Feb 25
Data, Knowledge Organisation and Scientific Knowledge
Back in November I participated in a workshop sponsored by the White House’s Office of Science and Technology Policy on “Changing the Conduct of Science in the Information Age”. My input (contained as an annex to the downloadable report) was on the role of knowledge organisation systems in making scientific knowledge accessible, and in enabling the sensemaking that results in the building of new knowledge.
The February 11 issue of Science Magazine has a report on the STAR Metrics programme, a fascinating approach to getting visibility into scientific knowledge and one of the inspirations for the workshop (I’m delighted to be cited) – but the whole issue itself has a lot of rich material on the current state of data visualisation, science metaknowledge, what happens to sensemaking, participation in science, and event the conduct of scientific approaches, when you open up data to the crowd and much much more. The main articles in this issue are currently free content, for additional material (eg the STAR metrics report) you’ll need to register/subscribe.
Feb 23
Brains Respond to Stories as if They Are Real
Fascinating piece from the February 17 issue of the New Scientist on a whole raft of brain research suggesting that the human brain processes the information from stories in very similar ways to the way it processes information from perceived reality.
“When a team led by Jeffrey Zacks of Washington University in St Louis, Missouri, ran functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) scans on people reading a story or watching a movie, they found that the same brain regions that are active in real-life situations fire up when a fictitious character encounters an equivalent situation (Psychological Science, vol 20, p 989). What’s more, the brain responds in the same way whether the story is in the form of words on a page or a realistic action video. “What I find really strange is the degree to which that neural activity is conserved,” Zacks says. The mental mechanisms evolved over millennia to interpret a spoken story seem to have no problem adapting to new media.”
To read the article you can register for free to the New Scientist to get ten days’ access. Thanks to Rick Davies via the MSC listserve for this lead.
Feb 22
Archetypes of Collaboration in Organisations
We work with archetypes a lot to help organisations characterise the individual behaviours within their cultures. (Our Organisation Culture Cards are a product of that work). This new book from Mehrdad Baghai and James Quigley based on work by Deloitte Touche Tohmatsu steps up the archetype approach to model the collective behaviours of organisations as a whole, specifically looking at patterns of collaboration.
I haven’t read the book yet, and I’m expecting to feel my normal sense of over-simplification frequently resident in consulting models (Deloitte is obviously building a new consultancy business around this), but I like the way they have packaged the whole thing, with an iPhone/iPad app, case studies and self diagnostics to accompany the book. If it gives organisations accessible ways of discussing how they collaborate internally, fine. If it drives orchestrated, consultant-led organisational change initiatives based on overly simplistic perceptions of culture, some victims are in for a rough ride. Download the app and play. Decide for yourself.
Feb 21
Witnessing the Birth of a Taxonomy
Here’s a workshop in Washington DC I’d love to be at (I’ll be doing my own taxonomy workshop in Sydney at the time unfortunately-fortunately). It’s on the potential for creating a new way of classifying diseases based on molecular mechanism rather than phenotype or symptom pattern. I’d love to be there because it’s not often you get to see a fundamental rethink happen live around how an embedded taxonomy should be organised. It must be a bit like witnessing the birth of a galaxy for an astronomer. This is an area with many powerful (and I’m sure passionate) stakeholders so I am convinced the process of expert involvement and public consultation will also be fascinating to watch. Alas, I’ll miss it.
Feb 21
Experiences on KM Incentives and KPIs
My last article about Knowledge Management Strategy created some discussions about key performance indicators (KPI) and incentives for KM activities. What are the right measures to overcome the barriers of information and knowledge sharing in an enterprise?
In our organisation we have three main indicators on how the activities corporate KM team are measured:
1) usage in terms of accessing knowledge items (files + discussions); we define a certain number of potential users and then expect that 20% of those should access the system at least once per month
2) contributions to the our KM platform; here we are setting an absolute target; this means, we don’t expect monthly contributions but rather each department should contribute and maintain a specified number of knowledge items
3) user satisfaction is captured in a yearly survey and measures the qualitative aspects of knowledge sharing activities; i.e. we are asking if the user would promote the tools to others and why they would (or would not) do that
Feb 09
Taxonomy Fairy Tales
Matt and I had a bit of a video rant the other day about common taxonomy fairy tales. I particularly liked Matt’s characterisation of taxonomy work as “a messy, dirty but necessary business.”
If you like this video, do consider attending our taxonomy workshop in Sydney 3-4 March, or in Singapore May 26-27!
Dec 24
Knowledge Management Videos from eClerx Services
eClerx Services in India has been building up a very nice library of short video interviews with gurus like Dave Snowden, Chris Collison, David Gurteen, and most recently with Verna Allee. Each mini-interview addresses a specific question and gets a short snappy response Check them out here!
Dec 23
Teaching Knowledge Management using Cards
Laurie Lock Lee of Optimice posted a video of a Hong Kong DBA class on Knowledge Management that he runs for the Newcastle (Australia) University Graduate School of Business. He used our KM Planning Toolkit and his organisation’s Partnership Scorecard to teach KM principles. Looks like they were having fun!
Dec 23
A Very Happy Christmas from Straits Knowledge
Here’s a link to our end of year newsletter, which has some updates on our activities, and some practical links for those of you interested in knowledge audits. We hope you’ll all have a wonderful Christmas and New Year holiday!Dec 22
Proof that Santa Has an ECM System
I have to say I found this article strangely convincing…
Happy Christmas everybody!
