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Tuesday, July 16, 2002

Caution Needed in Fulfillment Services

Caution must be taken not to overlook the actual ROI of most fulfillment operations (low) and the costs of inventory (high). Many fulfillment providers today have built businesses based more on storing things than providing robust services. As the cost of inventory and real estate has risen, they've found themselves pinched between expensive warehouses and customers who no longer want to maintain inventories. Most printers will likley have to make changes in their market and sales strategies for fulfillment to generate significant revenues. And selling print is a far different proposition than selling operational support services.

Fulfillment can be a solid service when matched with other appropriate offerings -- such as sophisticated freight and logistics management -- but printers must be wary of treating it as a simple warehouse adjunct. Instead they must address fulfillment as just one aspect of a demand-driven business and customer model, and build a solid value proposition for these emerging markets.

Fulfillment Services The Next Killer Application for On Demand Printing [WhatTheyThink]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Future of Print

Start Small, Grow Right with KM for Projects

• Start small and grow steadily over time.
• Set the "rules of the road" up front and keep it simple.
• Enforce the new culture.
• Define standards but be reasonable.
• Pilot a project.
• Assign a KM owner.
• Show everybody everything.
• Management support.
• Team feedback.

Project Level Knowledge Management.

Project-level implementations of KM hold promise for one simple reason: They address real day-to-day problems that can only be solved with collaboration. Notice I didn't say collaboration tools. That's a very important distinction because this is where KM has traditionally gotten into trouble. The tools are enablers; collaboration is an interaction of people. If you use the tools right, you make the interaction easier; people see the value and buy into the concept. Once people buy into the concept, any initiative will grow and nurture itself.

This approach is exactly why we're having success with project-level KM. The ability to focus on core collaboration tasks and really get to the heart of what workers need is key to any KM initiative. [ADVANCE for Health Information Executives ]

Another example of some solid thinking about how to introduce KM into the organization. This article focuses primarily on how to support a transition from typical practices (e.g. e-mail and ad hoc documentation) to practices that will support improved knowledge management in the long run. If you look at the examples offered, it's clear that k-logs would be an ideal technology tool to meet KM needs at a project level.

A nice little mini-case. [McGee's Musings]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Collaboration

Update: Radio Supports XCOPY Deployment and Synching

There are three modes of remote K-Logging. They are:

1. Remote access to a K-Log through a browser on a random PC.
2. Mobile laptop with a local K-Log tool.
3. Remote K-Logging via e-mail.

In my own post on the issues I noted that while using a mobile laptop is an enticing idea I don't want to give up my desktop workstation, so until there is a way to synch Radio across multiple computers I can't do this.

Well, Jon Udell has a story addressing a simple way to solve my dilemma. In Radio Supports XCOPY Deployment Jon explains:

FWIW, my recipe for backing up Radio, and also transplanting it to/from my notebook PC for travel, is simply:

xcopy /s /d C:radio. T:radio.

In this era of fast networks and capacious hard drives, it's really no problem.

BTW this feature, long missing from Windows due to registry entanglements, is touted as a new thing -- "xcopy deployment" -- in the .NET marketing literature. Works in Radio too :-)

I'm guessing there are some path issues to resolve here, but maybe not. In any case, I know I've seen a script somewhere for fixing paths. So if it is an issue I'm sure there is a fix. Being able to move Radio to a laptop for travel but not having to use a laptop all the time is great thing for me. Thanks to Jon Udell and the power of the web for getting this info to me.

Update: a link to the discussion thread on Andy Fragen's myFixFilePathsAndAddresses script.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:23 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

In the Same Room Does Not Mean on the Same Page

This cuts to the core of what goes wrong in many virtual teams and virtual organizations. Conference calls don't get it. More meetings don't help. The only thing that helps is getting people to expose what they are thinking in an open fashion. This essay at Technography is well worth your time. It is short, pithy, and to the point.

I don't know where he finds this stuff. This page has an original post date of January 1999. But Ron Lusk has done it again.

