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Sunday, July 21, 2002

Sen. Earnest Hollings Should Be Removed from Office

Digital Asset Management -- A Disappearing Act

Digital asset management (DAM) products may be a hot topic now, but a January report by Stamford, Conn.-based Meta Group predicts that by 2004 or 2005, such tools will likely evolve into nothing more than a set of features inside more complete enterprise content management tools." [CIO]

In 1999, while working for print industry consulting firm CAP Ventures, I wrote a fairly extensive research paper on Digital Asset Management for the print industry. (While a bit dated, you can still read the executive summary from that paper.)

Even back then I concluded that any discussion of DAM was incomplete without considering a much broader media context. But there is still a need for properly handling files for print, and many in the print industry can still use smaller systems than those sold by Artesia or Bulldog/Documentum.

This brief article is a good summary of the current state of DAM, covering several applications and giving a brief overview of the wide variety in price and features that today's products offer

Visible KM

KM

Some personal thoughts on Knowledge Management. [American Invisible, Inc.]

Hugh's RSS feed didn't include some key points from his story, so I've listed a few below:

A successful KM initiative needs:

• A compelling reason why each employee should buy in - rewards are called for
• training so that everyone appreciates the value of context. [...]
• training so that people learn to write for an audience outside their own group of contacts. [...]
• training so that people understand that most knowledge is specialized. [...]
• Someone VERY senior to champion the KM cause.

As Robert Buckman said in the interview John Robb posted yesterday, 90 percent of the effort put into the Knowledge Sharing system at Buckman Labs was spent encouraging people to share. And as I wrote in The Power of Knowledge Sharing, while some people will refuse to do this, most people simply don't know how.

The fact that the cost barriers for KM tools have plummeted means that those of us who already want to share can do so with less effort and less dollars. Now, how do we get those don't already want to, to join the group and be effective?

Windley on Blogs for Sprawling Organizations

On Wednesday, I spoke to the enterprise development group on my principles for enabling web services.  The enterprise development group, or eDG as they call themselves is a group of specialists from across our IT organizations that meet regularly to share expertise and develop some de facto standards for multi-tiered applications in Utah. 

I'm very supportive of these kinds of groups since I think they represent our best hope at building community in an IT organization that is best described as "sprawling."  We have talented experts buried deep within the organization and, often, the biggest problem we face is being able to get the right people on the job.  When an issue comes up, we likely have someone who knows just want to do, but no way to get that expertise to the job.  Building overlapping communities of specialists and communities of interests seems the best way to attack this problem.  My open offer on blogs is an attempt to jump start some of those communities. 

Klogs Get Official Support in Utah

The Utah State CIO made this Offer to Utah State IT Employees.

I believe that the 900 or so IT employees of the State of Utah would benefit from speaking and listening to each other more. I think we need groups of specialists inside various departments to communicate with others in their specialty and without.  Consequently, I'd like to see more people writing blogs and communicating their ideas through an open forum like the one blogs engender.  To that end, I'm willing to pay the licensing fee to Userland for the first 100 employees who start a blog.  Here are the conditions:

1. Download the software and begin using on the 30-day free trial.  I'd like to see you get a start before I pay the fee.  Let me know when you're up and running.
2. I'm biased toward IT employees, but other are welcome too, particularly if they're interested in eGovernment.
3. You're responsible for what you post.  If you're going to talk about things that shouldn't be public on Userland and need to be kept behind the state firewall, let me know and we'll set up a place inside the state network for that.  We could even set up an authenticated area, if needed. 

"It is good to be king." Royal suggestions cut through all kinds of trust issues and formal decision making. I've been asking for prerequisites to success on various knowledge management lists. Uniformly the top answer is "senior management endorsement, buy-in, enthusiasm."

UserLand's hit a sweet spot too.

1. Low price point cuts risks of trying and eventual rollout
2. Newbie-friendliness gives immediate satisfaction (egoboost, social affirmation)
3. Syndication/etc. amplifies social networking effects, reinforcing current participation and bringing in new users

One other thing: you can see from Windley's post there is something real about the sense of ownership and control you feel when the tool and your writings are on your desktop. Radio gives you this. The tradeoffs of remote access and managed desktop are also real, but have much less emotional investment. These feelings of control worth of attention as the klogging meme spreads.

[a klog apart]

I'll have to encourage my buddy Bill Kendall, who's in the Salt Lake City D.A.'s office, to look into this. (Granted, that's city and not state government, but wouldn't it be interesting to see that combination as well?)

Knowledge Networks for the Cost Conscious

Low-cost Klog Network

The level of investment required for really excellent km tools, such as weblogs, has gotten so low that it is much easier for a relatively low level employee to start a grass-roots movement within the staff if they are motivated. Given the failure of enterprise level KM initiatives and the burst .com bubble, this could be the perfect time to stealth in some web-based knowledge sharing tools.

In this article I will discuss how you can create a low-cost knowledge weblog (klog) network using free and/or donor supported software. This method is well suited to the stealthy introduction of weblogging as a knowledge management tool. All you need is one server to host the klogs and you can be off and running before senior management has a chance to quash your initiative. Or take credit for it. :) Read more... [High Context]

There are very important ideas in this:

• With no investment chances are you can sneak this into your Dilbertian department without raising suspicion. You still need a bit of a geek to set it up and run it, but you can do it for almost free.
• Even small enterprises can now afford this stuff. In fact they can no longer afford not to have it.

Young, entrepreneurial companies eat away from the bottom of the big Dilbert-company markets, but to do so they have to move fast and spread themselves thin. Most struggle to reach across geographic boundaries for anything more than marketing or a little customer support. True knowledge sharing across the country is just about impossible for the small- to mid-sized enterprise. ASPs, Salesforce.com, and MSOutlook's Public Folders haven't really helped. Most still get by on sheer luck and determination.

What David describes can be done by almost anyone with access to a geek. And not an uber-geek. Probably any 17-year-old with a knack for Python or pearl will do. That's still too techie for me, but even if you have to shell out $40 for Radio it's still an affordable way to get started.

This is great stuff, David. Thanks for bringing it to us.

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This Page was last updated: 2/9/2003; 11:17:18 AM