Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on collaboration http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic collaboration Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Collaboration: It's all about people Tue, 16 Jul 2002 23:36:51 +0100 Located (with thanks) through <A href="http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/">Column Two</A>: <BLOCKQUOTE><A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110426/stories/2002/07/11/technologyConfinedCollaboration.html">Technology Confined Collaboration?</A>  increasingly, this is the story I'm told.  The folks at the big software companies would have you believe that software is always pristine and perfect, and that organizations and their staid cultures are the barriers to reaching collaborative nirvana.  Don't believe the hype.  When it comes to collaboration, technology (and more precisely, technology architecture) can doom the best laid plans around enterprise collaboration.  I've written about it <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110426/stories/2002/07/11/technologyConfinedCollaboration.html">here...</A> [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110426/">Michael Helfrich's Radio Weblog</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> [<A href="http://home.netcom.com/~luskr/weblog/radio/categories/kLogs/">Ron Lusk: Ron's K-Logs</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Definitely: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> "Collaboration is about people.  Collaboration needs technology frameworks that support adaptive, ad hoc interactions.  Adaptive from the sense of extending functionality on the fly and securely embracing new members on the fly.  Simply put, it's the swarming culture fused with adaptive technology."</BLOCKQUOTE> and think that ad hoc interactions are the key.  As long as ad hoc implies that the technology works with the way you want to work now (rather than you fitting in with how the technology wants to work today!)  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000231.html More on TrackBack Fri, 09 Aug 2002 17:01:45 +0100 <A href="http://scriptingnews.userland.com/backissues/2002/08/09#whatAboutTrackback">What about TrackBack?</A>. While I was in the hospital in June, the Movable Type folks implemented a <A href="http://www.movabletype.org/docs/mtmanual_trackback.html">feature</A> <A href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=trackback">called</A> <A href="http://www.movabletype.org/trackback/">TrackBack</A>. I'm not exactly sure all that it can do, but here's at least part of the story. (I'm posting this so I can get corrected if I don't understand the feature. It occurs to me that this post could use the feature, heh.) Anyone, anywhere can send a message to any Movable Type server to associate a URL with a weblog post. That URL will be shown in the list of TrackBack links for the post. Further, based on an email from <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2002/08/08.html#a251">Matt Mower</A>, for some reason that I don't understand, this can only work with Movable Type servers. I doubt this, because from all outward appearances it is using HTTP, which could be emulated by any program capable of doing HTTP. Matt thinks this feature should be implemented with XML-RPC. I'm not sure it'll take off no matter what it's implemented in. Here's the problem. By design it seems to assume that everyone plays fair. But eventually we all attract a relatively small number of people who would mark up every post with trash talk, if given the chance to. It's a predictable process. That's why I don't have a discussion group here (I used to), or a comments feature. It's why MSNBC is moving to weblogs over discussion software. It's basically why weblogs have a future for thoughtful discourse where mail-list-like collaboration tools are dead-ends. When I think about evolving weblogs, I try to avoid features that turn them into discussion groups. [<A href="http://www.scripting.com/">Scripting News</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I think there has been a misunderstanding between Dave and I.  Maybe I misphrased something or it was misinterpreted.  Either way: I'm not suggesting that TrackBack can only be implemented in MT.  Just that, as it is implemented in MT it can only be served by MT and is most useful to MT users.  It doesn't suit me very much.   I also don't like the way you have to TrackBack enable things, use special URL's, have bookmarklets etc..  all that gets in the way to me. I envisage an open XML-RPC based system.  The TrackBack data should be available to & from any system and can track arbitrary URLs (no requirement to TrackBack enable anything). Also with the prototype Radio client all the work of pinging is done for you automatically.  As part of the publishing action Radio will figure out all the posts being referenced and ping them automatically.   That's how I want it to work, you might want it different which is why I say it's a prototype. As to the inherent design problem in trackback, well, I agree with the comments made.  From a certain viewpoint. However I see TrackBack not so much as a weblogging tool but as a k-logging tool.  It gives you the ability to know what someone else is contributing to projects you are working on and that could be vital.  As are discussion forums and all the other collaborative tools that help people do useful work. Will TrackBack be absused?  Sure.  But so can any technology.  If the abuse becomes a problem we can evolve strategies for addressing it.  For me this is a time for experimentation, it's too early to abandon a potentially useful idea like TrackBack because it has a potential for abuse. Example (and shooting from the hip) : Problem: "nusiance pings appearing on my TrackBack report."  This seems a lot like the problem of spam email to me.  Collaborative spam filtering looks set to deliver good results here, maybe it could do the same for TrackBack? [Disclaimer: TrackBack - I am a believer!]  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000282.html Gotta get into the Groove Sun, 11 Aug 2002 15:01:24 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0106046/2002/08/10.html#a123">Groove</A>. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> I had <A href="http://www.groove.net/">Groove</A> running on my notebook and I brought it up a few times to do things. I collaborate with some clients and people with <A href="http://www.groove.net/">Groove</A>, <A href="http://www.groove.net/products/individual/">keeping documents and discussions in sync. I also use it as a better Briefcase. </A>And invariably, the comments were like "Wow, that's cool! I could manage my distributed project that way. I could keep track of bugs across a geographically disperse team that way. And man, you're disconnected and can sync later?" Then all of them would say "<A href="http://www.groove.net/about/news/">Who's Groove</A>?" Its interesting to note that people need this kind of stuff and they have no idea its even out there or who Groove is (none of the developers in the room had ever heard of them). [...] How do we get people to collaborate? [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0105852/">Sam Gentile's Radio Weblog</A>] So then I download and install Groove, and start playing with it.  