I've just released my first UserLand Radio tool.  It's very silly but has taught me a bit about tools, Radio and UserTalk programming.

Called 'QuoteBox' what it does is to download the days quotes from QuotationsPage.com and allow you to embed a quotation in one of your HTML pages using the macro <%QuoteBoxSuite.quoteBox()%>.

It only downloads the quotations once each day (in accordance with QuotationsPage instructions) and dishes up a random quote each time it is called.

Installation instructions.  Download the QuoteBox.root file into the Tools sub folder of your Radio installation, then add the macro to a template page.

Some simple configuration of the macro can be done using the parameters:

• width
• borderColour
• bgColour

e.g. <%QuoteBoxSuite.quoteBox( "100%", "black", "white" )%>

The example in this posting has been wrapped inside Paolo Valdemarin's myNote() macro which creates a very nice highlight effect.  Thank you Paolo!

Data dyspepsia blights the workforce. One of the biggest challenges facing an organisation today is filtering the good from the bad information. It's the classic signal/noise equation. We all like to get the right signals--and all hate the noise. But for each and every employee these are highly debatable categories. Gartner found, quite surprisingly, that the most useful information employees receive comes from personal networks, contact with friends and colleagues, and emails--rather than the finely tuned information source that is supposed to be the Intranet. But how do you manage that?  The other option is some kind of sophisticated knowledge management solution--but no one has even figured out what this is yet so don't expect that one to solve your woes. [The Register]  The solution isn't a sophisticated KM solution, it is K-Logs.  A well authored K-Log provides a filtered knowledge stream based on the Intranet.  It is simple, elegant, and leverages the Intranet -- the perfect way to improve the signal to noise ratio. [John Robb's Radio Weblog]

I too believe that sophisticated KM tools are not the answer.  I think the clue lies in the word 'community.'   -- But then I would, wouldn't I?

It seems to me that new employees should be members of two Communities of Practice.  The first is the CoP that best fits what they do.  The second is the CoP of new starters.

In a way being new is what someone does.  Many of the questions and frustrations will be the same and the opportunity to share the answers to one and the feeling of the other seems to me what CoP is all about.

As people integrate into the company they grow out of the new starters CoP but until then they will be the valuable community leaders who help the rest.

I really like John Seely Brown (JSB).  In this article he talks about screen language which is not a term that I was familiar with but means "the vernacular of digital culture."  So much clearer!

In the language of mortals he is referring to how people are learning to communicate using the shorthands of the new media, instant messenging, and so on.

His point is that educators are not yet equipped to understand screen language and so cannot communicate effectively with learners.  He sees a widening digial divide between students who "arrive nicely fluent in digital technology and the virtues of hyperspeed," and faculty who are still in the antiquated analog world.  It's perhaps not as simple as that -- I know from experience that many faculty are bringing their warp drives on line.  But it's still a fair point in most cases.

I can also see, from first hand experience, another emerging divide.  Between those students who are at Hyperspeed and those who are not.  Spend some time at a non-redbrick English university and you will see the problems of students for whom English may not be their first language or where there wasn't alwasy a PC back home or a mobile phone in the pocket.  These students have a big jump to make if they are going to join in.  We should not forget, when we are designing courses and approaches, that not all students think or learn the same, or start from the same place.

Where I am wholy with JSB is in his analysis of the divide between context and content.  He relates a good anecdote:

"...one of the great ideas that fell flat was to invite well-known individuals to address a PARC forum every Thursday afternoon. The speeches were to be Webcast throughout the premises so 300 PARC employees could follow them at their workstations."

"'Efficiency is not the same as effectiveness,' Seely Brown said to the HBS participants.  It was disconcerting for speakers to arrive at the huge auditorium, he said, find only four or five people sitting there and be told, 'It's okay, you've got X number of eyeballs on the Webcast. So you can feel good now.'

"No one enjoys talking into thin air; a good speaker, like an actor, is always engaged in conversation with the audience during the performance. That sense of unleashing a dialogue between the speaker and the audience was lost with Webcasting, said Seely Brown. "