Beyond Search

So whilst I have not been blogging much lately, every time I get out one of my machines and get into an off-line RSS reader, I am amazed by the prodigous output of Stephen Arnold. Stephen has his own company, Arnold-IT but his blog is 'Beyond Search'.

If you have any interest at all in enterprise search, and you have not already, subscribe to the 'Beyond Search' feed for an excellent distillation of all that is going on, and some very enlightening insights.

the great KM debate surfaces again !

I wish I had been able to keep pace with the blogging recently, I could have contributed to the latest conversation on Knowledge Management, yep, its back again........ I have to add my two penneth worth, even it if its late.

So, apparently Chuck Hollis of EMC kicked it off this time, with a provocatively titled posting; "The end of Knowledge Management". Chuck seems to equate 'classical' KM as being almost the same as document management, at least thats how I read this statement: "I think what we're seeing a fundamental redefinition of knowledge management -- away from formalized documents living in a repository -- and towards active social networks of knowledgeable people who share, communicate and collaborate -- which we then capture and preserve for future use."

Now I did the Managing Knowledge module of my MBA course, as did a close colleague at the Open University, and we once had a rousing debate in an eRoom on the subject of Nonaka and Takeuchi's case for capturing knowledge via the SECI process (my argument) versus what Browne has to say about the way individuals indulge in sense making. Obviously other colleagues just gawped at the two pseudo academics in amazement, and probably did not understand a thing we were on about, but we enjoyed the debate. However I have since had an epiphany and now follow Dave Snowden's theories on KM, and he really, really is not a fan of SECI ! Dave's recent article on KM World is referenced by Lee Dallas on BMOC when he chips in.

Lee seems to agree with Dave, David Gurteen, Pie and others, that '2.0' technologies are assisting in capturing information, but that more importantly a generation of users that have grown up with user generated content, and 'web 2.0' tools 'get it' when it comes to processes that can deliver 'knowledge management' (in lower case), to quote: "The content being created in wikis and blogs is given context and relevance directly by those that know what it is for, what it says and how to apply it. The information is becoming knowledge."

I agree with this statement, because I agree with Dave Snowden that human brains turn information into knowledge. Information, plus context (contextual meta-information ?) is processed inline with the individuals past experience to create knowledge. Its becoming knowledge in the readers head, not on the pages of a blog or a wiki. Pie's input includes the post; "Knowledge Management is marching along" where he, as usual, does a good job of pulling various threads together, on how E 2.0 tech, plus ECM, SOA and various other technologies can be enablers for 'KM 2.0'. Bex makes an interesting comment, stating he would just like to drop the discredited 'KM' term, and just stick with 'Enterprise 2.0' as the new wave. Following on this 'semantics' theme, David Gurteen has a recent post pointing to an article on IBM changing to using the term Knowledge Sharing instead of Knowldge Management. I know its bad blogging practice not to link to this, but David weblog has just stopped my Firefox dead in its tracks 3 times, and I am not starting this blog post again....!

So, what can we take from all of this ?

1. KM is not dead - it was never alive in the first place ! (so was it a Zombie ?)
   
2. KM Systems were just another type of content management system, for managing data and information
3. Enterprise 2.0 technologies allow us to build better systems for managing information, better than KM 1.0 systems that is.
4. Culture is changing, people are getting more used to information management in general (i.e. they may not know what metadata is, but they 'tag' their music in iTunes) and participating via easy to use interfaces (thus getting them to blog, use wiki's etc might be easier than getting them to place 'their' information in the 'corporate KM' system)
5. If you want to indulge in knowledge management (with a small k and a small m) or intellectual capital management, or intellectual property management or any other label you want to give to this endeavor, you need good Information Management systems to underpin your efforts.
6. Point 5 means the latest ECM, Enterprise Search, and Enterprise 2.0 technologies may help you in achieving your goals - but as ever, the shiny new software is no panacea.

Bottom line for me, Information sharing is key, and thus Information Management including a 'knowledge management' component, alongside collaborative information creation and 'Information Organisation and Access' are all important to your organisation, lets consider that instead of getting too hung up on the labels.

Previous, but related posts:
Its Official, Enterprise 2.0 = Knowledge Management
Online Information 2007 - Updated

Also may I suggest you search Slideshare.net for Dave Snowden and David Gurteen, they both put their stuff up on there.

New WCM training

If you have not picked up on it yet, my friends at CMS Watch have released new WCM training. Its a 4.5 hour (half day) online (elearning ?) variant of Tony Byrne's very successful half day workshop which he has been doing at conferences for years. Go take a look at:
http://www.cmswatch.com/Education/WCM/

It has prompted me to start a discussion in the WCM group on InformationZen, a group I started as the AIIM guys seemed to miss out WCM in their initial setup of groups, as to whether we need an AIIM WCM certificate, similar to their other offerings, with WCM Practioner, WCM Specialist and WCM Master certifications.

Personally I think we do, at least having staff with some good training behind them may stop organizations from forcing a very square Sharepoint peg, into a very round WCMS hole.

Look no Windows....

Well I simply can't believe how long it is since I wrote a posting, for which I apologise, but its been very busy at work, with major deliverables due for multiple projects simultaneously, and Mel does like me to talk to her sometimes when I get home from work........

Mind you, I have written two articles for the Prescient Digital Media site:
CMS or ECM, Whats the difference?
Advice for (prospective) Sharepoint customers (with Toby Ward)


However, hopefully my lovely little new Acer Aspire One mini-laptop will allow me to get on with writing posts (as well as reading everyone else's) whilst commuting into downtown on the GO train. So, with is Linpus Lite Linux distro, and the Mac at home, you can figure out the name of this post.... :-)


Of course my 'work' laptop, a nice big HP which is definately in the 'desktop replacement' category and a beast to try and use on your knee on the train (and way too big for Air Canada's Embraer ERJ-175 regional jets) runs Vista, and part of me hates to say this, I have had no problems with Vista in the 3 months I have been using it. Well apart from all the annoying bits you have to configure to 'off' if you know what your doing. Mind you it has a big old hard disk, so when I get round to it, its going to be dual booting Ubuntu :-)

So far the OpenOfficeOrg 2.2 that ships on the Aspire One, which only comes with 512MB of RAM has coped beautifully with all the Word, Excel and Powerpoint files I have opened, despite some heavy formatting in the Word documents. All good stuff ! I had been trying to use my 6 year old eNote (aka Lindows Laptop) which is small and light and has fairly big screen, but even with upgraded RAM, its VIA 866Mhz CPU seemed to run the fan nearly all the time, and its a 'lap burning' machine at the best of times, plus the old battery now can only hold a charge for about an hour with no wireless (which is provided via PCMCIA card of course).

Anyway, lots to say on various issues, so hopefully I will get the chance to catch up with the blogging.