Fixing intranets. It's interesting how the same issues seem to come up in bunches. Over the last month, I have now talked... [Column Two]

» James has written an interesting post about some of the common problems with intranets that he encounters with his clients.  As someone interested in how klogging (I'll use the term for now!) could affect the role of intranets and content management his issues seem particularly relevant to me.  In preface to my remarks I should point out that I am choosing to address static content rather than the possible dynamic web applications you might find on a typical intranet.

The issues, re-ordered slightly to suit my responses, are:

1. The intranet has grown over time.
2. Manual processes (using Frontpage or Dreamweaver) are used to publish pages.
3. A lot of information has been published, but the site isn't being used.
4. There is little high-level structure, and users are not able to find information.

1. If you want a logical hierarchical structure then organic growth is a problem.  It's like running water, it flows down along the path of least resistance and doesn't care about the direction.  Same with people, they'll squirrel stuff anywhere that makes sense today (have you taken a good look at your my "My Documents" directory lately?).   Of course if you're klogging then this organic growth is part of the package.  Whether that bothers you is probably a factor of points (2), (3), and (4). 

2. This is most obviously solved by klogging software.  It's one of the fundamentals.

3. Hard to say but I guess much of the information published may be of low quality.  In my experience no matter how hard publishing to an intranet can be, creating information is harder still.  This leads to variable quality in that information.  Variable quality leads to low usage.  Low usage provides little incentive for new information to be created and so on.

Klogging address this in two ways I think:

• When you have something to publish it's dead easy: click, type, click.
• You can publish in bite-size chunks.  This means that if you have a small but useful piece of information you can just klog it.  You don't have to pad it into a long document to make it worthwhile.  You also don't have to find "just the right place" for it to go, it just gets klogged.  That chunk can exist in it's own right, waiting for the day someone needs it.

Which brings us rather neatly to (4)

4. As it stands klogging is a decentralizing technology that doesn't encourage a formal hierarchical structure.  You klog and, if all goes according to plan, people will subscribe to you and they will link to you.  Will they be the right people?  Does it make information any easier to locate?  Not automatically no.  But then hierarchical structures don't necessarily make life any easier.  Once a hierarchy is more than about 2 levels deep it can cause it's own navigation issues.

Some people might argue that a healthy klogging culture coupled with a Google search appliance (or any search engine that has a pageranking algorithm I guess) could well make it easier to find what you're looking for.  I think theres something to be said for that.

My own approach is to allow for easy metadata-enabling of klogs.  My hope is that combining klogs with topic maps will allow new structures to be grown from them automagically.  This can complement the pagerank based search and provide new ways of finding and traversing group knowledge.

So should you scrap the intranet and replace it with klogs?

I don't think so.  But perhaps you should think carefully about what you want your intranet to achieve and whether some of your goals for information publishing and dissemination couldn't be better achieved with a klogging strategy.

Why I'm Not Reading Your Blog and Why Others May Not Be Also

• *&*### Font Size is Locked Down!!!!  Depending on how you setup your CSS sheet, people with certain browsers, say IE 5 - 6 on a PC, can't raise the font size of the main text.  I run 1600x1200 on a 19" monitor and that means that 10 point type is, well, just plain freaking teeny tiny.  Here's a blog I'd like to read regularly but I don't really since it's just too small (but it's good):
  [The FuzzyBlog!]

» The reason I changed my weblog template was to make it more accessible.  I had been feeling that the template I was using so cluttered that it was getting in the way of the content.  Comments I received from others before and since would confirm that.  I believe the new template is much better in this regard.  All the bells-and-whistles have gone.  If you want to do a Google search about some topic I'm talking about, get the Google Toolbar and do it yourself!

However Scott's posting reminded me that this isn't enough.  So I've hopefully addressed the first of his complaints.  Mark Pilgrim has kindly organized his accessability guide for easy reference and today I've done Day 26: Relative font sizes.

So I'm ready at last to release liveTopics 1.0, the last remaining task is to find the license to use.   I want a license that allows me to release it free for personal use whilst still retaining my ability to charge businesses for it.  I want a license that allows me to publish the source (with Radio is there any other choice?) and encourage others to contribute, yet doesn't allow my work to be unfairly exploited.

Can anyone recommend what license I should be using?

Like me, Gary Secondino thinks that klogging is problematic as a term for 'weblogging as knowledge management.'

I'm actually wavering over my own suggestion of 'Personal Knowledge Publishing.'  Although I want to make it clear that this is KM for people, I also want to be sure that it's clear that what is being published is useful.

Mike O'Reilly's suggestion was 'Professional Knowledge Publishing,' or even 'Personal Professionl Knowledge Publishing.'  I think the last one is a bit of a mouthful.

So, should it be Personal Knowledge Publishing or Professional Knowledge Publishing...?