The Business of Knowing

Twitter as birth control

2010-08-14T12:00:00.003Z

Are Retweets just plain lazy? Twitter, sensemaking and adding value

2010-08-14T11:34:00.010Z

Based on this video posted by the Archduke of Twitter, Stephen Fry, you’d think Twitter was a load of mindless guff posted by idiots who think we care about what they had for dinner.

But its so much more than that. It’s a huge library of knowledge, insight and information, whose value to others is constantly increased by the action of re-tweeting. Disagree? Think re-tweeting is just lazy? It actually creates value for your followers.

Sensemaking and personal knowledge management
I came across this post by Harold Jarche on Twitter which started me thinking... It applies a sensemaking approach to Twitter for personal knowledge management, or for any humans reading, keeping a handle on what you know and making sense of it.

Mostly it’s a post about how to manage interesting things you’ve found on Twitter – favorite them, review them, add to more context to them, and publish them in all their expanded glory . Jarche calls them Friday Finds

An example:

Tweet: @roundtrip – 10 ways the “world of work” will change in the next 10 years @Gartner_inc “non-routine” work = adaptive innovative

Additional information:

De-routinization of work
Work swarms
Weak links
Working with the collective
Work sketch-ups
Spontaneous work
Simulation & experimentation
Pattern sensitivity
Hyperconnected
My place

What I found interesting was the sensemaking model Jarche refers to, because they way he manages tweets, via his Friday Finds, adds value to the original tweet.

Filtering (separating signal from noise, based on some criteria): Some filtering (if you consider that particular tweet in relation to the chaos on Twitter) has taken place, in terms of content and in terms of the concept of “following” being a filter.
Validation (ensuring that information is reliable, current or supported by research): There may be some validation on an individual basis ie Jarche has validated the content of the tweet based on his personal knowledge of the person tweeting it.
Synthesis (describing patterns, trends or flows in large amounts of information): Tweets grouped by theme would indicate synthesis – this is a more complex and time consuming activity which Jarche hasn’t undertaken
Presentation (making information understandable through visualization or logical presentation): The way the tweets are presented makes them accessible and quick to understand
Customization (describing information in context): Customisation means that the tweets, information fragments which give little context, are given a “boost” by adding more detail.

I’d argue that synthesis is probably higher in the value creation list of this model than presentation, but that’s just an aside.

What Jarche is doing, he is doing primarily for himself, but its adding value to the basic information contained in a tweet. This is librarianship if I ever saw it but it did make me think about the concept of re-tweeting.

Consider the tweet – you read it, find it interesting, you retweet it. Referring to the model above, some sensemaking has taken place. By retweeting, by virtue of passing on a tweet you’ve filtered out something useful from amongst the millions posted and personally validated it. Congratulations - you’ve just added value to the tweet for your followers.

Nothing is new under heaven
I intended to say something clever and thought provoking about Twitter retweets, but in researching this post I find that like all my good ideas, it’s been done already. Its been done here and here and here . Obviously there’s a counter argument, based more on the number of available characters than on the concept of ownership of information, but in the interests of balance, see it here .

According to Twiterlyzer, my influence type is Spider, A Spider has “a mid-sized network” and is socially connected. Clearly I am not a Source, one who communicates original ideas (I love labels as get-out clauses ;-) So I can feel no shame in repeating what someone else has said. I’m just adding value...

RSA Animate series

2010-07-17T15:01:00.024Z

I feel the need to confess. It's been some considerable time since my last blog post, my Hail Mary's come in the form of these animated videos from the RSA. These are my favorite, there are more on YouTube should you be inspired to view them.

Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us

Illustrates the hidden truths behind what really motivates us at home and in the workplace.

Smile or Die

Acclaimed journalist, author and political activist Barbara Ehrenreich explores the darker side of positive thinking.

Crises of Capitalism

Radical social theorist David Harvey asks if it is time to look beyond capitalism towards a new social order that would allow us to live within a system that really could be responsible, just and humane?

"Cross that you little bastards and you die..."

2009-10-29T22:01:00.006Z

Thanks to David Gurteen (again) for pointing out this particularly brilliant explanation of complexity theory by Dave Snowden, using the analogy of a party for a group of 11 year old boys...

2009-10-24T10:50:00.004Z

These are fantastic videos satirising KM and tell you more about how it should be done than attending any number of KM conferences. Genuis (and I wish I'd thought of doing this).

Thanks to Green Chameleon for posting them.

The evolution of social media tools - more than just a hammer

2009-08-08T09:07:00.007Z

Consider the building trade. Think about it...in't olden days, we had rudimentary tools - maybe an axe, a hammer, nothing very specific. As time moved on, tools have evolved to the extent that we now have a tool for everything you could imagine - there's even a thingymigig for removing old bath sealant.

Consider social media tools - to begin with, we just had a few basic tools - wikis, blogs, discussion groups. Now we have so much more. Variations on a theme, yes, but those variations make all the difference, and usability, just like with tools, means some things are better suited than others to the job. You want to write about the pros and cons say of communities of practice over action learning sets, you write a blog post. You want to share a link to a great presentation, you use a microblogging site like Twitter. You want to develop a policy document with 10 contributors, you use a wiki. You wouldn't try to develop said policy document via Twitter, you know it's not the best tool for the job.

Just like having the right screwdriver for the right screw, its clear that the right combination of social media tools can do the job better than using 1 tool alone ie writing a blog post then telling people you just posted via Twitter is a great way to let people know it's there. A discussion group to support the development of a wiki page based on an idea posted in a blog = an effective combination.

We're starting to adapt our ways of working to the tools we use. As we become more familiar with what these tools can do, it seems that we're also filling gaps, creating tools which do the jobs have but can't yet do.

This is quite exciting (I know, I should get out more). It makes me wonder what's being created by some enterprising person to help us collaborate and share to the degree that we have the equivalent of a thingymigig which removes sealant from the bath...

Maybe in sharing and collaborating using social media tools, we'll develop a sociological and psychological understanding which mirrors our grasp of construction, supported by exactly the right tools for the job.

Video is a truly effective learning tool

2009-06-22T15:54:00.005Z

A couple of years ago I wrote this about "how-to" videos being a powerful learning force in the Web 2.0 armoury.

Now thanks to David Gurteen's knowledge letter, I have some scientific proof that they can have a real impact on the changing behaviours.

Paul Van Mele of the Africa Rice Center in Cotonou, Benin has undertaken a study where farmers were shown how to parboil rice using video and using traditional training sessions.

According to the New Scientist article:

"The team found that uptake of the parboiling technique by women who watched the video was 72 per cent, compared with just 19 per cent by those who attended a conventional workshop with a scientist or non-governmental organisation worker (International Journal of Agricultural Sustainability (DOI: 10.3763/ijas.2009.0438)".

An interesting study which I believe indicates that the success of the videos was due to their being shown in the evening, when most people were able to watch. The video also uses real farmers, enabling the viewer to connect with "like" people. It demonstrates that a story can be far more effective for encouraging new behaviours than and expert led training session.

You can read the original New Scientist article here and the full paper here.

Is KM Dead - like a zombie, its back

2009-06-10T00:20:00.002Z

Having actually had some air time (god, did I really use that term then????) with Dave Snowden, I decided he and Larry Prusk were actually the same person, until David Gurteen reminded me that there is the quite brilliant video of them both in the same room.....which proves that even those with the most similar views can oppose one another with respect and energy and get a multitude of very relevant points across. Having now met both of them, I would NOT like to be the poor guy interviewing them...

That video again

BTW these are two people you should REALLY pay attention to if you ever want to get anywhere with KM - it's a business tool, not intellectual masterbation.

Are conferences really worth it? KCUK09 and mixed feelings

2009-06-09T22:15:00.007Z

So, freshly back from the KCUK09 conference, I'm now thinking, was it all really worth it. These things aren't cheap, take a LOT of business justification (I'm a civil servant, I worry about how I spend public money!!!!) and take a lot of time out. So I'll say it how it is...

I spent 2 days at the Arc Knowledge and Content UK 09 event where I had a very mixed experience. I'll do pros and cons...otherwise it will be a rant no-one wants to read:

Cons

The first day particularly was a dire tirade of vendor driven presentations where the presenters were passionless and the software uninspired

There was NO WIFI - I went to the trouble of borrowing my hubbies whizzy laptop as I've had anything useful disabled by our IT dept in the spirit of "safety" but why bother as I couldnt blog (even the bleedin Hilton only has ethernet - IS THIS THE 80's? I know shoulder pads are in but that's ridiculous).

Pros

Three KM gurus who have had the most influence on my KM career were on the same panel, and on the 1st day, there were 4 people I considered KM geniuses within shouting distance of one another. They are responsible for said accolade in these ways:

David Gurteen: Lovely lovely guy who remembered my name (thanks, meant a lot to me) whose amazing capacity for communicating and sharing got me my job (some blame there too methinks)

Dave Snowden - genius guy, great intellect, considerable persona, is in my considered opinion, totally on the ball with his mix of sciences and a MASSIVE understanding of how people actually work. I've used his stuff on Cognitive Edge with incredible results. I believe we share a common interest in Shamanism...

Ron Donaldson: - estwhile student of Mr Snowden and a properly clever sausage. He introduced me to Cognitive Edge and made me realise storytelling wasnt for hippies (well, it is, but its useful too) Wasnt on the panel but counts as a major influence. Love his concept of Knowledge Ecology (certainly better than Wisdom Manager!)

Richard McDermott: Helped me by doing something practical with Mr Wenger. I believe he's since amended his theory akin to the wonderful Tom Peters. In my opinion, anyone who can say "I was wrong" is worth listening too...

I'm pleased to say Mr Snowden considered my panel question mention worthy - having someone you hugely respect mention your contribution is always going to make you feel good, but all in all, I left feeling that I'd have done better reading these people's tweets rather than spending public dosh on suppliers time. I made some fabulous contacts, not least Mr Plouviez who properly made me giggle by saying he was from the "provinces" (he's from Scottish Gov). And mention to Tony Quinlan who was fantastically down to earth and really very clever, and has a dead sexy wink ;-).

BTW, @Kat_mandu - you're a star.

I was seriously considering getting out of KM and doing something without all the business shite, but talking to people with real insight and real passion has made me think, well, maybe I'll stay a while, so thanks to everyone who mentioned anything to do with human beings and business for rekindling my interest. Oh, and not to forget Bonnie Cheuk who was the most intellegent, business savvy, passionate and engaging speaker of them all - she's a really switched on bunny.

Right, time to catch up on Ashes to Ashes (in no small way responsible for the re-hideousness of the shoulder pad).

Twitter - the epitome of knowledge sharing

2009-05-15T00:20:00.006Z

Well I'm gobsmacked. All my pontificating about Twitter and Microblogging has not been in vain. I've been on Twitter since 2007 when there were about what seemed like 9 people on it, and now, well... @valdiskrebs (twitter persona) has made me think very differently...

If I'd have posted a link on there in 2007, there would have been little interest - you know why? Because NO GOOD SEARCH was available. And what's useful about the internet? THE SEARCH FACILITIES - I know I'm shouting, but my god has no-one realised yet? Whatever you do, whereever the next "big" thing is, its all about the search"!"!!!!!!!

If its 2 way communication or not, GET A GOOD SEARCH ENGINE ON YOUR INTRANET!!!!!!
Social media is lovely, giving people a voice is fantastic, but if they can't find what they're looking for, you've eff star star kayed it.......

So there. (and no Maxine, still no jokes...but does that make it boring?)

Oh how technology can exclude

2009-05-14T21:26:00.008Z

I've had a bit of a revelation recently - I know to the rest of the world, in terms of time spent doing online things, social networking is up on email but weirdly, 80% of DWP staff (of those surveyed, about 400) dont use any social networking sites. Which got me to thinking, are we all getting a bit carried away with this social media/social networking malarkey? Are people still really talking to one another? (probably not actually).

Then I had a technology exclusion experience of my own.

As a child I had a squint, my eyes facing in two different directions (how attractive and no I dont have a picture, I burnt them, lol). I have no binocular vision.

Cut to me looking for good films to see - a long time fan of Tim Burton and of animation, I was all excited by the prospect of seeing Coraline. Sadly, its 3D and I can't see 3D...at all (not even magic eye pictures, lol). Even the film that opened the Cannes Film Festival was a 3D animation

I now feel completely excluded, not through a lack of interest, but through a lack of ability.

How many are still in the internet wilderness suffering from that same lack of ability, being bamboozled by #links and confused by RSS - and how can we support them (and should we) to engage in this madness that is social media?
Answers on a tweet to @helennicol ;-)

New Director of Digital Engagement

2009-05-13T14:57:00.009Z

So, Andrew Stott of the Cabinet Office is now the Director of Digital Engagement, responsible for working across gov to "encourage, support and challenge them in moving from communicating to citizens on the web to conversing and collaborating with them through digital technology." So says The Wardman Wire. There's a Guardian article too.

As Mr Stott has done some stirling work getting CivilBlogs and CivilWiki off the ground, I'm hoping he'll be an effective DirDigEng, (his twitter name - 1 tweet to date) -

"I'm delighted to be asked to take up the Director of Digital
Engagement role. Looking forward to building on my #poit work."

(poit being Power of Information Taskforce). Amazing the number of tweets already mentioning his appointment. He's already been picked up on his first tweet by David at Webometric Thoughts - for following only his boss & using a hash tag few people understood. As for him being a "generic civil servant" - he's actually got things moving so far, so I have some faith in him...

It seems he'll be concentrating on developing digital services already in existance - hopefully he won't be pushed into trying to control and 'manage' digital engagement, makings rules, strategies and setting standards as Ron Donaldson suggested on twitter...but he probably will...

Knowlege Management Specialist Library Needs You

2009-04-20T13:42:00.003Z

I saw this call for people to take part in a survey to assess the value etc of the Knowledge Management Specialist Library in David Gurteen's newsletter. I've stolen it word for word due to lack of time...

Knowledge Management Specialist Library
Many of you will be familiar with the Knowledge Management Specialist Library from the British National Health Service National Library for Health. This is one of the best KM resource sites on the web. (It's not just about KM in the NHS but a full blown KM resource.) Well, it seems there is some doubt about its future and a survey is being carried out.

The reason for the survey is to gather people's views on the site, the resources, its relevance to their work and also how they would like to see the site developed. The future of the library is uncertain. It has already been made a static site and there is a real possibility that it will be closed. On the other hand if there is sufficient support it may be provided with a proper budget. So in addition to the above the survey is being carried out to:

Gather evidence on the value of the site, including case studies of how the library has impacted on people's work
Identify people that it would be helpful to include in the lessons learned review
Identify people that it would be useful to involve if the library needs to look for a new home
Gather information that would be helpful to pitch the library to a new host or funder
Generally stir up support for the library

If you have used this specialist KM library and found it useful could you please help out by completing the survey. It is short and simple and should not take long to complete.

This is my bit now...
I know the lady who used to manage the library (hiya Caroline!) - she put so much effort into it and its a brilliant resource which shouldn't just be abandoned!!! So please, complete the survey and save an immensely useful site.

Mister Know-it-all by Elvis McGonagal

2009-03-13T14:09:00.003Z

I had a lovely surprise when I attended my first Henley Knowledge Management Forum conference earlier this year, because they had hired Elvis McGonagal as conference poet! A brilliant idea, and considering it was written as the day progressed, a quite brilliant poem.

Mister Know-it-All by Elvis McGonagal

I’ve eaten all the fruit from the tree of knowledge
I know what’s what, I know who’s who
I know my onions, I know the ropes
I know a thing or two
I know the way to Amarillo
I know the way to San Jose
I know who let the dogs out
I know the time of day
I know what happened to The Likely Lads
I know what happened to Baby Jane
I know what’s eating Gilbert Grape
I know the rain in Spain falls mainly on the plain
I know who’s been eating your porridge
I know who ate all the pies
I know which side my bread is buttered
I know the wheres, the whens, the whys
I know a hawk from a handsaw
I know chalk from cheese
I know they know it’s Christmas
I know “thank you very much” in Japanese (”domo arrigato gazaimas”)
I know where the bodies are buried
I know whodunnit, I know the score
I know what it’s all about, Alfie
I know the capital of Ecuador (Quito)
I know how many roads a man must go down
I know where we go from here
I know why birds suddenly appear
Every time that you are near
I know the known knowns that I know I know
I know the unknown knowns that I don’t
And as for Mr Rumsfeld’s unknown unknowns -
Will I admit I don’t know I don’t know? No I won’t
I know that unlike Barack Obama
Most politicians don’t have a single scruple
I know that one of the speakers today
Used to be a roadie for Mott the Hoople
I’m a walking wikipedia
I’m a mobile reference library
I’ve got more knowledge than a London cabby
I know the quickest way from Highgate to Highbury
But little do you know that I know that you know
That I know what I know is no use
Unless I pass it on, put it over and get it across
There’s no mileage in a mastermind recluse
For facts are fine as far as they go
As long as new ideas come from what we glean
Just knowing stuff is not enough
We gotta innovate - know what I mean?
And even if we know who wants to be a millionaire
We know they know that others must cooperate
That they’ll have to ask the audience, they’ll have to phone a friend
Communicate, convey, collaborate
We’ve got to work as a team, pull together
Join forces, pool resources, play ball
We gotta sail in the same boat baby
It’s all for one and one for all
So - I know who put the “ram” in the “ramalamadingdong”
I know who put the “bop” in the “bop-sh-bop”
But the best piece of knowledge I’ll share with you today is -
I know when to stop

Thanks to Chris Collison for posting this so I didnt have to hassle anyone for it :-)

No More Learners

2009-02-27T20:27:00.004Z

Jay Cross has posted an interesting piece on not treating people as learners, in the same way as a the Dutch in some areas have removed road markings to encourage drivers to be more cautious. Has some real implications for current learning and development departments...see what you think.

