b.cognosco

Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.

Most Popular

Book Reviews

Recently

Sunday, August 11, 2002

Teaching the Next Generation of KM Leaders

By 2017, some 68 percent of today's librarians will have retired, according to recent estimates in the news (Lynch). President and Mrs. Bush have launched an initiative through the Institute of Museum and Library Services (IMLS) to recruit "a generation of librarians." Since schools of library and information science traditionally attract second or third career professionals, the aging of the information professions is a cause for concern. In addition, many new information-related jobs outside libraries now attract LIS graduates and compete with libraries as employers.

This poses several key challenges for the 56 ALA-accredited schools in North America. (For a list, check out the ALISE site at http://www.alise.org.) These schools must keep curricula vital for new professionals in a variety of settings, attract enough young recruits to fill the vacancies caused by retirements and to fill new types of jobs, and provide choices and flexibility in scheduling that appeal to full- and part-time students, both those pursuing a first career and those changing careers. It is a great time to enter the information professions, but one that poses challenges for LIS schools and employers, as a new generation of information professionals comes on the scene and prepares to tackle jobs in a variety of environments. [...]

I've been looking for a grad student in LIS to help me think through some business information flow issues, so this caught my eye. I know most small businesses don't have the resources to hire an information professional but, from my experience, small businesses need information help more than anyone. And the article discusses how LIS programs are more frequently showing students all the possible career paths they can take.

The careers that attract students to LIS programs aren't always what they end up pursuing. In fact, many of them come into the program without realizing all the career possibilities. One current student told me he started with an interest in special libraries, but, "as I have progressed, I realized that the skills that librarians have of analyzing information sources, or organizing information, and in researching are vital not only in libraries but in government and private business." His new goals are "to use the skills I have acquired to begin a career in knowledge management or competitive intelligence," with the ultimate goal of being in a position that will "have an effect on strategic planning."

Now that's the kind of person I'm looking for.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 11:46 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Managing Local and Remote URLs in Radio

Jon Udell is moving his weblog to new home using Radio and external FTP site. One of the gotchas he found:

"- If you hardcode your site address anywhere, you'll get burned. I did this in a few places. For example, I had:

http://radio.weblogs.com/0100887/stories/2002/03/16/storylist.html

instead of:

<%radio.weblog.getUrl()%>stories/2002/03/16/storylist.html"

Right. In fact, I use my own macro to do just that and little bit more. <%ifLocal()%> macro, which looks like this:

on ifLocal (url1="/", url2=radio.macros.weblogUrl()) {
  if radioResponder.flSameMachine {return (url1)} else {return (url2)}
}

One of the problems with Radio that I noticed is that it's not easy to produce link that works properly off- and on-line. Local links look like this: http://127.0.0.1:5335/gems/toolbox.css, and external links look like this: http://radio.weblogs.com/0106541/gems/toolbox.css. I use external stylesheets and often work offline, so it's real problem for me. ifLocal macros always generates proper link and works for images, files and pretty much everything else. Just put this as a value for href or src attribute: <%ifLocal()%>gems/toolbox.css and you're done. [toolbox]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 11:05 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Automating Radio Deployment

Steve points to some scripts Jon Udell is writing to smooth the deployment of multiple Radio blogs over at InfoWorld. I can't even deploy Radio on my laptop, but I think it's due more to some intellectual deficiency than any serous technological problem. Maybe I'll get it right when I have more time.

Udell's post is focused more on replicting all the little changes we do to personalize our instance of Radio -- a good thing since it's likely a good many of us personalize at least some of the prefs once we get used to it.

