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Drivel: I had lunch with John Robb last Friday. Getting together with John happens very infrequently these days. We spent lunch talking business, family, more business, and k-logs. K-logs have been on my brain ever since. Will K-logs go the way of Knowledge Management in the mid-90's? I think that it is quite possible given that K-logs in corporations require a decent investment in technology and training. I would like to think that it could be a grassroots initiative, but the likelihood of this happening is quite small. Let us look at this from a couple of perspectives: the individual and the corporation. Only corporations with significant investments in intellectual property will even attempt knowledge management (i.e. consulting companies like Accenture and engineering companies like Intel). The deal is that the knowledge created by the individual is the property of the corporation and should be held and managed centrally, or so argue the lawyers, executives, and IT guys. The individual does not get compensated for nor is motivated to generate knowledge that can be consumed beyond the boundaries of his own group. The individual has little time to devote to knowledge endeavors within the boundaries of the workday. How many software developers do you know that thoroughly and accurately document their code? I don't know any.
This embodies the age-old conflict between the individual and the organization. The solution lays in relationships between people, within the organization and those without. The connecting thread of these relationships is the knowledge of the individuals. If this is true, can there be such a thing as "corporate" k-logging? Can k-logging rise above the level of a group or department without becoming a tool of the organization? 12:36:12 AM 
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