Jay is asking for feedback here Twas David Gurteen's twittering which brought it to my attention.

Twitter is the new facebook

2009-02-12T22:32:00.047Z

The idea that Twitter is taking over as the "next big thing" of social networking hides the fact that Twitter has actually been around for a long long time. Its been around as long as Facebook et al if not longer (I myself can't remember when I signed up, but its definately pre-cocktail throwing). Twitter is suffering the same media frenzy as all the other social networking "phenomenon", its just taken a while to gain its own tipping point and resulting attention of the media.

The profile of Twitter has reached the heady heights of the popular. Famous Tweeters Jonathon Ross and Stephen Fry have been in no small way responsible for its recent attention. That, and underground conversations made public by our very own "can't say textes cos it's not English" Radio Stupid...But in reality this type of microblogging has been going on for some time. Twitter is now so "now" that even The One Show ran a Twitter feature, talking about it in a "we're loving it but don't actually get it" kind of way and trying, as they do, to appeal to all audiences whilst actively pissing most of them off. Twitter has, it seems "arrived".

A growth in Microblogging (which is what Twitterers or Tweeters do) means that where previously we just had information overload, now we potentially have experience overload as well. For me though, any experience based sharing, particularly if it is of an emotional nature, is good...and rarely happens face to face let alone online. A busineness example for instance..."We just got the *** contact, loving you all for your efforts...." - emotional, concise, and plain nice. I read a recent Forrester techradar report on social media (which I won't try to link to due its fantastically expensive nature), in which microblogging was referred to as the next big thing, but not necessarily for business. In fact microblogging is conceptually brilliant for knowledge management but its use is still in the throes of adolescence.

All of these social media tools are like MS Office tools of old (ish), no use in themselves - its what you do with them that makes all the difference....

Current Twittering (or microblogging) for Enterprise 2.0 may be (quite) a long way off but think of the potential - everyone needs a good elevator pitch and this is what microblogging can be - short, sharp, insightful or just plain educational updates with wide appeal which take seconds to read. Unlike this post which is seemingly none of the above...

Obama's powerful use of storytelling

2009-01-21T22:55:00.004Z

Having watched Barack Obama's inauguration speech, I was blown away by his use of storytelling to inspire. Particularly in the last stages of his speech, he referred to a shared historical event. Knowing full well that the story is well understood by his audience, only alluding to the story itself, he repeated its imagery, subtext and outcome to echo his own aspirations for the future.

"In the year of America’s birth, in the coldest of months, a small band of patriots huddled by dying campfires on the shores of an icy river. The capital was abandoned. The enemy was advancing. The snow was stained with blood. At a moment when the outcome of our revolution was most in doubt, the father of our nation ordered these words be read to the people:Let it be told to the future world...that in the depth of winter, when nothing but hope and virtue could survive...that the city and the country, alarmed at one common danger, came forth to meet. America. In the face of our common dangers, in this winter of our hardship, letus remember these timeless words. With hope and virtue, let us brave once more the icy currents, and endure what storms may come. Let it be said by our children’s children that when we were tested we refused to let this journey end, that we did not turn back nor did we falter; and with eyes fixed on the horizon and God’s grace upon us, we carried forth that great gift of freedom and delivered it safely to future generations."

Business leaders everywhere, indeed, politicians everywhere, should be looking hard at this mans oratory brilliance, and the effect it has on unfathomable numbers of people, and learning everything they can.

More Quotes on Knowledge

2008-11-29T09:27:00.013Z

Because this post containing a few quotes on sharing has been hit so many times, I thought it about time to do another one.

Where previously I was looking for insights, using quotes to give me new authors and thinkers to consider in relation to my dissertation, this time the quotes I have chosen are those that resonate for me due to my experiences with knowledge and knowledge management. So here they are, and I make no apologies for including Peter Drucker more than once.

"The store of wisdom does not consist of hard coins which keep their shape as they pass from hand to hand; it consists of ideas and doctrines whose meanings change with the minds that entertain them."
John Plamenatz, political philosopher

"The more extensive a man's knowledge of what has been done, the greater will be his power of knowing what to do."
Benjamin Disraeli, statesman and literary figure

"Knowledge is the fundamental factor -- the major enabler -- of enterprise performance."
Karl M. Wiig, KM guru

"The basic economic resource - the means of production - is no longer capital, nor natural resources, nor labor. It is and will be knowledge."
Peter Drucker, genius

"Knowledge must come through action."
Sophocles, ancient Greek playwright

"Knowledge management will never work until corporations realize it's not about how you capture knowledge but how you create and leverage it."
Etienne Wenger, co-creator of the concept of Communities of Practice

"Sharing knowledge is not about giving people something,or getting something from them. That is only valid for information sharing. Sharing knowledge occurs when people are genuinely interested in helping one another develop new capacities for action; it is about creating learning processes."
Peter Senge, author of The Fifth Discipline

"Alchemists turned into chemists when they stopped keeping secrets.”
Eric Raymond, programmer and open-source software advocate

“In a knowledge-driven economy, talk is real work.”
Thomas H. Davenport and Laurence Prusak, KM gurus

"Knowledge is experience; everything else is information.”
Albert Einstein, genius physicist

“Knowledge is like money: to be of value it must circulate, and in circulating it can increase in quantity and, hopefully, in value.”
Louis L’Amour, author

"Knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back of an ass."
Japanese proverb

"There's no such thing as knowledge management; there are only knowledgeable people. Information only becomes knowledge in the hands of someone who knows what to do with it."
Peter Drucker, genius Management guru

"Any piece of knowledge I acquire today has a value at this moment exactly proportioned to my skill to deal with it. Tomorrow, when I know more, I recall that piece of knowledge and use it better."
Mark Van Doren, poet and critic

Wikipedia isn't doing business use of wikis any favours

2008-11-28T19:22:00.004Z

So, contentious title out of the way, I'll explain...

Wikipedia is the best known example of a wiki. This is the frame of reference many use when thinking "what is a wiki". But a wiki is just a word document, online. That's about it. It doesn't have to be anything other than a place people can write things without having to email the document they wrote them in to one another. So in developing an encyclopedia, Wikipedia has inadvertedly created a mass misunderstanding as to the value and potential usage of wikis.

Wikis can be used for absaloutely anything at all which probably currently happens via email like non-standard agendas, standards, reports, current effective practice, policies, reviews, knowledge assets etc etc etc.

Unfortunately, many companies begin their wiki experiments by trying to create the definitive knowledge asset on, say, knowledge management. This is a big ask for people who've never had their own contributions edited by someone they don't know. It turns people off, and prevents them from recognising the potential in wikis. They need to start with a simple and non-threatening activity like a progress report or lessons learned review. Even a shared agenda would help as I said in this post some time ago. Starting small will really help people gain confidence enough to start working on bigger projects like knowledge assets.

Instead of creating company shaped Wikipedia replicas, maybe we should all set our sights a bit lower and take some time to get used to what Forrester and many others consider to be high value tools for business.

And just for the record, I think Wikipedia is the dogs thingamees :-)

Enterprise 2.0 Technologies: they're not going anywhere anytime soon

2008-11-27T21:08:00.002Z

Thanks to Bill Ives and his Portal and KM blog, I've been able to get the gist of the Forrester TechRadar For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 without paying the $379 it costs to read the whole thing (hurrah!)

Bill reviewed the report and his highlights mention that usage of Enterprise 2.0 software has produced significant success with social networks and wikis, moderate success with blogs, forums, mashups, prediction markets, RSS and widgets (don't they make your beer bubbly?) and minimal success with microblogs, podcasts and social bookmarks.

I'd agree that people appear to connect with social networks and wikis more than, say, podcasts and RSS (vastly underutilised if you ask me), but I would have to read the report to know why the distinction between social networks and forums. Any road up, the top and bottom of it is that in terms of these collaborative software applications "Some were just starting on their journey (microblogs), others had reached their high point (podcasts and forums) but none were on their way down". So the fact that the public sector is only just opening its doors to these tools is not necessarily bad - looks like enterprise 2.0 is no fad.

How could I forget? My first published picture

2008-11-27T20:37:00.003Z

I know I've stopped submitting in the stylee of the Friday Photo, because I discovered Flickr, but I thought I should mention, as I've been distracted from blogging by my photography obsession, that I've had my first picture published in the November issue of Digital SLR Photography magazine - this is the not winning but at least printed picture for your delectation. My street photos are more my thang, but this was for a themed comp....

Value Network Mapping and Analysis - the way forward?

2008-11-27T20:05:00.007Z

For some considerable time now I've been wondering if knowledge management is really the way forward. Many people either don't know what it is or relate it to a particular business area, for instance IT or HR and having boxed and labelled it, ignore it. So I've been searching for a way to find a practical application which would float the respective boats not only of the HR and IT afficionados, but also the CEOs of the world. I considered Lean, Six Sigma, Social Network Analysis, all which felt like there was something missing...but I'm struggling to find anything wrong with Value Network Analysis.

Like social network analysis, value network analysis maps relationships but using roles rather than individuals. The value associated with role interrelationships, both tangible (ie exchange of goods, services, revenue) and intangible (ie knowledge and benefits) is mapped and analysed to identify where there may be more value, tangible or intangible, and to highlight what is required to achieve the most value from the area of business being examined. It seems simpler and broader in scope than IDEF mapping and by virtue of the emphasis on role, appears to be less sensitive to the bias found in the individual focus of social network mapping,

I definately think it deserves fuller examination and I'll write more on this when I've processed and digested what it really means to me and potentially to my organisation, but for the time being, check out ValueNetworks.com - not just a sales site, there are some great tit bits (love that phrase) which help explain what value network analysis is all about. Some pretty impressive clients there too. Check out this article (which can be accessed from the Value Networks site too) demonstrating the technique in relation to Journalism, and this relatively scathing (but quite possibly valid) comment on change management.

Are you a fan of VNA? If so, tell me more...

Knowledge management analogies & stories Part I

2008-11-24T17:12:00.004Z

I don't know about you, but I often find that people have a preconcieved notion of what knowledge is, which prevents them from having a useful conversation about how it might be managed. I'm not convinced that it can be "managed" - maybe, using the same differentiation between leading and managing people, knowledge can be "led"? Anyway, the point is, I've been collecting analogies and stories to help me explain what I'm talking about re: KM in general, and to explain why I feel so strongly that tacit knowledge cannot, in essence, be captured (see this post and this post). I thought I'd share some of them with you.

The Salad Analogy - Information & Knowledge & Wisdom
Borrowed from Mr Mike Kelleher, senior consultant at the British Quality Foundation
Information tells us that that red round thing with pips in is a tomato is, knowledge tells us that it is a fruit, wisdom tells us that despite the fact it is a fruit, it doesn't go well in a fruit salad.

The Driving Analogy
Intuitively developed by me despite the fact it's used by many other people...
When you learn to drive a car, you do so by actually driving a car. The theory of road use can be gained from a book, but any real ability to drive is gained by driving. That is the difference between theory (information) and practice (knowledge). However, tacit, intuitive knowledge comes to us when we've had many years of idiot drivers pulling out of the middle lane of the motorway without warning. It's a feeling, a sensation of "better watch that car!" and cannot easily be articulated so that someone else could practice it. However, many frequent and long distance drivers know what I'm talking about...

Teaching by the book
A lovely analogy from Larry Prusak, on his site, tells of how he was once on a baseball team, but "was by far the worst hitter on the team". His father gave him a book on The Art of Hitting. Despite pratically memorising the book, he still couldn't hit. This is, as Prusak says,

"...a story I tell people who insist that knowledge can be codified, that humans are interchangeable. There are still many facets of life and work that are art not science, and wise managers understand how to manage both."

I'll post these as I come across them, and I promise to test them first, after all, it's not just about theory, it's about practice...

Is KM Dead? Great video of Dave Snowden and Larry Prusak

2008-07-09T11:20:00.008Z

This is a fantastic video, which actually hits the nail on the head about why "the dead keep walking" in terms of KM - that there's no clear practice community for KM, where people keep doing the same thing, not learning from experiences - quite scathing about government adoption of KM...

NHS eSpace - real adoption of social networking

2008-07-06T10:17:00.004Z

Despite deciding to leave my job, I am very much enjoying seeing some really positive uses of eSpace, the social networking/media site (not to be confused with the car) I've been working on for the past year or so. It's been recently updated to a Drupal platform, and with improved navigation and what appears to be, a consistantly spreading network of advocates, I'm seeing a considerable increase in activity and buy in for it.

eSpace is based on Communities, some of these are communities of practice, some communities of interest, but all have been created based on a perceived need for an online space. It's potential is huge, as an awful lot of money and time is spent travelling around the country to meetings, which could more effectively and easily happen via web conferencing - hopefully that will be the next step. But currently, people are actually asking questions and getting answers, finding colleagues through the member directory, sharing concerns and generally sharing knowledge and experience, which is what it's there for.

Having done a lot of work with the Tipping Point theory of the adoption of ideas, and the nature of change, I can see that we're on the upward curve, heading happily toward the tipping point. This I feel has been in part for these reasons:

the communities are created by demand by the workforce, and not dictated centrally, allowing for people to engage with them and to really support their community as advocates who spread the word
there is strong leadership support in some areas, encouraging participation, explaining usefulness, and generally advocating the site and specific communities they see a need for
each community has a coordinator from within the community (or who is close to that community) which enables them to understand the needs, interests and barriers the community faces

There's still very much a "pull" tendency, with people expecting to be fed information, - we don't get many documents shared by users, but it's clear that knowledge is being shared in discussion forums.

To anyone trying to implement a social networking or social media site in their organisation, I would say the key elements to think about are:

Bottom up works best - it's incredibly difficult to get a network going, supporting the ones that want to be there is half the battle
You need the support of leaders. These don't have to be leaders in the sense of the organisational structure, and could be leaders of a particular network.
Skills in networking, influencing, and identifying potential advocates and coordinators are vital to get the right people on board - find your advocates, the rest will happen more easily
It takes time, lots and lots of time, and you can't force it (but you can push it gently) so just keep listening to your users and coordinators/facilitators and above all be supportive. Every user is important, without them you have an empty site

Hopefully eSpace will continue to demonstrate its usefulness and become a hub of knowledge and experience to which staff can turn to help them along the potholed path that is IT enabled change. Effective use of the site requires a huge culture change, lots of time, and considerable demonstration of benefits, but it really does seem, in the words of Bob Dylan, that the times they are a changing (terrible grammar that man had, and he sang down his nose, but a useful sentiment).

Lord Darzi's review - a good effort, but why aren't we doing this already?

2008-06-30T22:49:00.023Z

I just wanted to say, I haven't totally given up on this blog, I've just been a bit distracted - by really interesting things. These come after my thoughts on the Darzi review, and include a slightly (er, very?) cynical rant about NHS Connecting for Health. For those of you who have come here because you're are interested in the Darzi review (and not my life story which I'm assuming you couldn't give two hoots about) I've left the personal bits till the end, so you don't have to read them if you don't want to (I'm nice like that :-) But the fact that Patient Opinion is up for 2 awards is reason enough to read the entire post...

As the Darzi review on High Quality Care for All has just been published, I felt I should put my two penneth in.

It's all very well saying we're going to empower the staff and patients to develop a high quality NHS, but to actually do that requires a long, hard look at what is preventing the NHS from doing that already - namely huge bureaucracy, historical and systemic scapegoatism (is that a word? it is now), conflicting targets, political maneouvering and an awful lot of conjecture and rhetoric and (contentious I know) an attitude that the medical profession knows all, despite the fact that some patients are actually experts on their own conditions (god forbid we actually have patients who are intelligent enough to understand medical theory!!!).