EVEN PILOTS WITH 8000 HOURS RUN CHECKLISTS FOR PROCEDURES
Jon's checklist is handy if you change PC's, move your site or simply want to understand Radio better

Radio deployment descriptors. A few weeks ago, I spent some time showing an InfoWorld colleague, Mark Jones, how I use Radio. As always in this kind of situation, I was reminded of: ... [Jon's Radio]

[Rodent Regatta]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 10:41 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Can Small Business Use Web Services

Even when it does occur, the implementation is most often a straight routinization of their old manual process -- it is exceedingly rare for a printer or publisher to completely re-engineer a process to take advantge of the inherent a nature of EDI and B2B e-commerce.

I don't know whether these initiatives will lead directly to services that the average small enterprise can use -- BEA and IBM tend to focus on gargantuan implemenations no small business can afford. But if they can get the groundwork right, and seed the tide of easily accessible services for things like invoicing, POs, order confirmations, etc., it could make a major difference in the way the print industry operates in the future.

WEB SERVICES FOR SMALL BUSINESS AUTOMATION

For years it has been extremely expensive for a small business to automate key aspects of its supply chain. Unless driven by a large customer (Wal-Mart and Procter & Gamble mind) small businesses seldom took advantage of EDI feeds of order acknowledgements, accounts payable invoices, etc. Instead, many well run small businesses printed purchase orders and faxed them, hand-entered receipts of goods and manually keyed in invoices for supplier shipments.

Web services has the potential to bring on dramatic change. With today's generation of accounting and business management software, small businesses are prepared to remove much of the human intervention that was required in the supply chain. This article shows that the trend starts in the BigCo's, but the prospects for the Forgotten 5000 are clear.

Tech giants back new Web services. Microsoft, IBM and BEA Systems plan to announce new specifications that they hope will spur use of emerging software designed to foster business interaction over the Internet. [CNET News.com] [Rodent Regatta]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 8:18 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Playing With Wireless

I should have done this months ago.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 4:13 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

PickWick Hotel Rating

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 3:33 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Rethinking the Intranet Staff

My limited experience has been, in fact, that IT quite often does strangle intranets and most any collaborative effort with a lock-down, security-centric approach that is rarely warranted. Certainly some things need strong protection, but the blanket application of strong security technologies and approaches have really limited the usabiltiy of intranets I've been a part of -- for both large and small companies.

This, in turn, limited users' ability to easily contribute and update content, leading to some of the problems noted in the article.

Intranets need team players. This is the title of an excellent article in New Media Zero by Steve Lodewyke of Think Lateral. This short article contains some important insights into the management of intranets.

Steve observes that "Business-minded information professionals are needed, people who can open dialogues between departments to create improved products, services and systems. It will be these 'communication altruists' who will draw together IT, corporate librarians and HR in order to make the corporate intranet flourish. It's crucial that employees trust the content on their intranet, as well as the team responsible for its implementation. Currently, many companies recognise that their intranet is becoming a bank of information that no-one has any faith in, with no discernible knowledge management in place. It's time to give the task to the communicators, to cut through the chaos. Together with the Webmaster they will be able to create inter-departmental links to pull the side together. A game plan can then be devised to focus on business imperatives such as corporate culture, rather than technology. More importantly, they can identify where return on investment will be delivered. This quantifiable index of intranet success is what's needed to win the support of the directors."

The number of intranets I come across where the IT department has managed to strangle an intranet, often at birth. As Steve points out "When intranets first came into play, many could see the business sense in having one, but were unsure of where to start. It was customary to give the task to IT, because the intranet was seen as a technology solution. Although this strategy has delivered a lot of intranets, their quality is now under review. Information technologists don't have a monopoly on intranet common sense and companies are aware that their intranet isn't the open communication tool that their people need. Intranets are about communication. Obviously the better the technology, the better it will perform. But a great technical solution won't make an intranet work if information is hard to find or out of date."

There is nothing I can add. Steve has said it all.

Martin White [Intranet Focus Blog]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 3:08 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Collaborative Work and Intranets

The intranet is not a coporate brochure damnit!.

