Wed, Dec 31, 2003
Knowledge Management as Information Brokering
#
DavidGilmour, CEO of TacitKnowledgeSystems, wrote an excellent (and
short) essay in the October issue of HarvardBusinessReview
entitled, "How to Fix Knowledge Management." The gist of the article: (P3)
The problem is that most organized corporate information sharing is based on a failed paradigm: publishing. In the publishing model, someone collects information from employees, organizes it, advertises its availability, and sits back to see what happens. But because employees quickly create vast amounts of information, attempts to fully capture it are frustrated every time. Even the most organized efforts collect just a fraction of what people know, and by the time this limited knowledge is published, it's often obsolete. The expensive process is time consuming, and it doesn't scale well. (16) (P4)
See more....
/articles |
Posted at 3:34pm
IT as Commodity and its Contribution to Productivity
#
There were two interesting articles about IT and productivity in the
HarvardBusinessReview this past year: Nicholas Carr's "IT Doesn't
Matter" (May) and Diana Farrell's "The Real New Economy" (October). (OK)
Carr's title is a bit misleading. It's not that IT no longer matters
at all; it's that IT is less important (for most companies -- a
subtle, but important disclaimer) from a strategic standpoint, because
it has become a commodity. Carr writes: (OL)
What makes a resource truly strategic -- what gives it the capacity to be the basis for a sustained competitive advantage -- is not ubiquity but scarcity. You only gain an edge over rivals by having or doing something that they can't have or do. By now, the core functions of IT -- data storage, data processing, and data transport -- have become available and affordable to all. Their very power and presence have begun to transform them from potentially strategic resources into commodity factors of production. They are becoming costs of doing business that must be paid by all but provide distinction to none. (42) (OM)
See more....
/articles |
Posted at 2:37pm
George Soros: "The Bubble of American Supremacy"
#
GeorgeSoros? has an excellent
article in this month's
TheAtlanticMonthly entitled, "The Bubble of American Supremacy,"
where he decries the neoconservative Bush doctrine and proposes an
alternative. Soros compares the Bush doctrine to a financial bubble: (OE)
The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble. The dominant position the United States occupies in the world is the element of reality that is being distorted. The proposition that the United States will be better off if it uses its position to impose its values and interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly by not abusing its power that America attained its current position. (65) (OF)
See more....
/articles |
Posted at 1:37pm
Mon, Dec 22, 2003
Church of Purple: The IDs the Thing
#
Some interesting posts in the blogosphere today that are relevant to
PurpleNumbers. First, SebPaquet
pointed to
MattMower's recent
"Show Anchors"
bookmarklet, which displays named anchors on an HTML page. It's a
good hack, and it will hopefully encourage people to do more
fine-grained linking, which is one reason for PurpleNumbers. (NW)
Second, BillSeitz referenced BobDuCharme?'s
article earlier this year on
the deprecation of the "name" attribute for the new (but optional)
"id" attribute in HTML, and
asked whether this is relevant to PurpleNumbers. It's very relevant.
Widespread use of ID attributes will hopefully make people understand
the value of stable IDs for addressing (as opposed to the relative
addressing enabled by things like XPointer). (NX)
PurpleNumbers are about two things: Making people aware of
fine-grained addressability, and assigning stable IDs to each of these
chunks. The former is what most people see, but good UIs will
eventually (hopefully) make this feature irrelevant. The latter is
the truly important contribution. (NY)
See more....
/tech/purple |
Posted at 3:51pm
December GivingSpace Workshop
#
There were several interesting presentations at TomMunnecke's December
11 GivingSpace workshop, as well as some worthwhile discussion. Some quick thoughts
and tidbits: (NA)
See more....
/events |
Posted at 2:28pm
A Walk with Howard Rheingold: Collaboration as Craft
#
I had the great pleasure of walking and talking with HowardRheingold
last Thursday. Howard lives in MillValley, a few blocks away from
some of the many trailheads leading up to MountTamalpais. We had
exchanged emails a few times and had met briefly after
his talk at
Stanford in October. I had invited him to coffee, and he suggested a
brief hike instead, which I gladly accepted. (MG)
Winter is one of the best times to go hiking in the Bay Area. We
started walking around 4pm as the sun was beginning to set. The sky
was a deep blue with a solitary streak of clouds overhead, and the air
was cool and crisp. We walked about a mile to the top of a hill,
where a rock formation seemed to form a natural bench around the
crest. Looking north, we could see the peak of Mt. Tam. To our west
were neighboring hills and the Pacific Ocean. To our east was a
beautiful view of MillValley, where the city lights were beginning to
come on. All of this served as a vivid reminder that I had, as usual,
forgotten to bring my camera. (MH)
Nevertheless, I was there to talk, and talk we did. One topic that
came up -- and a key reason for wanting to talk to Howard in the first
place -- was my desire to see the emergence of collaboration and
community-building as a discipline, a widely acknowledged craft. (MI)
See more....