I read Darzi's review (very quickly, obviously) and I was, well, suprised! Seemingly ridden with conjecture, in that in every section the introduction makes sweeping references to something each and every politician with anything to do with health would love - the right words are there, but there is actually some weight behind them. The review contains some practical examples and realistic suggestions (in my considered opinion, obviously).

Of course, the majority of the NHS will say every one of those suggestions is unworkable, but that's what happens when people with great ideas are squashed under a ton of processes, policies and long, long conversations about what colour it should be. It just needs some brave, fearless and quite positive people to try and make what appear to be sensible actions a reality.

I thought it was a good effort :-) Make your own mind up, read it here.

Other stuff stopping me having time to blog is that I've
1) begun blogging for and supporting the "webinisation" of the inclusive and innovative website Patient Opinion (they're up for both the New Media and Catalyst awards btw...and yes, they paid me to say that - I'd say it for free, just don't tell them that :-)
2) been taking even more photos and learning to paint on silk (if only there was money in being an artist)
3) been trying to decide what to do for the (immediate) rest of my life.

Generally though, I've had enough of being resolutely hated by everyone in the media, the NHS, and eHealth Insider, due to having the audacity to work NHS Connecting for Health and have decided to discover what really useful stuff I could be doing without the booing when I mention where I work (yes, that really happened....) - I've got until the 1st October. If someone wants to offer me a job, preferably before that date, that would be lovely :-)

Oh, and did I mention, I'm looking for work? :-)

Comment on the social networking masterclass

2008-05-20T19:59:00.004Z

I read with interest a comment from RayJones on the Health Informatics Social Networking masterclass I referred to previously, on the Informaticopia blog. He writes that we "should be concerned about the decline of the scientific approach and the use of evidence in healthcare" and references two particular points I made in my own session - that Web 2.0 encouraged examples of ‘the wisdom of the masses’ and that it recognised that more brains = more information.

Ray's argument is that

"Quite often the masses do not have wisdom but follow prejudice, hearsay, and urban mythology. How often do we see public opinion radically influenced by the tabloid press, for the story to change a few weeks later? The tabloid press and tabloid TV use the case of Uncle Norman or sister Mary to tell one person’s story. That story may be true but if we are to take a rational approach, for example, to our understanding of the cost effectiveness of a particular treatment we need to consider evidence gathered on representative populations."

I'm not sure if this is a comment about the press, or about the lack of intelligence of "the masses". My talk was emphasising the fact that if we treat people as if they are stupid, they will act stupidly, particular in reference to what appears to be an overly paternalistic approach to healthcare which assumes the GP is the font of all knowledge and the patient can't possibly be informed about their own condition. To assume "the masses" are a prejudiced bunch with no ability to make their own choices, is for me, a very negative view of humanity. I'm not saying people always make the right choices, but having the opportunity to consider their options might be a good start.

His second point,

"Similarly, the phrase ‘more brains more information’ may apply in a limited range but if we were to ask 1000 or even a million people to work together would they have come up with Einstein’s theories? More information may just mean more noise rather than more intelligence."

I think has some validity - although I'm not sure Einstein worked in a vacumn - and when he did, he didn't get anywhere (thinking of his later efforts to align theories of quantum mechanics and general relativity). What I was suggesting, was that one person may be an expert in say, Sport, another in the works of Shakespeare, another in astrology etc. Get them all together, and they know more about everything than they do individually. Again, the attitude that people cannot be intelligent on mass, is one which prevents effective collaboration reducing the opinion of others to "noise".

Always interesting to understand alternative viewpoints don't you think...read the full post and make up your own mind.

Scam Warning - Whos Who of Professionals

2008-05-16T16:05:00.004Z

I've had quite a few responses recently to this post on the WHO'S WHO of Professionals recently, so obviously our friends are at it again...just wanted to to draw your attention to some of the comments I've received - tells it all really:

Comment 1

Good work, Nicole (ok, so they got my name wrong, hey ho). I wish I could say that I hadn't fallen for it in 2004, but I did. At that time they claimed more than fifty thousand members world-wide, but the invitation letter was about the same. I joined and became active. IN FACT I ended up running a club free of charge and of benefit to these people while paying a huge sum of money to them for the honours.Of course, at the time, the supposed book in which entries would appear was constantly "fastly approaching the editorial deadline",... year after year. I never received it and after showing patience began to speak legalese, after which part of my money was promptly refunded. The book still had not come out when I checked in 2006.After visiting the website:http://www.internationalwhoswho.de/and getting a strong "deja vu" feeling, I looked these people up in the Better Business Bureau databases and lo and behold I found a wealth of info on Gibralter Publishing (at the time, the core persona) and the about fifteen other names these people use.Not long after quiting IWWHS, I was approached by a new "networking" society (apparently they had shared my details) and when I asked who their executives in charge were I found several of the same North Carolina-based names from IWWHS!Unfortunately, those vane enough to list this "merit" not only advertise a questionable enterprise, but many times will have their OWN integrity questioned by those in the know! Beware!

Comment 2

Hi all,I (in France) received this e-mail a couple of weeks. And last tuesday, a woman who claimed to be in Washington proposed to me an interview with her "director" for "the final step of selection".The day after, "the director" called me and our "interview" was interesting ... he sounds actualy like a professional interviewer, but he ended the call when I choose a $800 registration option but never give him may credit card details.I hope it's for free!!!Thank you all for your information.

Comment 3

WARNING: “WHO IS WHO”/ internationalwhoswho IS quite probably SCAM !!!I have exactly the same experience: "deadline was "fastly approaching" - this time in March 2008, and one day, when I was busy ,I gave them my information and my credit card number (we ARE busy, and this is what they take advantage of). They immediately withdrew $800 for a book and some pins & stuff I had orally been coaxed into saying "yes" to. I understood the same afternoon that this might be scam and cancelled the 'order'. Got a letter back from them, which said "We will be more than happy to assist you with your membership cancellation as soon as the proper information is pulled. An Account Manager will get back to you as soon as possible and thank you in advance for your patience." Signed Sabrina Fuentes. Many days later the letter from the "account manager", Sandy Garcia, came. According to Sandy Garcia, who would from now on be my contact, the "cancellation policy" of "whoswho" was to retain 358$. I protested immediately in an e-mail to Sandy Garcia, only to receive a bounce-back e-mail that I was "not authorized to contact" Ms (Mr?) Garcia. This is no doubt SCAM, and probably
plain fraud. The method is: 1. Appeal to /boost people's vanity, or other things which may make them feel good (for some time). Promise people something good and cheap (here: for free).2. Give the poor fool an opportunity to buy something expensive, but valuable, in addition to the free stuff.3. Be sure you have a huge "cancellation fee" - more or less hidden underneath the offer.4. Ask for the credit card numberof the stupid fool you are fooling5. Withdraw the money immediately6. When the stupid/ victim realizes that he is about to be fooled, promise your "account manager" will contact you "soon": However, that will take so many days, that the fool/ victim will give up, or the deadline of complaint is running out.
We must warn the world against these crooks ... I was one of the fools. I have learnt, and will do what I can to warn others. I will also try to sue them (very unpleasant, but - if necessary -I will grin and bear it).ViVa

Comment 4

hello, just had an interesting interview with these people too - you can learn a lot from their interviewing style and the gaps in their so called research - the fact that my business is not yet registered or trading, and that the relevant website is not yet active, did not seem to deter them. They also suggested that I would be able to make use of the informal social networking down the road at a local pub (450 miles away in London) and never once gave any indication of understanding what sector I might actually be in. VERY smooth interview style, very much about stroking the old ego. I swear I heard the file being deleted when I said I'd be in touch as soon as I thought such a membership
would be appropriate (ie, no thanks) - in fact I thought I was very pleasant given that someone had just asked me for $950 for what we all do through Facebook anyway.cheers (see you down the pub!), Sarah, Edinburgh

So, learning from these experience, don't even bother to speak to these people (unless you want your ego massaged for free, then tell them you're not interested :-)

Social networking and knowledge sharing the NHS way

2008-05-15T15:29:00.007Z

So, I've had a few months off, due to losing my spark and being distracted by a photo a day project on Flickr, Project 365. But now I'm back...

Today I took part in a fantastic event, organised by the NHS Health Informatics Faculty, on the Power and Perils of Social Networking which was downright inspiring, as much for the people who attended as for the realisation that there are others out there who think like me...which is always nice - I feel validated :-)

Four of us presented:
Rowan Purdy - ex-Knowledge manager for the CSIP (Care Services Improvement Partnership), now of Surepoint, a new knowledge consultancy
Rod Ward - freedom of information campaigner and blogger (see Rodspace and Informaticopia)
Paul Hodgkin of Patient Opinion (see this post on Headshift for a rather good write up of his work and thinking and here for their blog to which I contribute also)
And me....

Interestingly, and despite my concerns about the degree of crossover in terms of our talks, we all complemented and support one anothers perspectives. It was thoroughly enjoyable to not be the only maverick in the room...

There are several key points I touched on, which were reflected in the others presentations to some degree:

1) The way we communicate is changing, has changed in fact, and Web 2.0 means the internet is now, as well as being a paradise of shopping and porn, a very large, very complex conversation. Studies are beginning to show that we trust the opinions of our peers more than those of institutions, in retail, and in health. The consumer, and the patient, now has a voice, and it's getting louder. If we (the NHS) don't join the conversation, it will happen without us.

2) The NHS is hugely paternalistic. In fact, the UK is hugely paternalistic. We're told what we can and can't do to such a degree that we are being treated like errant children. Unsuprisingly, sometimes we behave that way. If the drive is towards a wellness rather than an illness model of care, then surely we should be able to make our own decisions, to be empowered to make our own choices, do our own research, live our own lives. Unfortunately, there's a conflict between what the government et al want us to do (self manage more) and the existing culture of health, which is often one of superiority and knowledge conservation, which hampers our efforts at self management. Informed and intelligent conversations are happening outside the NHS about patient care but these are not integrated into daily practice. Some clinicians still feel threatened when a patient turns up having researched their own condition...(I'd love to qualify that statement, but I've forgotten where I read it - so consider it an observation...).

3) The NHS is a brand - it doesn't actually exist. There is no one controlling body. The DOH does this to some extent, but it isn't "The NHS". That is actually an enormous number of diffuse organisations. That said, how do you leverage social networks across the NHS? There are a multiplicity of sites and networks, all with different focuses (or should that be foci?) so inevitably, you get different business models which drive different types of networks, silos of sharing based on role, geography, culture, specialty, profession etc. It's incredibly complex but that shouldn't be a reason to ignore the fact that multidisciplinary working is so very important for the success of the NHS. So, I bit the bullet, and suggested that we try to join some of these diffuse sites together - possibly along the lines of Open ID, maybe Dataportability is the way to go, but someone somewhere needs to think about this on a national level. That's not to say that we should create yet another bureaucratic, hierarchical monstrosity, but that some leadership is needed, or some collaboration, but something...

Interestingly, this week, NHS Networks posted on their site a closure notice which states:

We regret to announce that, due to lack of funding, NHS
Networks will cease operations on 31 October 2008. More information

I spoke with the National Institute for Innovation and Improvement, who currently fund NHS Networks, and was told it isn't their core business, so they are no longer providing funding. Which begs the question, who would say the support and encouragement of networks in the NHS is their core business - I would suggest, it's the core business of every organisation in the NHS! But with so many targets and directives and changes and plans and strategies and measurements each and every one of these organisations has to adhere to, the basic requirement for people to learn from what they do is way way way down the list of priorities....

What can you do?

To see what was talked about at the event, you can read about it on Rod Ward's blog Informatacopia which he wrote (amazingly quickly) during the event.

A long one, but I feel better for a bit of a rant :-)

Apple know their onions: shameless promotion for Podcast Producer

2008-02-09T10:27:00.000Z

I recently had the pleasure of attending a presentation by a couple of guys from Apple on their Podcast Producer. It's a very nifty tool which takes full advantage of all the great products that come with a Mac (and I love Macs) like GarageBand and enables you to produce and publish a podcast in minutes.

It's easy enough to create a low-tech podcast, but publishing is a bit more difficult, and Podcast Producer has a simple interface for getting around all the fiddly bits. The only down side is that you need a Mac OS X Leopard server to use it.

Apple are really hot on the educational possibilities of podcasting, and work closely with US Universities including MIT and Stanford, to examine the learning possibilities of podcasts. They've developed the iTunes U, accessible from the iTunes store, where you can access 30,000 video and audio files. Easy access learning from top institutions? Go Apple!! (whoops, lapsed into American there :-)

For me, podcasts have been a godsend, and I've now developed quite a vocabularly in Spanish, having been listening to the fantastic Coffee Break Spanish podcast on my commute.

The guy who produces it, Mark Pendleton, was described as a podcast guru by the Apple guys. He started small, but has a phenomenal number of downloads from around the world. It just shows what a powerful medium for learning podcasts can be.

I'm also learning more about photography techniques with the Tips from the Top Floor podcasts - a combination of audio and video casting, which has improved my pictures no end.

From a personal perspective, I think podcasts are the learning tools of the future - another fantastic addition to the e-learning possibilties already available, making anytime anywhere learning a reality and catering from those of us who have an auditory learning style.

All we need now is to persuade those pesky purse string holders to fork out for a Mac and a Leopard server and we're off...

Dilbert on Knowledge Management II

2008-01-23T23:56:00.001Z

The knowledge hoarder - that individual we all know and love...

Dilbert on Knowledge Management I

2008-01-20T20:53:00.000Z

Funny...

Learning Podcasts

2008-01-16T19:25:00.000Z

Having received a lovely object of gorgeousness in the form of an iPod nano for Christmas from hubby, I've been trawling the internet for podcasts of interest. I've found some really great ones with a focus on learning, but not so many knowledge type ones.

In the spirit of sharing, here's a list of the podcasts I've found particularly interesting on my no longer dull commute to work and back.

Kineo audio interviews - great interviews from the likes of Jay Cross, George Siemans, Clive Shepherd, Donald Clark. (for any fellow Sheffieldians suffering from the dearth of learning related jobs, Kineo have just opened offices in Sheffield with Wendy Weller-Davies who previously worked with the excellent ex-tata interactive systems as project lead).

The Education Podcast Sampler has some great links...like the George Siemans at the Ohio Digital Commons for Education (ODCE) Conference in 2007

John Husband and Dave Snowden on Wirearchy

That should keep you going for a bit...and it'd be great if anyone has any other suggestions, please do let me know what they are.

All I need to do now is work out how to stop iTunes from putting none iTunes subscription podcasts in the music folder. It's very disconcerting to be biddling along, happily ensconsed in my own personal musical bubble and to suddenly have it burst by something like...

"So Jay, what would you suggest people do to embed informal learning in their own organisations..."

Any solutions to this problem very gratefully received...

In defence of Powerpoint

2008-01-11T09:01:00.000Z

In my last post, I mentioned that I had recently realised that presenting without the use of Powerpoint could be very empowering. I wanted to redress the balance somewhat, by saying that it can also be an incredibly useful tool for transfering complex ideas to an audience. This video of David Weinburger presenting his work on categorisation - "Everything is Miscellaneous" demonstrates excellent use of Powerpoint.

CILIP event - web 2.0, knowledge management and the corporate librarian

2008-01-09T22:03:00.001Z

I had a bit of an epiphany last night, a bit late for the biblical sense (the end of the 12 days of Christmas) but definately a sudden moment of understanding that caused me to think differently...

I was speaking at an event run by CILIP (Chartered Institute of Librarians and Information Professionals) in London. It was in a rather nice "proper" pub, part of the Cilip in London Sekford Arms programme of meetings. I had originally envisaged doing a powerpoint presentation, image based of course, with videos and examples of blogs, wikis etc. However the group has a "no technology" rule, requiring only that the speaker, well, speak.

I was, to be honest, dreading this, as I've always used powerpoint and similar as a prompt to help me remember where I am, what I was going to say, to give me some place, as I'm a bit of a waffler. To be without said prop filled me with dread. But I was amazed (cue epiphany moment).

I felt incredibly comfortable with just sitting there, talking to people, without thinking about what my slides said, without worrying about whether I'd missed bits, whether the videos would work...all that distracting stuff you get with technology. I could listen to what I was saying, listen properly to questions, watch the group for non-verbal cues (like nodding off, head shaking, frowning) which I'd probably have missed had I been concentrating on the technology I was using to present with. I felt like, almost anyway, a storyteller. I'm going to try to avoid powerpoint in future...

For those who couldn't make it - I did promise I'd put my key points here, so here they are:

Educationalists and librarians have the same basic objective - to help people gain knowledge. Educationalists focus on the how of learning, information professionals on the what, the information, but the end result is the same - we're all helping people to learn. The more we work together to do this, the more helpful we will be to our customers.
Technology can help, but we shouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water. Face to face interventions have served us well, and I think we should use technologies to supplement what we already know about people and the effective ways we've developed of working for and with them and not forget about this knowledge by focusing solely on technology. I know some would disagree, but for me it's not about the technology per se, it's about how we can use and leverage it to best effect.