Collaborative working using an intranet. Many of the dot.com magazines have perished, but Fast Company seems to keep going, though I admit I look at... [Intranet Focus Blog]

» Good pickup on how so many companies still have a narrow view of what an intranet can be.  A good intranet is an information ecosystem and not just a magazine site for the corporate communications team.

The questionnaire mentioned looks interesting too.  It is geared towards large companies and seeks to determine:

• the potential value from developing a collaborative organization in your company.
• the current behavioral obstacles in your organization.
• the extent of collaborative levers currently in place in your company.

however I'm sure that many of it's questions could be usefully tailored to fit other situations. [Curiouser and curiouser!]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 2:55 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Saturday, August 10, 2002

Integrated Blogging Functions and KM

Integrating klogs with Big-KM.

In order for klogging to be successfully I think it is going to have to come to an understanding with Big-KM.

Example: BigCo has invested half a million dollars in a big knowledge management system for their world-wide operations. This kind of investment can become a lode-stone around any other systems neck. For klogging to thrive here it is going to have to integrate.

Here's one idea I have for how this could work.

1. Extend Big-KM System-X so that it can aggregate RSS feeds like Radio, MT and others do now.
2. Extend your klogging software to allow per-post meta data. (liveTopics does this for Radio)
3. For each project in System-X define a set of topics that will act as trigger phrases for that project
4. Get the kloggers to use those topics when they want to involve a post in a particular project
5. Now subscribe System-X to every klog in the organization and watch as it indexes and archives all that information. Each project grabbing only those postings that are appropriate (by use of the trigger phrases)
6. This means that the klogs add value to the big-KM system. Suddenly it doesn't just have the dry dusty project documention, but all the live vibrant stuff that people are really doing!
7. Now extend System-X to generate a per-project RSS feed.
8. If I am on the project I can subscribe to this feed. Now instead of receiving email from System-X or having to go to an arbitrary web page, I get all the "official" project stuff (new documents, forms etc...) delivered in my RSS stream.

Closing the loop between the big-KM and the klog so that they both add value to each other.

Just an idea... [Curiouser and curiouser!]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 6:37 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 
Categories: Collaboration, Strategy, Technology

The First Remote Post

I have to say that over a dsl line at both ends this works about as well as locally. I could get to like this. It's still not quite as nifty as having Radio deployed on my laptop (where I could work regardless of connectivity) but it's pretty darn good. Now, next step is to figure out how to make a VPN.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 2:36 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Failing Badly

There's an interesting article in the current Atlantic Monthly about the likelihood that stricter security systems will make Americans less safe than they'd be otherwise. In it, one of the foremost experts in the world on cryptography talks about how certain systems fail badly -- by which he means that when they fail, as they inevitably do, the consequences of the failed system are worse than the consequences of never having had such a system in the first place. The full shutdowns and total rescreenings of passengers following airport security breaches are one of his examples -- when these systems fail, they do so in a way that is extremely costly and painful. Interesting in its own right, and unquestionably true. It got me to thinking about the broader implications of failing badly -- that a really well-designed system fails well, and that that might be a source of compelling competitive advantage in business -- that one's systems are designed such that the inevitable failures in any given component are isolated and prevented from causing more widespread and costly failures. While I haven't even finished the article yet, it seems that systems that fail well are designed so that components are modular, with responsibility for only one small area of functionality, and that surrounding systems are designed to catch and isolate the consequences of any failure.

Now, neither Scott nor I have really thougth this through, but it seems likely that failing to adequately consider the consequences of failure is at the heart of all sorts of major screw-ups -- ranging from California wildfires started by the Forest Service to the Worldcom debacle.

I wonder how often a failure point is observed but not noted by someone in a company, and I wonder if the open use of klogs within a company could broaden exposure to those failure points, thereby hardening the system and improving competitive advantage?

