b.cognosco

This post from Doc points to Jerry's weblog, Sociate. One of Jerry's reviews many years ago turned me on to TheBrain. I still use TheBrain a little bit every day, but had unfortunately lost track of Jerry. He's a broad thinker and an accessible writer. His take on briefing books is just one more sample of his outstanding ideas.

Pro-industrial rethinking

Jerry has a good idea that perfectly brings blogs and wikis together: industrial briefing books. Think of them as open source aggregated knowledge around every business subject you can name. (For those who don't know, wikis are joint web publications by any number of interested authors.) [Doc Searls Weblog]

This is a great complement to the knowledge sharing facet of weblogs. So many industries could benefit from this. I can see starting one for my own industry (printing and publishing) and its many segments. So much basic industry knowledge is locked up in consulting reports and government statistics that it's of almost no use to the industry in general. This just got added to the upper section of my To-do list.

Among other things on his weblog, Jerry also talks about supplemental technologies for weblogs -- things like how to effectively link wikis (I never really got wikis, but the Briefing Book idea helps give helps.)

Note: Reposting a story from Doc's weblog is a pain. I don't know what he's doing, but all the tables, named links, and geegaws are for the birds.