Curiouser and Curiouser!

Curiouser and Curiouser! on sharing http://matt.blogs.it/ RSS feed for topic sharing Copyright 2006 Matt Mower Squib/0.1 self@mattmower.com self@mattmower.com en-gb Sharing is a community responsibility Wed, 07 Aug 2002 21:38:21 +0100 <A href="http://www.kellogg.nwu.edu/faculty/mcgee/htm/blog/2002/08/07.html#a2039">Knowledge sharing and responsibility</A>. <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px">Key insight for me:</BLOCKQUOTE> <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> the sharing of knowledge, and the cooperative application of new technologies are part of the responsibility of belonging to a community of practice.</BLOCKQUOTE> First time I've seen the notion of knowledge sharing articulated as a responsibility of community membership. [<A href="http://www.kellogg.nwu.edu/faculty/mcgee/htm/blog/">McGee's Musings</A>] [<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"> » Hmmm... I guess it's one of those point of view things.  It seems obvious when I think about it that if you are really a member of a community then sharing is an implicit responsibility.  Whilst the value of what you have to share will vary over time, you will want to share to enable the community to grow.  Otherwise you're not really a member. For me it's the difference between carrying a Union card and going to meetings (I never did either but hopefully that doesn't hurt my point too much).  If you don't go to the meetings then you're not really part of the Union.  </BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000263.html Can teach. Won't teach. Thu, 22 Aug 2002 22:16:14 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2002/08/22.html#a173">Learning, sharing, and doing both</A>. ... I wonder what connections exist between learning and teaching, or, in KM context, between learning and sharing. Are those who dare to share and eager to learn are the same people? Are these two sides of the same coin? May be its a coincidence in my case :-) [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0109961/">Mathemagenic</A>] I believe that all sharers are learners. However from my experience there are perhaps five to ten times more people who can learn but won't teach than there are people who'll do both. The implication would be that you can only klog 10-20% of an organization. But watch the generation of kids who are going to grow up with the medium. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/">Seb's Open Research</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » I'd be interested in any conjecture about the, possibly many, reasons why those people won't teach?</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000439.html Sharing zones of control Tue, 24 Sep 2002 23:48:52 +0100 <A href="http://www.smartmobs.com/archives/000171.html">IBM turns to social network analysis</A>. A critical resource embedded within organizations is the knowledge that highly skilled workers bring to work on a day-to-day basis. However, aside from human resource policies targeted at the attraction, development and retention of skilled knowledge workers, there has been little effort put into systematic ways of leveraging knowledge that is embedded in people and relationships. Given the extent to which people rely on their own knowledge and the knowledge of their contacts to solve problems, this is a significant shortcoming. Social network analysis allows us to understand how a given network of people create and share knowledge, helping us to move beyond this approach. [<A href="http://www.smartmobs.com/">Smart Mobs</A>] An important issue that would arise for me, if I were to work in an enterprise, would be to restrict my sharing to the organization. This would require a degree of corporate loyalty that I just might have some trouble with. From a personal standpoint, it would be more useful for me to share all my knowledge publicly: it would enable me to build more relationships with outsiders, and establish a reputation that is not limited to my organization. When the time comes to move on, I'd probably be in a better position. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/">Seb's Open Research</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » As in most human endeavours I think there's going to have to be a compromise.  I can imagine increasingly relaxed zones of control over blogged information.  Sharing layers if you like: <UL> <LI>My personal private blog (backup brain)</LI> <LI>Team / Project Group / Community blog (private sharing)</LI> <LI>Intranet blog (corporate sharing)</LI> <LI>Public blog (real sharing)</LI></UL> All of which could be done now using Radio category routing.  A simpler interface could be introduced in Radio so that people can specify how wide they want that post shared and Radio selects the right routing category itself. I'd add that liveTopics (plug, plug) will soon support categories and less soon the idea of a corporate weblog directory.  This will group posts from different weblogs around shared topics.  Add theme support and you can cluster related topics to create a real navigable knowledge structure for each layer. I haven't forgotten about BlogPlexes either... [I do seem to have gone italic mad lately though]</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000591.html XTM and XFML: more cousins than competitors Tue, 08 Oct 2002 22:34:19 +0100 <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/2002/10/08.html#a420">A faceted classification standard</A>. <A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/2002/10/08.html#a464">XFML 1.0 (CORE) Published today</A>. [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0107808/">Curiouser and curiouser!</A>] Does this have the same purpose as XTM (topic maps)? What are the differences? [<A href="http://radio.weblogs.com/0110772/">Seb's Open Research</A>] <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> » Whilst XTM and XFML do have many similarities (and theoretically you could represent any XFML document using XTM -- I think) they are different. XTM was designed to be a generalized format for representing arbitrary topic relationships. The upshot is that XTM, whilst expressive, is relatively complicated.  XFML is more focused and so, IMO, easier to get going with.  XTM can support arbitrary, complex, relationships among topics.  XFML supports fewer simpler relationships.  Don't go getting the idea that XFML is inferior though. One of XFML's guiding principles is that it be focused and easy to implement.  In this I think it succeeds admirably.  The spec is only about 8 or 9 pages long. In an XTM document everything is a topic or relationship.  This means you can model arbitrary structures, but this very power makes XTM quite complex and an individual XTM document is not necessarily easy to understand. By contrast XFML defines just three structures: <UL> <LI>topics (can belong to a single facet)</LI> <LI>facets (can group many topics)</LI> <LI>pages (can have topics as occurrences)</LI></UL> For most web-based applications these three concepts are sufficiently expressive.  Topics can have a parent (but only 1, which must be within the same facet).  A facet thereby is a hierarchy of topics.  So an XFML document contains a number of topic hierarchies which each define a seperable metadata concept. To understand this idea imagine you define topics under the facet Date of Publication like: 1999 2000   Jan 2000     1 Jan 2000     2 Jan 2000     ...   Feb 2000     ...   ... ... Each page in the XFML document will have an occurence of a topic like "1 Jan 2000" indicating its date of publication. Another facet could be Author with topics like: InfoWorld   Jon Udel   Bob Lewis Novissio   Matt Mower and again each page in the XFML document will have an occurrence of the appropriate author topic. The first thing to notice is that it probably doesn't make sense for a topic from the Author facet to appear in the Date of Publication facet (and vice-verca)  They really are orthogonal concepts. The other thing is that because the topics are hierarchical we can start off with a general filter and drill down.  These two facets would allow you to immediately restrict the range of pages you were looking at to: <UL> <LI>only those published by InfoWorld (or Novissio)</LI> <LI>only those published in a specific year</LI></UL> Drilling down further into either facet will filter to an even narrower (more focussed) set of results.  This is a very powerful tool if you have the right facets and appropriately defined topic hierarchies (for your application). For a much clearer and more succint definition read  <A href="http://www.highcontext.com/">David Gammel's</A> recent post to the xfml group <A href="http://groups.yahoo.com/group/xfml/message/145">here</A>. The other powerful concept embodied directly in XFML is the idea of connecting topics together.  This allows me to say, within my map, that: <BLOCKQUOTE dir=ltr style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"> my topic X = your topic Y</BLOCKQUOTE> Which is a very powerful, decentralised, way of sharing your indexing efforts without requiring that everyone use the same topics/terminology.  For building real-world topic maps among groups of disconnected people (such as those in different organisations) this could be essential. Okay I've about run out of steam for the moment.  Hopefully this was useful though.</BLOCKQUOTE> http://matt.blogs.it/entries/00000683.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/00000736.html