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:44 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Factory Tours -- BN.com

This week I went into the Barnes & Noble distribution center in Memphis, TN. I've been there before but it still amazes me -- 300,000 sq. ft. of space housing a $12 million automated book handling system that guides human pickers with RF-based scanners and then transports, sorts, matches, packages, weighs, stamps, and ships 10s of thousands of packages a day -- error free. It's one of the most incredible things I've ever seen.

The level of software integration they have achieved is incredible. Sometimes orders are processed in the warehouse within an hour or so of being placed on the web. This really is the future of book sales.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:23 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Untethered -- Going Wireless and Seeking Remote Access

The 614+ has a much nicer router with built-in web page for admin, plus 802.11b and enhanced 22Mbps wireless. It was only $119 with a $20 mail-in, and a PCMCIA card was just $59 with a $10 mail-in.

I haven't tested the remote access yet, but it sure was easier to configure. And the wireless is way cool. I haven't really played with WiFi before, but it was a cinch to configure and get access. Now I need to find some of those war chalking places and log in, tune in, and turn on.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:15 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Browser Wars

I got started on this browser kick because some of my favorite blogs starting using activeRenderer for archive pages, blogrolls, and such. I can't read them in Opera -- it doesn't support some DOM and Javascript functions that Barrot uses to create the collapsable menus.

Mozilla supports them, but it just does not run on my system -- not v1.0, or any of the v1.1 Betas I've tried. Besides, it's full of other bugs and anomolies (at least on my Win2k system.)

So I'm stuck. I can't read a number of the very nice blogs I've been reading until Opera gets with the program and supports DOM. I hope that is soon -- it's the only real weakness it has.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 12:06 AM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Thursday, August 8, 2002

liveTopics, TrackBack, and Other Radio Enhancements

Let's see what's on the slab....

Well in the last couple of days I have been working hard on the liveTopics 1.0 release.  It's so close I can almost feel it.  We're testing and hopefully will have the kinks worked out in the next couple of days then I can finally get this sucka out the door.

Also I'm really besotted with TrackBack but haven't seen it work the way I would like yet.  So I've rolled a TrackBack server in Frontier that comes with a Radio client.  The two communicate with a simple XML-RPC interface that would allow any klogging system to join in.

At the moment the Radio client automatically harvests each posting for links (when you submit it) and automagically pings each one.  The ping contains the permalink for the post, the Url of your weblog, the title of the post, your name & email address.  But you can drop most of this information you don't want to pass it.  I guess some people will also want fine-grained control over what they ping.  That shouldn't be too hard.

Along with this are some macros to show your TrackBack information against each item.

At the moment the server is hosted on my laptop which isn't ideal but is good enough for testing.  The next job is to find a better host and then look at adding a simple federation mechanism.  That would allow lots of different people to provide TrackBack servers and share the results.

More on this later. [Curiouser and curiouser!]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:23 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Social Capital, Intellectual Capital, and Klogs

K-logs, knowledge sharing, and social capital.

Blogging Alone.

Stephen Dulaney applies Indicators of Social Capital to Web Logs.

1. Levels of giving (blog ecossystem) reflects people's propensity to give to others when they themselves may not directly benefit. The economy of giving links.
2. Participation and engagement (What we do when we blog Meg Hourihan) gauge of people's involvement in a range of groups and associations, both formal and informal. Ray Ozzie adds a nice contribution to "Why we Blog"
3. Reciprocity within the community (everybodyblogit) is the measure to which people can rely on their community to help in times of need. How to Start a Weblog (For Professinal Journalists)
4. Generalized trust that people have in other individuals and groups, and how safe they feel in their daily interactions with others.
5. Trust towards public officials and institutions or the measure of people's confidence in the institutions of society.
6. Social Norms (Lessig) the rules, belief, morals and habits that regulate behaviour.
7. Attitudinal variables (blogtree) important to social capital or individuals' belief about themselves, their place, and their tolerance of others, levels of acceptance, motivations and sense of connectedness.
8. Confidence in the continuation of social and political relationships for the future.