Technography: Group Journaling.

So here's the problem: Presentations, all be they clear, graphic, succinct, perhaps entertaining and even electronic presentations, do not a consensus build.

When all is said, and all the presentation presented, and the doing has to get done, the page we're on is not the same anymore. We each have a somewhat different understanding of what we supposedly learned. Informed as we have supposedly become, the information isn't part of our common knowledge. via [Ron Lusk's Radio Weblog]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 4:44 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Radio -- More Than a Blog Tool

After reading and writing about blogging books yesterday I began to think about what it is that separates Radio from the other tools, and why this distinction is important.

I don't journal. There is nothing in my personal life worth remarking on, and tools that cater to the user who wants an online personal journal don't appeal to me. I enjoy reading some journals, but had that been all there was to Blogging I would never have tried it myself.

I'm more interested in business and learning, and I need a different tool. I want something that fosters collaboration with less structure, and less intimidation, than formal KM systems. I want to successfully run a virtual company -- something I now believe to be virtually impossible. But I think a transparent, user-friendly, addictive method for getting people to enter the collaborative system is mandatory for any chance of success.

So when I saw Radio's personal content management, networking, and k-logging possibilities I was hooked. It's still a little rough around the edges, but it's a great tool, and I can see tremendous possibilities for using it in business and learning environments.

I agree with Matt, Radio won't ever be right for everyone. There's no reason for it to be. Blogging is becoming a generic descriptor for a set of personal software tools, with specific types emerging for different users. As Dave Winer said:

In 2002, we're beginning to get to a category of software, with lines of delineation -- Movable Type is different from Manila, and Radio is different from Blogger, if one wanted to study a category, the products are lining up to accomodate. Other than that there's little that each blog has in common with other blogs.

There will be plenty of room for different tools in the future, and I look forward to seeing developments from all the BlogTool writers. My eyes have been opened to a new paradigm in web space. Many years ago I naively thought XML would kill the web as a personal medium, making it too inscrutable for all but the brainiest experts.

I was wrong. The BlgTool writers have taken XML to the masses, and it is good. There are many, many people who don't know it yet. But they will. And when they do there will be a BlogTool to meet their specific needs.

Why Radio?.

Why have I choosen Radio over MovableType? It's a question I've asked myself recently.

I think MT looks like an excellent blogging system. In a few years time I think that MT (or son-of-MT) is likely to be the choice for bloggers who need a little more than Blogger (or son-of-Blogger) will provide.  I don't believe, as much as I love it, that Radio will be that choice.

However I do believe that Radio could be the klogger tool of choice.  Why?

Because Radio has such potential in both a networked (social) and standalone (personal) context.  Because Radio is a general computing platform that has been specialized to handle blogging but could also be specialized for a thousand other applications.

I, along with others, are looking to take it to the next stage with k-log ready tools.  Userland are doing their part with things like Instant Outlining and RCS.

So, that's why Radio. [Curiouser and curiouser!]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 3:17 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Photo-Realistic Choices

Photoshop is clearly the hands-down winner for overall functionality but, frankly, is way overkill for the beginner.

WHICH APP TO USE? Sticking my toe in the digital photography pool, I hear about three applications for photo editing:

• Adobe Photoshop
• Adobe Photoshop Elements
• JASC Paint Shop Pro

Does anyone have advice on how to determine the right tool for the job? Is it logical to think that someone just starting in digital photography will find all they need in Photoshop Elements, and because it's from Adobe, the upgrade to Photoshop would be an easy transition?

Adobe Elements 2.0. Adobe has announced an new version of Elements. Version 2.0 adds a variety of new features and improvements including a Glossary of digital photography terms, Quick Fix dialog which can add immediate fixes in... [Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)]

[Steve Pilgrim's Radio Weblog]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 1:44 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Radio, Mindspring, and ftp

Update: My upstream to Mindspring works as advertised. I think all the problems were related to the BlueDomino ftp server locking up the Radio ftp driver. Once I stopped Radio from trying to upstream to BlueDomino.com everything at Mindspring worked fine.

