Tag: KM

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Knowledge Hoarding

I ran across this rather disturbing quote on the web this morning:

“Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.”

This is the very argument that keeps people from sharing knowledge — a fear that they will be giving up a portion of their power base. This irrational fear cripples people and prevents us from achieving far greater good.

What is reality? Knowledge is power, and knowledge shared is power multiplied! When I share my knowledge with you, you add your collective knowledge, experience and perspectives and do new things with it. I’m no less “powerful” because I haven’t lost the knowledge I shared. And together, we are much more powerful, able to accomplish more and innovate beyond what either of us could do alone.

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Yahoo! Acquires WebJay (and a KM digression)

Webjay logoO’reilly Radar reports that Yahoo! has made another acquisition in their drive to transform the company’s web properties into a Web 2.0 über-community. This time it’s the music playlist community Webjay created by Lucas Gonze.

Yahoo! seems determined to be a player in the Web 2.0 world, and they just might succeed.

danah boyd writes:

I often hear people talking about how Yahoo! is buying up Web2.0, but i don’t think it’s just that. It’s not only about tagging, social bookmarking, sharing, etc. It’s about rethinking the innovation process when handling social technologies. Take a look at some of the characters recently hired/acquired – Caterina Fake, Stewart Butterfield, Joshua Schachter, Andy Baio, Cameron Marlow, Chad Dickerson, Tom Coates… These aren’t even your typical Web2.0 crowd – these are creatives with attitude who have no problem telling corporate what they think and pushing for changes that they feel are essential.

What is the glue that holds all these many seemingly disjointed pieces together (Flickr, del.icio.us, Webjay, etc.)? The people, first of all. People with innovative ideas and the drive to express them. What about from the perspective of the community member? Well, there’s authentication, something that Yahoo! can help unify. There’s commenting and discussion. And there is tagging.

A KM Digression
I had a conversation last week with Darryl, Randy and Kevin about tagging. Not the folksonomy-style tagging familiar in the Web 2.0 world, but old-school taxonomy. Specifically, how much emphasis structured taxonomy (i.e. tagging with a predefined vocabulary) should have in an enterprise knowledge management environment, and whether there is a place for folksonomy in such an environment.

People clearly “get” the value of tagging. As they use web sites like Flickr, del.icio.us and Last.fm, they see firsthand how tags add value on both a personal and a community level. The debate is whether free-form tagging can apply inside the corporate firewall. I believe there’s a place for both. Structured tagging (taxonomy via vocabulary) by knowledge managers; folksonomy tagging by everyone else. Imagine being able to see three levels of tag clouds: enterprise, community, and personal. At a glance you would see what matters most at each level. Color coding could make it more revealing. Corporate tags (vocabulary) gets green; community tags get grey; personal tags get blue.

Are you with me?

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Wikis and Knowledge Management

Wikis are a fascinating experiment in collaborative content management. Wikipedia is the perfect example. Within a few short years it’s grown to become one of the largest encyclopedias every, all based on knowledge shared by individuals on a volunteer basis.

I’ve been fascinated with the application of wikis in the realm of knowledge management. The concept is simple — we all possess knowledge, and as we individually share the bits and pieces of what we know, collectively we grow more knowledgeable. I benefit from your knowledge and expertise, just as you do from mine. Knowledge is shared by individuals, but the collection (or the wiki) is owned by the collective.

To experiment with this technology, I’ve setup a wiki using the same software that powers Wikipedia: Wikimedia. Yes, it’s available for free, and it took me all of about 15 minutes to download, install and configure. Amazing.

If you are interested in exploring the application of wikis to the field of knowledge management, jump in and check out the FDnot Wiki. It’s open for you to sign-up and begin contributing your knowledge.

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Blogs and Knowledge Management

One of the more interesting seminars I attended at KM World dealt with the opportunities to use blogging behind the firewall. Of course, blogs such as this one tend to ramble, but a well-focused, topical blog can provide two things that help employees deal with info glut: human filtering that gleans the really valuable nuggets from all of the information on a subject, and contextualizing that information with storytelling and personal perspective.

Blogs are easy to create, even easier to maintain, and can bridge the gap between adhoc communication such as email or instant messages, and structured knowledge stores.

This got me thinking. With all of the excellent tools on the market, many of which are free and/or open source, why not create an entire knowledge management system built using free components. Blogging software, forums, news and content management systems and RSS feeds could all become part of a KM package that even small companies or low-budget non-profit organizations could afford to implement.

What do you think? Am I out to lunch? In left field? Up a creek without a paddle? Let me know.

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Googlicious

adj.
1. Highly pleasing or agreeable to the end user, especially the functionality and performance.
2. Very pleasant; delightful: a googlicious web interface.

The knowledge management system I am working on is tightly entwined with Verity’s Ultraseek search engine technology. One of the recurring requests we used to get about search functionality (both the search form and the results) was simple: make it more like Google.

It seems like almost everyone loves Google. And why not? It’s got a simple, no-nonsense interface that puts little in the way between me and my task: to find something. It’s fast. And the results are very accurate. Things should be more like Google. Simple. Purposeful. Incredibly useful… maybe even Indispensable.

So that’s my goal. Create interfaces that are a pleasure to use.

Googlicious.