February 2004 Archives

I've decided to switch from Bloglines to NewsGator for my RSS aggregation, though Bloglines is still serving up my blogroll. Some discussion of why and the features of NewsGator, which operates within Outlook.

The March KMPro Chicago meeting will have Bob Hiebler of St. Charles Partners, and formerly of Arthur Anderson, speaking on "Best Practices in Knowledge Solutions" including material published in Best Practices: Building Your Business with Customer-Focused Solutions. When: 5pm, 9 March 2004 Where: Allstate in Northbrook and Factiva Details: KMPro Chicago...

In response to my post on Intranets take second place to public internet, Lilia commented about the work of Dick Stenmark at Götebord University, who has been doing some interesting work in this area. Stenmark discusses knowledge creation and how this may be enabled in an intranet in "Knowledge Creation and the Web: Factors Indicating Why Some Intranets Succeed Where Others Fail."

I just discovered ProQuest a library service that provides, among other things, fully-indexed historical newspaper archives in PDF format through their "ProQuest Historical Newspapers."

Mopsos is worried about his future at a company in which the culture has become rather hostile to knowledge sharing of any type. No future? Now I have a problem, and a big one. I don't see any executive in this company who would accept to be a role model for...

Dina is having some interesting discussions with a client about what they really want from their infrastructure, not just the KM system: Revisiting the Intranet - Presence, Communication, Collaboration. In response to a "what would you like" question, the client says: I know X is not here in my office (in...

I'm going to be in Seattle next week, and I expect to have some down time. Anyone interested in getting together for some coffee (or is that passe by now in Seattle?) or other means of facilitating discussion? Drop me a line, or leave a comment....

I am sure you are all hanging on my laptop purchase, but I decided to pick up the Sony Z1 from our local CDW. It has all the features I need (5+ hr battery, ram, processor, screen size, 802.11b and Bluetooth), and it is amazing how bright and the screen can...

Martin Dillon of Dominican University's Library Science department gave an overview of knowledge management at a joint meeting of Special Library Association / Society of Competitive Intelligence Professionals. The answer to the question, "Panacea or Passe?" was less interesting than the topic appeared. Dillon thinks KM will remain a force in...

Joe Lieberman (contender for the 2004 US Democratic presidential nomination) proposed the creation of a new American Center for Cures in May 2003, and it has been getting some coverage in the media of late. A friend (my lawyer, actually) sent me a note about it because they referenced a knowledge...

Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering Brain: Pinky, Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering? Pinky: I think so Brain but what if we stick to the seat covers? For those people who enjoy twisted humor, strange accents and mice, the Animaniacs Pinky and The Brain was an excellent combination. My wife...

For people who don't read the Critical Chain Yahoo group, David Anderson describes a revelation he had watching one of my favorite Christmas TV shows back in December. Some Holiday Constraints: I was watching the DVD of Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer with my daughter last night. I was amused to...

If you want to talk about Personal Knowledge Management (or Inter-Personal Knowledge Management), David Gurteen is the AOK STAR Series for the next two weeks. Most people equate PKM to PIM (Personal Information Management). They talk about it in terms of personal competences and as being able to do such things...

Focus on what is important. Parkinson's Law is usually quoted as "The work expands to fill the time available." This is a slightly different take on the law. Maybe Parkinson's corollary. Why should I care what color the bikeshed is? The really, really short answer is that you should not. The...

Curt Rosengren has been talking about looking toward the future, and he now has a post on Make a Success Journal: In my recent post on an article on creating your own luck, I mentioned one of the action items the author suggested...creating a success journal. It was a great reminder...

Timeris asks an interesting question, based on some discussion of creating a business: Is Knowledge Worker a Knowledge Capitalist? Knowledge, that is often referred to as intellectual capital, is used by the knowledge worker to create value, just like an entrepreneur does with money capital. And, eventually, productivity is created value....

Column Two has found a survey result that probably isn't terribly surprising for people who work in large firms. Intranets take second place to public internet: Altas Ventures has publicised the results of a recent survey comparing the internet and internet as sources of information for staff. To quote:Despite heavy investment...

IBM have a nice website for finding computers that meet my criteria.

Jevon at Laudably posts on the threat represented by cultures where silence reins supreme. No one speaks, even when they know something is wrong. A couple HBR articles inspire this discussion.

Jay Cross of Internet Time Blog posts his article from CLO Magazine Personal Intellectual Capital Ultimately, you're responsible for the life you lead. It's up to you to learn what you need to succeed. That makes you responsible for your own knowledge management, learning architecture, instructional design and evaluation. This quick...

