There's a hole in my bucket.... As a klogger, over the past 3 months or so, I have recorded & published tens if not hundreds of thoughts. I doubt if I shared one quarter of output during the last 6 years I worked at various companies. Oh I would probably have emailed here and there, spoken up during meetings. But I wonder just how much knowledge is being lost, second by second, in most companies by each employee. Then multiply up...[Curiouser and curiouser!]
If I consider the value to me of the things I failed to blog, and wish I had, there's a fair chunk of change involved. [Ron Lusk's Radio Weblog]
Conspiratorially creating a hobo-language for paranoids.
Psychalking is a method for paranoids to communicate with each other about dangerous mind control hot spots. By leaving special symbols written in chalk on pavements, walls, slow-moving pedestrians, and other objects found around town, a paranoid can warn his or her peers of local mind control dangers and advise on a proper means of protection.
Virtual nations (v-nations) are online masses of individuals, unified by a common cause or ideology, that mirror real nations in the inclusion of and progression toward leadership, laws, power, security, monetary systems, and other elements. They will act as both a threat to and a hope for global resource allocation, cooperation, and security. [via KMPings] What do you think? [] links to this post 9:17:25 AM
I was recently commissioned with the task of selecting an appropriate blogging tool for our upcoming Intellectual Property Weblog class. Selecting blogging software is becoming increasingly tricky, in part because there are so many packages out there, and because so many of them are so good. All have been appending each other's features as time goes on, making their advantages progressively less distinct. [...]
Greymatter and Radio are both great systems in their own ways, but Movable Type moved to the front of the pack very quickly, and is the package we'll be using. If only Movable Type handled RSS aggregation as well as Radio... but one can't have it all.
...The article correctly identifies the need for online learning communities as a means of capturing the informal or tacit knowledge that circulates within an organization or group. But then, like most accounts of online learning communities, it describes a fairly structured or formal approach to their creation, so much so that the resulting product would resemble a classroom much more than a community...
...I think there are two major things to remember, things that dictate a very different approach than is recommended here. First, informal learning is informal, so don't try to structure it with roles and behaviours. Second, informal learning is not separate, but rather, integrated into day-to-day activities. The learning is a part of and a natural outgrowth of other activities. Putting it into a nice formalized box somewhere separate from everything else simply ruins it...
Something to add to my question about "can we support informal learning". Supporting often means formalizing... [Mathemagenic]
For me, supporting informal learning largely means making it easier for people to find and pullwhatever knowledge they need at a given time. It means giving them the freedom to select the ways that suit them. It means providing a varied array of powerful tools, but not forcing any particular one on them. Putting a learner in a wagon on a predefined track is not the way to go. Sadly that's what they still do in schools everywhere. That's the price to be paid for maintaining (a semblance of) order.
Personal RSS Aggregators. John Udell wrote a good overview of RSS Aggregators in a May 27 column in Byte, the seminal, now-online-only computer magazine (the only such magazine I ever paid to subscribe to):
No single person will be completely authoritative in any one area, but that won't matter -in fact, it's better that way. In the interplay among several weblogs, the sum can be greater than the parts. [Radio Free Blogistan]
I'd already encountered it but this excellent article should circulate more.
Accountants think "long-term" is more than a year. Corporate strategists sometimes work with a 3-5 year planning horizon. Now a candidate for congress, Tara Grubb of High Point, North Carolina, frames a campaign issue, a human capital issue, in the next 15 years. [...]
She also makes a longer term case. A smarter, better educated, more capable workforce builds an economy.
A community vested in industry & commerce can never hold a candle to a community that is first invested in itself. Human capital is the most valuable capital. It is a renewed resource. And its livelihood can be improved. Dedication to this renewal, to this improvement is the wisest choice for any business, any community and any government. The only improvement necessary is one which offers true dedication and care for the families of our community. Invest in human capital. Invest in each other. Invest in youself.
Isn't it great seeing a candidate raise long-term human capital issues? Someone articluate and passionate and eager? North Carolina could do worse than Tara Sue Grubb. [a klog apart]
It's my weblog + topics exported as a topic map via liveTopics. I'd be interested in any opinions as to the correctness of my XTM implementation, use of tags etc... [Curiouser and curiouser!]
As for insecure and fearful managements, I suspect that the market will take care of them for us although perhaps not quickly enough. Call me a Pollyanna, but I think healthy organizations dominate statistically and economically. But as the norm, they are less visible in places like the media. We seem to be much more inclined to see and hear stories of trauma and problems than ones of normalcy and health. [McGee's Musings]
... One of the advantages to blogs is that they make it easy to simply jot down some thoughts. You don't need to give too much thought to what is valuable and what isn't - not only wouldn't you know, but value to one individual is worthless to another. The key is to ensure a simple, reliable way for capturing the ad hoc thoughts. Blogs make capturing this info about as simple as it can be. [tins ::: Rick Klau's weblog]
Rick adds some more insight to the question of getting knowledge shared in the first plac e so that you might have an opportunity to manage it in an intelligent way.
To me this discussion is finally beginning to address the first issues that need to be thought about - how do we make sure there is something worth managing. It's easy and all too tempting to gloss over that issue, but my experience has been that it's critical. [McGee's Musings]
I think I've seen the future, or a small part of it, regarding weblogs. Two things:
If you're not syndicating your site as RSS it might as well not exist.
If you don't include a tag in your home page that points to your RSS feed, then you might as well not be syndicating your site, and therefore it might as well not exist. [Radio Free Blogistan]
This might be up there with the Popcorn Fork, but it's a hoot anyway.
The Conference Bike. "The Conference Bike is a tricycle built for 7 people sitting in a circle. One person steers while everyone is free to pedal or not, as the bike moves effortlessly along."Once again, my hope for the future of group silliness is restored. [DeepFUN Weblog]
The 99 cent KM solution(via elearningpost): David Weinberger advocates simple KM solutions: mailing lists, personal pages, blogs, and suggests ideas for using them.
A couple of pieces I like:
...I am not opposed to big, expensive, all-embracing KM solutions. I'm just suspicious of them. There is a difference. And I get more suspicious of them as they promise to automate more. On the other hand, the ones that offer to put me in touch with more people bring a rosy glow of happiness to my face...
...By the way, not only allow but encourage the creation of "off topic" mailing lists. The world is so connected that nothing is off topic any more...
...Then there are the non-digital ways of encouraging the creation and sharing of knowledge. Leaving office doors open. Weekly pizza parties. Brown bag lunchtime lectures by employees on what they care about. A free library with monthly book club meetings. Learning to listen. Shutting up once in a while... [Mathemagenic]
Weblogs' ease of publishing has a disadvantage: Because it's so easy to post information, blogs grow quickly and become unwieldy, making it harder and harder to track down relevant information. That's because most blogs are organized solely in chronological order, with the most recent posts at the top and older content stacked in an archive, like a pile of old newspapers.
Conspiratorially creating a hobo-language for paranoids.
