Tuesday, August 27, 2002

[Alison Fish of Blogfish] shared from [Seb's Open Research] Lessons learned from a large scale K-logging implementation. Most people don't like to write. We've had a difficult time designing interfaces that encourage adding information instead of just reading. There's no substitute for good, accessible writing. We have several people who write consistently for the system. The logs show that postings from one writer get far more attention and prompt far more linking than those from the other writers. " [Seb's Open Research] [Alison Fish of Blogfish] QUOTE I suspect that beginning bloggers and kloggers are often inhibited.. If we set up a k-logging community for our company intranet, I suspect there will be an initial _hump_ of hesitation among the employees. Maybe having a few designated posters at the beginning would ease the transition. Must think on this. UNQUOTE [Alison Fish of Blogfish] Al's suggestions Recruit co-workers who you think share your enthusiasm for the idea of having a KLOG on the company intranet, and would be good power users to serve as a kind of help desk and cheerleader squad when you launch it. With them, setup a system patterned on dws.Radio.FAQ model to discuss what needs resolution before implementing this, and inviting in the mass of users, so as to maximize odds of getting great value out of his project. Do so outside company intranet until you nailed down everything needed for implementation. That includes both technical know how and management approval. When management says Yes, they often expect results soon. So you use this outside discussion area to identify pre-requisites and get them resolved. Assuming you are the moderator Your team use a Category name like Radio Plot Twists which performs role like Radio Questions input to dws Your aggregation, like dws.Radio.FAQ, have name like The Plot Thickens Ask your co-workers if y"all want to invite into your discussion any non-employees from outside the firm Think Radio enthusiasts who have written relevant documentation Think other firms personnel trying to organize an company KLOG in which those people are not in competition with your company Just as dws has Topic headings like Radio Wishes Radio Tips Radio Questions Radio Alerts Your multi-author discussion would have its relevant Topic headings like Documentation and Tutorial Flow Chart of Learning Curve Topics that co-workers need to learn to be proficient in this. Will you want to host a seminar class to help people get up to speed Will you want to mirror some Radio documentation on your intranet Examples of KLOGS worth emulating Initially you just want anything that illustrates the concept Then you want some that are close to what you want for your company Implementation Challenges to Solve What OS does Radio Frontier etc. work on What OS are most heavily in use at your company People working from home PC and from work PC updating from either location Management Personnel Topics Distinct from documentation for users and Implementation issues This will eat some disk space and other resources There will be executives slow to accept some communication methods Everyone still needs to communicate with them by their preferred methods Paper, Fax, e-mail, whatever [Al Macintyre's Radio Weblog] 7:34:04 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

I really didn't expect weblogs to change the way I met with people.  This was a surprise. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] I totally agree! I did meet in person a few people I knew from their weblogs, and it's kind of weird. What I find amazing is that somehow you already know these people, to the point that I almost interrupt them saying "oh, you have already told me that" when what really happened is that I read that sometime on their weblogs. I have just got off the phone with Jean-Yves (alson known as the first JY of google ;-) after about one hour discussing Radio, Frontier, IdeaTools, markets and life in general. Hopefully we'll meet some time, but even this conversation was very very interesting. Weblogs not only changed the way I meet with people, they also improved the quality of the people I meet! ";->" [Paolo Valdemarin: Paolo's Weblog] 7:05:28 PM    trackback []     Articulate []

Small Business Blogging. Rereading Bricklin's Aug 12 article on small business blogging, I realized that his first example is a pretty close fit for the intangibles I get from doing this blog: One type of small business is the "consultant". This covers a wide range of areas, from engineers, to marketers, to event planners, to freelance writers and designers, and more. Consultants are already very common users of blogs. A normal part of the job of many consultants entails going to meetings and conferences and being active in trade associations where they "network", show off their expertise, appear on panels, etc. A blog is a way of showing your expertise and establishing yourself as a trustworthy authority without doing the travel. The time necessary to maintain the blog comes out of the time that would have been spent at some of the meetings. (A blog is an excellent way to build up your "authority" to move up politically in a trade association, too. Your readers would be others in your field, not customers.) [Radio Free Blogistan] 6:56:24 PM    trackback []     Articulate []