Feb 05
From Data, with Love
That most hallowed of mental models and glib explanations, the Data-Information-Knowledge-Wisdom hierarchy has taken a bit of a beating this week. It started in an innocent enough way when, in a discussion about knowledge sharing and generation on the KM4Dev listserve, somebody cited the DIKW model as a way of describing how knowledge is generated in organisations. This provoked Dave Snowden into some sharp but illuminating posts (by the way, if you ever get bored and feel like doing some Dave-baiting, get yourself a false identity, sign up to one of the listserves he frequents, and make an enthusiastic post about DIKW, wisdom management, Six Sigma, Ayn Rand or KM certification - or any combination thereof):
“I would reject the DIKW pyramid, aside from the fact it’s just plain wrong, it’s difficult to explain and leads to bad labels. Better to think that KNOWLEDGE is the way we create INFORMATION from DATA. If we share knowledge then we can understand information.”
“Aside from being linked to a particular period of systems thinking approaches, which we are hopefully moving on from, its very culturally specific. It fails entirely to account of shamanistic knowledge, or the narrative traditions of Sufi philosophy and others. I could go on, but the you get the point; the DIKW pyramid is a culturally limited and inadequate model which has done more harm than good. The SECI model with its de facto focus on codification comes a close second, as I said the other day it’s the model that launched a thousand failed knowledge management initiatives. The main problem is its tendency to get people to think of knowledge as a thing rather than as a flow.”
Dave has posted in the past at greater length on DIKW here and here, and so have I.
However, one worried comment from a listserve member that DIKW was a “well-understood idea within the community” struck me, and prompted a further reply from me - because indeed this hierarchy is extremely well entrenched in the KM (and information science) literature. It’s about as sacred as a sacred cow can get. Why? And should that make it immune to attack posts?
Here’s my reply, slightly modified for a wider audience:
Feb 04
Well I’ll Be…..
What do you call a conference on Data Analysis, Data Quality and Metadata Management? Not the most obvious of acronyms… are they trying to communicate something? Find out here!
Feb 03
KM Method Cards in Good Company!
Nancy White has a great post sharing the different types of card decks she uses in facilitation. Our KM Method Cards are included, as are the IDEO Method Cards (come unexpected insights on how to use them), Arthur Shelley’s Organisational Zoo Cards the Corban & Blair story cards and others.
Jan 29
Where are the People in KM/IA?
Forrester have just put out an overview report on the challenges facing enterprise Information Architecture (it’s free, bless them, but you’ll need to have an account or register for a free one to get it). Quite apart from the solid way that they establish IA as part of a rigourous information management approach, it also casts surprising light on the world of knowledge management and why it’s so difficult: if you do a cut-and-replace between “IA” and “KM” you will get some engagingly good insights and ideas:
“It’s a political quagmire. [KM]IA discussions require a horizontal approach to traditionally vertically managed resources. On top of this, business areas tend to feel a strong sense of ownership of the data in their mission-critical applications, and they’re suspicious that any discussions about data usage with “outsiders” could lead to a loss of control.
A very good relationship between IT and the business is a prerequisite for [KM]IA. Overcoming the political difficulties is challenging enough; succeeding when there is a poor track record of communication and trust between IT and the business is even more unlikely.
[KM]IA can look like a boil-the-ocean effort. The data and content mess facing most large organizations is enormous, and any architects who consider getting the enterprise in order quickly recognizes that they will retire before the task can be completed — no matter how young they are.”
Read on in the report for some insightful advice about “street-level-strategy” building to address these challenges – just as good advice for KM as for IA.
There’s one big gap which is not addressed: take a look at the high level view of the enterprise information architecture (shown below) from the report.
What struck me was what was missing: where are the human beings in the framework? “Real” architects never show their models or visualisations without putting in stick figures to show how it works with people in them. Why don’t we? Apparently, this report, unabashedly technical in orientation, has ruffled a few feathers in the more human-oriented IA camps, not least for quoting a reference to them as “Web weenies”.
There’s a reason why user experience folks call themselves information architects, and they’re not going to be expelled from the academy because they don’t fit within a logical array. The parallels with KM sharpen this question for us as well: where does the interface with people’s desires, aspirations, frustrations and needs come into what we do? Where does it fit within our KM frameworks?
Thanks to Nick Berry for highlighting this via the TaxoCop forum.
Jan 22
Information Visualisation
I can’t remember how I happened across this post by Robert Kosara on “The State of Information Visualization” but it’s a good one – and here’s an interesting prediction:
“2010 might be the year of visualization theory. While our field is certainly an applied one, we still need a much deeper understanding of how it works and how to build better tools. There is some existing work, but much of that is old (Bertin’s work was published in the 1960s, Mackinlay’s almost 25 years ago, Shneiderman’s 13 years ago, Chi’s taxonomy almost ten years ago). The field is progressing and we are developing new tools that do not always fit the old molds. We are also gaining a better understanding of how things work, and we are seeing interesting new concepts from other fields. So an update of our theoretical foundations is really overdue now, and this year will hopefully be when it happens.”
Jan 21
Metadata for Movies
The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (the people who give out the Oscars) recently held a symposium on metadata for digital movies. It has an impressive array of speakers and should be required viewing for anyone grappling with metadata for broader digital asset management, not just movies. Appropriately, the video files are available as well as the presentations (though the videos will not hosted there forever, so download them while you can – why they don’t use a video hosting site where you can review the videos, I don’t know). Thanks to Seth via TaxoCop for this link.