The evening was a great experience, the audience were fantastic. What a great group of clever, thoughtful, open minded and responsive people.

There were some very interesting questions about the philosophical nature of knowledge. I'm fascinated by this topic, but I do feel that when considering the practical uses of knowledge, it's about what we can do to help one another learn, as much as it is about understanding what it is we know, and what is knowing. It was also great to see and hear from health based individuals who struggled with issues of access, skills, understanding and also excellent examples of the uses of technologies such as wikis and blogs in a medical library.

After (another) rubbish day at work I was really pleased to read Anne Welsh's post on the event, and to hear that those who were more negatively inclined were more engaged by the end. I feel like I did something really useful, and sparked some debate, whilst thoroughly enjoying myself and learning more about the role of the librarian in the corporate world. I also discovered (thanks to Ruth Rikowski), that there are some fabulous books published by Chandos which are right up my street in terms of knowledge management, so I encourage you to have a look at their catalogues.

The sausage and chips were great too :-)

Thanks to Ralph for the invite and looking after me while I waited for my taxi, and thanks to Anne for contributing definitions in such a concise and accessible way...huge respect to you missus.

Learning 2.0 video

2007-12-08T10:56:00.000Z

A quite inspiring video on the uses of technology for teaching - focused on students, but considering that they are the next generation of workers...it's also incredibly relevant for workforce learning and development.

Minority report style marketing is on the way...

2007-12-08T10:39:00.001Z

If you've ever seen the film Minority Report and thought it would be so annoying to have advertising all around you, that knew your name, your shopping profile, everything you'd ever bought, and targeted you with specific products? Well...it's not just fiction, it's going to happen...and sooner than you think.

Reinventing the way we write books...

2007-12-08T10:26:00.000Z

A great video posted by Ben Scoble on the Best Practice for Learning community

Blogs in plain english - another CommonCraft offering

2007-12-01T19:13:00.000Z

I'm a real fan of these CommonCraft videos, so here's the latest on blogs...

What can blogging contribute to the training and development of project managers

2007-11-25T11:09:00.000Z

UPDATE - 2nd Jan
A very nice person has just commented that the link to the dissertation is no longer working. I've put it instead on a wiki - here's the new link to my dissertation

Right, I've set up a website so that I can actually put my dissertation online and link to it - what a faff! I just wish blogger allowed you to upload documents, instead of only linking to them. Hey ho.

Apologies for the rather, er, basic site, and all the ads...it's a free site, you get what you pay for (or don't pay for) I guess. Avoid the advert popup nightmare by just going to the dissertation (see link below).

Abstract
This action research study examines the contribution a group blog can make to the training and development of project managers and indicates that blogging effectively supports knowledge sharing and learning.

Three cycles of research provided evidence that blogging has utility as a tool for informal learning, enabling the capture and dissemination of experience based knowledge. Project managers taking part in the study realised benefits such as access to previously unattainable knowledge and information, and increased exposure to alternative practice. The similarity of the context of the experiences, advice and guidance submitted to the blog and the project managers working context enabled effective learning transfer.

Postive reactions to anonymous posting indicated a culture which does not support the open sharing of mistakes and failures, preventing project managers to learn from and mitigate against these mistakes recurring. Anonymity provided a degree of protection to those concerned about possible repercussions from contributions but prevented the development of more productive collaborative relationships.

Participants were reluctant to post, a possible indication of an inability to identify good practice with value to others. Although interview responses indicated that the blog encouraged reflection on practice, further development of project manager’s skills in reflection may facilitate an increase in the sharing of tacit knowledge and good practice.

The need for management support was indicated throughout the study. The relative importance of learning must be raised to encourage the prioritisation of learning and managers need to show their support by allowing more time for participation on the blog. The management of the blog itself was received positively, indicating the need for facilitation and moderation, however the community responded negatively to over and under management indicating that a light touch is required when facilitating a group blog.

The study demonstrates therefore, that a group blog has considerable potential as a tool for informal learning and may be effectively used alongside formal training interventions. However, a well developed ability to reflect on practice along with an open, supportive culture of sharing are required to maximise the potential of blogging for learning and knowledge sharing.

Click here for the full dissertation

Disseration success!!! Academia doesn't hate me after all....

2007-11-23T23:49:00.000Z

After all my ranting about academia (in this post and this post) they've actually been kind enough to grant me an MEd with Distinction...

Am really quite proud :-)

Will post the entire dissertation for those with insomnia...

Thanks to my fantastically grounded supervisor Andrea, and my hubby, without whose cooking efforts during the 3 months I lived in the office of an evening and only ate when it was put in front of me, I would have probably died of malnutrition.

Helen Nicol, BA, MA, MEd
*grin*

Searching - it's all about individual differences

2007-11-23T23:09:00.000Z

I'm still convinced that the skills of librarians are paramount to the success of utilising web 2.0. I'm starting also to think that individual and social psychology have a role too (I KNEW there was a point to studying Humanities...)

This video from Mike Wesch (via Stephen Dale) illustrates the power of searching, removing the need for a pre-organised filing system, but with the underlying need for effective tagging.

Folksonomies are powerful, in that they are driven by the searcher, it's filing by a democracy, but searching is anarchic...anyone can use the term they think of to look for whatever they are thinking of.

Understanding individual differences, different spelling, interprettation, ways of thinking and being, can all help us to understand what language different people might use to find something. Searching is only as effective as the tagging behind it. The more people rely on searching to find information, the greater the need to understand we're all very different beasts. Information management is becoming as much about how information can be made accessible, as it is about the information itself. If you want your information to be discovered, used and appreciated, you need to put yourself in the shoes of the people you want to find it.

Second Life - how it really is...

2007-11-21T20:00:00.000Z

Having totally failed to "get" second life, mostly because I can't move around in it very well (never was very good with games) this video tickled me so I thought I'd share....

Thanks to Dennis Coxe for posting it on the Internet Time Community

Web 2.0 driving forward a different kind of customer relationship

2007-11-16T17:47:00.000Z

As a Wiggly Wigglers wormery owner myself (I love my worms) I was interested to see this video of Wiggly Wigglers frontwoman Heather Gorridge, long term blogger and podcaster, on her creation and use of podcasts.

It's interesting that she emphasises the point that she only podcasts what she's interested in, that if people are interested in going with her, that's great, but if they're not, they should "listen to something else".

That's a brave attitude, and one that goes against marketing theory - the mantra "listen to your customers" is not one she's considering here. She's driving her own agenda, and people are following and not visa versa. That's what you can do with the internet - talk about what interests YOU and find that others share that interest. But a very different standpoint from a business I think...

Thanks to Rafa for commenting on my last post so that when I followed his link I found this video on his blog (dontcha just love networks).

Facebook more popular than football and porn

2007-11-09T21:48:00.000Z

I know it's sad, but I really love stats and graphs...and have been having some fun tonight playing with the fabulous Google Trends.

Having mucked about with it a bit, I realised you can do comparison trends, and obviously after a glass of wine or two, I thought I'd see just how popular social networking sites really are, as everyone I meet now seems to have a presence on Facebook.

According to UK searches on Google, Facebook is now a more popular search item than football, holidays or porn! Here's proof...

In the US, Time magazine even agrees that Facebook is more popular than porn.

I'd love to see some stats on the level of usage of different available on Facebook, to more fully understand how people are actually using it, considering you can do anything from fling food at one another, to fighting vitual wars (which I know too well, being as I am, addicted to Warbook), to collaborating on group projects and sharing information. I'm sure someone somewhere will be starting a thesis on the use of Facebook but knowing what it is that has made Facebook so popular that as a search term, it's ranks more highly than porn and football will give us a real insight into how we might leverage online social networking for business advantage.

In the meantime, I'll just enjoy it for what it is, good fun, excellent for connecting with likeminded people and really very useful for keeping in touch with people I rarely see, even if it is just sending them virtual G&Ts.

Digital library...what about the technophobes

2007-11-08T23:52:00.000Z

I was in the British Library yesterday - something I'd always wanted to do, and never seemed to have time. Staying at the Novotel (quite nice actually) next door, I thought, why not, I'll go and have a peruse...

Well, I wasn't allowed was I (grumble). I didn't have the right ID...something to do with my driving license still being in my maiden name and all my bank cards in my married name (whoops!) but what really struck me was the fact that EVERYTHING is now digital...well, almost.

Anyway, I was signing up, using the terminal to enter my data, and a lady next to me was visibly sweating. She was grumbling "bloody computers" and bashing keys, getting more and more flustered. The registration lady noticed that she was about to pop, and came over to help, saying "I can only do this if noone sees me helping you". I just thought about all the other people who must struggle with the computerised library facilities.

The British library is indeed, highly digital. The catalogue searches are all digital, online collections are available in all the reading rooms (which I wasn't allowed in I remind you), it was hell on earth for anyone with low level technical skills. So what about accessibility? Most of the under 30's are au fait with technology. What about the over 30's? Not everyone with an interest in knowledge and information can use a keyboard and mouse. We spend hours making sure our online contributions are DDA complient, but what about the huge number of people who get palpitations when they have to use a PC?

I know there's been a huge effort to raise the level of IT skills in the UK, but people are still techophobes, or people who just haven't had the need to use a computer, for many reasons. However much we tout the internet and digital services as the way to go, we are in danger of excluding people if we don't support them to be able to use the amazing services we are making available.

Technologically driven improvements are fantastic for those who are adept and interested, and I'm sure digital libraries will do very well in universities etc. But I really felt for the poor lady standing next to me, who I'm sure was having what should have been an inspiring and enlightening visit to the British library ruined because she hadn't learned how to use a computer.

Part of me wants to think - get with the programme Grandma (she was only about 40 though....), the other part worries that we're getting too eager to provide online and digital services without thinking enough about who is accessing them.

Everyone has had problems with new technologies as this video demonstrates (thanks to Karen Blakeman for pointing it out to me)...but maybe we need to think more about making support available to those who really need it, to make the inevitable transition to a world of predominately digital media.

The perils of too much knowledge...

2007-10-27T11:39:00.000Z

On the perils of knowing too much...

Research Findings 1 – confidence and diversity in communities

2007-10-27T11:22:00.000Z

I assumed, when I began my research, that having a balance of experts and novices was important to engender the sharing of knowledge and experience. What I found was that more confident community members would share more readily regardless of how long they had worked in their roles.

The apprenticeship model assumes that a “master” can and will teach an “apprentice” what they know. We generally assume that the length of time in a role dictates the level of ability – this may be the case, but the ability and willingness to pass on skills requires a degree of confidence.

In terms of an online community, attempts to ensure that membership includes those with differing levels of seniority alone may not be the best tactic for ensuring skills are past from master to novice – if the “master” is not confident, they may be less likely to share their knowledge. Confidence AND ability are required to ensure skills are passed on within an online community. Face to face sharing may be different, as the level of confidence required to share may well be less in such familiar situations, and many of us have techniques for encouraging participation in even the quietest individuals.

Confident people may share more readily, but that doesn’t mean what they are sharing is good practice. Encouraging the more reticent members of a community to take part is important for diversity of opinion. Those with less confidence may be less willing to share online and may need support to develop confidence and trust prior to sharing online.

Managing the diversity of a community then is more complex that merely having a balance of novices and experts. Just as we see in meetings, training, any group gathering, quieter less confident members have valuable contributions which balance debate and enhance the knowledge being shared. Where there are no face to face opportunities, then techniques such as encouraging individuals to contribute by contacting them personally, by a phone call or an email, recognising their value, may give them the incentive to take part.

Communities will out

2007-10-27T09:47:00.000Z

A couple of things this week have reminded me just how quickly technology is adopted and begins to shape our lives. One of Russell Brand's Ponderland rants, this one on science and technology, reminded me of the days before mobile phones, when we had to arrange to meet our friends at pre arranged times and places - if they weren't there, we just had to go home! This was only about 10 years ago! According to the CIA World Factbook (cited in Wikipedia), several countries, including the UK, now have more mobile phones than people! The use of mobile phones has grown, not because they are clever, and have many functions, but because we are social animals who like to connect with others.

The internet was adopted in a similar fashion - it was only in the 90's that it really took hold, and companies and porn pushers took hold of it...but it wasn't always porn and poker...in the early days, there was a sense of freedom, connectivity, sharing and community, that was then missing from our lives. Web 2.0 has developed to enable us to return to this community centric internet of old. This fantastic video illustrates the point (thanks to Laurel Papworth for this).

Interestingly, the guy being interviewed refers to people "feeling rooted through another person" in communicating via the internet. A great quote from an article on The Internet Society site, a brief history of the internet says

The Internet is as much a collection of communities as a collection of technologies, and its success is largely attributable to both satisfying basic community needs as well as utilizing the community in an effective way to push the infrastructure forward.

The notion of community is at the core of how we use technology, and has always been the case. Many technological developments have enabled us to communicate (phone), to visit one another (cars, roads, bridges), they've all been about people getting together in some shape or form. Communities adopt technology for their own ends, they "find a way" to use what's available. What I'm really interested in is the word of mouth promotion of "tools" that lead us to make use of what is available to communicate, share and come together.

Communities will out...the technology with which this happens will change and develop, and communities which will do the changing. We need to think of communities like we do gardens - plants will grow if we do nothing, if we want particular types of plants to grow, we must nurture them. The same goes for communities - they will occur whatever we do, whatever technology is available, but if we want a particular type of community, then we must develop the skills to help them grow and flourish. Different technologies are like different types of soil, fertiliser, different degrees of heat, light, and different amounts of water. Different plants like different things, different communities like different things. We've developed skills in plant cultivation over many many years, it's time to learn how to grow our communities. Wenger, McDermott and Synder understand this - their book "Cultivating Communities of Practice" is a great start...but there's much more digging to be done.

Academia vs Wikipedia...again

2007-10-24T19:28:00.000Z

I thought I'd share this rather fabulous rant by Thomas on Techyum with you. Thomas is incensed about this article that appeared in New Scientist about Wikipedia, particuarly noting that some professors are less accurate in what they say than Wikipedia, which in my experience, is fair comment.

There has been phenomenal debate around the worth of Wikipedia, and most of the key elements of the debate can be found on Wikipedia itself. Indeed, in one of its own articles, Wikipedia itself notes that

Wikipedia acknowledges that it should not be used as a primary source for serious research.

but its value as an encyclopedia for me is endless. There is no way I could have written a thesis on the use of social media had I not had access to the definitions therein. Current information on the the terminology used in the area of social software use just wasn't available to me in books, and relevant peer reviewed articles were few and far between, in obtuse articles not held by my university.

Barry Leiba reviews research papers, and has kindly cited some examples of where Wikipedia shouldn't be used in research papers. His greatest bugbear appears to be the fact that references cited may have changed by the time the reviewer checks the reference, which is fair comment. This is mitigated however by refering to the precise version. David Gerard's comment on the same post explains how -

Click on the "History" tab and you'll see every version inthe edit history. Whereas the version at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inflation may change, the version at http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Inflation&oldid=162022107 (14:46
UTC, 3 October 2007) will not.

Wikipedia are attempting to get around the problem of peer review, with, suprise suprise, a peer review system...based on "trusted" sources. To earn this trusted status, users will have to show some commitment to Wikipedia, by, for instance, making 30 edits in 30 days.

This seems very much a quantity over quality strategy, but I'm sure its more robust than that (!). New software will also be used to give a "trust score" to contributors based on whether their edits are changed or not. This means that any topic in which there is healthy debate and disagreement will therefore be a no go as edits and changes will reduce trust scores.

In terms of academically accepted definitions, maybe the solution is for the Oxford English dictionary say, to produce a free online dictionary which takes contributions from us mere online mortals, to speed up the process of adding new words. As it is, you have to subscribe to even view the Oxford English dictionary, it takes an age for new words to be included, and right now, there's just no real substitue for Wikipedia.

Sharing the knowledge...about cutting down power use

2007-10-19T19:19:00.000Z

Compact fluorescent lightbulbs - you know you need them....you know they make sense, and if you weren't convinced, check out the latest Commoncraft video.

Reuse, recycle, reduce, reflect, reinvent, reconsider, and really think about the impact you make on the world...please?

Pandering to ego - scam email for professionals

2007-10-17T18:00:00.000Z

Just received this email and thought I should warn others that it is very probably a cunning way of getting details for a mailing list or to get you to buy the book because you're in it and it shows you've reached the pinnacle of professional excellence. Others have blogged that they've received this, so this is just a possibly cynical warning...they want everything but your sexual history to be included...so alarm bells rang loud and clear.