Dennis Kennedy has some thoughts about "The Continuing Search for a Personal KM Solution." Given the hypothetical case of receiving email with attachments or "interesting" links to new information, Dennis is trying to figure out the best way to deal with this.

The Chicago Software Association held a seminar today on Why Projects Fail and What You Can Do About It with three speakers who focused on different aspects of the question. All three agreed on the main theme: Communication, early and often, is critical to successful projects.

This is a real time-filler. These folks have been collecting photo stories of a mini Steve Jobs. My friend Howard took his mini to Ecuador. The DealMac Project...

"There is too much information to pile it on the floor." Marjorie Hlava of Access Innovations an excellent overview of the state-of-the-art with taxonomies, including both basic background and discussion of where and how taxonomies are used in the business world. For those that don't know, taxonomy is generally a hierarchical...

To be accepted and helpful, knowledge management has to create benefit at many levels: individual, group and organization. I like to think of this a making the wheels of the business turn faster or with less friction.

Holt Uncensored gives us a discussion of Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See (But Can Easily Fix When They Do)Repeats Flat writing Empty adverbs Phony language No-good suffixes The 'to be' words Lists Show, don't tell Awkward phrasing Commas [via curious frog]...

Here is a (not terribly pretty) Social Network Diagram for Peter Drucker from namebase.org that connects people and associations based on book citations. The database isn't comprehensive, or there would be hundreds of connections to Drucker, but it is a "fun" idea....

Denham Grey asks if there is a KM sub-culture? based on a Brint posting of 58 Top KM Contributors. There is a whole league of influential KM folks that seem to operate below the Brint radar. Here I'm thinking of on-line players and personal (blog) publishers... It turns out that this...

Glacial Erratics has a very detailed article on How I Handle Email that covers a range of issues from servers to filters to rules for reading. His aim is to cover all mail processing tasks. First off, information handling is not an arena where the poor craftsperson may blame their tools...

EEK Speaks writes on Lurkers: "Are Lurkers Bad?" Interesting thoughts about community and shared context with respect to the people who aren't talking out loud.

Martin Dugage has some interesting thoughts on What's wrong with KM Software? What these approaches fail to understand is both technical and social. Technically, there is now far more storage capability at the edges of the network than there is at the center, as P2P software has taught us, yet vendors...

Valdis Krebs has extended his analysis of book buying habits, originally written a few years ago: The Social Life of Books: Visualizing Communities of Interest via Purchase Patterns on the WWW One of the cardinal rules of human networks is "Birds of a feather flock together". Friends of friends become friends,...

From Wall Stree Journal Online, Jeanette Borzo writes Get the Picture Executives in a broad range of industries around the world are finding that information-visualization software helps them make critical business decisions by cutting through information overload. Instead of wading through endless spreadsheets and text analyses, executives can get a quick...

I had lunch today with my lawyer at a Chinese restaurant, and what should appear as my fortune Discontent is the first step in the progress of a man or a nation....

The next KMPro Chicago meeting will be February 10 with Marjorie M.K. Hlava, speaking on Taxonomies and Metadata. The growth of internet technologies and the threat of information overload have contributed enormously to the adoption of taxonomies in corporate settings, but there is still a great deal of confusion about what...

An article from John Hagel III and John Seely Brown on the growing capability of information technlogy to take us from productivity enhancement to innovation enhancement.

From BetterManagement.com: Knowledge Exchange and Knowledge Creation: Should the Emphasis Shift in a Competitive Environment? (pdf) by INSEAD authors Elie Ofec and Miklos Sarvary discusses how consulting firms have responded to the market downturn and how other firms might respond as well. There are two extremes represented in the paper. Either...

Last year I took the 12-week Dale Carnegie course that covers their five drivers: Self-Confidence, Human Relations, Leadership, Public peaking, and Overcoming Fear & Worry. I really enjoyed it and found the concepts a great extension to what I have been doing in my life. A few weeks ago, the instructor...

Everyone has a different approach to their life and their work, so they have different needs from an approach to managing knowledge.

I always find Denham Grey's writings worth a couple of reads. Knowledge-at-work: The KM spectrum is another good piece: Everyone positions themselves somewhere along the spectrum from knowledge creation (awareness, learning, community) to intellectual capital (knowledge assets, branding, knowledge exchanges). Through long exposure, I have come to recognize my passions and...