August 2006 Archives

Lou Rosenfeld and Steve Krug will hold an informal get-together on September 14th (Thursday) in the evening while they are here to give workshops.

I linked to the techno-centric description from the US government a few days ago, and both Yigal Chamish and Shawn Callahan rightly complained in the comments that it missed whole aspects of KM that are important to the field. Here is some thought on the way I think about KM.

The August 2006 TOC Update from Goldratt Marketing Group includes an item on The Impact of Multitasking by Mike Mannion and Sven Ehrke.

Patrick Lambe has self-published a piece he calls "Money, Testosterone and Knowledge Management" which discusses a schism in KMPro in 2004.

A member of a mailing list pointed us to the US Government's definition of knowledge management. Even though the definition is fairly technology-centric, I generally agree with it.

More fun for Friday. Soy Latte? I guess these quizzes don't always get it right.

Anecdote is using an interesting methodology, called Most Significant Change, that uses storytelling to help measure the normally-implicit value of projects and change initiatives. They are enhancing the MSC process with some tools.

Luke Naismith writes about "Infoluenza." This idea goes beyond strict information overload and suggests a group psychology that prevents us, as a society, from stopping and thinking about what we are doing and why.

Dennis Kennedy points to the Innovation Styles website and a personality test for your Innovation Style.

Ron Friedmann has a piece on (legal) knowledge management at his blog and at LLRX, "KM - The Right Question?" I like his "better" question, thus the title of this post.

Booz Allen Hamilton's strategy+business has a piece entitled The Megacommunity Manifesto. Megacommunities bring together government, business and NGO on problems of common interest, even if they don't all see thing from the same perspective.

I appear to be 75% like Spider-Man. He was one of my favorites growing up. It probably helped to have three or four Spider-Man comics every month.

I've seen a number of articles recently on a variety of systems that let people ask questions and have them answered by "experts." Those experts could be biochemists on a email list somewhere, or technology enthusiasts on the million-and-one online bulletin boards / newsgroups, or it could be the average Joe who happens to know just the right thing in order to answer a question.

I just came across the Evolution of Business Knowledge project. The project is a collaboration between many schools in the UK with projects that all have to with the combination of knowledge and process. There are a number of sub-projects and papers at their website to peruse.

Emily Turrettini at SmartMobs references a piece by Jeff Zaslow in the WSJ, "How You Handle Your Email Inbox Says a Lot About You."

A press release: The World Tourism Organization (UNWTO) is ready to play a leading role in two new bodies set up by the United Nations – the UN Knowledge Sharing Task Force and the UN Group on the Information Society (UNGIS).

37 Signals tells us that "Late projects are late one day at a time."

A friend is moving to Los Angeles and is considering going back to school for a masters-level degree related to knowledge management. Can you provide any suggestions as to which schools have KM-like programs.

Knowledge retention is an important issue in business these days. This month's K Street Directions tells us about a story from NPR on Raiders of the Lost Tapes, where the knowledge is tapes of the Apollo moon landing.

The ProBlogger Quiz tells me that I'm a "Serious Amateur."

This is an amazing set of pictures of a caterpillar invasion in Flogsta, Sweden. Scroll down to see a few bikes covered in their webs.

Dick Richards of Come Gather Round gives an example of why he suggests "Don't Sheild Them From Distress: An Example" and closes with the great comment that "truth alone will not initiate change."

A KnowNow press release says, "KnowNow has released three new solutions designed to instantly connect people with critical information." It sounds like an aggregator and blogging tool packaged together.

The Work Foundation has a new report that suggests the "Knowledge economy debate needs to move beyond platitudes." They are in the beginnings of a multi-year project to clearly define the knowledge economy.

Patrick Lambe points to "Negative Knowledge, Expertise and Organisations" by Jaana Parviainen and Marja Eriksson of University of Tampere, Finland.