That URL -- www.mindspring.com/~tfrazier/ -- still works and I can still connect and put files with a regular ftp client. I never really used the space much. I had a couple of subdirectories in it and I used to get Register.com to forward some URLs to those directories rather than pay for hosting accounts.

Steven has a little different setup and his settings might be of value to others trying to put a Radio weblog on a Mindspring account:

server: home.mindspring.com
path: /www
url: http://svore.home.mindspring.com
[X] check...passive mode.

I hope this helps
-Steven Vore

So do I. Thanks Steven! The URL above is Steven's weblog. Go check it out.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:01 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Update: Radio, BlueDomino.com, and ProFTPd

I recently setup a new domain at bluedomino.com, using their $8.95/mo plan. This runs less than half of what I pay Interland, and I can have it billed monthly to my credit card, where Interland wants to bill me annually.

But I can't get Radio to upstream to the BlueDomino servers. Seems they run ProFTPd 1.2.5rc1 as their ftp server, and this gives Radio fits and starts.

What's more, Blue Domino doesn't seem to have much of a tech support service. I can't be sure -- I've only just started using them. But so far it takes 2-3 days to get an e-mail from a human, and then it's pretty useless.

Contrast this to Radio support:
I post a note on the Radio discussion group and (usually) within hours I have a response from someone on the Radio team. And the resulting discussion gets the problem solved quickly -- either through references to existing posts or some new information.

Lawrence Lee has picked up the case on the ftp driver and is trying to debug what's happening. Since ProFTPd seems fairly popular among the Linux-based hosting services, I guess the Radio guys would like to understand it. Here's hoping he gets it solved shortly.

Update: Lawrence has successfully upstreamed to a subdirectory under my domin at BlueDomino.com. But I still can't do it. I continue to get the "buffer" errors. And I still don't have any help from Blue Domino tech support -- either via e-mail or through their supposedly LiveChat support. Harumph!

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:21 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Singing in the News

Newspapers Got The Beat?. " ' Can newspapers help make record companies obsolete? . - By Robin 'Roblimo' Miller - I just downloaded Internet Porn from The Washington Post's Web site. It's one of the quirkier songs available from MP3.washingtonpost.com , a section of the Post's site that allows local musicians to self-publish their work online for free. MP3 download sections are not yet common in daily newspapers, but if enough of them pick up on the idea, newspapers could becom... [The Shifted Librarian]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 1:00 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Night Watch

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:58 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

How to Succeed at Consulting

The Talent Myth [Ye Olde Phart]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:53 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Monday, July 15, 2002

Call Centers Represent Upstream Opportunity

Call centers are an emerging opportunity for Print Service Providers looking to move into upstream, value-added business. Already, if you call Microsoft's Certification & Training center, your call is answered by a Bertelsmann employee in Burbank, CA. If you call John Deere's dealer support line your call is answered by an employee at Midland Information Resources in Davenport, IA.

These companies handle the printing, inventory, and fulfillment tasks for training or parts manuals. It was a natural extension to begin handling the questions that go along with these products. A call center doesn't have to be a huge enterprise (Midland's has four employees), but running a call center is nothing like the printing business. It requires a whole new set of skills and understanding.

If you're interested in how call center management could fit into your business, or want to better understand the value proposition for such an operation, James' work is a good place to start.

Tog on call centers. Bruce Tognazzini (aka "Tog") has written an excellent piece about How Call Centers can Make or Break Companies. This talks about the value that a call centre call can add to the business as a whole.

Interestingly, this is exactly what I wrote yesterday, when finalising the Powerpoint presentation for my talk at IIM 2002 on "Knowledge management for call centres".

