(from Scripting news http://thoughtsonthinking.weblogger.com/2002/10/10)

I just discovered Omni Outliner for OS X (as a biologist, I find that I do think in hierarchies) and purchased it almost immediately. It is almost perfect, with every function behaving exactly how I would like it to work. I was impressed to find that I can export an outline to OmniGraffle - instantly creating a 'mind map' of my outline. The feature that I instantly wanted is the abiltiy to re-collapse my outline graphically in OmniGraffle.

This is a feature that is essential to teaching and learning science (or at least the life sciences) - the ability to master both the concepts in general terms and the details. My colleagues in Skylight are observing that novice learners have a difficult time reconciling both views of a discipline.

11:18:16 AM | # |  |

This blog experiment seemed to not work very well at all! I guess we didn't give enough feedback or training.

Desmond's Blog http://desmond60.blogspot.com/
Steve's Blog http://stevetang.blogspot.com/
Monica's Blog http://mtang.blogspot.com/


9:06:46 AM | # |  |

I've just read Richard Gayle's document on knowledge management in biotech and pharmaceutical companies. Lots of interesting stuff in there some of it specific to biotech, some more general in applicability. In particular, I'd never seen  the diagram reproduced on the right, which I find really thought-provoking.

Here's a quote from the introduction:

[...] I realized that few people outside individual projects really follow the progress of other research projects. As companies grow and as the amount of information generated increases, fewer people have time to read the literature or are able to personally interact with those outside their particular program. This results in isolated projects, the inability to stay current, and the repetition of effort. Information flow stagnates, knowledge is only fitfully created and poor decisions get made due to lack of knowledge.

The following report looks at research describing how knowledge is created from information. A unifying principle in much of the work is that people must interact to create knowledge. Simply examining a database can not do it. Information must be dispersed in order for knowledge to be created. A company has some hope, then, if it can create an environment that fosters personal interaction. This is easy in small companies but becomes much harder as they increase in size. Luckily, technology may help attack this problem, providing a way for people to interact much more efficiently, allowing much larger groups of people to come together to create knowledge.