Dear Helen Nicol:

On behalf of International WHO'S WHO of Professionals, I am pleased to inform you that you have been nominated as a candidate for inclusion in the 2007-2008 Edition. We congratulate you! Nomination into WHO'S WHO is an honor in itself. WHO'S WHO has over 20,000 members in 154 countries worldwide. It is the most elite professional network in the world. Our members assist each other daily with business and career opportunities. It is in times like these that such a network is most valuable and we are seeing members help other members expand their businesses, find new positions, even relocate to another country.

If selected into WHO'S WHO, you will also be listed in the 2007-2008 Edition of International WHO'S WHO of Professionals. This is the definitive work on the world's leaders in commerce, economics, policy, and trade.

We do require additional information to complete the selection process and we ask that you provide your biographical data by accessing the form on our website at: http://www.internationalwhoswho.com/Nominations/FE1964C.aspx

Our editorial deadline is quickly approaching. I urge you to act today. If you delay, I cannot guarantee the committee will have ample time to review your submission.

Sincerely,

Wayne Uehara
President
2020 Pennsylvania Ave. N.W., PMB #504
Washington, D.C. 20006
P.S. There is no cost or obligation to be listed in the International WHO'S WHO of Professionals. To ensure your biographical data is received in time, please complete this online form http://www.internationalwhoswho.com/Nominations/FE1964C.aspx by November 15, 2007. Upon review, our Membership Selection Committee will be in touch with you.

Members of our Board of Advisors include: Wallid Abdo, CEO, Eurobrokers-Greece; Michael Gondive, CEO, Eastern and Southern African Trade and Development Bank-Kenya; Fehmi Sami, Senior VP, Citibank, N.A.-Great Britain; Yusuf Alami, COO, Abdu Dhabi Investment Company-UAE; Mikhail Zaitsev, Finance Director, Volvo Car-Russia; DR. Jung Kook Paeng, CIO, Hyundai Motor Company, Korea; John Sai Chi Mak, Managing Director, Bulova Watch International, Ltd.-Hong Kong; and Aldo Castelli, President, Shell Brasil, Ltda.-Brazil

Note: If you wish to unsubscribe from WHO’S WHO of Professionals please click on the link below:

http://www.internationalwhoswho.com/unsubscribe.aspx

You have received this message because you are registered to receive messages from Informa, One Research Drive, PO Box 5195, Westborough, MA 01581.

Networked knowledge and Connectivism

2007-10-14T10:09:00.000Z

I came across an interesting post from Susie Vesper this morning. Having listened to George Siemen's presentation on Connectivism and Web 2.0 in Education, she considers what Siemen's says about our tendency to subscribe only to those sites which reflect our own positions. Although her online research reflects this, she finds that many of her colleagues do NOT share her fascination with technology for education.

This resonanted with me - I know how she feels. I am constantly debating the utility of trusting in networks as a strategy for creating and utilising knowledge with colleagues whose standpoint is that knowledge is created THEN disseminated. The notion that knowledge is continually created, refreshed, developed, through social interaction, action and evaluation, appears alien.

My greatest difficulty is not getting frustated - how can they not see this is the case! (I know, we're all different...). My second greatest difficulty is creating a lucid, valid argument which will enable us to reach a position from which we can move forward and make use of the knowledge we all have.

What I need is a way to articulate my argument in a persuasive manner using language which they can relate to, an analogy that demonstrates the evolving nature of networked knowledge, something more concrete? Resources I've found useful to date have been from David Skyrme, who believes

"...information and communications technology is a powerful enabler of prosperity and well-being at all levels - individuals, organisations and society as a whole."

A sentiment I agree with wholeheartedly. After all, without new technologies, we'd all still be banging rocks together.

His Knowledge Networking insight has a practical focus, and I'm reading his book Knowledge Networking: Creating the Collaborative Enterprise. The book has its own update website, which keeps the content bang up to date.

Hopefully, I'll get some tips on explaining and selling the principles of Connectivism to colleagues so we can really take advantage of the huge amount of knowledge there is walking around in my organisation.

Government use of social media - reporting what we already knew...

2007-10-11T08:59:00.000Z

A friend at the very useful National Library for Health recently sent me the Government Review of Social Media Use, which reflects my research findings into the use of social media and which is, in reality, a fine description of the problem of electing individuals who crave power to represent us.

The Social Media Review was commissioned in March 2007 by the Permanent Secretary for Government Communication, to provide information on the current and planned use of social media in government. Its aims were to

assess the strengths and weaknesses of government communication activity in this area
identify examples of good practice within the wider communication network
identify barriers and opportunities
make recommendations on how government communicators can build their capability to
engage more effectively with the public using social media
identify communication structures, processes and resources that may need to be
enhanced or refocused to facilitate better working

A couple of things caught my attention when reading it...

It mentions the command and control culture prevents them civil servants from

"having access to the tools and networks they have come to expect in their private lives."

This I found in my own research, that my organisation was wary of losing control of its communications with "the masses", leading to negative media attention and public uproar. This is very clearly demonstrated in the review, where it states

"...the use of some social media – particularly blogs and social networking sites – could open up individuals, departments, the Civil Service and Ministers to extreme scrutiny, criticism and negative media comment."

Again, the media impacts negatively on the culture of the public sector, leading to the opposite of what is required, a culture of open and transparent debate and communication.

It amused me that this report stated that public servants are warey of social media due to the fact that it "puts communication into the hands of the many" and for every gain to the reputation of a department, there is the danger that policy differences be exposed or misinterpreted and "circulated widely". Funny...I always thought the government was based on on electing representatives of the "many" to voice their opinion? I thought that that was what representative meant? Is that wrong?

Maybe this is a chance to develop policy WITH the electorate? The reality of it all seems the wrong way around to me...but then I am only one of the "many".

The report also notes the lack of understanding of the skills and resources required to manage online communities, blogs etc, another misconception about online communities and social networking....it takes some very refined skills to make it work effectively.

Jeremy Gould. a civil servant running websites for a UK government department notes also, that government colleagues are blind to the value that could be gained from joining in with existing debate, and bemoans the fact that they are just

"... desperate to have a shiny blog/wiki/forum (delete as appropriate), not interested in examining interaction online with existing communities or partnering. They just WANT A BLOG, NOW!"

This to me is a complete failing to maximise on a potential collaboration between the people and the people elected to represent them and a misunderstanding of the true nature of social media. David Milliband may have a popular blog, have been interviewed on Second Life, and wax lyrical about the potential of Web 2.0, but his colleagues it seems, are still living in the dark ages (but we all knew that now didn't we).

It's NOT fluffy - misconceptions about knowledge management

2007-10-08T17:19:00.000Z

If one more person says "you do the fluffy stuff" when talking about the human element of knowledge management I'm going to scream...

Why is it, that anything to do with people is termed "fluffy". It makes it sound all kittens, pink and soft. It's not. People are interesting, complex, and above all, very very difficult to fathom. They are multifacted self directed objects, with their own thoughts, motivations, likes, dislikes, habits and beliefs. How on earth can dealing with or understanding them be "fluffy".

Knowledge managers who do not think codification and storage of knowledge is the way to go are not the only people who have this ridiculous label. Anyone working in training and development, social work, psychology, will all have been told they "do that fluffy stuff".

In terms of knowledge management, when we talk about communities, and networks, we are talking about the way people really learn. Numerous studies have demonstrated that we learn most of what we know about how to do our jobs by talking to one another, by communicating our experiences with others. However, this is seen as "fluffy" - because it isn't quantifiable? Because we can't see the knowledge being shared? It doesn't mean it's not happening...and that we may be able to harness/cultivate it for positive gain.

There are still people who believe that collecting "knowledge" is the way to go in knowledge mangement, that a database full of documents, a spreadsheet of comments, is what is needed. I would argue that this is not knowledge, but information. Information devoid of context, knowledge reduced in complexity, is of little use in comparison with a conversation or story giving depth and clarity. As Jay Cross so succinctly put it in his book Informal Learning,

"You can no more capture true knowledge in a repository that you can trap lightening in a box". (p64)

So what is so "fluffy" about people sharing knowledge without storing it in a repository...maybe "fluffy" is a euphemism for "I don't understand what you are talking about so I'll give it a name which makes it seem easy and harmless".

Then again, if "fluffy" really means complex, difficult to understand, but vital if we're going to share knowledge effectively, then I'm happy.

Rant over...

Seeing the bigger picture – the problem with focusing on technology

2007-09-29T11:48:00.000Z

We understand everything from a position of prior knowledge, and make assumptions based on that knowledge. These two videos illustrate this point beautifully – one is the old Guardian advert from the 80’s, promoting the paper’s unbiased views, the other, a video cartoon using familiar images (!) as a starting point, and creating something completely different from them. In both cases, it’s the bigger picture that is important, not your initial assumptions.

We tend to jump to conclusions based on our existing knowledge and prior experiences, to focus on just one part of what we are seeing and experiencing to such an extent that we sometimes fail to see the bigger picture – this I feel is the case with social networking and our dependance on technology. I feel we are spending too much time thinking and talking about web 2.0, enterprise 2.0, library 2.0 etc etc, and not enough time understanding the human element of the changes that are occuring in work and business, and indeed, in our social lives at this time. We are concentrating on what we know, focusing in on just one part of the picture. I’m guilty of this as much as the next person, but it’s starting to concern me.

Yes, the internet helps us to connect and share and communicate and collaborate – but are we doing this to the deteriment of having quality, real life interactions? The bigger picture has technology as ELEMENT of what’s happening. It’s an enabler, not an end in itself. Email has reduced the number of telephone calls we make, texting is the communication tool of choice for millions of people – what about conversation? I spend more time on Facebook than I do meeting up with the people I’m communicating with!

The bigger picture – surely it’s about humanity and not technology? Maybe we should all get out more….

Moroccan Adventure

2007-09-22T14:21:00.000Z

Having finished my dissertation, my hubby and I decided to get away, and a cheap flight to Morocco was too much of an opportunity to turn down.

Little did I know that I'd be on a crash course in communication. I came back being able to speak a smattering of French, a smidgen of Berber and a wee bit of Moroccan Arabic. In fact, I realised more than ever, that we are all the same, wherever we live.

I managed to communicate despite having no idea what people were saying and picked up language without really knowing how. It was a real lesson in situated learning - without being immersed in the language, I don't think I'd ever have learned as much. The same goes for the culture of Morocco - staying in a Riad with a Moroccan housekeeper who was adamant that I'd learn how to pour mint tea in an acceptable way brought the culture to life and I'm now equipped to at least visit a Moroccan home without showing myself up and not pouring the first cup of tea back in the pot!

They say travel broadens the mind - I can certainly see why.

Dissertation complete!

2007-08-30T22:37:00.000Z

Well, I've finished the dissertation - thanks to everyone who helped form my thinking by comments to this blog - you've been invaluable. Off to Morocco for 2 weeks now, will get straight back into the blog on my return. I've really missed blogging but had to focus on writing...

See you soon...

Helen x

Informal learning - identifying bad practice

2007-08-04T08:18:00.000Z

Being a huge advocate of organisations paying more attention to informal learning, I've been attempting to raise awareness with practitioners of project managers of possible ways of learning. Then I had a sudden crisis of confidence. What if they are learning not the most effective ways to do things, but are validating bad practice.

I'm not saying that this happens, just that it's a possibility. In any gathering where practice experiences are shared, it's surely possible that there are more novices than experienced practitioners. If the experienced practitioner is advocating a practice which is not necessarily the most effective way to do things, or indeed, advocating bad practice of some sort, how are the novices to know that they should not adopt that practice? How do they identify "good" practice, when they have nothing to compare it against? After all, we don't know what we don't know. And who has the authority to identify good practice.

I return then to the concept of communties and networks, as it seems that the more contact novices have with ways of working, the more likely they are to identify mulitple ways of acting, and so be able to make their own decisions about what is good and bad practice. Without multiple contacts with multiple ways of working, their options for choosing an effective approach are lessened, another argument for the concept of Connectivism and networked learning, as advocated by George Siemens. It also appears to indicate that any community of practice must have a mix of novices, experts and all those in between, which in itself has implications for the moderation or management of communities to gain the best result for organisations.

Is it then the role of the community facilitator or coordinator to maintain a mix of skills and abilities in any given group, and if so, how do they go about identifying these? Maybe a community coordinator can direct the make up of a community to some an extent, but the development of skills in critical reflection and relationship building is far more empowering, and may better enable novices to consider critically any practice they come across. In addition, skills in network development will help them identify more individuals from which they can learn multiple ways of working.

Community of practice activity

2007-08-01T18:24:00.000Z

Those of you coordinating an online community will know how depressing it can be to see that your most active members sometime just disappear. This, according to Wenger, McDermott and Synder in their book, Cultivating Communities of Practice, is normal.

Active members may move away for a time, depending on time, life changes, lack of interest in current topics, all manner of reasons. Conversely, those who only read but don't take part in discussions, may suddenly become very active, posting and commenting when once they were invisible to all but those with access to site usage data.

My own community has been changeable in terms of participation, with people moving from very active to inactive and vica versa. The diagram below shows this movement across 2 months. The colour labels are to show the anonymised logons.

So it's comforting to know that people do naturally participate to a greater or lesser extent, however there is one important element that must be considered if this is to without the collapse of the community - that there is something to motivate people to move to a more active role.

Percentage wise, Wenger et al suggest that activity rates are as follows:

Core = 10-15% - participants who post, encourage activity, get involved often
Active = 15-20% - participants who are sometimes involved, ie commenting occasionally
Peripheral = 65-75% - people who read, sometimes known as "lurkers" - although this isnt a term I would encourage as these people are far more valuable than the term suggests.

Jakob Nielson's much referenced article on participant inequality indicates that this is a far higher level of participation than most sites experience. He suggests that the following is the case, and the following is more the case.

"User participation often more or less follows a 90-9-1 rule:
90% of users are lurkers (i.e., read or observe, but don't contribute).
9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities dominate their time.
1% of users participate a lot and account for most contributions: it can seem as if they don't have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they're commenting on occurs. "

Those who read but don't contribute are important, as I have said before, but without the active and core members, there's nothing to read! This really is a problem if your community is tending towards the 90-9-1 percent rule, rather than the 75-15-10 rule that Wenger predicts.

So...

although it's nice to know that your most prolific contributor leaving the group is not the end of the world, that others will change role and fill their shoes, without something to engage with, people won't move from their peripheral role to a more active level of participation.

The important thing then is to make sure your community is motivated by giving them a purpose.

Friday Photo

2007-07-27T12:20:00.000Z

My favorite plant in the my garden right now if my Crocosmia "Lucifer" - it has beautiful flowers and an exotic look...and obviously the bees love it (not much else flowering at the mo, guess they can't be picky!)

Cos I couldnt decide on which picture to post, there's two for the price of one...

Wikipedia, community self-regulation and academic peer review

2007-07-26T16:35:00.000Z

I've just been reading an interesting post by Seacat (Cass Nevada) demonstrating the machinations of the Wikipedia editing collective in relation to the entry on Enterprise 2.0, which has been through a long and intense process to ascertain whether the term really is "a dubious neologism".

Of Wikipedia, Seacat notes that

"The system works because it is incredibly porous. Input, output, the chorus of voices, the rag-tag team of determined editors, all keep the information and the channel incredibly vital and alive..."

Despite what I said about the term Enterprise 2.0 in a previous post, I feel for Andrew McAfee, who has experienced first hand the editing process for Wikipedia entries, which displays hugely energetic intellectual debate, and as he has recognised, isn't cuddly (see this Harvard Business School report for more on the whole episode).

George Siemans remarks on his blog that he has experienced a similar vetting process, this time by the academic community, who are making it difficult for students to reference his (in my opinion fabulous) book Knowing Knowledge.

He's been in conversation with Masters student who

"...stated that her panel felt that the theory of connectivism and the book Knowing Knowledge had not been subject to peer review."

No doubt I will suffer the same dilema as the aforementioned Masters student, as I have quoted widely from the book in my own dissertation, primarily in relation to the theory of Connectivism

I have no problem with this, as I feel I have a good case for including material not considered to have been peer reviewed, as I believe, as does George Siemans, that it is an outdated concept. I thoroughly agree the argument he makes in his post:

"Peer review plays an important role - it is intended to provide expert critical review of concepts and ideas to ensure quality and accuracy. I'm all for that. My primary concern rests with "privilege only" accepted view of peer review. The progressive advancement of educational attainment (see OECD's Education at a Glance 2006) indicates a society increasingly capable of engaging in complex dialogue. The throne of knowledge is now a seat available to many of society's members. As such, it's reasonable to assume that the opinions of even those peripherally engaged in a discipline can provide insight and value. I appreciate experts, excellence, and established processes. But I despair when the processes of validation inhibit, rather than advance, thinking and idea sharing in a discipline."