After 15 or 20 minutes of this, I'm starting to get it, so I think.  I call a few people from a client's office and get them to install it, and we start exploring what we can do.  By now, I'm getting excited about what I can do with this, and I'm starting to think I get it.  We figure out a couple of quick wins, and share a "pilot" groove space out to the team. [<A href="http://www.rassoc.com/gregr/weblog/2002/08/09.html#a57">Greg Reinacker's Weblog</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> Greg emailed me about Groove yesterday, I too had taken note of the recent posting on Groove and I'd been kicking around the idea of downloading it and seeing if anybody else at work would be interested.  Communication and collaboration are serious problems at work.  We've been using Sharepoint, but the results aren't great; we're using it as a glorified file server with a web interface.  Unfortunately, our connection to the Internet was pretty flaky yesterday and I couldn't connect to Groove the couple times I tried.  Monday, hopefully. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0106046/">Gordon Weakliem's Radio Weblog</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Groove's one of those things.  I know it's important but it's a complex app and I never seem to get around to testing it out.  Maybe this week I'll download it again and see if <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0104207/">Jeroen's</A> offer to help me out is still good.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000304.html So this is Ray Ozzie Sun, 11 Aug 2002 20:27:24 +0100 Here's something from a piece on <A href="http://www.ozzie.net/blog/stories/2002/08/04/why.html">"Why Collaboration"</A> by Ray Ozzie: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> "And so, for most of my life since that time, it has been my goal to explore what lies at the intersection between people, organizations, and technology. To attempt to utilize technology - to mold it, to shape it into a form such that it can help organizations to achieve a greater "return on connection" from employee, customer, and partner relationships, and to help individuals to strengthen the bonds between themselves and those with whom they interact - online. Because - empirically - collaborative technology has substantive value, in reducing the cost of coordination, in providing shared awareness across differences in space and time. The way that I explore is to build products, and to see how they are used. To see what works, and what doesn't. To listen, to interact, to refine. Because cooperative work exists at the intersection between people, organizations, and technology, collaborative systems are truly fascinating: in order to serve people effectively, technologists must, for example, understand social dynamics, social networks, human factors. In order to serve people in the context of organizations effectively, technologists must, for example, understand organizational dynamics, <A href="http://www.ssc.ruc.dk/institutional/rpnit_01_00.pdf">modularity</A> and <A href="http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/HJames/tce-bib.htm">transaction cost economics</A>. The bottom line to "why?" To create real value in a dimension that I passionately believe in."</BLOCKQUOTE> Wow! I've known who Ray Ozzie is for some time and what he's been involved in.  But I knew next to nothing about what drives him, what he is passionate about. I just love what he says here.  Given a few years, a whole heap more experience, wisdom, and education I could have written this myself! <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> What lies at the intersection between people, organizations, and technology?</BLOCKQUOTE> a fantastic question that drives me as well. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000311.html SpamNet Mon, 19 Aug 2002 15:30:18 +0100 I've been trialling DeerSoft SpamAssassin Pro for two weeks now.  For those unfamiliar with it, SpamAssassin is a collaborative spam filtering application that leverages the power of it's users to help fight spam. However the DeerSoft plugin for Outlook XP does not handle the HotMail inbox yet and this is where my spam comes from.  My novissio address is still shiny enough not to get any spam.  But I don't imagine that will last for long! Unfortunately the DeerSoft trial is only 14 days so I don't really feel I've seen it in action (although it did file a number of legitimate but likely messages as spam) and can't justify the $30. However, reading <A href="http://www.michaelandrochellessite.com/about/michael/blog">Michael Alderete's</A> weblog I came across his notes about <A href="http://www.cloudmark.com/products/spamnet/">SpamNet</A> which is another collaborative spam filter and available as a free download.  If it can access the hotmail inbox that would be great, otherwise I guess it gives me more time to play with this technology before having to commit and maybe pay for SpamAssassin. The only downside is that it's only available for Outlook on Windows. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000353.html One for PingBack Wed, 25 Sep 2002 16:29:02 +0100 I agree with <A href="http://www.ozzie.net/blog/2002/09/25.html#a65">Ray</A>.  I don't want pingback, trackback, or refererback.  I get enough feedback with comments, spam free e-mail, and links to IM.  If I wanted to host a discussion group, that is what I would have instead of a weblog.  [<A href="http://jrobb.userland.com/">John Robb's Radio Weblog</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Quite frankly I do more than scan my referrer lists "once in a while" as Ray puts it.  I am always scanning them, looking for the breadcrumbs of someone or something interesting that has passed by.  Always on the lookout for that connection that could have value for me or my business.   I get as much spam as anyone, but I'll put up with a future of pingbots right now if it means I make the connections that helps my business to succeed.  Just like I put up with spam to use email today.  I can't afford to pull up the draw bridge. PingBack may not be good for John, Ray, and others on the path well trodden.  But I think there are lots of people like myself who see things differently.  I want to know when someone is talking about what I am talking about and especially when they are talking about something I've written. I don't know all the answers to the path I'm on, it's only through shared dialogue and the connections that I am making that I have a hope of moving forward.  I see PingBack as a valuable way of making those extra connections that I need, of closing the loops, and getting the feedback.   If Ray & John don't want to come to that party that's fine, but I hope that, their not turning up, doesn't mean that there isn't a party at all. To put it another way my blog isn't the government emergency broadcast system, it's The Frasier Crane show. So go ahead and ping me. I'm listening.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000601.html Digesting knowledge management technology Tue, 15 Oct 2002 20:43:23 +0100 Over today I've been digesting <A href="http://researchweb.watson.ibm.com/journal/sj/404/marwick.html">Knowledge Management Technology</A> by A. D. Marwick It was an interesting although in some ways unsatisfying read.  