April 2006 Archives

Denham Grey is excited about Steve Barth's upcoming Deconstructing Knowledge Management with Steve Barth at KnowledgeBoard. I found Barth's article on PKM to be interesting as well.

Drucker is always good for quotes: "The knowledge that we consider knowledge proves itself in action. What we now mean by knowledge is information in action, information focused on results."

HP's Stan Garfield published a useful set of KM Resources in a Line56.com article back in February. He lists Books, Periodicals, Blogs and other Web Sites.

MeshForum 2006 will be in San Francisco this year on May 7-9th. Please consider attending if networks are in your realm of interest. Registration is open and there is now a group discount option.

The MS of Learning and Organizational Change department at Northwestern in which I am an adjunct needs a Department Assistant.

Kaye Vivian has transcribed a conversation she had with a friend on "Knowledge and Information: a Discussion." The line of the discussion should be familiar to anyone who has spent time trying to explain knowledge management to friends or colleagues.

Luis Suarez links to Jon Udell's Reinventing the Internet. I was taken by Suarez' observation that social software is all about the individual and the community.

Robin Good gives some great pointers to web design and suggests that amatures (like me) shouldn't have to worry about design any more. And Six Apart is running a style contest, so I may not have to worry about design for this blog.

Michael Fitzgerald's recent editorial on tagging focuses primarily on the tools people have been using on the web and how companies are beginning to pick up on the tagging phenomenon. I'd really like to have a tool of my very own to use.

Northwestern's Center for Learning and Organizational Change has an interesting talk coming up on May 1st: The Inner Life of a Leader with Dan McAdams.

In my knowledge management class last night, we covered the issue of knowledge work from many different angles. One of the topics that came up in our readings was a distinction between work and working (and workers). Lilia Efimova has just written something along these lines with regard to blogging.

Ross Mayfield uses a new term for knowledge management to reflect his focus on the social side of knowledge, "Manage Knowledgement."

TechCrunch had a guest author, Frank Gruber, write about the The State of Online Feed Readers. Being TechCrunch, the review was primarily focused on features and technology of these aggregators

Jim McGee tells us that "Deliverables [are] the fundamental secret to improving knowledge work." I see a connection to Theory of Constraints in Jim's thinking.

Knowledge@Wharton has an interview with Helen Greiner of iRobot, maker of the Roomba and the new Scooba. Greiner clearly has a vision for the future of robots-as-appliances.

My friend John Barrett has moved to North Carolina and started another KM group, the KM Network of North Carolina. If you live in the area and want a wider connection to the KM community, check it out.

Bill Brantley points to "The World is Round" by Laurence Prusak in the April 2006 HBR. Bill provides a nice review for people who don't get HBR delivered to their doorstep.

Tim Thomas contacted me in regards cultivating communities of practice for people in the natural sciences, biologists in particular.

Frank Patrick reminds us that there will be some fun numbers coming up. Wait until the 4th of May if you live outside the United States.

Kyle McFarlin makes a fun analogy in "Knowledge and Yardsale Exercise Equipment" with the picture that people collect information because they can, like the exercise equipment you see at yardsales.