Referencing Knowing Knowledge and the theory of Connectivism might lose me marks but it's worth it to make the point. After all, I'm not studying to progress my academic career, but to improve practice in my chosen field.

I've also been warned against using definitions from Wikipedia, which is, as far as I'm concerned, a valid source for the current use of terminology around web 2.0 and associated concepts. Thanks again to George Siemans, who pointed out the rather wonderful Wikipedia page entitled Errors in the Encyclopædia Britannica that have been corrected in Wikipedia which says it all really...

As for the concept of peer review, maybe it's time the academic establishment recognised that communities of online users really do self regulate effectively and started to reconsider their "priviledged" stance...and if they could do it quickly, before my dissertation hand in date, that would be really great (I don't really wanted to be a martyr :-)

Knowledge sharing quote

2007-07-26T10:07:00.000Z

Another knowledge sharing quote...quite an incentive!

"Share your knowledge. It's a way to achieve immortality."
Dalai Lama

Knowledge sharing - what people really want

2007-07-24T08:19:00.000Z

I held a workshop for Project Managers last to consult with them about a possible knowledge sharing process. It was a great success, with a fantastic buzz, and some interesting outcomes.

The general feeling was that talking to people who had previous experience of a related area was key.

There were many requests for a "facebook" type social networking facility, the emphasis being on speaking to people directly, rather than accessing materials which related their activities second hand.

There was also a desire for face to face networking opportunites, and telephone conferencing appeared to be popular, due to concerns that something was lacking in text based online communications.

The emphasis was very much on "at time of need" communications, and everyone agreed that building a network of potentially useful contacts was a good idea.

Many were requesting access to a repository of guidance and information, but by far the greatest emphasis was on the need to communicate directly. Very much along the lines of what George Siemens and Stephen Downes have been saying about Connectivism, that knowledge exists in the network itself, rather than in a knowledge repository, and those that attended the workshop echoed this ascertion.

It was a fantastic experience, to talk to so many people with so many opinions, and it really did confirm that we're on the right lines with Web 2.0, as long as we remember it's about people making use of technology, and not the reverse. As Jay Cross says in a recent post on the Internet Time community.

People, not technology, keep us from making our relationships at work more productive and fulfilling.

Knowledge management quote

2007-07-21T09:41:00.000Z

Writing about the difficulties of sharing knowledge, and considering the intial attempts to "capture" knowledge in a repository, I came across this great quote by Jay Cross in his book "Informal Learning- rediscovering the natural pathways that inspire innovation and performance", which I thought really summed up the reason why the KM knowledge repository idea has failed.

“You can no more capture true knowledge in a repository that you can trap lightening in a box”.

Facebook - not as innocent as it seems

2007-07-19T17:35:00.000Z

A month or so ago I received an innocuous invite from a friend to "join me on Facebook", so I did, innocently and without any understanding of the future impact of my action.

After wasting many hours trying to get a purple rabbit called Gerald to win his fight against various monsters, posting pictures of Sheffield flood carnage, ignoring people trying to turn me into a vampire, zombie, pirate etc, and flinging food and drinks and flowers at my friends, I've realised Facebook is just one big playground of mindless yet addictive applications. This rather sweet poem from David Bogner says it all really...

Facebook has gargantuan time-sucking powers, but what's worse, much worse, is that Facebook is now being used by employers to assess the potential suitability of job applicants. Mike Gotta points out that if information concerning protected characteristics (e.g., race, gender, or age) is disclosed and those being assessed by employers are not hired, they may find themselves on the wrong end of discrimination claims. David Lacey warns that employers might have grounds to demand ownership of their employees’ social networking information.

This is bad, as any prospective employer looking at my Facebook profile would think I was a mindless numpty with too much time on their hands and alot of mad friends who like to take pictures of people blowing rasberries (pretty good actually, check this one out...)

So consider this when you're in the middle of a virtual food fight - someone somewhere may be checking you out...and dismissing you as an idiot...

The return of the Friday Photo

2007-07-13T18:49:00.001Z

This pic is of a fire-twirling man on Kho Tao, Thailand.

Happy Friday!

Yov Gov most hated Internet words

2007-07-12T08:44:00.000Z

Reading the Metro on the train yesterday, I came across an article on the most hated internet words (which, Metro being a "mash-up" publication, probably came from China Daily).

The results of a YovGov poll found the most hated interent words included "Blog", "netiquette", "cookie" and "wiki".

The most hated internet words

folksonomy
Blogosphere
blog
netiquette
blook

Cookie and wiki were ninth and tenth respectively

Makes me wonder if anyone actually likes any internet words...and if they don't like them, why use them? I feel a sociological paper coming on :-)

Social Networking video from CommonCraft

2007-07-12T08:29:00.000Z

Stephen Dale drew my attention to another CommonCraft video, this time on Social Networking

Online-offline crossover - Enterprise 2.0 post in print

2007-07-11T20:28:00.000Z

I received an email from work colleague yesterday which said "I see you made it onto the back page of Information World Review." "Back page?" I thought, "websites don't have back pages?"

He informed me that the july/august printed publication of IWR had picked up a post (also picked up by Social Computing Magazine) on the human face of Enterprise 2.0, Enterprise 2.0 - same problem, different platforms, and included it in their The Best Bits of the Blogosphere section - flattery indeed! The starting point is Stephen Dale's post Librarians, where are you? from his Dissent blog, in which he challenged my ascertion that there were librarians out their involved in Web 2.0, and which elicited a cascade of comments from information and library professionals involved in social software (only slightly encouraged by me....)

What struck me was that this section from the printed publication is not online, and because of that, I was unaware my post had been picked up. I use technorati to check out who is linking to my blog. Printed publications of course, are not referenced in technorati. So once again, I've experienced a degree of crossover between online and offline worlds, which I've commented on previously in relation to work relationships and collaboration, The impact of blogging on offline relationships - Real Life 2.0 anyone?

It's a strange and fascinating world where you can write a quick post one morning and a few weeks later, find yourself on the back page of a journal - strange, fascinating and really quite nice....and it's a very good read, so I'll be subscribing from now on (maybe it was a really convoluted marketing ploy all the while :-)

Capability building – where Enterprise 2.0 plays a part

2007-07-10T18:01:00.000Z

This somewhat ranty post was born of a conversation about the difficulty of evidencing ROI for training and development - the particular conversation didn't include Enterpise 2.0, but it should have, so I've included it anyway.

So...

The argument for a holistic view of learning which incorporates formal training, informal learning, knowledge sharing AND Enterprise 2.0
(forgive me the simplicity - this is a rant remember).

If you want someone to be able to do the job you pay them to do, they need to know how to do what they’re doing, or you’re paying out for no reason.

To get more than a return on current skills levels, to improve the skill base, or just to keep up with changes, you need to invest in people. This needs to be via formal training (the what) and informal training (focusing on the how).

Definition of formal training in this instance is directed, structured training, primarily classroom based, where a set curriculum is followed as required by the job function. For instance

Methodology training ie Prince2, MSP, ITIL
Principles training ie mentoring, negotiating, facilitating, dealing with difficult people,
Application/tool based training ie MS office, autoCAD, procurement system

This can be related to learning to drive – you learn to drive a car (methodology), pass your test, (certification), but you only learn to drive by doing it (practice).

According to the Institute for Research on Learning, formal training accounts for only 20 percent of on the job learning (Jay Cross 2006 “The Low-Hanging Fruit Is Tasty”, - or see informal learning, the other 80%). If this is true, understanding the other 80 percent, the practice, and cultivating informal learning to improve this practice in the most effective way, must benefit the workforce.

Cheetham and Chivers also support this, they state that

"…much of the learning required to attain full professional competence actually takes place after the completion of formal training. This conclusion highlights the critical importance of informal learning. However, the results also suggest that different individuals find different kinds of experience formative, and this should caution against being too prescriptive in respect of “best practice” learning methods.”

Cheetham and Chivers 2001

Therefore broadly speaking, professionals learn a degree of what they do from formal training, but the majority of their skills, knowledge and behaviour is learnt informally.

Any investment in the development of capability therefore needs to consider informal learning to a high degree, if what is discovered in formal training is to be translated into practice and improved competence, to gain a return on investment.

Formal training related to relevant situations
As Knowles and others have identified, adults learn most effectively when what they are learning relates to their environment. Training which relates to learners particular experiences is therefore vital if what is learnt is transferred into their work. This can be done by using case studies with direct relevance to the job of the learner – ie using case studies from that company to train Prince2.

Knowledge management
Sharing knowledge about how an issue was mitigated or a risk avoided reduces the likelihood of costly mistakes. Sharing experience which was in some way successful helps to improve competence. For instance, knowing that post go-live support can be reduced by 6 days by investing time up front to understand and communicate exactly who will do what in a business process is a valuable experience which, if shared, saves 6 days expenditure and improves the likelihood of change being accepted.

Knowledge sharing is therefore a vital component of learning about a role, and thus, increasing competence. Networks and communities of pratice, both offline and online, can help to share this knowledge.

Enterprise 2.0
Blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS feeds, instant messaging, online conferencing, all these tools facilitate collaboration, reflection, sharing, and ultimately, learning, all important for the development of competence and capability required to achieve business objectives.

Mentoring and Coaching
Mentoring also is a way of enabling people to share experience and good practice, and to increase competence, and serves to help people develop their skills in the areas they need to develop, when they need to develop it – just in time learning.

Professional Development Networks
Professional development networks, workshops and masterclasses improve practice by enabling individuals in those networks to dictate the content of workshops when they need them, keeping work current and allowing individuals to share experiences and knowledge.

In conclusion...

You need both training and development to facilitate learning and to improve competency. You need both formal and informal learning initiatives, which incorporates knowledge sharing activity, to support people in their roles in achieving your business objectives.

Dissertation distractions

2007-07-05T18:44:00.000Z

Running out of time to complete my dissertation, I realise that I'm having too much fun blogging, so have to focus focus focus on writing now...

I've discovered that a million things are actually have a priority over writing my dissertation, the top 5 being

Blogging (which is sort of writing my dissertation...)
How many people are reading my blog
How many things are happening that I can't go to because I'm writing my dissertation
Facebook (steals hours of life)
Considering my split ends

Posts are going to be sporadic, which is a shame, but such is life....

Critical reflection, knowledge sharing and the learning cycle

2007-07-02T17:12:00.000Z

Having more or less given up on the concept of tacit knowledge, in terms of completely failing to discover a way of identifying demonstrations of tacit knowledge in blog postings, I've been examining reflection as an alternative route to identifying knowledge with value for the development and improvement of pratice.

In doing so, I remembered the good old learning cycle, developed by Kolb and utilised by Honey and Mumford in their work on learning styles...

Going back to Kolb, I started thinking about his learning cycle in terms of a community of practice, particulary in relation to the concrete experience element. How do people get to know about the experiences of others? Through sharing reflection.

To share experieince, one must have to some extent thought about it. In thinking about knowledge sharing, I've linked what Boud would call Returning to Experience to the 1st stage of Kolb's learning cycle, as this descriptive stage of reflection does not involve a critique, but is merely a description of what happened. To some extent, if we avoid the philosophical debate around knowledge, we can call this, or at least liken it, to explicit knowlege.

Moving onto the next stage of Kolb's cycle, critical reflection, we are considering the emotions and outcomes associated with the experience. This sounds to me something like tacit knowledge...and it's these elements of the experience that hold the utility of the practice - the stuff that we really should be sharing.

If critical reflection can be utilised by a group, they can more effectively validate any reflection, both at the descriptive level, but more usefully, at the abstract conceptulisation and active experimentation stages. This is a powerful medium for testing new outcomes and learning as a group from the experiences of individuals. Each individual thus gains more from the critical reflection of one person than that person alone.

Ideally then, the group learns more individually due to the groups multiple conceptualisations, experiements, reflections and experiences.

Unfortunately, this implies that we must

Learn to reflect, descriptively and critically, in terms of repeatable processes and procedures and potential new practice
Learn to articluate those reflections, by writing, conversation, networking
Learn to read, listen to, review and analyse those reflections in terms of our own practice
Learn to collaborate in our abstract conceptualisation
Learn to collaborate in our testing of hypotheses generate by our abstract conceptualisation

It's never simple is it...

2007-06-29T17:49:00.001Z

This Learning 2.0 slideshow has given me plenty to think about

Social Learning 2.0 by EdMedia 2007

Love the "why e-learning is better than sex" slide....
Sadly, another something 2.0 label though. Maybe I just have to live with it...

Thanks to George Sieman (again) for the link

Who is participating in social media and how

2007-06-29T17:01:00.000Z

Thanks to George Siemen for highlighting this chart from Business Week, showing participation in social media in the US

Another Business Week chart shows that although use of social media has grown enormously, creation of content is still the domain of the few

In the 22+ age range, there are more commenters and readers than there are creators (those who write blogs, publish web pages, upload videos.

This is reflected in terms of my research, in that there are more readers and commentors than creators.

The impact of blogging on offline relationships - Real Life 2.0 anyone?

2007-06-27T21:14:00.000Z

I want to highlight a recent post by Jon Husband, KM and Friendships - Blogging, Listservs, Forums, Moderation, etc. in which he returns to a blog post from 2002, showing remarkable insight and a considerable amount of vision, in terms of the potential of blogging. In particular this comment resonates with me...

...the sociality that blogging enables and creates is a critical component of the effective construction, exchange and use of knowledge, and I truly believe that many if not most organizations should move more quickly and more seriously to experiment on purpose with ways to use blogging (inside and outside the firewall) to enhance responsiveness, effectiveness, productivity and innovation.

I agree completely with Jon. But I wonder if when writing this he was thinking about the construction, exchange and use of knowledge offline, as well as online? (maybe he'll let us know?)

I've noticed recently that my involvement in blogging, particuarly internally, is having a real, positive impact on my face to face work relationships.

People I have met on our internal blog already know me to some extent - I'm much happier to ask them for advice, info and input, they seem to be much happier to give me what I ask for. We've developed a level of trust even though we haven't met in person. We've connected on a level that has increased the degree to which we share knowledge and experience, the degree to which we collaborate.

This isn't necessarily on a blog, it's because of a blog. We're collaborating and conversing in emails, on the phone. The blog facilitated and enabled the open, collaborative working relationship we now have.

To some extent, this is problematic, as not everyone has access to the knowledge we are sharing, it's offline and between just us, but in terms of a broader knowledge sharing process, knowledge is being shared, and between people who may not have done so without the blog acting as an enabler.

I don't think the power of the blog can be underestimated here, particularly when those participating are unlikely to meet face to face, yet still benefit from sharing.

I guess what's really starting to interest me is the impact of online activity on offline reality. If anyone has seen anything of note on this, it'd be great to hear from you.

...and no, I don't really think we should call it Real Life 2.0, considering a recent post, that would make me a hypocrite.

Special Sheffield After the Flood post

2007-06-26T10:54:00.000Z

Nothing to do with learning or knowledge management I know, but just had to post these pics of Sheffield after the great flood of 25th June 07

Enterprise 2.0 - do we really need to label EVERYTHING?

2007-06-24T14:37:00.000Z

I seem to have had a bit of a week of deciding terms and concepts serve no purpose...after condemning Tacit Knowledge to the conceptual dustbin for not being at all helpful in the search for ways to effectively share knowledge, now it appears it's the turn of Enterprise 2.0.

Trying to write academically about what Enterprise 2.0 actually is is like plaiting fog. Even if there is some consensus about the term, it's usage varies incredibly, it's confused with Web 2.0, social software, Enterprise Web 2.0, it's just a mess.

James Dellow (yes, James again...) has noticed this in his amusingly titled You're all completely wrong. In relation to the recent Enterprise 2.0 Conference, he quotes Jevon MacDonald .

"This conference has made it painfully clear that the term Enterprise 2.0 has no discernible value at all. The label simply means everything and nothing all at once. It has become a something that people want to add to their recipes."

What is Enterprise 2.0? on the Webmashup.com Blog also acknowledges that Enterpise 2.0 is a nebulous concept...

“Enterprise 2.0″ has a simple definition: The application of Web 2.0 technologies to the enterprise. But there are almost as many different meanings for “Web 2.0″ as there are mashups, making “Enterprise 2.0″ an equally nebulous concept.

Do we actually need to label everything in this way? We didn't start labelling everything when other technologies were adopted. There was no Printing 2.0 or Multimedia 2.0, why Enterprise 2.0. Enterprise has been changing ever since the first entrepreneur sold the first wheel to an innovative stoneage man, so why now this obsession with giving everything a label?

I know it gives us a shared language, but do we really need one to discuss technologies which support collaborative working? Surely it's not hard with the language we already have?

I guess I'm just frustrated - with every term I use in my dissertation, like Web 2.0, or social software or Enterprise Web 2.0, I have to spend hours trying to find a definition that explains what it is, and that's not easy!

