Updated: 02/06/2003; 6:45:38 AM.
Robert Paterson's Radio Weblog
What is really going on beneath the surface? What is the nature of the bifurcation that is unfolding? That's what interests me.
        

Tuesday, May 27, 2003

Weblogs and knowledge management, part 2.

One unexpected fringe benefit of falling way behind in responding to all the fascinating posts accumulating in your news aggregator is that you get a chance to pull multiple items together into an integrated post. I did one recently on weblogs and knowledge management that a number of people found helpful. The backlog of posts shows no signs of abating, so it's time for a follow up.

Rick Klau sets a nice context by reminding us of Gartner's hype cycle and its application to blogs:

We are almost certainly in the trough of disillusionment when it comes to blogs. Lots of critical comments, much confusion over their "true" benefits, etc. Yet hundreds of thousands of people continue to use their weblog as a way of cataloging their thought. And companies are starting to explore how they might use weblogs for other purposes.

My prediction: we will emerge from this trough into the "slope of enlightenment" during which it will become obvious that personal weblogs can be tremendous tools for capturing ad hoc knowledge and archiving it for future use. Furthermore, businesses will figure out that blogs can serve as both a content management system as well as an internal knowledge sharing platform - a much different use from the personal application, but a critical one for the business world to adopt weblogs with enthusiasm.[tins:::Rick Klau's weblog]

Dina Mehta is relatively new to the blogging world. She offers some helpful fresh perspective on the challenges of introducing weblogs into corporate environments. Thinking about the problems of knowledge management and how weblogs may fit, she says:

I'm not really sure that KM is being adopted in a really useful or effective manner in many organisations here. More importantly, while its great to have a system in place as a talking point, i'm not really sure what real value is being created and disseminated. They tend to be led by the HR department and are usually one-way monologues that not many participate in - (but this is really a topic for another post).

There is a constant generation of content in an organisation - via email, via IM, through documents, presentations, training workshops and seminars, and sometimes through discussion boards. KM systems tend to be slow and heavy in capturing and disseminating this content - in the process, the value may be lost[Conversations with Dina]

Like many of us, she sees that blogs may be the answer, but isn't sure how best to make the case to those in a position to make a decision.

Part of that case will hang on the availability of some concrete examples of weblogs in use in organizations. Two areas that are generating some early examples of weblogs in organizational settings are project management and marketing. Both are naturals for the technology, being high-paced and communications intensive.

On the project management side, Jon Udell at Infoworld is a regular source of good insights into weblogs in organizational settings. Here's a post he ran on the use of weblogs to improve project communications plus the corresponding article at Infoworld (Publishing a Project Weblog).

The value of a project Weblog has a lot to do with getting everybody onto the same page -- literally. You want to deliver a manageable flow on the home page, drawing attention to the key events in the daily life of the project. To do this well, think like a journalist. ...

The newspaper editor's mantra is "heads, decks, and leads" -- in other words, headlines, summaries, and introductory paragraphs. These devices are, in fact, tools for managing a scarce and precious resource: the reader's attention. A well-written title (or subject header if you happen to be composing an e-mail message) is your first, best, and often only chance to get your message across.

There's a particularly useful diagram Jon reproduces in another Infoworld post on blogs, scopes, and human routers and drawn from his his equally useful book, Practical Internet Groupware. It captures a notion of the multiple overlapping groups that we belong to in the pursuite of knowledge work.

Jon has also talked about the notion of what he calls the conversational enterprise and how weblogs will serve as a key source of the raw materials for knowledge management in organizations (Technical trends bode well for KM);

What k-loggers do, fundamentally, is narrate the work they do. In an ideal world, everyone does this all the time. The narrative is as useful to the author, who gains clarity through the effort of articulation, as it is to the reader. But in the real-world enterprise, most people don't tend to write these narratives naturally, and the audience is not large enough to inspire them to do it.

There is, however, a certain kind of person who has a special incentive to tell the story of a project: the project managers, who are among the best power users of Traction Software's enterprise Weblogging software, according to Traction co-founders Greg Lloyd and Chris Nuzum (see “Getting Traction”).

Traction certainly is powerful software, although the power does come at the expense of a somewhat steeper learning curve than systems like Radio or Moveable Type whose origins were in personal weblogs rather than enterprise. Actually, it might be better to think in terms of a steeper implementation curve, rather than learning curve. Setting up Traction in terms of project structures and tags takes some thought to get full advantage of the tools. Using them on a day-to-day basis is pretty straightforward.

The use of weblogs in marketing settings is also drawing attention. Some of that is in the form of early, and rightfully ridiculed, examples such as the faux-blog Raging Cow, which tried to force its traditional marketing strategy through a blog format.

Others have made more sensible progress (I suppose that makes me terminally boring). Inc. Magazine ran a recent piece on Blogging for Dollars (link found via Blogging News), for example, that highlights some examples of the real use of blogs as a marketing tool.

Gary Murphy at TeledyN offers up a couple of interesting examples of KM in organizational settings in a recent post on Walmart's KM rocks.

Both searches were initially pointless because, for very good reasons, both the sought after data items did not exist in the superficially logical locations. This is probably the number one flaw with most dead-robot KM systems: They fail to accommodate how Reality is inherently messy!

The only possible method to locate either the ribs or the cards was to do what humans have done since the dawn of archives, ask someone who knows. In both instances, we needed someone who knew where the target was, and who could refer us to someone who knew how to extract it.