/collaboration |
Posted at 11:35am
Tue, Dec 16, 2003
Culture Clash, Shared Language, and Story Telling
#
Speaking of names, a
recent Newsday article on Viggo Mortensen, who plays Aragorn in the
Lord of the Ring trilogy, notes that Danish people find his name: (KK)
"Corny?" he says. "Yeah, I know. It would be like being called Oscar. Or Otto. It's an old name. A really, really old name. And a little bit corny. Like Oswald or something ..." (KL)
Elmer? (KM)
"Yeah! Elmer. Yeah," Mortensen says. "I think there's a comic strip in Denmark, a Dennis the Menace character, and his name is Viggo. He's all over the place." (KN)
Names are a great example of how our different cultural backgrounds
can make SharedLanguage challenging. There are many great examples of
brand names gone wrong because they mean something obscene in other
languages. (KO)
See more....
/collaboration |
Posted at 11:20am
Why I Have Three Names
#
One thing that the articles cited in my two
previous
entries is that
they both mispelled or misarranged my name. This is actually a
relatively common phenomenon. (K9)
For the first dozen years of my life, I went by my middle name,
"Eric." Using one's middle name is also a relatively common
phenomenon. What's more unusual is that, upon changing schools in the
seventh grade, I decided to go back to my first name, "Eugene." (KA)
It's been long enough now that most people know me as, "Eugene."
Notable exceptions include my family, all of whom still call me,
"Eric," and the few people who remember me from way back when. I
think my brother-in-law, Isaac, is still thoroughly confused as to
what to call me, although he seems to be settling on "Eric." (KB)
In my bylines, I use my full name, EugeneEricKim. This is partially
an acknowledgement of my dual identity, and also a feeble attempt at
uniqueness in a world with way too many Eugene Kims. (KC)
See more....
/personal |
Posted at 10:28am
WikiWhiteboard
#
Many moons ago, DannyAyers reported the successful prototype of WikiWhiteboard, a simple tool
for creating editable SVG images on Wikis. Motivated by the
simplicity of the design and a little
subtle prodding by Danny, I
ported it to PurpleWiki. (See PurpleWiki:WikiWhiteboard.) Danny's
writeup on WikiWhiteboard,
"Creating an SVG
Wiki", appeared last month at XML.com. (K4)
The WikiWhiteboard code will be released in the next version of
PurpleWiki, although I will be happy to release code early to anyone
interested. (K5)
/tech/wiki |
Posted at 10:04am
Ross Mayfield on Coevolution
#
A few weeks ago, I
posted some
comments about RossMayfield's talk at the Bay Area Futurists Salon.
Ross recently posted
a good response at Many 2 Many. (K3)
/collaboration/tools |
Posted at 9:47am
Mon, Dec 15, 2003
perlIBIS: The Virtue of Thinking Out Loud
#
Read DannyAyers's blog this morning, and saw
an entry describing
KenMacLeod's recent
experiment
with IBIS DialogMapping. I took a
look, and was surprised
and thrilled at what I saw. Ken had used (and improved)
perlIBIS, which I had written
and last released two years ago. (JU)
I note this not just because I'm pleased (I am), but because it also
shows the importance of knowledge capture and thinking out loud. I
had announced this work to members of the small DialogMapping
community, and had received some positive feedback but little else.
That was fine; my motivation in writing the tool was to
ScratchYourOwnItch and experiment with some ideas, and I accomplished
that. That said, it was gratifying to see that the ideas and the tool
had propagated outside of that community, and that someone else was
doing something valuable with it. (JV)
Perhaps this will be the kick in the pants I need to finally write up
some of my notes on DialogMapping, both for synchronous and
asynchronous collaboration. (JW)
/collaboration/tools |
Posted at 8:35pm
Tue, Dec 09, 2003
Blue Oxen's One Year Anniversary
#
Today is BlueOxenAssociates' one year anniversary. Many thanks to all
for your support and goodwill, especially those who have worked with
us this past year. Special thanks to ChrisDent, our
advisory board, and
members of the BlueOxen CollaborationCollaboratory. It's been a great
year; looking forward to another good one. (J6)
Today, not coincidentally, is also the 35th anniversary of
DougEngelbart's MotherOfAllDemos. (J7)
Tonight, a small group of us are celebrating at the ForesightInstitute
in Los Altos, California. After that, back to work! (J8)
/blueoxen |
Posted at 8:59am
