January 2006 Archives

I attended the Web2.0 and Communities distributed conference from CPSquare during the past four weeks. It was very instructive to me, as a person fairly well versed in the technology end of the spectrum. There are some lessons about online conferences to be learned as well.

Kaye Vivian has written up a list of concerns that managers have voiced over many conversations in her organization: "Managers Look at the Risks of KM." It's a great (or scary) list of barriers and concerns that need to be addressed for any big change project.

The next KM Chicago meeting will be 14 Feburary, at it's normal time from 5-7 pm. The topic is "KM in the Asia-Pacific region."

Malcolm Ryder has some fun with "Business Intelligence versus Business Knowledge: Who Cares?" I particularly like his thoughts about business intelligence, or more accurately, the process of seeing patterns in the constant wave of data, information and knowledge.

John Tropea has posted some thoughts on more advanced mechanisms to get recommendations, based on what you read and write. My best recommendation engine is the people I am already reading, can recommendation engines take advantage of that?

Erik Hollnagel does Cognitive Systems Engineering research in the area of human performance and accident analysis / prevention. He has a brief write-up on The principle of Efficiency-Thoroughness Trade-Off (ETTO) that I found interesting. The bottom line: it is the system that has to be diagnosed to understand why an efficient "short cut" failed when it normally worked just fine.

Catastrovision is that wonderful effect when you get so wrapped up in your own world that it seems like everything is about to end. [Reposted]

"Why Most Published Research Findings Are False" by John P. A. Ioannidis describes a statistical test for the likelihood of research being false, first without researcher bias and then a second test that includes bias. The result: it doesn't look good.

I'll be on a panel at the Knowledge Management for the Modern Law Firm conference that the Ark Group is organizing in New York City, 22-23 February 2006.

Tris Hussey found a nice list of tips to improve your blogging from Make You Go Hmm. These cover a lot of ground, and they don't make sense for all bloggers, but they give a positive way to think about blogging. I like the focus on passion in a few of these.

Bill Ives has done his first podcast with the Otter Group's Learning2.0 podcast series. His topic is Blogs as Personal Knowledge Management, and he does a nice job of summarizing in six minutes what blogs are and how Bill (and others) use blogs as their "backup brain."

I was talking with some students at Northwestern about blogs, and the question of trustworthiness and accuracy arose, particularly if one is planning to site a blog in a research paper. I came up with some criteria that turn out to be similar to those in a publication from Google.

Amy Gahran has a nice list of "10 Reasons Why Blogs Are an Awkward Conversation Tool" that talks about how blogs hinder the flow of a conversation. I agree, and yet conversation still happens.

I discovered Anti-Knowledge by Bruce LaDuke recently. What struck me was the central role he gives to the power of the question in his framing of how human knowledge develops.

Thomas Vander Wal has a nice essay, describing his views of his Model of Attraction and Personal InfoCloud, The Come To Me Web. His view is that we are moving from a place where "I go get" what I want to a situation where what I want "comes to me."

Rashmi Sinha has another nice piece on tagging, "A social analysis of tagging." I like the way Rashmi talks about the blurry line between the individual act of tagging and the social use of those tags.

Howard Rheingold links to an interesting look at social networking services in "Unraveling the Taste Fabric of Social Networks." Short version: the authors describe a mechanism for describing people's interests as a fabric of tastes with some browsability components.

I was at a talk recently in which the speaker mentioned that humans process a given idea for 6-7 seconds before moving onto the next idea.

"Beating the Boomer Brain Drain Blues" is a good overview of the knowledge retention problem facing many companies. It provides some suggestions on how to think about the problem, and there are many examples.

During the CPSquare conference on Web 2.0 and Communities of Practice , someone referenced Barn Raising as a means for the initial build-out on a wiki. What a nice way to think about building a community-needed structure.

The next generation of aggregators are going to have a lot of interesting features, whether they are the ones I want or not. In reading John Tropea's "Authority in your RSS readers," I realized that the aggregator needs to extend beyond the box of a single tool.

I attended an demonstration of Tidebreak's TeamSpot collaboration software yesterday as part of my adjunct appointment at Northwestern. It's an interesting product for co-located group work.

The McKinsey Quarterly has Ten trends to watch in 2006 by Ian Davis and Elizabeth Stephenson, which are really trends to watch over the next decade. Several of these ring for me.

Fellow Corante Web Hub contributor, Matthew Hurst wants Consumer Facing Text Mining Opportunities. He wants text mining for non-commercial customers that actually provides some value to the user.

