July 2004 Archives

Dan Armstrong writes in the March 3 Baseline Magazine Six Degrees of Project Management (free registration to see expanded pdf) Human networks often cause more problems than technological ones. Break it down to that old game of Six Degrees. The article starts with the claim that the "most successful project teams...

I had never really given the term "grass roots" much thought, other than the usual media meaning of "coming up from the people." But in a conversation with some fellow KM travelers, the ideas of grassroots and social networks crossed paths quite nicely. One of my colleagues suggested the idea that...

Weblogs > I, Distributius - The information snowflake - consuming, collating, commenting, collaborating and creating" href="http://www.synop.com/Weblogs/Peter/PermaLink.aspx?guid=037a908b-fb8e-45aa-9d60-7995729ce4ca">The information snowflake - consuming, collating, commenting, collaborating and creating (edited) We spend a lot of time at Synop thinking about information and what happens to it. Richard and Nathan last year came up with...

Chuck Martin writes in the July Darwin Magazine, "Information Sharing: It's all about what you know - and what you choose to tell others." This fits with other ideas about community and how people work together.

Two interesting articles have come across my aggregator that remind me how important it is to have fun and to actively look for opportunities to throw my thoughts onto the waters. All 'nose to the grindstone' leaves me with a very flat face. Rebecca Ryan at Worthwhile Magazine, Thought is the...

Or maybe the subject shouild read "project network as a conversation." Patti Anklam posts an interesting comment about project networks in Project Team Analysis and SNA, which references an article by Dennis Smith, Network links go well beyond straight lines. To quote Patti: ... Dennis's insight, expressed well in the article,...

Jeremy Aarons is attempting to define the discipline of KM Research in scientific terms. I don't know how scientific I am, but I appreciate his acknowledging that the research has to have both theoretical and practical aims, rather than solely one or the other. I tend to focus on the practical,...

PlaNetwork Journal announces its inaugural issue. Along with the focus on "source code for global citizenship," they include a blog. I don't see a web feed for their articles. We are pleased to announce the inaugural issue of Planetwork Journal, a quarterly online publication for in-depth articles by those engaged in...

Of course, PKM isn't an all-or-nothing proposal. It's just that experience has taught that big "knowledge base" efforts don't seem to make it when it is the individuals within the organization that have to use the system. Or maybe it's just that the proposed benefits are never fully realized.

For the next two weeks, Józefa Fawcett will be the guest of honor at AOK's Star Series. This snippet sets the tone of On the Operational Level of Knowledge Management. ... I work at an operational level with regards KM (personal knowledge management PKM, knowledge-sharing KS, knowledge-creation KC, knowledge development KD)...

Just in case you forgot that I am a chemical engineer by training, here is a link to the 49th Annual (Safety in) Ammonia Symposium that showed up in my mailbox today.

Karl Nelson writes in his Information Management Weblog about Open Source Knowledge A few years back a professor I had talked about the shelf-life of knowledge. His point was that informaiton goes stale quickly, especially in the technology world. There isn't much value in keeping it locked away. The value, in...

There is a fellow who is attempting to visit every Starbucks on the planet.

Chuck Frey in today's InnovationTools newsletter gives an interesting suggestion for helping deal with all your extraneous project artifacts in How to use mind mapping software for project management. Among their primary suggestions are Idea file, Project objectives, Milestones, Questions, Information needs, Links to project resources, Define team roles and responsibilities,...

Uncertainty is a critical thing to understand and too many people seem to gloss over it. How much would it take to add uncertainty to your timelines and reports?

Joyce Wycoff reprints an excellent article from Mary Bartlett that I would have never found otherwise in Good Morning Thinkers!: "Four Agreements & Work."

[a very old article that never got published] I was referring to a graphic at work looking like a Spirograph on acid and decided to see what is available on the web. Besides the two versions of the toy avaible from Hasbro/Playskool, there is a web app from Anu Garg at...

I stumbled upon "Integration of business process support with knowledge management (Inka)" via some Google searching. The lead, Dr. Ilia Bider of IbisSoft takes the words out of my mouth. Knowledge management won't help until it is built into and supports the important processes in the business.

Amy Gahran has a different take on personal knowledge management, suggesting that it is more about Arranging Ideas: Knowledge Management in Human Terms: In my book, knowledge management boils down to arranging ideas. In other words, I prefer to view this as a real human process, not a technological or abstract...

[Discovered this unpublished draft from last September] Fortune: A Big Maker of Tiny Batches about Rockwell-Collins' operations: The virtual factory has had an unexpected effect on productivity. When a product arrives from another plant, it gets a fresh look. Besides a natural attitude of "anything they can do, we can do...

A very intriguing conference, and I can enjoy it from the comfort of my home. Integrating Knowledge in the Life Science Product Life Cycle - A Douglas Connect Life Sciences Virtual Conference, running 18-29 October 2004 The purpose of this conference is to examine and explore the state of progressive knowledge...

Bill Ives does a bang up job of tying together historical (back to Alexendria and Sumeria) development of knowledge to the issues faced by today's organization that are still struggling with the issue of helping knowledge workers do their jobs. This quote is from the conclusion of Part 6, but it's...

Jim McGee's "The grassroots are where knowledge management must begin" reminds me of discussions from Martin Roell and the recently-concluded discussion on Personal Knowledge Management "versus" Corporate Knowledge Management at AOK. I am also trying this idea with my colleagues and clients to some level of interest.

We think of online communication and community tools as something that groups use to work together. While this is true, people use these tools in isolation from the rest of the group. Spinning off ideas from Lilia, Nancy and others.

Tuesday's KMPro Chicago meeting was a great panel discussion on social networks and social network analysis with Stefan Lafloer of InsightKnowledge, Valdis Krebs, Konstantin Guericke of LinkedIn, and Shannon Clark of JigZaw and MeshForum. We had people participating at two gathering points in Chicago and several of the panelists on the...

When I rebuilt my blog last month, I managed to leave out or lose one third of my entries from the end of October through the end of January. I'm not sure what I did because they are all there in the export file I created. So, now I have re-imported those entries and they are available for all to see. Here are some of my favorites.

The 13 July meeting of KMPro Chicago will be a panel discussion with yours truly as the discussion leader. Participation will be both in person and virtual. Check the web for details. KMPro Chicago - July 13 Meeting Social Networking - A Discussion with a Panel of Experts In this unique...

Debra Amidon's Innovation Superhighway: harnessing intellectual capital for collaborative advantage is the subject of the July 2004 book club at KnolwedgeBoard The Innovation SuperHighway: Harnessing Intellectual Capital for Collaborative Advantage, by Debra M. Amidon. Join the one-hour online conversation with the author: 13 July, 14:00 BST, 15:00 CET, 09:00 USA East...

Dave Snowden and his Cynefin Centre amicably parted company with IBM. As of 5 July, the Cynefin Centre has become an independent research organization with a focus on Social Complexity, Open Source and Emergent Research. It will be interesting to watch what comes out of this research, particularly since I have...

An excellent story about project management reproduced in full. "We Drink The Cool-Aid Because That's All That's Being Served" by Tony Rizzo, Product Development Institute.

From an interview in the January 2003 Destination KM: Saving Millions while Improving Customer Service, Madanmohan Rao interviews Jennifer Saldanha of J.D. Edwards Q. What are the top three things you have learned about KM over the years? 1. Focus on business issues and value. KM platforms extend beyond the technical...