Jan 19
Social Computing and Learning
Three different, interesting takes on social computing:
Mike Fisher has analysed various social computing tools into Bloom’s taxonomy of learning objectives – ie which tools fit where according to th level or depth of learning you want to achieve.
Olivier Amprimo has a very systematic analysis of how the knowledge organisation requires social computing tools and why, leading to some very practical examples (video of a talk for iKMS).
Ron Young argues that social computing massively enables personal knowledge management, and this in turn puts enormous pressure on organisations to adopt knowledge management practices (video of a talk for iKMS).
Jan 18
An Open Enterprise Directive?
Just over a month ago, Barack Obama’s Office of Management and Budget issued an Open Government Directive by Presidential order. The principles of this directive are pretty interesting from a knowledge management point of view.
“The three principles of transparency, participation, and collaboration form the cornerstone of an open government. Transparency promotes accountability by providing the public with information about what the Government is doing. Participation allows members of the public to contribute ideas and expertise so that their government can make policies with the benefit of information that is widely dispersed in society. Collaboration improves the effectiveness of Government by encouraging partnerships and cooperation within the Federal Government, across levels of government, and between the Government and private institutions.”
They might be principles any knowledge management initiative within an enterprise could sign up to. There’s another development which is interesting: the US Attorney General in 2009 issued new guidelines on how public agencies should interpret the Freedom of Information Act, making it clear that “the default position” with respect to freedom of information is openness.
Too often, I’m working with organisations where the default position (in knowledge sharing) is keep it out of sight unless somebody makes a case for sharing, and then only share with the requestor. I’ve blogged before about how the US Army and State Department are seeking to shift their own default positions. The issue however is that even if senor management adopt the position that knowledge sharing and transparency are good, and come out openly and say that, there are still residual parts of the infrastructure that are designed for the closed way of working. For example, diverse policy documents that are built on the assumption (or actually state that) “all information is confidential” or “information should be shared on a need to know basis”. And from those policies spring an architecture of procedures designed to enshrine and protect that closed way of working. It’s one thing to say, and other things to do.
Which is why I think the OMB directive is worth watching, because it comes with a timeline for action planning and compliance, as well as a dashboard for agencies to report into. Now such high level dashboards can be gamed, but this is a step further than simply expressing a wish for openness and ignoring the trajectory of the current infrastructure. Should we be thinking of our knowledge management plans and strategies more along the lines of an “Open Enterprise Directive”?
Jan 15
Metrics, ROI, Monitoring and Evaluation Again
Some updates on the monitoring and evaluation of KM front. My contribution to the Carliner & Shank Elearning Handbook was on establishing the value of an elearning initiative, and reviews a range of valuation methods to consider. An adapted version of the chapter has this week been published by eLearn Magazine and can be accessed in two parts here and here.
Matt Moore is doing some interesting thinking around ROI, and to the quantitative/qualitative mix, he’s now adding ‘credibility’ or ‘authority’ of the project leader as an important but usually neglected issue. An early version of his thinking (related to a KM context) is here, and he is gunning to present some more developed thinking on this at the Boston Enterprise 2.0 conference if enough people think it’s important and vote for him. Take a look at his proposal and if you like it, vote!
The KM4Dev folks have been having some interesting discussions on monitoring and evaluation, and this blog post represents a very sophisticated and promising direction. Finally, I came across a nice short video podcast from Nick Milton giving an overview of Knoco’s measurement approach.
Jan 08
“Make a Video about KM” Competition - Win Prizes!
We’re launching a competition!
Key Facts:
•send us a link to any video you made that explains, illustrates, promotes knowledge management
•no more than 7 minutes in length
•your work and you have permission to publish it
•should be publicly available
•submission deadline: 26 February 2010
•award announcement: 5 March 2010
Objectives and Judging Criteria:
The “Make a Video about KM” competition is founded in memory of the late Dr David Vaine, KM podcaster extraordinaire. The competition’s goal is to promote education, awareness and interest in KM. We will keep this goal in mind as we evaluate the submissions.
There are four categories of award:
•Most informative and educational video
•Most inspiring and engaging video
•Most creative video on KM (including the techniques used to make the video)
•Funniest video
Videos will also be evaluated on the extent to which they demonstrate effective knowledge management, by packaging knowledge in an attractive, engaging and accessible form.
Prizes:
The winner in each category will receive a full set of our KM Method Cards, KM Approaches, Methods and Tools – A Guidebook, and our Organisation Culture Cards (worth US$140).
Techniques:
You can use any techniques you like, including mashups, interviews, talking heads, documentaries, skits, animations, dramas, comic strips, music videos.
To Submit:
Make, upload your video to a hosting site and send us a link to the video at . We may embed some videos in posts to our blog as the competition progresses, but this is not an indication that you will win! You can let us know which category of award you are aiming for, but we reserve the right to award in any category.
Rules:
1.Videos are only eligible for an award if entered by their creator(s) and all necessary permissions have been secured.
2.Videos can be of any length up to a maximum of 7 minutes.
3.Contestants can submit any number of videos.
4.Contestants can submit videos they created previously for other purposes.
5.Videos submitted must be available for viewing on a public website.
6.The decision of the judges (the Straits Knowledge Team) is final.
7.The judges reserve the right not to make an award in any category.
8.No human beings should be harmed in the making of this video.