I stumbled upon Eric Tsui's 2002 technology survey, "Technologies for Personal and Peer to Peer Knowledge Management," when writing my earlier article on PIM. I do not recall having read Eric Tsui in the past, but many of his ideas about knowledge management and the emphasis on personal vs. corporation are strongly connected to how I have thought of KM.

I was in a conversation earlier today, where we talked about the familiar rating tools that you find in Amazon and frequently on internal website ("rate this article"). There are some big differences in rating services on a public website, like Amazon, and internal websites.

I came across "The knowledge management puzzle: Human and social factors in knowledge management" from the 2001 IBM Systems Journal. The authors use the metaphor of a jigsaw puzzle to motivate their discussion, suggesting that IT is only one of many pieces to the puzzle for knowledge management. And they also acknowledge that there are pieces they may not know that create still other pictures when the pieces come together. They also provide a great set of references for the curious.

Steve Borche of Connecting the Dots has an idea for "smart aggregators." This is something I've been looking for as well for some of the same reasons, primarily information overload.

I've been "attending" the CPSquare Web 2.0 and Communities of Practice online conference for the last week or so, and it has resulted in a number of interesting conversations. It's also inspired some personal realization as well.

Lucas Rodríguez Cervera points to Just Enough Process Management by Tammy Adams at the BPMInstitute website. Rather than perfections, she suggests just enough Clarity, Change, Measurement, and Control.

Well, if I can't find a fulltime gig somewhere, I can always become a bookstore employee, according to the "Are You a Librarian Test." Bookstore Employee You...

I've been moderately successful in this consulting gig, however moderately isn't cutting the mustard when it comes to a feeling of stability with another child coming along.

What a nice combination of blogs and podcasting. Dan Oestreich is writing and reading at his blog, Oestreich Associates. He is posting his written word as audio files.

I mentioned a few weeks ago that Intellext are making their search-in-the-background tool, Watson, available for free. I used it for a while last year, and I just tested it again as I wrote that long post on the collection of PIM articles in CACM.

Rather than making a list of my favorite KM blogs, which is always changing, why not make that list available to the public. And instead of a blogroll, why not put it somewhere everyone can use it. Viola, Blogdigger (and others).

Jeff Oxenford tells an entertaining quick story about Capturing Knowledge (attempting to) from his 7-year old daughter and her fun science project. Tears ensued, passion waned. Redemption at the end.

Don Cohen writes about "The Knowledge Technology Trap" at the Babson Knowledge blog: ""Knowledge management projects focused mainly on technology will fail."

Dana Dolan found an interesting quote from Richard Templeton of Texas Instruments, "the biggest thing you do to reward great business people and great technological people is to give them harder problems."

The latest Communications of the ACM has a great set of articles on Personal Information Management. I provide a rather detailed review of the collection, as the topic interests me greatly.

Sylvie Noel has a basic suggestion on How to get better information from an expert: "[I]f you want to understand your local expert, tell her how much you already know about the subject. That way, she can adjust her vocabulary to your needs."

Michael Schrage's "Making IT Work" editorial in the January 2006 CIO Magazine riffs off the results of the magazine's State of the CIO survey. "CIOs may think that backlogs are their biggest pain point. But the real cause of IT failure is mismanaged expectations."

Apparently Robert Fripp has been picked to create the sounds for the new operating system from Microsoft, Vista. Robert Scoble (or Charles Torre) has published a 25 minute video of the session.

The RSS Blog points to a new way to peruse your Flickr images with photoblogger. It is very much geared toward finding pictures, rather than browsing in the standard Flickr mode.

Another article on KM mistakes / myths, this time from Michael Gilbert at Nonprofit Onlines News: "Seven Knowledge Management Mistakes." He also introduces his idea of The Tyranny of the Tangible.

Jack Dahlgren suggests that we should treat "The Schedule as a Symptom" at his Project blog. I like the description of the schedule as a hoped-for picture of how the project will go.

Christian Wagner discusses the problems with knowledge acquisition and suggests that wikis in combination with communities might be a solution for knowledge acquisition where more formal processes have failed.

A little entertainment from Paul Graham: "Good procrastination is avoiding errands to do real work."

Joy London points to "Lisa Kellar's MS Outlook: KM Friend or Foe?" The answer to the question posed by the article isn't yes or no, it really does depend on what you want as a result.

David Anderson's "Drumming in the Dark" talks about what happens when the constraint isn't obvious. The answer is deceptively simple, and TOC provides guidance.

The December 2005 Business 2.0 has an article about Dell's newest manufacturing facility that may reflect theory of constraints principles: "Dude, You're Getting a Dell--Every Five Seconds."