Murphy provides the critical link here between weblogs and organizational need. It is the realization that KM in organizational settings is primarily a social phenomenon and not a technology one. Most prior efforts to apply technology to KM problems in organizations have been solutions in search of a problem. They have been driven by a technology vendor's need to sell product, not an organization's need to solve problems.

Weblogs are interesting in organizational KM settings because weblogs are technologically simple and socially complex, which makes them a much better match to the KM problems that matter. One thing that we need to do next is to work backwards from the answer - weblogs - to the problem - what do organizations need to do effective knowledge management. We need to avoid the mistakes of other KM software vendors and not assume that the connection is self-evident.

[McGee's Musings]
10:07:34 PM    comment []

Investors in Social Capital Create New Blogging Wave.

Today Blogging Alone identifies investors in soical capital. Weblogs as a new technology for communication are, changing the nature and process of opinion formation in the public sphere.

For example look at Dave's post of Ed Cone question; Why is there not more buzz in web logs about Tom Delay's use of his access and influence to get Texas 5 more Republican seats in the next congress? Did Tom Delay use his influence to get the Department of Homeland Security to track and monitor the 50 Texas house Democrats that left the state of Texas in order to kill the redistricing bill? If he did how do you feel about it? I heard the story this morning but untill that post had not really given it much more thought. Ed was able to store that information in the blogging ecosystem in a way that allowed me access and time to learn more and reflect more deeply on what I think.

Norm formation in web logs results form the storage and retrivial and even manipulation of information. Contemplation takes time. In this way I was able to replay the news giving me time to think and even easy access to invigate more deeply at the edge of the social influence network called the blogsphere.

Who are the web loggers and what is their role in society?

From IIkka Tuomi's paper Emerging Research topics on Knowledge Society I read that though the ages architecture of oru towns, cities, public buildings and private spaces act in ways that also enable the storage and access to information. A study of these physical spaces shows how humans construct them in ways that controll the circulation and access of information and knowledge. Structures are placed or arranged in space for either the exclusion of outsiders or to insure inclusion of its community members to the flows of communication and information necessary to drive their econimic activities.

Ito's paper talks of the notion of public sphere where members with access make their views visible and available for critism by others. The foundaton for ligimid democracy is access to this puplic fourm in a way that it is available to all its members and that the members agree to work together to a shared goal of future coperation.

Web logs are similar to these architectural forms in their ability to store information and provide controll over the flow that information to its members and restricts outsiders in some ways to the access of that same information. First to even be a member of this community even if just a reader you need access to the internet. Remember from Douglas Williams paper, successful communities are those that recognize the importance and find ways to improve the social outcomes of their leasted advantaged members.

Second, to make your views show up in this public sphere you must have made the choice to become an active participant, in short you need to blog. Choosing to blog involves spending money on the tools and investing the time in learning how to use the technology. It is a clear example of an individual choice to invest in one's personal stocks of social capital. I made that choice last July when I finialy realized that to play you have to pay and I bought a copy of Radio Userland.

That was the start of my personal  investment in the social capital stock market. Some of the readers may know that for the last 9 months I ahve been continuing that experiment in social capital that has resulted in the public release of a blogging tool that makes blogging easer for people like me called FM Radio with enhanced SocialDynamX. I recomment that if you are going to blog, you should use FM Radio -- this is a tool built through social capital and the group we have developed enchorages you to gain not only from the construction of social capital, but allows you to participate as well.

Now I place that resedue of our teams creativity, inovation, and cooperation in the public sphere open for public critism. Today I want to finish by telling you what I have learned about the question I earler ask. Who are the bloggers?

I am learning that this is a great social way to meet new people. I ask for the email before they can start the evaluation. I have been trying to find their blog and read about their interest and then write them a personal note asking them to tell me what they like and don't like about our work. In this short very non scientific study I clearly see the corrilation between human and social capital.

I am finding great intrest in web logging from peoples who are in occupations where they meet and work with lots of people every day. Occupations like doctors, laywers, teachers, journalist, and youth ministers. Oh and the one Marketing guy from Microsoft.

In the course of our conversation I am watching and studing their request and description of how they want to integrate this new technology for communication to better meet their work needs. I clearly see that commonly as part of their training the web loggers are in occupations where they record or log their social interactions with the people they work with each day. For example doctors in a hospital keep a chart that is a written log of their enteraction with their patients. These charts store the information in a way that can be shared or handed off to another member of their work network in order to solve the problem they both share. Laywers, and Journalist likewise use and deeply value their social skills necessary for them to solve problems they are assigned to solve as part of their work. They share a deep understanding that investments they make in communicating well with others, improving their social skills will provides great benifits to both themselves and society.

From Edward Glaeser work on a framework to understand the formation of social capital I remember this. Social capital can best be thought of as a stock which will yeild both market and non market returns over a given time period. Market returns are the combination of social skills and network connections that will help the inverstor to peform more succdssfully in their jobs. Like for a journalist earning the trust and confidence of a new source and a commiment to keep the identity of that source confidential. Non-market returns are many thing all that the investor still values that resul from the individuals invenstmen in social capital like happiness from a game of chess or friendship and a sense of belonging.

I think it is no accedent that in this ongoing experiment in social capital I continue to meet and teach the next wave of addoptors I will continue to see an extremely strong connection between, education, trust, and increased participation in the civic activity we call blogging.

[Blogging Alone]

I find it extraordinary how the  understanding of the blogoshere is emerging through conversations like this - see more from Ross


10:06:03 PM    comment []

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