This list is from the work titled Framework for the measurment of Social Capital in New Zealand which was prepared by Anne Spellerberg and assisted by the social capital programme team. page 16 of the (link to pdf found here)

Do these apply to an Intranet klogging cluster?

I'm sure they do, with a few differences.

1. More klogger than blogger. Kloggers are also members of the large, amorphous population of blogspace. As people are socialized first into a local klogspace, this outside affiliation may be lessened.
    
2. Colleagues first. Second, you define your focus of attention by your work more than your passions and curiousity. Your formal affilliations (your chain of command, your team, your stakeholders) and informal ones (your office network, ad hoc teams) fill your days, and your klogs.  
    
3. Work cultures. Social capital within an enterprise is strongly flavored by personality, policy, institutional memory (institutional rumor?), regional culture, and occupational culture.
    
4. Personal fences. Do you keep your social circles apart? Many people take care about mixing work, family, friends, politics, and faith. Do you want your bondage master, your bowling team, and your quality circle to know about each other through you? when people at work see your personal blogs, how does that affect your working relationships? This visibility biases what people write.  
    
5. Intellectual property. Work is more a Free Agent Nation than ever. Portability of knowledge and experience is a career asset. Most employers claim that everything employees write using company IT gear is the employer's property. This creates a conflict of interest.  

[a klog apart]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:19 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

The Failure of Transcopyright

[...]Ted Nelson's concepts of transclusion and transcopyright belong to a similar paradigm where content is value and links are mere mechanics, an outside vehicle for the transmittal of content rather than the item of value itself. In its fully implemented state, transcopyright sees a link from A to B as A using something owned by B, which readers should pay for in the form of a micropayment. This makes perfect sense in a traditional, product oriented economy where content is king. B manufactured a product which As readers consumed and should therefore pay for. After Google, it makes no sense at all. The economy of links is not product oriented. It is service oriented, and the service is the link. The link is an action rather than an item; an event, rather than a metaphor [...]

This puts things in a perspective I never considered. I suspect the treatise will fall on a lot of deaf ears (the Danish Newspaper Association?) but with the rise of more google-like entities it is only a matter of time before online resources that refuse links become isolated and rarely-traveled bypasses on the web.

The value of linking.

Links and Power: The Political Economy of Linking on the Web. (SOURCE:a klog apart)-Where does Phil get this articles? Thanks!<QUOTE>Search engines like Google interpret links to a web page as objective, peer-endorsed and machine-readable signs of value. Links have become the currency of the Web. With this economic value they also have power, affecting accessibility and knowledge on the Web.</QUOTE> [Roland Tanglao's Weblog]

Looks as though I missed this the first time round. Thank you Roland for catching it this time. [McGee's Musings]

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 9:07 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

More Flexible News Scanning Needed

Radio Wishlist - Tune news aggregation intervals up and down..

Bryce Yehl tossed a coin in the fountain:

Radio Wish: Finer configuration of aggregation frequency.

One thing that sucks about falling behind in Radio's news aggregator: new items will continue to flow in while you're still dealing with the old ones. The "sticky" checkboxes in myRadio help to cope with this problem, but that only goes so far (especially when you have a serious backlog).

I'd like to configure Radio so that it automatically runs the news scan less frequently, perhaps once per day. Coupled with that, I want buttons in the browser to scan immediately and temporarily disable automatic scans.

Why make news collection a quiet background activity? Resources, for one: you don't want syndication confused with denial of service.

klogging calls for more frequent updating of select partner/colleague feeds. Sometimes polling every three minutes is the right thing to do.

Posted by:  Terry Frazier at 8:54 PM  | Permanent Link  | Trackback URL | 

Syndication

Contact

 

Presence

 

 
 ICQ

 

 

 

www.flickr.com More of GratefulZed's photos

This Page was last updated: Wed, 02 Jul 2008 22:06:57 GMT