I'm off make dinner with our microwave - I guess that would be Cooking 2.0?

Internal blogs - just another tool

2007-06-24T14:31:00.000Z

I think of blogs as electronic notebooks - it doesn't matter what you put in them, they are essentially just a platform for expression, communication, publication.

James Dellow has posted a quote from Jim Vinson in his post Internal blogging is just one example of open information sharing inside an organisation that sums this up for me.

"In a recent discussion on the ACT-KM discussion list, someone mentioned that blogging is just one means of communication - that it isn't the be-all, end-all of knowledge sharing. I like this reminder because promoters tend to fall all over themselves with fantastic claims. On the other side, blogging provides a means of communication that people may need and don't currently have within their organization."

Just as a notebook has potential, but without anything in it, it's just a notebook, a blog has potential, but in reality it's just a platform, an enabler, it's what you do with it that matters.

Barriers to sharing 2 - fear of repercussions

2007-06-23T09:54:00.000Z

I've been thinking about why participants in my online community were discouraged from posting on their shared blog. They felt there may be repercussions if they did so, and they wanted to remain anonymous.

I initially thought the reluctance to post was due to a lack of confidence, but responses show that this is not the case, they were pretty confident with posting, commenting, sharing experience. I've considered their reponses in terms of Nolan's model which indicates that the balance of the elements of trust influence participation, which told me they were only partly participating due to this balance, but fear of repercussions is clearly an issue, which I feel may be due to a large extent to the impact of the organisational culture.

Almost half of the participants responses to the statement "I believe I can say what I want on the blog without repercussions" were negative. They really did think what they said may come back to haunt them. They were also very keen to remain anonymous.

This is a worrying response if online communities are to be effective for learning and knowledge sharing. I started to think of Big Brother (the BOOK, not the god awful reality TV programme) and the impact knowing you are being watched has on behaviour.

The majority of us, when pulled over by the police, will feel guilty, even though we've done nothing wrong. It's a feeling brought on my our perception of the police, that they are in control of us and can punish us for our actions if they so wish.

In terms of participation in an online community, considering the same effects, posting and commenting is open for review, which is great if you are in an environment which encourages learning, reflection, and questioning. If you feel however you are being policed, that's a whole different ball game. It means every time you present yourself through your posts and comments:

you have to think about what you do against the culture you work in
you are aware you may be questioned or assessed

The fear of "not doing it right" is overriding the desire to learn. Acknowledging that you need help with something is one thing, asking for that help is clearly another.

A post entitled Learning Disabilities on Leonardo Mora's blog, reminded me of what Peter Senge said in The Fifth Discipline, that most managers find collective inquiry inherently threating. I'm not sure this is true, but I do think organisations with a particular culture can find collective inquiry threatening. Leonardo also reminds us of something Chris Argyris noted,

If we feel uncertain or ignorant, we learn to protect ourselves from the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant. That very process blocks out any new understanding which might threaten us. The consequence is what Argyris calls “skilled incompetence”– teams full of people who are incredibly proficient at keeping themselves from learning.

The initial fear of repercussion felt by my participants I feel may to a great extent be driven by the perception talking about anything that went wrong, any negative experiences, may be picked up by the media. However, the positive effects of sharing failure can be phenomenal - we can learn so much from mistakes, that not sharing them seems almost criminal.

This fear may also be due to the espoused theory, theory in action element of people's survey responses. They may say they are confident about posting, but the pain of appearing uncertain or ignorant prevents them from actually participating. Without further research I can't say if this really is the case, but I suspect there's some truth in it.

What I can say, is that for whatever reason, wishing to be anonymous and fearing repercussions from writing something online are not condusive to online participation, and that gaining people's confidence by showing that there will not be any repercussons, even when posting as yourself, seems the only way to increase online participation for this group.

Again, it all boils down to trust...and that means it's going to take time...

For Pete Thornett, stilt walker extraordinaire

2007-06-21T20:38:00.000Z

Just had to promote the efforts of my friend Pete, a performer and stilt walker from Sheffield, who is walking, on stilts, from John O'Groats to Lands End for Epilepsy charities. Sadly his support person has abandoned him, and he's all alone...

See him on Scottish telly

His blog - check his progress

Good luck Pete...we're thinking about you

Prediction by Gartner on tacit knowledge

2007-06-21T20:05:00.000Z

I found a great article on ELearn Magazine by Eric Sauve, CEO and Co-Founder, Tomoye Corporation called Communities of Practice: Addressing Workforce Trends Through New Learning Models

Eric notes that

industry analyst firm Gartner estimates that the frequency of non-routine situations requiring tacit knowledge will double between 2006 and 2010. The reality is most organizations' situations change rapidly, making formal training once or twice a year inadequate. Organizations would be well-advised to shift budgets and resources from formal learning settings to informal situations where the majority of learning actually takes place.

The definition of tacit knowledge here is

complex interactions which require that people handle ambiguity and solve
problems based on experience

but how on earth do you measure this? I'd be interested to see the metrics Gartner used to came up with their prediction.

I'm definately all for shifting focus from formal training, which I believe people tend to jump to at the exclusion of all other learning opportunties (maybe because they are more difficult to manage?)

A useful introduction to communities of pratice though...

Tacit knowledge - an unhelpful term for knowledge management?

2007-06-19T18:12:00.000Z

Philosophically, tacit knowledge is a complex area. Widely taken to be a classic theory of tacit knowledge, Nonaka and Takeuchi's defininition tacit knowledge is that it is part of a dynamic process, part of a spiral of knowledge creation whereby knowledge moves through the following "states".

socialisation - sharing through face to face interaction
externalisation - developing concepts which incorporate tacit knowledge, making it communicable
combination - combining elements of explicit knowledge
internalisation - explicit knowledge is "internalised" and practicable

Nonaka and Takeuchi state that tacit knowledge is somehow externalised, stating that it somehow changes states from tacit to explict knowledge, a theory which is based on that of Michael Polanyi However, their theory moves away from Polanyi's, where tacit knowledge is subsidiary, present in the mind, but not directly attended to.

Where focal knowledge is knowledge that one refers to directly when making a knowledgable statement, tacit or subisiary knowledge is

Active in the mind, but not consciously accessed
Enables or causes the focal knowing

According to Polanyi, one cannot KNOW tacit knowledge, tacit knowledge supports explicit knowledge. It can't be changed into another TYPE of knowledge.

What Nonaka and Takeuchi are saying then, is like saying bricks can become a house, when in actual fact, a house is the sum of it's parts, bricks. The bricks are still bricks.

Another analogy that springs to mind is that of the psychoanalytic descriptors, the unconscious and the conscious.

Freud understood the unconcious as that part of mental functioning of which subjects make themselves unaware. It affects behaviour, but acts at a level beyond normal comprehension. Freuds somewhat negative interprettation of the unconscious, that it is a repository for socially unacceptable ideas, wishes or desires, traumatic memories, and painful emotions put out of mind by the mechanism of psychological repression. (see Wikipedia entry) means a direct comparison with tacit knowledge is problematic, but Carl Jungs idea of the unconscious, what he termed the collective unconscious, better relates to the concept of tacit knowledge as Polanyi describes it.

The collective unconscious directs the self, via amongst other things, intuition, toward self actualisation. In Humanist terms, tacit knowledge directs knowledge to enable a person to self-actualise.

To return to the philosophical notion of tacit knowledge, a fascinating article by Stefan Gueldenberg and Holger Helting, "Bridging the Great Divide - Nonaka's Synthesis of Western and Eastern knowledge concepts reassessed" considers the influence of Heidegger on Polanyi's thinking.

Heidegger proposed a philosophical notion of tacit knowledge whereby he describes it in terms of examining foreign cultures, where interaction with foreign cultures can shed light on what is tacitly understood. He noted that such interactions help identify things that appear to be self-explanatory and familiar, so no conscious note is taken of it.

Heidegger says we should seek out "foreign" experiences to more fully understand our own culture and experience. Something like "walk a mile in another mans shoes" to understand your own journey.

"Sojourn in foreign realms and the process of alienation within those realms must take place in order for that which is one's own to being glowing in light of that which is foreign." (Heidegger 1992, 175)

So to understand what we know tacitly, we need to look differently at the experiences of others to see what it is we know ourselves.

How does this help us to share tacit knowledge? Well, the above highlights the difficulty with the concept of tacit knowledge itself, that by Polanyi's definition it is unknowable. It's the personal, experiential building blocks of that build our explicit knowledge.

What does this mean for knowledge management? I feel that unless we develop a system of interprettation of tacit knowledge akin to the way the psychoanalytic movement strove to interpret the unconscious, we're going to be none the wiser. And we don't really understand the unconscious, or even agree what it is.

Maybe the best we can do is develop Heidegger's idea, that in considering how others do things, we gain some insight into how WE know. Sounds strangely like reflection to me...

In conclusion then...

Practically speaking, to understand good practice in terms of what we do that works, and sharing that knowledge with others, a move away from the philosophically challenging area of the nature of knowledge, particularly the notion of tacit knowledge, and a return to the notion of reflection and reflective practice, may yield far greater returns for knowledge management.

Librarians and tagging

2007-06-19T18:04:00.000Z

Anne Welsh has echoed one of the points I made in a previous post Enterprise 2.0 - same problem, different platforms on her blog about the need to leverage libarians skillsets in relation to tagging: Letting Our Skillsets Be Leveraged.

It seems Steven Dale has also picked up on what I said, and has issued something of a challenge to librarians out there.

Maybe I'm reading the wrong blogs, but my perception is that most Librarians remain wedded to structured, corporate categorisation and file management systems, and haven't yet grasped that the world is changing around them. Sorry if I'm over-generalising, but I've seen very few articles/comments/blogs from Librarians in support of social bookmarking.
Someone prove me wrong?

Will the librarians out there rise to this challenge I wonder and take up the opportunity to showcase the great work that's going on in the area?

Trust and Participation - leaning toward a community of interest

2007-06-17T10:30:00.000Z

My dissertation research has ended (see Communities of Practice, Knowledge Management and Learning for background on the research project), and I've discovered some interesting findings in relation to trust and participation.

Once again I need to point out that the size of the sample I have for my research is not statistically valid. What I do want to point out is that participants are self-selected, and interested in being part of an online community of practice - one would therefore expect results from the study to be indicative of people who WANT to be involved, rather than those who feel they SHOULD be involved.

I believe this makes the findings worth reporting.

In terms of responses, it appears that people are

fairly confident about posting and commenting (more confident with comments than posts I should note),
feel the shared blog has been useful for learning and knowledge sharing
feel the information they have received through the blog has been useful for their work.

However, particpation levels have been lower than one would expect from the above responses.

Why is this? I analysed the responses using the model described in Trust and Participation - and there's more. This model considers pairs of variables that will dictate the level of participation.

On mapping the participants survey responses to Nolan's model, it became clear that generally speaking, the participants are showing only a partial level of participation due to the following:

Participants perceive the blog to be more interesting than useful
Utility value being greater than interest would, according to Nolan's model, result in greater participation. If participants dont think it's useful for their job, they won't bother to get involved. This is a community of interest, rather than a community of pratice.

Participants percieve their power to influence is less than their interest in the subject
Participants are interested, but not engaged - the extent to which they feel their knowledge has an impact on others is less than their interest in the area. This again, reflects a community of interest, and would explain why levels of participation in terms of posting and commenting are lower than one would hope.

So results, whilst limited in sample size, suggest that key elements affecting participation are:

Trust
Confidence (perceived power to influence)

Unless of course Nolan's model is way off the mark. With more time, I would more fully research the validity of the model. As it is, it does indicate that my initial gut feelings about the influence of trust and confidence over participation, as indicated by the semi-structured interviews I conducted, is correct.

Again, as I said yesterday in my post Enterprise 2.0 - same problem, different platforms , if we are to leverage benefit from online community, we need to attend to the shortfall behaviours (lack of trust, lack of confidence) which prevent the realisation of the potential of Enterprise 2.0.

Enterprise 2.0 - same problem, different platforms

2007-06-16T08:17:00.000Z

I've been tracking the Enterprise 2.0 debate on the blogosphere. Posts from Dion Hinchcliffe, Enterprise 2.0 as a corporate culture catalyst, Tom Davenport Why Enterprise 2.0 Won't Transform Organizations Andrew McAfee The Impact of Information Technology (IT) on Businesses and their Leaders and John Husband "These Tools Change Corporate Culture" highlight the debate that, as Dion Hinchcliffe says

applying Web 2.0 tools and platforms inside organization may or may not — depending on who you are talking to — improve the way we collaborate, run our businesses, and even potentially tap major new veins of previously unexploitable worker productivity.

Not wishing to dismiss the potential benefits of web 2.0 applications for freeform social collaboration in business, I do think what is being experienced in relation to the use of these tools is heavily impacted by

Organisational culture

Confidence

Trust

These are the same elements that impact on knowledge sharing and collaboration as a whole - and they are all human.

Until we consider the human side of collaborative working online, Enterprise 2.0 won't get off the ground, let alone make an impact on the way our organisations function.

This is the state of play re: Enterprise 2.0 as I see it in my organisation in terms of shared Blogs, Wikis and Tags

Wikis
It seems to be a no brainer that wikis are perfect for the collaborative creation of documents. The problem is that people aren't keen on changing what someone else has written without asking them/telling them they've done it.

When sending comments on a document by email, the person sending them knows that the person receiving them knows who they are, and can decide to implement the change or not. Just changing something on a wiki appears somewhat disrespectful of the person who has originally written something.

People need time to get used to this way of working. Probably not a good idea to start with a policy document, but start with creating a meeting agenda...

Shared Blogs
Knowledge sharing group blogs are a problem as people may not have the confidence to say "this is what we do" for fear that people will think it's a ridiculous way to work. They can't ask "what do you think to this way of working" and get immediate feedback - they're announcing it to the world/company/team without any understanding of how it will be received.

It seems easier for people to do this face to face. Having a focus or purpose for sharing information where all participants are equal seems to help, for instance, stating up front that contributions will be added to guidance for others in the team/company. However some just don't trust enough or aren't confident enough to share. This has to addressed in terms of developing trust and developing confidence.

Tagging
A skill in itself if tags are to be meaningful for all. If there is different terminology for the same thing ie expenses form/travel expenses/car mileage claim, then all those tags need to be present for someone to find what they are looking for.

In business this is important - if it's not done well, people will stop using the application they are searching in because they can't find what they are looking for. Librarians get this, it's what they do. Leveraging librarians skillsets - getting them to develop/deliver training in search and retrieval skills seems sensible here (which I know many of them are already doing...).

So...

If we concentrate too much on what Enterprise 2.o can theoretically do for or organisations, we do this to the detriment of acknowledging that the human element is key - people don't work in the way theory suggests.

If workers are to achieve what theory suggests they can achieve through web 2.0 technologies - collective intelligence, greater knowledge, greater awareness, improved performance, then they are going to need help to do this. And time....lots of time.

Friday Photo

2007-06-15T21:43:00.000Z

Don't the weeks just fly by, seems like only a day or so since I posted the last Friday photo, but here's another Friday, so here's another photo, this time from The Cosmic Garden of Speculation at Portrack House, a rather wonderful physics based garden in Scotland, designed by the fantastically talented Charles Jencks. The picture shows The Singularity, designed to represent a black hole. It blew me away, and the image doesnt do it justice. Unfortunately the garden is only open once a year, so if you want to see it, plan well. The next time it opens I believe is the 6th May 2008.

In memorium - for M772VWE

2007-06-15T21:35:00.000Z

Tonight I gave my car to a Ford dealer without properly saying goodbye. I abandoned a 1994 Ford Astra diesel that's been with me for 6 years on the forecourt of a Ford dealership in Sheffield and I never looked back as I walked in to the showroom to pick up it's replacement. As it wings its way to the breakers yard in the sky I want to thank it for many years of thankless transportation, despite the thrashing, crashing, scrapping and bashing it received from it's slightly rubbish owner. It's being replaced by a shiny NEW(ish) Ford Focus but it will not be forgotten - the first car I owned.

Quite sad really, just thought I'd share that with you :-(

Look, listen and learn - video how to's get media attention, again

2007-06-13T22:09:00.000Z

So it's not just me, even Metro have got in on the video for learning debate- not that I'm knocking Metro, in my opinion it's the best newspaper in the UK and it's free.

Metro's article Look, listen and learn on Wednesday said

'How to' videos are gaining pace as a form of learning without having to pick up a textbook or phone a parent. VideoJug – dubbed 'the thinking person's YouTube' – launched last September with step-by- step guides on everything from 'how to check for testicular cancer' to 'how to make a delicious mango chutney'.