For the record, these are the six advanced KM for call centres points at the end of my presentation:

• Building 'communities of practice' within call centres
• Developing relationships between customers and the organisation
• Call centres as a strategic corporate asset
• Call centres as a source of innovation
• Incorporating call centre expertise into research and development teams
• Integrating training, usability testing and knowledge management

(For more on this topic, see my full article.) [Column Two]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:00 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Future of Print, Strategy

The User Time Forgot

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:43 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

HP Drops Middleware

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:34 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Liberty Alliance

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:33 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Books Make It Real. An Offer You Can't Refuse

What's The Problem?

Bill Turner : "Okay, do we really need all these books about weblogs? Is it really that complex a thing that we need instruction?... Personally, I don't think there's anything that a book can teach you on the subject, much less four books. It isn't rocket science." [jenett.radio] [via The Shifted Librarian]

Frankly Bill, it damn near is rocket science -- at least if you want to do anything more than post a little IM-type blather to a couple of friends. Anything more complex requires some knowledge of what's possible and the technology. Radio, Wiki, Zope, and the lot are Geek Toys. I spent over three weeks fiddling around before I got it, and I'm a reasonably astute person who has used the Internet daily for years.

More importantly, you need to know why you should be doing it. The few adults outside the blogging community who have some idea of what blogging is think it's just the chatty-app described above. And that application has about zero appeal to anyone over the age of 14. You're not about to get mass adoption with this as the reference model. I still have trouble getting anyone I know to understand that blogging is not just a trifle suited only to the feckless and unemployed.

But even if you add in all the people who have heard of blogging and think it's useless, you still have a tiny fraction of the web-enabled population. As Michael Wilson says:

Oh stop already
Look, there's a simple fact that seems to elude most of the Blogerati, if I may coin a term. Most people (something that has no statistically relevant deviation from EVERYONE) have NO idea that blogs exist. The books about blogging need to be there. We're in a pretty self-congradulatory medium here. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that an inaccurate book is better than no book.

I have a long-held belief -- books make things real. Whether you read them for fantasy, relaxation, or education, a good book has a way of bringing its subject to life -- even ethereal techno-things like blogging. Books add credence and credibility. They make the intangible tangible. Dave Winer claims he doesn't understand books about blogging. I think our fearless leader has missed the boat on this one. And the general uproar over badly written or useless blogging books is misguided.

As |Matt| says:

I think this is a key point. When I step back and think about it I've had a lot of conversations recently where the subject of blogging came up because people asked me about what I was doing. There then followed a conversation where I try to get across what it's all about. In desperation I usually end up with some sort of half-baked: "It's like a web diary" explanation. This misses so much of value but there you go. These are people who know what the Internet is, use wordprocessors and email, maybe even write web pages.

And here's uber-librarian Jenny Levine summarizing nicely the need for books on the subject:

I covered blogs at our SLS Tech Summit in March, but it was still too confusing and irrelevant for most of the librarians that attended that session. Next time, I'll be able to hold up these books, and they'll take me more seriously. Sorry, but that's how most of the world still works. They'll purchase them for their libraries, too, which means the concept of blogs will officially be cataloged and indexed in our collective memory (not just the memory of those of us who live online).

What's The Deal

One of the things that kills books about blogs is the shelf-time they spend between the time they were written and the time they go to press. This is a fast-moving area. That really is visible in the Blood books, and I suspect will also be evident in the O'Reilly and BlogRoots books.

I know how to fix this. I work (at least for a bit longer) for one of the new, Internet-based publishing companies. My employer can get a book from manuscript to finished product in less than a month. Once available it's listed in every book distribution database in America and is available to ship within 2-3 days of order.

What's more, my particular company is also partly owned by Barnes & Noble, and has a deal to get top-quality how-to, self-help, and tech books into the stores and on shelves in B&N retail stores.

So it's theoretically possible (yeah, even feasible) to get a real book into real stores in time for it to be timely, relevant, and useful.

Dave's second complaint is this:

Another problem with books about blogs (blooks?) is that as I read them I want to comment, more than any other kind of book (I've been reading a lot lately). Well, how do you do that? Will these books be on the Web? Will they have paragraph-level permalinks?

