May 11
Let me have men about me who are (not) fat
Social network maps reveal many things. They tell you who the super-connectors and the corollary isolates are. They may uncover connections and chasms that are potentially problematic. And studied over time they also tell the movements or history of the networks. What I find interesting about this TED talk by Harvard University social scientist Nicholas Christakis is that social networks also have an underlying contagion effect. People who are connected to each other are more likely to share similar attitudes, values and behaviours. And the closer you are with someone, the more similar you are likely to be. So if you and I are tight, then if I’m happy you’re more likely to be happy. If I’m fat then you’re more likely to be pleasantly plump. If Julius Caesar had known about this contagion effect, would he still have wanted to have around him men who are fat?
May 10
Two Pillars of Implementing KM Initiatives
Are you implementing a tool for collaboration, document sharing, discussions, etc and you are not sure how to make it a success? How to bring your colleagues to use it? Often, just a great tool alone is not sufficient to achieve sustainable usage. I would even say that the technology, the tool itself, is only 20% of the business. The other 80% is convincing, promotion, and making the users aware of your solution.
May 05
Selling KM
A useful TED talk by Simon Sinek, ostensibly about inspirational leadership, but really it’s about how to sell yourself, your products and services. Knowledge managers will find this talk useful I’m sure, given how much a part of their job selling is.
Apr 29
Post on The Accidental Taxonomist
I’ve had the honour of writing the foreword for Heather Hedden’s new book The Accidental Taxonomist which will be published in the next few weeks – here’s a snippet of what I wrote, to give you a flavour of the book:
Apr 12
Post on Two Tales of Taxonomy Ignorance
Maish Nichani has an absolutely brilliant post dissecting the taxonomy issues around the reorganisation of TV channel listings on local provider Starhub.
Apr 08
Spring Cleaning
Now I know what information overload means…
We’ll be sharing our office space from mid-April, and so we spent the day weeding, shredding and recycling the product of eight years of workshops. Is there a way of holding participatory workshops and not killing so many trees?
Apr 06
Give Yourself a BEtreat
Etienne Wenger and Beverley Trayner are blending the personal with the formal in what looks like a wonderful series of workshops on “Convening, leading, and supporting communities of practice and networks” in rural California in July. If you are working on CoPs and need fresh inspiration, or want to reward a particularly dedicated CoP facilitator, this is about the best way I can imagine to do both of those things. They even have a family programme if you want to bring your kids!
BTW, if you haven’t seen Etienne’s keynote on his latest thinking in communities of practice, given to the KM Singapore conference six months ago, here it is:
Download the MP4 video file by right clicking here
Go to the show page on vimeo by clicking here
Mar 23
Personal KM vs Team Collaboration
Are you a person that is very well organised? Can you always find the books, CDs, or DVDs you are looking for? Are you doing the same for your digital information? By nature, I am rather a forgetful and chaotic person; therefore, I learned rather early to become structured and organised to overcome this shortcoming. I therefore engaged in something I would call “Personal Knowledge Management (KM)”.
Mar 16
KM Video Competition Extended
The KM videos in our competition have been coming in slowly, so slowly that we almost gave up! But there have been a few interesting submissions, and so we’ve decided to extend the deadline to March 31st…
Mar 16
Chris Collison on KM and Technology
The guys at eClerx Services have continued their short KM video series with an interview with Chris Collison on the relationship between KM and technology. He has some interesting and insightful things to say:
- upside – technology (especially social software) can disrupt in a positive sense and create new capabilities
- downside – we shouldn’t assume that everybody is ready or needs these new tools
- technology for KM is shifting from a focus on “collecting” content to “connecting” people
- there will always be a role for more specialised applications of technology to support aspects of KM.
Good work guys! You can subscribe to the whole channel here (8 videos so far).