I found the earlier more general sections more interesting and useful than the later sections which actually analysed the technology.  That may be because I had more to learn from those earlier sections. Some preliminary thoughts: "Knowledge" in this context includes both the experience and understanding of the people in the organisation and the information artifacts, such as documents and reports available within the organisation and in the world outside. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » We value experience and tend to reward it commensurately.  In a down economy headcount reduction is often used to pair down expenditure but at the same time it tends to pair down experience.  Investment in knowledge management (particularly tacit->tacit and tacit->explicit) is a defensive tactic for dealing with this.  For the same reason it could be viewed as a hostile technology by staff who might see themselves as being "in the firing line."   </BLOCKQUOTE> Tacit knowledge is actionable knowledge. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Not sure I understand this point.  Is explicit knowledge not actionable?  I guess I'm going to have to understand the term 'actionable knowledge' a little better.</BLOCKQUOTE> The key to knowledge creation lies in the mobilization and conversion of tacit knowledge. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » A key point from Nonaka.</BLOCKQUOTE> Creation of new knowledge takes place through the processes of combination and internalization. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » An interesting point.  Ref Nonaka, Internalization is defined as: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> explicit -> tacit (e.g. learn from a report)</BLOCKQUOTE> Combation as: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> explicit -> explicit (e.g. e-mail a report)</BLOCKQUOTE> Need to think more on this.  I'm not quite there.</BLOCKQUOTE> Knowledge sharing is often done without ever producing explicit knowledge and, to be most effective, should take place between people who have a common culture and can work together effectively. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Follow up the Davenport & Prusak reference. It would be interesting to study the cultural differences and similarities of groups of webloggers who are sharing knowledge successfully.  What are the interesting cultural segments in blogland?</BLOCKQUOTE> Externalization (tacit->explicit): By it's nature, tacit knowledge is difficult to convert into explicit knowledge.  Through conceptualization, elicitation, and ultimately articulation, typically in collaboration with others, some proportion of a person's tacit knowledge may be captured in explicit form.  Typical activities in which the conversion takes place are dialog among team members, in responding to questions, or through the elicitation of stories. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Key section. We're in the meat of klogging here.  Attempting to convert our mental models into text the better to share and collaborate with others. Note: elicitation of stories in this sense could just as well be capturing best practice,...</BLOCKQUOTE> For example, knowledge creation results from interaction of persons and tacit and explicit knowledge. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Seems to contradict the earlier point slightly.  This one makes more sense to me.</BLOCKQUOTE> Through interaction with other, tacit knowledge is externalized and shared. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » A key goal must therefore to be to make sure that we are able to interact with the right people and that our information is in a form that is suitable for sharing. Free text is obviously the most flexible but as many others have observed it may be useful to have templates that provide some form.  This might also be useful for introducing those who aren't comfortable with the idea of writing what they think. Rick Klau made an interesting observation when we met up.  To get people into klogging provide them with the Radio aggregator and simply tell them to re-post any item they think is interesting. This is sharing at it's simplest.  In my view once someone gets the hang of this they will make the next step - adding a simple commentary - themself.  Even if it is just one word here and there. What will be required to get full engagement will be an issue that they feel the need to speak out on.  A weblog is not just a bunch of text, it is a voice.</BLOCKQUOTE> the greatest value occurs from their (the 4 processes) combination since, as already noted, new knowledge is thereby created, disseminated, and internalized by other employees who can therefore act on it, and thus form new experiences and tacit knowledge that can in turn be shared with others and so on. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I think in reading this I was again reminded of the question: What is the value of new knowledge, of a new idea.  This idea of creating new knowledge doesn't seem as if it will play well in the downturn "evolution not revolution" "fix the leaky pipes" mindset. It's far more in tune with the "!garyhamel" mindset: Coming up with discontinuities that create new markets.</BLOCKQUOTE> In any case, automatic extraction of deep knowledge from documents is an elusive goal. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » True.  Although it will be interesting to see what tools like "!cyc" will be able to do as they mature.</BLOCKQUOTE> However, the candidate pieces of extracted knowledge must still be presented to a human for review and final decision, so that the value of the system is in increasing the productivity of the human analysts. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Yep</BLOCKQUOTE> The greatest difficulty in knowledge management identified by the respondents in a survey was "changing peoples behaviour" and the current biggest impedement to knowledge transfer was "culture." <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Key point. There is little technology can do about culture.  This maybe shouldn't worry us since because, as Seb pointed out in a <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2002/10/08.html#a413">recent post</A> (regarding a Darwin article), "Natural selection will take care of those companies (and individuals) who can't or won't do it". Technology can come to bear on behaviour though.  Two enablers will be: <UL dir=ltr> <LI> <DIV>software that encourages & supports behavioural change</DIV></LI> <LI> <DIV>software that requires less behavioural change</DIV></LI></UL> as appropriate.</BLOCKQUOTE> Ackerman refers to this situation as a "social technical gap." <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » This is the gap that good software must attempt to bridge.  Current paradigm weblog software is I think a step forwards and a step backwards. Forwards in that it supports the right behaviour, but backwards in that the key to weblogging is writing and hence it smacks straight into the barriers discussed recently about "why won't people write."</BLOCKQUOTE>  Shared experiences are in important basis for the formation and sharing of tacit knowledge. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Again this relates back to the point about culture.  