Monday, July 22, 2002

Blogs and Business Value. Information Week (John Foley):  Are you blogging yet.  Weblogs could have business value. [John Robb's Radio Weblog] More fodder for the business value of blogs - a good thread from last week with input from John, Terry and me. [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog] 12:30:40 PM    Trackback []

The Downside of KM?. Some cold water on the blogs as KM solution: Given a choice people tend not to communicate. Some don't want to share, some feel threatened or diminished by sharing, some fail to understand that most things lose meaning unless they have adequate context, some enjoy a feeling of superiority by talking about their work in a way that others will have difficulty understanding, some get a kick out of doing things but not out of explaining things, some simply lack communication skills. Remember, most offices are political environments. That doesn't help. The author, a former .com employee in charge of KM, rightly identifies a number of cultural challenges to getting people to share information. But these aren't really downsides, per se - more like hurdles. In any event, I like the recognition that there's more to KM than just software - that unless someone is committed, responsible and incented to make the thing work, it will be hard to succeed. (Not unlike the post I made a few weeks ago about Tom Jones' cross-selling efforts at Citigroup...) The question is: does a simple software platform (weblogs) reduce the barrier to entry? It's not the answer, by a long shot - but if the software can make the sharing easier, then the efforts expended by the KM "owner" are far more likely to be rewarded. [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog] 9:57:23 AM    Trackback []

It's Knowledge Sharing - not Knowledge Management. Here's a perfect example of how weblogs can create shared knoweldge: John Robb posts to his site about the State of Utah's CIO asking his employees to start contributing to a K-log. Mohan Narendran adds a comment to John's post, pointing him to the Singapore Business Times article interviewing Robert Buckman of Buckman Labs. Rajesh Jain sees the comment, adds a pointer to the article. John sees Rajesh's post, and adds a post of his own. The knowledge spreads. Interestingly, I wrote about Buckman Labs back in April. For those who are interested, here's a snippet: Speaking of Buckman Labs, look what a Google search turned up: Buckman's website devoted to KM titled "Knowledge Nurture" - which includes a wealth of articles about Buckman's KM efforts (like this case study in DestinationCRM). [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog] 9:57:01 AM    Trackback []

Personas and scenarios. Donna Maurer has written a very practical blog entry on using personas and scenarios. To quote Donna: These were so [Column Two] 9:52:02 AM    Trackback []

KM Asia 2002 Report. Maish Nichani from elearningpost writes an excellent report on his views on the recent KM Asia 2002 conference. Unfortunately, I [Column Two] 9:50:51 AM    Trackback []