Dan Thompson, VideoJug's CEO makes an important point in terms of the value of video for knowledge management

According to Dan Thompson, VideoJug's CEO: 'So much knowledge is lost when people fail to pass it on to future generations. We hope to stop this. VideoJug is a visual encyclopedia of life.'

A plethora of sites hosting video style guides have appeared - videojug, ehow, how to.tv and a host of other sites. As Streaming Media Magazine says

...these do-it-yourself sites bear witness to the power that video content can have in daily life

Only last week, Videojug launched their Ask The Expert service, which offers professional advice for free on areas like health, technology, money and property.

I can only see this getting bigger and bigger, with really practical as well as entertainment application. If we really are at the beginning of the web 2.0 explosion, who knows what we're going to see in the future. With so much power in the hands of the people, it's going to be an exciting ride.

Links to previous posts on video
Little Videos That Educate - Making Learning Viral
More on video for learning
Viral Learning Centre - spoof video

On Intuition

2007-06-12T20:59:00.000Z

Over the last few days I've experienced some really quite amazing coincidences, most of which relate to inituition in some way.

I recently met a lady who talked of intuition in terms of "just knowing things", and related this to being "fey" or in touch with her spiritual side. Another I met through a different situation, told me she'd been on a course examining intuition in business terms, and today, I was identified as "the intuitive", and told my skills were interesting.

A coincidence or not, it's got me thinking...

Personally I've always had a nightmare with my tendency towards intuition and "gut feeling". I seem to intuitively see a solution, but then I have to work out how it was I reached that solution so I can explain it to all the analytical people who ignore what I've said, because I haven't gone through the correct process to reach that point.

I had the pleasure of being able to actually show how the solution I'd identified could work today, using a process map, but as always I felt frustrated that it took so long!

An interesting post on blog.gkaindl.com, aptly titled Exploiting Intuition, points out that

When a person acts intuitively, the purely analytical mind is prone to either dismissing their results as luck or to attribute them to a level of understanding and mastery that is unique and exceptional. However, as the benefits of intuitive results as either a starting point for further analysis or as a quick way to make highly accurate predictions are manyfold, the actual concern with intuition should be: Can I train it, and how?

It's an interesting point, but I think in some spheres there needs to first be a sea change in terms of how we see intuitive reasoning. In fact, it doesnt even warrant a Wikipedia page! Intuition itself only gets a brief philosophically orientated commentary. But according to many, if we trust our intuition, it's surpising how many times we are correct.

this article on Building an Intuitive Organisation from Chief Learning Office Magazine says on the benefits of using intuition:

When used in innovation intuition becomes part of an applied creativity process, among other necessary components, like imagination or creative idea-generation. It contributes to having an innovation strategy and training plan.

Individuals who use intuition in decision-making can achieve far better results than those who use facts and logic alone. Highly integrated individuals are able to do both well. Specific learning processes can be used to train people on intuitive decision-making.

Intuitive people have a better chance at recognizing the symptoms of stress and can take the steps required for better self-care and reducing burnout. This improves productivity while reducing losses and absenteeism due to stress.

An area worth some consideration I think...

Methodology for Web 2.0 Collaboration for Reluctant Organisations

2007-06-10T10:12:00.000Z

Dave Pollard has developed a A Methodology for Web 2.0 Collaboration Experiments (in Reluctant Organizations). which he discusses in his business innovation and knowledge based blog How To Save The World.

This diagram explains the process he envisages will enable organisations to mitigate the three key areas he says people have difficulty with...

What's perceived as urgent in most organizations (i.e. what's keeping management awake at night) isn't collaboration or innovation or technology or worker effectiveness, it's cost reduction and risk management. Nothing else gets any executive bandwidth.

You can't change an organization's culture (short of firing everyone and starting over with new managers and staff). The best you can hope to do is help people adapt to the existing culture in useful, valuable ways.

Organizations are, mostly, complex adaptive systems, so one-step needs identification is futile. You have to let a full understanding of the organization's problems and needs, and the solutions that address those needs, co-evolve. By the time you have an intelligent answer, your understanding of the problem is usually vastly different from what it was at the outset.

The methodology he advocates is one based on experimenting with collaborative technologies. He's developed what looks to be a very pragmatic approach, grounded in the reality of business, which relies on what appears to be an action research approach, which spirals through four phases of planning, acting, observing and reflecting.

Where I think he's spot on is what he says about the need for champions to meet face to face in the inital stages of the process. As he says,

...there is much work to be done up-front to understand the opportunities and challenges, and some sleeves-rolled-up face-to-face is needed to do this

When I've asked project managers about whether meeting face to face prior to taking part in a shared blog would have given them more confidence in the group, they've had mixed feelings. Some felt that yes, they would be more comfortable sharing with people they knew, others felt that prior judgements about individuals roles and organisations would have a negative impact on sharing face to face.

Many of these judgements had a power dynamic. As the group blog is anonymous, and anonymity is a great leveller, the power dynamic has been removed. It may be that new ones build in relation to the activity of the community members, rather than due to prior assumptions about individuals within a bureaucracy.

Recieved wisdom does suggest that face to face activities strengthen a community, but it appears we can't necessarily assume this is the case.

What Dave Pollard is referring to is more those individuals who will drive forward the experiments in collaboration, rather than the wider community, but the impact of face to face activites on online collaboration is definately something to consider very carefully.

What is Enterprise 2.0? - Web 2.0 technologies for collaborative working

2007-06-10T09:13:00.000Z

I've been poking about on the incredibly linkful (is that a word? It should be) Green Chameleon blog and I found a link to a really simple but incredibly concise demonstration of how Web 2.0 technologies can facilitate collaboration in the workplace.

It's the sort of the thing that might help you to sell the idea of using them for collaboration, knowledge sharing etc to people who have little knowledge of what Web 2.0 is all about. It looks like it would be a useful awareness raising tool.

I've failed to embed it, here's the link

This video, by Commoncraft, is clever, short and amusing, and demonstrates how a wiki can be used. But it's NOT one for demonstrating the business benefits of using a wiki for collaboration to your CIO.

Every community of practice needs a focus

2007-06-09T21:25:00.001Z

Something Caroline DeBrun from the National Library for Health (who runs the Talking Knowledge Management blog along with many other KM activities and sites) said in her presentation at the CILIP event yesterday has struck a chord with me.

She mentioned that she personally used blogs for reflection, and wikis for collaboration. I agree, that seems a sensible and effective use of both technologies, but what she said made me really think about potential activities a wiki would be perfect for, and which would facilitate knowledge sharing, particularly the sharing of lessons learned from the experience of project management.

It's becoming clear to me that what we (NHS CFH) are trying to gather and utilise, primarily tacit knowledge based on experience which is difficult to articulate, is nigh on impossible to collect with a blog. There may be many reasons for this, and it may not be true of all organisations or group blogs, but what I think might work is to focus more on faciliating community development via collaborate activity. This should in turn, increase community cohesion and encourage a culture of sharing.

Acknowledging that people really need to focus on activity which improves practice within their particular domain if they are to function as a community of practice, I think rather than asking people to write about their own experiences and lessons learned, we should ask them to collectively create guidance for others, using a wiki. This should draw out experiences and knowledge that they wouldn't offer up in iscolation on a blog. To a certain extent, it's getting them to share their tacit knowledge without knowing that's what they are doing. Crafty...

I can't believe I didn't think of that before...amazing what happens when you look up for a moment, look around, and listen to what others are saying.

Definately one for the recommended research section of the dissertation.

Friday Photo - on Saturday...

2007-06-08T20:53:00.000Z

Got back far too late last night to post a pic...so not technically a Friday Photo but never mind...

This is another one from Cambodia - this time from a wonderful ancient temple, Ta Phrom, one of the temples in the complex outside Siem Reap. Everywhere you look there are trees growing through and over the temple, the result is a beautiful mix of natural and man made structures. I truly amazing place.

CILIP Blogging from the Backroom event - the many uses of blogs

2007-06-08T20:32:00.002Z

Sadly I'm posting at 9.30 pm on a delayed GNER train from London, which has charged me £5.00 per hour to log on to what appears to be a Dutch ISP, I suppose I've learnt a wee bit which might be useful one day - Visa Blogg apparently is "view blog", "Redigera inlägg I think is "edit posts"...

The journey was worth it though - the CILIP event was great. Some very interesting presentations. Of particular note for me was a session by the Home Office on how they review news stories and , particularly how many feeds and blogs they read. They review 3,000 google feeds a day!

Their mission, to identify issues within their remit ie immigration, as well as what is being said about the Home Office. It was interesting to see the effect David Blunkett's resignation had on THOSE stats... But 3,000!!! I manage about 3 if I'm really focused. The skills required for analysing that much data and information are phenomenal! Maybe one day we'll all (have to) become that proficient at sifting through information.

See Alertinfo, with it's strapline "Crime, Justice, Society" for the fruits of the Home Office's labour.

Thanks to the very interesting Anne Welsh from Drugscope for inviting me to speak and for entertaining me after the event.

Blogging from the Backroom event, CILIP event

2007-06-07T18:27:00.000Z

Tomorrow I'm speaking at an event run by the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals, Blogging from the Backroom. I'll be talking about my experiences with the Project Managers Knowledge Cooperative shared blog. Also on the programme are Drugscope, St. George’s Medical School, University of London, Home Office and the National Library for Health (NHS). You can see the full programme here.

I'm looking forward to being able to enthuse about the power of blogging, after all, I think blogs are the notebooks of the 21st century, a fantastically flexible tool, but I'm also keen to point out the problems of using blogs for knowledge sharing and learning.

My key points are that

Knowledge alone is nothing, it's how it's applied that matters, so a blog is merely an enabler for improved practice
A blog can aid reflective practice as by the very act of writing about experiences, people create a concrete example onto which to hang theory
Collaboration is key in a group blog - if only one person posts, and few people comment, the value of the group element of the blog is lost and it becomes a different animal
Trust and confidence are vital for participation, if this is lacking, and a culture change is required, it will be an uphill struggle to gain benefit from a shared blog

I'm sure it will be an interesting and thought provoking event and despite a few nerves (I've not presented on this area before, as my research isn't complete) I'm looking forward to it.

Trust and Participation - and there's more

2007-06-06T18:28:00.001Z

Another model, developing the theme of trust and it's impact on participation (see my post on Time, Trust and Participation for 3 level model of trust), this time from Terry Nolan in his paper Individual trust and development of online business communities. (again, can't find a free link...)

It aligns with the economic based, information/knowledge based, identification based levels of trust, but looks at it from the standpoint of the component parts of trust, rather than the types of trust behaviour which align with participation.

Nolan identifies what sees as the component parts of trust. In his words:

Risk - associated with providing information to unknown participants and acting upon information received from them

Benefit - an overall perception that involvment will provide individual gain

Utility value - measured by high information quality such that it can be absorbed into immediate practice

Interest - indicating an inherent interest in the system and the information available

Effort - the effort exerted to acquire information

Power - an individual's ability to influence others

He believes that participation is dependant on the combinations of variables, ie

Interest vs Utility value
If interest exceeds utility value, then you have a Community of Interest, rather than a Community of Practice

Risk vs Utility
If the risk of participating outweighs the usefulness of the information, the likelihood of participation is lessened

Benefit vs Effort
If benefit outweighs effort, the individual is more likely to participate

Power vs Interest
Power gained through the possession of expertise that influences the practice of others. To participate fully, an indivual must have more than a mere interest in the topic

So the following diagram, reproduced from fig 7 in Nolan's paper, shows that the interaction between the above variables will determine how much an individual participates.

Assessing individual perception of the component elements of trust in relation to an online community appears to be a great way to identify barriers to sharing, but I'm still no further on with a strategy for facilitating the change of an individuals position from one of non or part participation to one of full participation and membership of an effective community of practice.

Time, Trust and Participation

2007-06-05T18:59:00.000Z

If someone came up to you in the street, and you had a packet of crisps in your hand, would you let them have one?

If you wouldn’t share your crisps, why not?

Maybe because we generally don’t share things with people until we know them (or we’re just plain greedy/hungry).

Maybe because we don’t generally share things with people we don’t trust – you don’t tell someone a secret unless you know you can trust that person not to then tell your secret to everyone they’ve ever met...

In this very simple scenario, the two dimensions that clearly affect sharing are knowing someone and/or trusting them. The fact that degree of trust in information, individuals and technology and length of time people have known one another can affect knowledge sharing shouldn’t be that much of a surprise.

If we are to engender trust and encourage participation in online communities, then:

On the time side – we need to develop relationships, sustain them, and not assume that people who don’t know each other will share.

On the trust side – we need to be honest and transparent in our dealings with people, trust is a delicate thing – who is going to trust someone who keeps things back? Who is going to trust a system that isn’t secure. Who is going to believe information when the last thing they read was untrue or inaccurate?

On the relationship side – trust is developed between people, organisations can only leverage relationships that are trusting.

As Kevin Dwyer from Build Your Own Business notes

Trust is personal. It is between two people. When organisations “trust” each other it is a result of trust between individuals in the organisation.

An interesting article from WeMedia says

From the consumer's perspective, it's easy to place trust in an established institution such as The Wall Street Journal or even MTV, but how does the audience learn to trust a stranger (or group of strangers), to evaluate the information they are providing, and to collaborate with them?

Thinking primarily about business based communities, it seems to encourage participation, we need to more fully understand how we can cultivate trust whilst at the same time acknolwedging that it takes time to build.

Maybe the first step is to assess readiness to share in terms of trust. Hsu, Ju, Yen and Chang from Taiwan have developed a very interesing model (sorry, can't find a free link to this paper) based on Social Cognitive Theory which measures multi-dimensional trusts.

Economy based trust – based on economic benefit or violation of trust ie the termination of a relationship or the likelihood of retribution
Information based trust – knowledge based trust, the belief that behaviour is predicatable and and uncertainty is reduced
Identification based trust – parties understand one anothers wants and mutual understanding is developed

They found that certain trust dimensions have a positive effect on others ie

Economy based trust has a positive effect on information based trust.
Information based trust has a positive effect on identification based trust

Taking the crisp sharing scenario as an example:

Economy based trust – sharing must give you some sort of benefit ie not being hit
Information based trust – to share you believe what you expect will happen – and they won’t give the crisp to their dog
Identification based trust – you share because you can see they are hungrier than you

To examine the level of trust someone has toward a particular group or system would help identify the barriers that continually prevent sharing. Individual differences are clearly important in understanding why some people share quickly and without pontificating, whilst others need to see individual benefit to take part.

I feel this model may help us to understand what it is we need to do to encourage diverse participation in our online communities. All we need to do then is work out how to help people move from where they are to where they need to be to effectively share and learn.

Shouldn’t be too hard...

Quotes on sharing

2007-06-04T19:52:00.000Z

In an attempt to really impress the academics and gain valuable brownie points for my dissertation by reading both deeply AND broadly, I developed a cunning plan for finding authors outside of the immediate learning, knowledge sharing, knowledge management type literature - check out some quotes on learning, sharing, knowledge etc.

This cunning plan is based on the premise that if they've been quoted talking about something, maybe they know something about it.

It's working, I just have to keep focused and not find out everything there is to know about the politics of Barbados or the principles of environmentalism...

Must...control...inquisitive...nature...

Here's some good sharing quotes - seems only right to share them...

Great leadership does not mean running away from reality. Sometimes the hard truths might just demoralize the company, but at other times sharing difficulties can inspire people to take action that will make the situation better.

John Kotter, Change expert

Often, we are too slow to recognize how much and in what ways we can assist each other through sharing such expertise and knowledge.

Owen Arthur, Prime Minister of Barbados

In today's environment, hoarding knowledge ultimately erodes your power. If you know something very important, the way to get power is by actually sharing it.

Joseph Badaracco, Business Ethics specialist

The fact that I can plant a seed and it becomes a flower, share a bit of knowledge and it becomes another's, smile at someone and receive a smile in return, are to me continual spiritual exercises.

Leo.F. Buscaglia, he was really into Love

If a child is to keep his inborn sense of wonder, he needs the companionship of at least one adult who can share it, rediscovering with him the joy, excitement and mystery of the world we live in.

Rachel Carson, Environmentalist

You are forgiven for your happiness and your successes only if you generously consent to share them.

Albert Camus, genius existentialist philosopher

Web 2.0 video on the socio-political nature of the web

2007-06-01T17:34:00.000Z

I think this is the most amazing video to describe Web 2.0 and it’s impact.

Maybe it's the Manga films I’ve watched like Ghost in the Shell, maybe it’s my anarchist tendencies, but this videos socio-political statement, that we ARE the machine, really made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up!

Thanks to Clive Shepherd and Brent Schlenker for the link.

Right, no more posting over the weekend, really must do some studying and stop getting distracted by all the really interesting but not completely relevant conversations going on in the blogosphere...

Roll on August 28th when I hand in my dissertation!!!