A shared culture implies a set of common experiences that form the culture.  Hence why storytelling is important.  So we need tools that support shared experience and, hence, the capturing of context.  (Again this relates to my recent reading on best practices)</BLOCKQUOTE> A richer kind of shared experience can be provided by applications that support real-time on-line meetings (i.e. groupware) <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Yep.  I've <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2002/10/15.html#a483">just been musing</A> on an IM client I would like to have to support richer online collaboration than "just text".  Also Marc Canter & co. have been working on the idea of <A href="http://blogs.it/0100198/2002/09/20.html#a184">multimedia conversations</A> for some time. For myself I would like to try experimenting with VideoBlogging.</BLOCKQUOTE>   More later...   http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000730.html P2P companies or 'loosly coupled business' Thu, 31 Oct 2002 14:16:57 +0000 Loosely Coupled Business Practices Remember my ramblings about <A href="http://paolo.evectors.it/stories/p2pCompanies.html">p2p companies</A>? Well, when I wrote that piece I wanted to use the "loosely coupled" metaphor, but then for some reason I didn't. <A href="http://www.johnhagel.com/blog20021009.html">This article</A> gives a some very interesting perspectives on the idea. You should also read the <A href="http://www.johnhagel.com/paper_orchestratingcollaboration.pdf">white paper</A>. [<A href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I'll be reading this article later on.  John Seely-Brown is one of it's authors so I have high hopes. For now here is a 250 word summary: <UL> <LI>Collaboration can only generate economic value when it is firmly anchored in specific business processes that span across enterprises.</LI> <LI>Three core business processes meet this requirement: supply chain management, customer relationship management, and product innovation and commercialization.</LI> <LI>Li & Fung provides a powerful example of a new kind of sophisticated orchestrator coordinating a very broad process network.</LI> <LI>More fully developed process networks typically represent an expanding group of companies organized by an orchestrator to execute tailored business processes extending across multiple stages of activity.</LI> <LI>For ts and to motivate every orchestrator, then, there will be a growing number of companies known as service providers.</LI> <LI>Another aspect of Cisco's operations receives relatively little attention -- its development of an innovative process network to enhance the performance of its customer relationship management process.</LI> <LI>The differences between tightly coupled and loosely coupled business processes explain fundamental differences in the economic value creation potential of each type of business process.</LI> <LI>The early examples of loosely coupled business processes have all emerged within existing generations of information technology.</LI> <LI>Web services are the technology analog to loosely coupled business processes.</LI> <LI>Another key challenge in this stage is to build the appropriate information feedback loops to accelerate the ability of s improve their performance in supporting the process networks.</LI> <LI>Few companies will evolve to the third stage where they shed their traditional core business and become pure process network orchestrators.</LI> <LI>Success requires migrating towards a much more flexible business architecture supported ultimately by a more flexible technology architecture.</LI></UL></BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000797.html Contributing to an intranet Fri, 29 Nov 2002 10:59:59 +0000 I'm trying to come up with more models for thinking about communication.  I came up with a question: What affects my contributions?  And some attributes of an answer: <UL> <LI>inertia - how hard is it for me to make a contribution</LI> <LI>reward - what do I get in return for contributing</LI> <LI>value - how much use can be made of my contribution</LI></UL> A powerful intranet system makes it easy for people to contribute, gives them a direct return on investment and allows what they have added to be re-used in as many ways as possible. Typically an employee can contribute via: <UL> <LI>e-mail</LI> <LI>bulletin board / discussion list / group mailbox</LI> <LI>document management system</LI> <LI>database</LI></UL> A cursory examination of these options follows: e-mail <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> It is very easy to write e-mails but often harder to know who to send them to for maximum value.  They often go unacknowledged, its very hard to tell if they've had the desired impact and it's increasingly hard to know if and how to re-use the content of an e-mail.  Also with the quantity of e-mail people receive these days I think the law of diminishing returns is at work.  More e-mail (even better e-mail) isn't going to make things any better.</BLOCKQUOTE> bulletin board <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> On the face of it bulletin boards and other discussion groups work very well.  However as long time users will attest they have many significant drawbacks.  The first is that it is very hard to keep on track as an initial discussion widens out in collaboration.  Inevitably people look to take the traffic "elsewhere".  Popular discussion groups can get croweded very quickly which is a curse and a curse.  A crowded group can intimidate new comers and makes it harder for members to find what they are interested in.  A corrolary of this is that it soon becomes impossible to find anything for re-use.</BLOCKQUOTE> document management system <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> These days web-based document management systems (which all call themselves knowledge management systems in the hope you won't know the difference) tend to be pretty easy to use.  As ways of storing and indexing large collections of documents they work very well, but they often fail to solve the underlying problems of managing an organisations knowledge.   This is because, often, the knowledge isn't in the formal documentation. Example:  I'm an engineer working for a company who make handheld wireless workstations.  I acquire through on-site testing some valuable knowledge about a problem with making our equipment work in their situation.  I could write this up in a document and post it in the DMS but more likely I will put it in a notebook or on a post-It or just tell my colleagues about it. This kind of micro-knowledge (micro-content) is often where the useful knowledge lies and it can be very hard to get at if your systems all work at the macro level.</BLOCKQUOTE> database <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> What company doesn't have at least a CRM system today?  Supposedly the channel for storing all information.  But if you take my previous example where does that knowledge go?  It's not information about the customer (at least not really).  And that assumes that your CRM system is flexible enough to handle unexpected data.  Most either aren't or are never properly implemented. Databases are often cumbersome, unfriendly and inflexible.  