Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on knowledge-work http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic knowledge-work Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Terminology: The management in KM Wed, 25 Feb 2004 15:30:04 +0000 I've been pondering the term Knowledge Management a little. In particular the use of the word manage. A dictionary search for 'manage' brings up, among others, the following meanings: <ul> <li>to direct or control the use of</li> <li>to exert control over</li> <li>to make submissive to ones authority, discipline, or persuation</li> <li>to direct the affairs or interests of</li> <li>to make subservient by artful conduct</li> <li>to bring around cunningly to ones plans</li> <li>to exercise in graceful or artful action</li> </ul> with the following synonyms: <ul> <li>to direct</li> <li>govern</li> <li>control</li> <li>wield</li> <li>order</li> <li>contrive</li> <li>concert</li> <li>conduct</li> <li>transact</li> </ul> From the latin manus meaning hand. To me this terminology sounds all wrong. It is the language of control, of dominance. It is the lanuage of the <a href="http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&oe=UTF-8&q=the+scarcity+mentality&btnG=Google+Search">scarcity mentality</a> which says "I Win, You Lose" or "You Win, I Lose". That's not how I want to think/talk about knowledge. Unlike, say, <a href="http://www.webelements.com/webelements/elements/text/Pu/key.html">Plutonium</a>, knowledge is only as scarce as we make it. As I impart my knowledge to you I don't lose it, instead we both have it. And maybe more, between us we may synthesize something that I could not have created alone. Giving my knowledge to you has, at the very least, increased the total amount of knowledge, not reduced it. (Fortunately Plutonium doesn't work this way!) So I think the terminology doesn't fit. In the context of a healthy organization knowledge isn't something that we should want to manage. Rather I'd say it's something we want to plant and watch grow. What is required, I think, is to recast the principles of knowledge management in a language which emphasizes abundance without unduly frightening those people who may tend toward a scarcity mentality. I'm still thinking about how that goes... http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00001912.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/00001953.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/00001986.html Social Tools for Enterprises Symposium in London Tue, 08 Jun 2004 12:24:14 +0100 Now that we have the agenda sorted I am happy to announce the 1st, London, <div style="margin-left: 40px;"><a href="http://www.kmcluster.com/lon/LON_Summer_2004.htm"> Social Tools for Enterprises Symposium</a> </div> which <a href="http://www.evectors.com/">Evectors</a> is organising ably supported by <a href="http://www.kmcluster.com/">KM Cluster</a> and a group of the usual suspects (see the <a href="http://www.socialtext.net/stes/">Wiki</a> for details). We think this is a great opportunity to start showing people that social tools (both people tools and software tools) are ready for prime time and deliver bottom line benefits to enterprises. The event will be held on Monday 12th July at the <a href="http://www.bloomsburysquare.co.uk/intro/index.html">Bloomsbury Square Training Centre</a>. We've got a great list of people leading sessions which we hope will be a bit different to the usual chalk & talk conference fare. We really want a conversation to emerge from this event which will help to enlighten people interested in social tools but unsure how to put them to best use in their own contexts. So we have: <ul> <li>Stowe Boyd - <a href="http://www.corante.com/about/research.shtml">Corante Research</a> & <a href="http://stoweboyd.typepad.com/awm/">A Working Model</a></li> <li>Lee Bryant - <a href="http://www.headshift.com/">Headshift</a></li> <li>Prof. Marc Eisenstadt - <a href="http://kmi.open.ac.uk/home-f.cfm">Knowledge Media Institue</a></li> <li>David Gurteen - <a href="http://www.gurteen.com/">Gurteen Knowledge</a></li> <li>Euan Semple - <a href="http://www.bbc.com/">BBC</a></li> <li>Phil Wolff. - <a href="http://www.dijest.com/aka/">A Klog Apart</a> & <a href="http://blogcount.com/">BlogCount</a></li> </ul><a href="http://paolo.evectors.it/">Paolo</a> and I will also be there. I think it has the potential to be a great event and a great day I hope that you will come and join us. Please tell all your friends! http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00002294.html