There are a lot of options for how this might look, but the short answer is yes, this book can be available on the web, in formats that allow comments, bookmarks, etc.

Here's the Offer

When it's published any royalties (after recovery of actual publishing fees) will go to some charity -- maybe the Heart Assn, or the American Cancer Society. (I'll post the royalty reports and check copies so you can see.) I'll even avoid putting my name anywhere in or on the book, if that makes you feel better.

It won't be

"a philosophical book to have lasting value, but to do so, they should have gotten a social butterfly to edit it, one who crosses all the lines with ease, someone who likes everyone and who everyone likes, but somehow doesn't have to kiss ass to do it." -- Dave Winer

We could use a conceptual manual for blogging, klogging, connecting, managing, etc. One that could be updated and revised every few months, if needed, but still be tangible to the outside world.

Call me crazy, but I think it would work. I'm willing to try, if a few of you want to contribute the content. I can post a draft shell for the TOC at QuickTopics and we can start anytime. It's all up to you.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 4:34 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Presentation Wars

Powerpoint In The Coliseum. Oops - I missed Round Two of the Sippey versus Harpold clash of the Powerpoint titans , so now I'm also catching up on Round Three . I agree that Harpold won round two , if you can use the word "won" for that presentation. Hey, why no RSS feed for this epic battle?!

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 3:36 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Blogging Collides With The Printed World.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 8:13 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Blogging Books and Trackback

Look, there's a simple fact that seems to elude most of the Blogerati, if I may coin a term. Most people (something that has no statistically relevant deviation from EVERYONE) have NO idea that blogs exist. The books about blogging need to be there. We're in a pretty self-congradulatory medium here. Hell, I'd even go so far as to say that an inaccurate book is better than no book.

» I think this is a key point.  When I step back and think about it I've had a lot of conversations recently where the subject of blogging came up because people asked me about what I was doing.  There then followed a conversation where I try to get across what it's all about.  In desparation I usually end up with some sort of half-baked: "It's like a web diary" explanation.  This misses so much of value but there you go.  These are people who know what the Internet, use wordprocessors and email, maybe even write web pages.

So the value of the books, even the bad ones, is as Jenny points out:

"Now I find myself in the same situation with blogs. I plan to implement them for every service area at SLS and on a personal level for staff internally and yet, I'd be surprised if even 10% of our staff understand what they are. I covered blogs at our SLS Tech Summit in March, but it was still too confusing and irrelevant for most of the librarians that attended that session. Next time, I'll be able to hold up these books, and they'll take me more seriously. Sorry, but that's how most of the world still works. They'll purchase them for their libraries, too, which means the concept of blogs will officially be cataloged and indexed in our collective memory (not just the memory of those of us who live online)."

People are going to read these books.  Lots of 'em.  I hope Blogger.com have a good relationship with their server suppliers!

Blogging is currently a one-way medium. Best you can do is have 2 (ok, "N") people subscribing to each other's monologues. But with TrackBack you close the loop and notify your conversation partner that it's now her/his turn. Now you can TRULY have interchange. Something that's only hackishly possible at the moment. (Check the userland discussions for the number of times people ask for "comment notifications".)

» I agree.  I think TrackBack is a very important technology.  I'm reaching for a metaphor but can't find a good one.

But effectively it's the difference between a broadcast system and a network.  Blogs alone are too much like public broadcasting.  You send and if you're lucky you get back letters and phone calls.  With TrackBack people can be wired in, feedback loops will be established, communities will grow, it'll all come alive.

 

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 8:12 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Sunday, July 14, 2002

John Patrick Adds to the Call for Grassroots Trusted Computing

John Patrick on digital IDs for spam control. Yes, yes, yes! Pardon my euphoria, but I'm really pleased to see such a thoughtful and seasoned observer as John Patrick linking use of voluntary digital IDs to spam control: ...

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 11:33 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

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