Also where information goes in, it is often much harder to get it out again in any sensible form (another Access report anybody?).</BLOCKQUOTE>   As I have written before I do believe that all of these systems have a valuable role to play in building a successful intranet, however they address only the macro level and much of the knowledge an organisation needs to gain an understanding of itself and a competitve advantage over it's peers is micro-content. What is required is a communication medium that has low inertia, rewards the constributor and builds shared value.  Answer: weblogs, or more accurately knowledge-logs. More later. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000910.html Patterns of Interaction Tue, 07 Jan 2003 11:15:39 +0000 Just discovered the <A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns.html">Patterns of Interaction</A> which is described as "a pattern language for computer supported collaborative work."  I've not had much chance to delve yet, but the patterns look interesting: <UL> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/artifactAsAnAuditTrail/artifactAsAnAuditTrail.html">Artefact as an audit trail</A> </LI> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/multipleRepresentationsOfInfo/multipleRepresentationsOfInfo.html">Multiple representations of information</A> </LI> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/publicArtefact/publicArtefact.html">Public artefact</A> </LI> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/accountingForAnUnseenArtefact/accountingForAnUnseenArtefact.html">Accounting for an unseen artefact</A> </LI> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/workingWithInterruptions/workingWithInterruptions.html">Working with interruptions</A> </LI> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/collocatedTeamwork/collocatedTeamwork.html">Collaboration in small groups</A> </LI> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/receptionistAsAHub/receptionistAsAHub.html">Reception(ist) as a hub</A> </LI> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/doingAWalkabout/doingAWalkabout.html">Doing a walkabout</A> </LI> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/overlappingResponsibilities/overlappingResponsibilities.html">Overlapping responsibilities</A> </LI> <LI><A href="http://www.comp.lancs.ac.uk/computing/research/cseg/projects/pointer/patterns/careerTrajectory/careerTrajectory.html">Assistance through experience</A> </LI></UL> This was discovered via the <A href="http://www.pliant.org/personal/Tom_Erickson/InteractionPatterns.html">The Interaction Design Patterns Page</A>. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001042.html p-logs Fri, 14 Feb 2003 17:43:09 +0000 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://weblog.halmacomber.com/#90323308">P-Logs for Project Teams</A>. Here's my <A title="Hal Macomber, Reforming Project Management, 2003" href="http://halmacomber.com/p-log_draft_spec.html">Proposal for a P-Log (Project Weblog) Specification</A>. Why the Interest in Weblogs? I've been curious about the role blogging could play on projects. In October I did a posting <A href="http://halmacomber.com/jammin/2002_10_06_archive.html#85538713">Project Klogs: Changing Paradigms</A> on John Udell's view of weblogs for projects. Udell claimed our tools and practices don't attend to the story of the project. Projects fail. This is the usual case. We all know this. Attempts by the <A href="http://www.pmi.org/">PMI</A> to address this have not succeeded. It's time for something completely different. Why A Specification? We've been designing and redesigning the same collaboration tools for years. Ten years ago I used an early Lotus Notes database for project management. Back then and today the collaboration environments do the same things: provide status, track issues, and discussion. We can do those things with a p-log. But there are three critical issues that need attention that haven't got attention: <OL> <LI>Uncertainty - the future unfolds influenced by actions of the team and the world that is unfolding around the team. Planning is the conversation for participating in the infolding. <LI>Learning - the vast majority of knowledge is tacit. Projects are one-of-a-kind opportunities to share, deepen, innovate, ... <LI>Mood of the team - enthusiasm beats complacency, cooperation beats (internal) competition, determination beats resignation, and wonder beats arrogance. Yet, when mood is left unaddressed we get what we get. </LI></OL>P-logs are about the story of the project and the team. P-logs are for the team to take charge of the conversation of the project. What's Next? Perhaps this is too ambitious. Perhaps nothing short of audacious ambition will get at the underlying sources of project failure. I propose we do this together. How about a project conducted with a weblog for developing the p-log? (Thanks <A title="Learning about Lean" href="http://joeelylean.blogspot.com/">Joe</A> for the proposal.) In the next few days I'll write about aspects of the <A title="Hal Macomber, Reforming Project Management, 2003" href="http://halmacomber.com/p-log_draft_spec.html">p-log specification</A>. Please join in with your comments and questions, suggestions and criticisms, and offers to build and use a prototype p-log. [<A href="http://weblog.halmacomber.com/">Reforming Project Management</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE>   http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001161.html Purple thy name is: SocialText? Tue, 18 Feb 2003 16:41:05 +0000 Interesting, I just post about Wiki and here I read that the <A href="http://www.socialtext.com/">SocialText</A> crew (Adina Levin, Ross Mayfield, Peter Kaminski, and Ed Vielmetti) are releasing a Wiki product of their own called <A href="http://www.socialtext.com/projects/">NiceLittleWiki</A>.  I hope it will solve some of the current problems with Wiki software (ugliness, impossible media handling, lack of ability to format text when you need it, bad indexing, etc...). SocialText may turn out to be one of the Purple Cows of KM.  I await their next move with interest! (With thanks to <A href="http://www.terryfrazier.com/weblog/">Terry</A> for reminding me about SocialText) http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001175.html The whole is greater than the sum of it's parts Wed, 20 Aug 2003 10:01:18 +0100 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <A href="http://weblog.halmacomber.com/2003_08_17_archive.html#106135017216163658">Doing My Best Not to Scream</A>. <A href="http://weblog.halmacomber.com/2003_08_17_archive.html#106126040209696149">Yesterday's posting</A> hit a nerve. (Seems at least three people agree with me!) What might we be able to accomplish on our projects if we put our attention on learning to increase the relatedness of people on our projects rather than studying for the <A href="http://www.pmi.org/">PMI</A> certification exam? Does anyone really think that doing better work breakdown structures will make our projects successful? No one. That's what I thought. How about learning to repair trust between two important team members? Now that would make a difference. Not the role of a project manager, you say? Then who's role is it? It's time we stopped acting like good technical wisdom is what makes for good project management. It doesn't. Likewise, accountability, authority, and responsibility (someone needs to explain the difference between accountability and responsibility for me) don't make a project manager. Let's try care, guidance, attention, listening, and openness. Now we're getting somewhere! I recognize my mood in writing this is somewhat impertinent. Frankly, I'm doing my best not to scream. (It would wake the dogs.) We must shift our conversation about project management from the things we do to the people we do it with. Only when we put people at the center of projects can we have the fantastic environments that projects are for our clients, for us and our team mates, and our companies. [<A href="http://weblog.halmacomber.com/">Reforming Project Management</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> I missed the original post in my aggregator but agree strongly with what is said here.  