still wandering on the road of transition, faced with a large number of problems, virtual community can be a significant way of sociological, trade, expert and scientific organization in FP area. It can be a driving force for innovations and for finding new, more effective and more efficient products, services and fire-protection processes.