Sunday, April 10, 2005
sunday morning links
"I've written recently about the future state of business, a world incorporating powerful, versatile social networking tools. And I've played with most of the first-generation social software and read volumes about how it will, or won't, work in business and ultimately affect our daily lives. The concept is wonderful, and the technology is fun, but the tools developed so far suffer from three fatal flaws:"
PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT
"Since February 1st, David Gurteen, one of the pioneers and brightest thinkers in the field of Knowledge Management, has been busy, to my delight, reinventing the discipline as Personal Knowledge Management (PKM). As readers of my business posts know, that's what I've been advocating for some time. A group of leading KM luminaries has been discussing this all month on the AOK (Association of KnowledgeWork) discussion group, an online community of practice moderated by Jerry Ash. This has been tremendously helpful in enabling me to flesh out my own vision of how PKM could work, the latest rendition of which is diagrammed above."
BLOGS IN BUSINESS -- WHAT WE COULD DO NOW
"I've written before about Blogs in Business and the role I think they could play. But my idealism -- the desire to have a better, simpler blog product with some better social networking functionality before we try to sell it to business -- is giving way to my impatience. A couple of business leaders have challenged me to develop a pragmatic strategy for effectively introducing blogs into a business today. Here's what I said."
The Barriers of Content and Context
"Social networking is suffering the curse of all attractive innovations in the modern era: As even the most winning innovations rise into popular consciousness, the backlash against them begins instantaneously. The traditional lag between initial adoption by a small percentage of hip, connected "innovators" and the later contact with the "majoritarians" that comprise the overwhelming bulk of the market has been squashed to an almost immediate effect. Just as truckers' caps begin to diffuse out to the average metrosexual a few weeks after becoming cool, the glitterati already declare them passé."
Cracking the Social Code
"Can networking tools work their magic on your bottom line? Some companies hope so. "
the foaf project
"The Friend of a Friend (FOAF) project is about creating a Web of machine-readable homepages describing people, the links between them and the things they create and do."
A Working Model
"We advise both users and builders of these tools -- instant messaging, collaboration and community tools, real-time conferencing, and other social tools -- and we track the real time enterprise architecture that is emerging from the collision of real time communication and enterprise application integration. We consult with venture capitalists and other investor groups interested in the potential of this marketplace and the players in it. Our goal is to provide incisive and actionable analysis and advisory services."
The Eurekster Platform
"Eurekster is the first truly democratic search engine platform because it allows people and web sites to have a search engine powered by the people that matter to them."
SOCIAL NETWORKING SOFTWARE: HAVE IT YOUR WAY
"The greatest challenge for developers of Social Network Enablement software will be to allow each of us to portray our knowledge and our network(s) any way we want to represent them."
World of Ends
"What the Internet Is and How to Stop Mistaking It for Something Else - by Doc Searls and David Weinberger"
A HIGH-LEVEL SPEC FOR BUSINESS WEBLOGS AND SOCIAL SOFTWARE
Delphes
"The DioMillennium integrated information system generates interest among your employees in capitalizing more on your company's informational assets, by letting them find intelligent information rapidly and efficiently."
Part 1 : Business Ignorance
"Nobody Knows What's Going On"
Part 2 : Trying Technology Painlessly
"This piece talks about how tough it is to sell software these days, and why, and a marketing idea we've cooked up to try to remove the risk from buying software, which I think ought to work well beyond our patch of turf."
Antarctica Systems
"Antarctica's mission is to provide applications that complement all the leading Business Intelligence (BI) solutions. BI solutions are designed to allow organizations to access, analyze and visualize corporate data. Antarctica’s flagship product, Visual Net, is like a Navigation System for business – geared specifically towards the business users – to let them see what’s really going on in their organizations and understand the root causes of performance. Visual Net extends an organization’s business intelligence strategy by providing a highly visual reporting/data presentation analytics tool that is especially well suited to non-technical users. "
Walmart KM
"2 cases of real world KM"
Revive KM
"If a purple KM cow could revive the discipline before it goes the way of TQM and BPR, where could we find one? "
In Praise of the Purple Cow
"Remarkably honest ideas (and remarkably useful case studies) about making and marketing remarkable products. "
The nonsense of 'knowledge management'
"Examines critically the origins and basis of 'knowledge management', its components and its development as a field of consultancy practice. Problems in the distinction between 'knowledge' and 'information' are explored, as well as Polanyi's concept of 'tacit knowing'. The concept is examined in the journal literature, the Web sites of consultancy companies, and in the presentation of business schools. The conclusion is reached that 'knowledge management' is an umbrella term for a variety of organizational activities, none of which are concerned with the management of knowledge. Those activities that are not concerned with the management of information are concerned with the management of work practices, in the expectation that changes in such areas as communication practice will enable information sharing."
THE TIPPING POINT, AND HOW IT WORKS WITH BLOGS
"What got me most excited was how Gladwell's thesis -- that diseases become epidemics if and only if they meet three criteria -- lends itself by analogy to just about every change initiative (what Gladwell calls "social epidemics") you can imagine: getting your blog recognized, achieving enduring change à la John Kotter in business, or changing the world from a consumer culture to a citizen/conserver culture. The three criteria are:"
Tipping Point, Continued
"In my recent posts reviewing, and then discussing the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell, I tried to express some of the things that don't sound right to me in the book."
Power Laws, Weblogs, and Inequality
"Prior to recent theoretical work on social networks, the usual explanations invoked individual behaviors: some members of the community had sold out, the spirit of the early days was being diluted by the newcomers, et cetera. We now know that these explanations are wrong, or at least beside the point. What matters is this: Diversity plus freedom of choice creates inequality, and the greater the diversity, the more extreme the inequality. "
Organizational Networks
"Social network analysis software and services for organizations and their consultants."
"From Open Space Web Conferencing ToLiving And Collaborating Together In A "Private" Space"
WHAT'S WRONG WITH FIRST-GENERATION SOCIAL SOFTWARE
"I've written recently about the future state of business, a world incorporating powerful, versatile social networking tools. And I've played with most of the first-generation social software and read volumes about how it will, or won't, work in business and ultimately affect our daily lives. "
Knowledge Papers
"· Social Networking· Blogs in Business· Knowledge Management· Innovation· Entrepreneurship· Natural Enterprise· Aids for K-Workers"
Visible Narratives: Understanding Visual Organization
"Now that we understand the basic ways to visually distinguish objects, we can look at the big picture: using visual relationships to tell a coherent story. Elements within a “visual narrative” are arranged in an easily understood order of importance. A center of attention attracts the viewer’s attention, and each subsequent focal point adds to the story. This logical ordering is known as a visual hierarchy."
When Will Business Embrace Blogs?
"Newsletter writers and Content Aggregators in our Communications and Marketing departments, and our National Practice offices who wrote technical briefs on regulatory and professional matters;
Subject Matter Specialists, who knew the most in the firm about specific major accounts, industries or professional disciplines, and who could reduce the enormous volume of incoming information requests by making their 'filing cabinets' available to others; and
Community of Practice Coordinators, whose job it was to make communities work by pulling information into shared 'spaces', pushing it out to those who needed it, and responding to daily urgent information requests"
How can you build a successful community of practice that is integrally linked to your company’s strategic vision?