One of the key things I have learned over the last year or so is that it is people that do valuable things and they don't do them on their own. To take my own example, my productivity has soared since I started collaborating with <A href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo</A> and <A href="http://simone.blogs.it/">Simone</A> of evectors.  It's not our technical knowledge that has delivered this, it's the new interactions that we can provoke & sustain in each other.  The whole definitely is greater than the sum of it's parts. We're looking at ways in which <A href="k-collector">K-Collector</A> can help to connect people together in organsiations because we think it's a powerful tool. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001566.html Hydra = SubEthaEdit Wed, 27 Aug 2003 13:50:21 +0100 <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> <IMG src="http://www.cristianvidmar.com/images/subethaedit.jpg" align=right>Hydra is now called <A href="http://www.codingmonkeys.de/subethaedit/">SubEthaEdit</A> due to legal issues. I really don't like this name, the old one was way better. Anyway I love this product and already tried it in two meetings some weeks ago. It rocks. Yesterday I co-edited a wiki page using SubEthaEdit and it's been damn great, save from having to copy and paste from the editor to the browser. Thinking about it...wikis are collaborative web editing, SubEthaEdit is realtime collaborative editing. Where could this lead if the tools could someday integrate? Realtime collaborative web editing? Wouldn't it be great? Inserting a picture and having it suddenly appear inside the web editor of the others concurrently editing the web page? [<A href="http://www.cristianvidmar.com/">Cristian Vidmar: CRISTIAN VIDMAR: M y P u b l i c W e b l o g</A>]</BLOCKQUOTE> Ah.. this confused the hell out of me today when I followed a link, downloaded a package and ended up with a program with a different name!  Okay, so I do have Hydra.  Cool. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001591.html Aggregator as hub Fri, 05 Sep 2003 10:40:17 +0100 <div style="margin-left: 40px;">Intranet aggregators. I spent most of the week visiting small and large companies. The more I talk with "real people working in real companies" (meaning: not nerds spending their whole days hacking), the more convinced I am that a news aggregator is the ideal center for any Intranet. The basic idea is merge to the same server contents coming from: </div> <ul style="margin-left: 40px;"> <li>internal sources (accounting, trouble ticketing, exiting document management applications, other data bases: we should be able to get a feed from any internal app)</li> <li>k-logs (every member of the group has one)</li> <li>external news sources (general news, weblogs, specialized sources, scraped pages)</li> </ul> <div style="margin-left: 40px;"> </div> <div style="text-align: center; margin-left: 40px;"><img src="http://paolo.evectors.it/myImages/intranetAggregator.gif"> <div style="text-align: left;">The output of the aggregator should be both html that people can browser with their browser and more feeds which could end up in personal aggregators or funneled in other applications. Centralized aggregators should not necessarily mean that every user has to read all feeds. There should be both the kind of personalization allowed by personal aggregators (deciding which feeds to subscribe to) but also added vaue services that would allow users to discover additional sources of information and anyway give different relevance to different kind of information snippets that are displayed on the page. </div> </div> <div style="margin-left: 40px;"> [<a href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog</a>] </div> Paolo has put it succinctly. The aggregator becomes the organisational hub gathering information from all sources and using personalisation and intelligence to filter & recombine information in useful ways before presenting it either as views or as feeds for other consumers. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001611.html Thu, 08 Jan 2004 13:10:14 +0000 <blockquote><a href="http://www.weblogsky.com/archives/000033.html">Ross Mayfield on Wikis</a> [<a href="http://www.weblogsky.com/">Weblogsky</a>]</blockquote> Ross's point:<blockquote>By giving users the power to create, link and form groups it serves the domain of business practice, the unstructured collaboration that leverages informal networks.</blockquote> is well made. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001790.html ETCon'04 - We won't be there Fri, 16 Jan 2004 08:57:46 +0000 <blockquote><a href="http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/entry/4114434910144189/">ETECH is coming up....</a>. <A href="http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/entry/4114434910144189/">O'Reilly's Emerging Technology Conference...</A>. <H2>OReillys Emerging Technology Conference</H2> <H3>Posted Jan 15, 2004, 6:54 PM ET by Judith Meskill</H3><IMG src="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/images/et2004/etcon_butterfly.gif" align=right> <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etech/">OReillys Emerging Technology Conference</A> taking place at the Westin Horton Plaza, San Diego, CA, Feb. 9-12, 2004 will have a <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/28/track_social.html">Social Software track</A>. This promises to be an excellent event with a broad spectrum of notable speakers that includes (but is certainly not limited to): <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_spkr/1686">Helen Greiner</A> - iRobot Corp., <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_spkr/521">Cory Doctorow</A> - EFF, <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_spkr/1730">Lili Cheng</A> - Microsoft Research, <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_spkr/1727">Gilman Louie</A> - In-Q-Tel, <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_spkr/363">David Sifry</A> - Technorati, <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_spkr/1703">Joichi Ito</A> - Neoteny, <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_spkr/1669">Elizabeth Lawley</A> - Rochester Institute of Technology, and, of course, <A href="http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_spkr/416">Tim OReilly</A> - OReilly & Associates. [<A href="http://socialsoftware.weblogsinc.com/">The Social Software Weblog</A>] This is the key event of the year.  