A Work In Progress

Wednesday, January 23, 2002

Peer to Peer
More KM musings. These came to me last night, and were hastily jotted down in my bedside notebook.

You've got circles of friends. Inner circles. You've got friends of friends, where circles overlap. Those friends have friends, and so on.

In an organization, you have a particular skillset, or you work on particular projects, or maybe you even semi-regularly contribute content to a corporate message board (or web log). So do other people. More circles, more overlap.

First thought: how about a graphic representation of this? So whether I'm new to the company or not, I can get a good picture about who works with who, who knows what, etc. Basically, who do I contact to learn more about something.

Second thought, a little more compelling: let's assume I've got some kind of rudimentary reporting system. I apply some filters to the data to get a monthly view of profitability for Region X. Let's say we've developed the system to remember my settings (every time I hit "apply" and request new data from the server, you save parameters). And then let's say this "intelligent" EIS system, also aware of my closest "circle," asks me, ala Amazon, if I'd like to see some of the analysis done by my peers.

Now, you've got to build a lot of smarts behind it (i.e. my peer might see Region Y because she's the regional manager), but the basic concept is to capture knowledge. Even if it doesn't have anything to do with "circles," how about a menu of "most viewed reports?" Or top ten queries. Or something that lets other users reap the benefits of collective experience.

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Second article I read in the paper: Success comes after bitter lesson for Lawson's Coughlan. Much more uplifting. Talk about perserverance, and character. Accidents do happen, even deadly ones, but you can find the strength to move on.

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First article I read in the paper this morning. Snowmobile kills Chisago City boy. Depressed the hell out of me, especially when I start to let my imagination run wild, and think about what "what if that happened to Jasmine, or Esmé."

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