We're gonna party like is USED to be 1999. I'll be there - sponsored by <A href="http://laszlosystems.com">Laszlo Systems</A> and I'll be giving a :05 minute talk on FOAF and the PeopleAggregator. But clearly the most exciting event will be the field trip to TJ and the House of Mole.  Something not to be missed. [<a href="http://blogs.it/0100198/">Marc's Voice</a>]</blockquote> Anyone out there want to sponsor three Europeans with a kick-ass new RSS based collaborative knowledge organisation tool to go to ET'04? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001808.html Building collaborative culture Tue, 02 Mar 2004 07:08:22 +0000 <blockquote><a href="http://www.alphaport.co.uk/categories/alphaVirtualWorkingAndCollaboration/2004/02/25.html#a263">Collaborative Business Culture</a>. In a collaborative business culture, people work effectively together as a community, guided by a common purpose. Trust is swift and open and honest discussions are the way of working together. In this culture, members respect each other, value their differences and are open to the ideas of each other. Members listen to each other and believe that strength, resilience and progress come from the diversity of people working together rather than the monolith of the corporate ego. These communities often share a common vision, one that is not always shared with business leaders. However, it is important for business leaders to support this new knowledge-led culture where conversations are for sharing and learning, and working is about doing things better next time. Without the support of business leaders, even the best technologies will not allow for a collaborative culture. So how do we shape this culture - after all, we cannot create a new culture overnight. All that business can do, therefore, is provide the necessary tools and infrastructure to support this new way of working. We can start by ensuring that there is a commitment from the top that permits the changes in the business environment that will allow this new culture to flourish. Such commitments will also need to include the provision of an infrastructure, a collaborative tool and a place for people to discuss, meet and get-together in person or in a virtual way. We identify business communities that share a common goal and assure support for a community leader and facilitator, providing ongoing commitment and interest in those common goals. This process is repeated and over again with other communities, and waiting as other new communities form spontaneously. This process also needs to be supported by learning in three key areas; becoming a community leader and facilitator, working with collaborative tools and building a community case. [<a href="http://www.alphaport.co.uk/categories/alphaVirtualWorkingAndCollaboration/">Torben Anderson: Alpha Virtual Working and Collaboration</a>]</blockquote> Something I am thinking about, more and more often, is the organisational tools to help <a href="http://www.evectors.com/itkcollector/">K-Collector</a> customers make the leap from a technology solution to a business solution. Experience has taught us that it's not enough to simply give them funky software and expect them to know what to do next. Here is the beginnings of advice to collaboration/community software purchasers: <ul> <li>Try to understand, as far as possible, what you expect from online communities. If possible, be aware of existing communities (both formal and informal) operating in your business, their structure, and their value.</li> <li>Communities are like flower beds -- nobody wants to see them until they bloom. Try to find natural community leaders, people motivated to make the community a success and who will hold things together (after the initial flurry of interest is over) until the community actually delivers for it's membership.</li> <li>Learn/Find tools to recognize new and important communities emerging in your business. Have a model for recycling communities and letting them die with dignity.</li> <li>Learn to get the best out of the tools. Pick a tool which will help grow the kind of communities that you want to build (not all tools are equal). Make sure you pick a vendor you trust and who you think are on a similar trajectory to you. Are they responsive? Do they understand what you're doing?</li> <li>Human encouragement is your best weapon.</li> <li>Expect change.</li> </ul> More, much more, in due course... http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001938.html 3rd Gurteen Knowledge Conference on Managing Organisational Complexity Wed, 03 Mar 2004 20:13:46 +0000 Spent today at <a href="http://www.gurteen.com/">David Gurteen's</a> 3rd Knowledge Conference on Managing Organisational Complexity. It was a great day and I took lots of notes and photos (to the extent that I annoyed most everyone!) Sadly Dave Snowden was not able to attend in person due to personal circumstances, however we got virtual Snowden which was still very good. Today certainly added a new layer to my thinking and i'm going to be percolating all this stuff for days and weeks to come. Right now I'm up to my ears in a market research exercise for K-Collector so expect blogged notes & photos probably Friday. Plus I got to meet Ian Glendinning of <a href="http://www.psybertron.org/">Psybertron</a> which was cool. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001946.html A little light reading Sun, 14 Mar 2004 13:26:15 +0000 Papers I read on the plane home yesterday:<ul> <li><a href="http://jroller.com/page/rickard/20040306">Implementing dynamic AOP using abstract schema</a> by <a href="http://www.jroller.com/page/rickard">Rickard Öberg</a></li> <li><a href="http://www.cognexus.org/">Sense-Making and Knowledge Collaboration Tools</a> by Dr. Jeffrey Conklin.</li> </ul> Rickard is doing a lot of thinking (& acting) in the Aspect Oriented Programming (AOP) field. I think it's pretty exciting and fully expect AOP to be as mainstream, in 3-5 years, as OOP is today. I'm playing with <a href="https://dynaop.dev.java.net/">Dynaop</a> which is a very low impact AOP solution for Java written by <a href="http://crazybob.org/roller/page/crazybob">"Crazy Bob"</a>. It's a great package and laughably easy to get started with. Sense making is I guess one of my key themes these days. My work has taken me from the mainstream of KM (i.e. document management) into the world of organisational complexity, deep collaboration, wicked problems, patterns in information and making sense of it all. In particular this paper introduced me to Issue Based Information Systems (IBIS) and how they affect tools & approaches. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001980.html #joiito, #kmtalk Fri, 09 Apr 2004 18:24:19 +0100 Since the <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2004/04/02.html#a1394">dinner</a> last week I have found myself hanging around in <a href="http://joi.ito.com/joiwiki/IrcChannel">#joiito</a> quite a bit.  <a href="http://chocnvodka.blogware.com/blog">Suw</a> kindly introduced me to the folks there.  It's a great group - if a little schizophrenic at times - full of interesting people.  You can always be assured of something to whet the appetite! But, beyond this, I've realised what a fabulous community building tool IRC is.  Instant messenger has become an essential tool and IM (and I imagine, even more so, Skype) conference chats are great for focused collaboration.  IRC seems to have something different.  It's something about the way the channel is permanent, but people drop in and out as they can.  Bots are written to offer assistance.  Conversations run into side conversations.  It's all a big mess, but a beautiful one and it works. For this reason I am now going to hang around in a channel called #kmtalk on <a href="http://www.freenode.net/">freenode</a> IRC (details of how to get there are <a href="http://www.freenode.net/using_the_network.shtml">here</a>).  If anyone is looking to chat about knowledge management, communities of practice, collaboration, effectiveness or any of those sorts of topic I am offering this as a good starting point. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002052.html More on #kmtalk and IRC integration Tue, 13 Apr 2004 17:58:47 +0100 A couple more visitors to <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2004/04/09.html#a1399">#kmtalk</a>.  First there was the author of <a href="http://jcwinnie.us/MT/weblog/">Your Guess Is As Good as Mine</a> (Jonathan Smith?).  Also <a href="http://www.terryfrazier.com/weblog/">Terry Frazier</a> and <a href="http://www.rklau.com/tins/">Rick Klau</a> stopped by.  Terry demonstrated his l33t skills by signing in using his Treo 600 (using <a href="http://www.smittyware.com/palm/upirc/">upIRC</a>). Anyone and everyone who is interested in knowledge management, communities of practice, collaboration, wiki, social networks and other related topics is welcome to stop by.  Right now I am interested in how IRC can be linked to other tools (including <a href="http://www.evectors.com/itkcollector/">K-Collector</a> of course). For example might it be useful to link K-Collector topics (e.g. <a href="http://w4.evectors.it/itentdirectory/topic?topic=knowledge_management&chunck=1">Knowledge Management</a>) to IRC channels?  For example topics like <a href="http://w4.evectors.it/itentdirectory/topic?topic=knowledge_management&chunck=1">Knowledge Management</a>, <a href="http://w4.evectors.it/itentdirectory/topic?topic=k_logs&chunck=1">K-Logs</a>, <a href="http://w4.evectors.it/itentdirectory/topic?topic=knowledge_organisation&chunck=1">Knowledge Organisation</a>, <a href="http://w4.evectors.it/itentdirectory/topic?topic=knowledge_work&chunck=1">Knowledge Economy</a>, <a href="http://w4.evectors.it/itentdirectory/topic?topic=collaboration&chunck=1">Collaboration</a>, <a href="http://w4.evectors.it/itentdirectory/topic?topic=commercial_blogging&chunck=1">Commercial blogging</a>, ... could all be linked to the #kmtalk IRC channel. Topics about different subjects could be linked to other channels. The idea is that people viewing the web topic could see who was talking in the channel (want to join in?) and recent traffic in the channel (have something to add?) Could this be a useful application? http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002071.html First outing for People Centred Knowledge Management Thu, 22 Apr 2004 13:04:12 +0100 <blockquote><a href="http://blog.xrefer.com/2004_04_01_xrefer_archive.html#108246245765384532">City Information Group April seminar - A trip to t ...</a>. <a href="http://blog.xrefer.com/#108246245765384532"></a>City Information Group April seminar - <a href="http://www.cityinformation.org.uk/Events/FutureEvents/April04.htm">A trip to the virtual world</a> - 27 April 2004 - London, UK - Roger Brown from GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), will describe the dramatic transformation of the GSK libraries from physical to virtual, focussing on the implications for their information vendors. Matt Mower, partner in Evectors Software, will discuss exciting new developments in people-centred knowledge management. He will focus on "social software" including weblogs, aggregators and instant messengers [<a href="http://feedster.com/rss.php?q=evectors&sort=date&ie=UTF-8">Feedster.com Results For: evectors</a>]</blockquote>I shall be speaking on April 27th to the <a href="http://www.cityinformation.org.uk/">City Information Group</a>.  I am presenting the first fruits of the work that <a href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo</a> and I have been doing over the last couple of months.  I'll be presenting our theme: People Centred Knowledge Management, talking about issues such as collaboration, innovation, and trust, and illustrating how social network tools from weblogs to wikis to IRC combine to address those issues in a way existing tools cannot. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002107.html Social Tools for Enterprises Symposium Wed, 19 May 2004 07:27:36 +0100 Yesterday at various times around the world we held an IRC chat in the #kmtalk channel to get started organising an <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/stes/">event</a> in London in July (July 12th it now transpires).  The working title is 'Social Tools for Enterprises' and the event is aimed to be a practical get go for CxO's in Enterprises as to how social tools & methods can help them with problems like insufficient collaboration, low innovation and unmanaged risk. This first session was really a chance to ensure that everyone had a similar vision of what we want to achieve and to get some vital details like the date sorted.  Over the next couple of days we'll be working on the programme and there is another chat planned for Friday (details will be on the wiki soon). Everyone with an interest is welcome to join the next IRC chat and get involved. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002240.html Getting my head shifted Tue, 25 May 2004 09:29:09 +0100 Had a very nice lunch with Lee Bryant of <a href="http://www.headshift.com/">HeadShift</a> yesterday.  We met in <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2004/04/09.html">#kmtalk</a> talking about the <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/stes/">Social Tools for Enterprises Symposium</a> I am helping to create..  Headshift are based in <a href="http://www.pooloflondon.co.uk/visiting.builder/places/0010.html">Butlers wharf</a>, right on the river, which is a great setting for a meet up. Over spinach & ricotta parcels and some <a href="http://www.staropramen.cz/">Staropramen</a> we chatted about: social software, the challenges facing organisation and employees, the central importantance of people at all stages of collaborative/KM projects, the roles of blognets, <a href="http://www.headshift.com/work/proj.cfm">projects</a> they are working on, <a href="http://www.foaf-project.org/">FOAF</a> (esp. how we need to be careful with what we infer from the data), <a href="http://www.sysval.org/">metavalues</a>, <a href="http://www.linkedin.com/">LinkedIn</a>, <a href="http://matt.blogs.it/2003/06/19.html#a956">Dave Snowden</a>, <a href="http://www.evectors.com/itkcollector/">K-Collector</a>, <a href="http://www.purl.org/NET/ENT/1.0/">ENT 1.0</a>, <a href="http://blogtalk.net/">BlogTalk 2.0</a>, the <a href="http://topicexchange.com/t/blogwalk/">BlogWalkers</a>, Vienna, services vs. products, and a host of other topics. I look forward to talking to Lee & co. again in the near future. http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002272.html