b.cognosco
Where leaping to conclusions is my primary form of forward motion.
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Book Reviews
Recently
Harvard Frontline Strategy Conference
Web Builder Conference and Web Builder Tools
Learning to Make Better Decisions
Defining KM
printChannel To Cease Operations
Interview with Tom Genova of Rampage Systems
Ideas Are To Talent As Execution Is To Practice.
RAID-on
Honey, I Shrunk the Conference
IA-CMS Mailing List
More Info For weblogRecentPosts
Tuesday, September 17, 2002
Glory Be! Jenny The Power Librarian Returns
I've read the tales of woe, cried the tears of the downtrodden, felt the fears of the huddled masses. But it's over now. The blogoshpere's prodigal InfoMaven has returned. Welcome back, Jenny.
A Very Shifted Library. Thanks to Lori Bell, I've been scanning the Memorial Hall Library's web site (they're located in Andover, Massachusetts). They do a great job of providing remote access to their databases, live online chat with a librarian, a browsable catalog (instead of just a searchable one), and they're even circulating Gemster ebooks . Lori led me there, though, because the MHL is yet another library circulating Audible MP3 audiobooks . What I found interesting, though, was that... [Source: The Shifted Librarian]
Harvard Frontline Strategy Conference
Another interesting conference to add to the futures list. Let's see what JR has to say after it's done.
I am going to be blogging the Harvard Frontline Strategy Conference at the Ritz-Carlton in Boston on the 17th. Bennis, Davenport, and Siebel will be speaking. Should be fun and there are seats still available. If you are interested in attending, let me know. [
Web Builder Conference and Web Builder Tools
Personal note: catalog Scoble's Web Builder Conference for future reference. I'm looking to change the focus of shows I attend -- go more toward genuine conference/seminars (sort of like my very first Seybold Seminars in Boston around 1989 or so) vs trade show/expos where the conference is often an afterthought. The Web Builder Conference sounds like it fits.Personal note Numero Dos: I didn't realize Scoble was with Thunder Lizard (or may be is Thunder Lizard.) I used to know some guys there years ago when they first started out doing QuarkXpress seminars -- at least I think it's the same company. The world keeps getting smaller.
Scoble's endorsement may convince me to buy TopStyle. I've used HomeSite for several years and it ships with TopStyle Lite. I got to messing with CSS a couple of weeks ago with some new templates, realized how woefully inadequate my CSS knowledge was, and nearly bought TSPro on the Spot. (No, I can't bring myself to use Dreamweaver or any other snazzy editor that costs $350-$400 to do the simple, basic, occasional HTML pages I do.) I'm really teetering now. One positive comment from the peanut gallery will put me over the edge.
Getting back into Weblogging. Thanks to Chris Pirillo for snapping me out of my blog-free rut that I've been in.I had dinner with Chris and Gretchen on Saturday night and Chris showed me some stuff that just got me fired up about this industry again.
[...]
What did he show me? Moveable Type for one. I'm pretty impressed. Although I didn't see enough to make me move off of Radio.
And a tool called Top Style which lets you build standards-based Web sites. I've been playing with it the past few days and it's awesome for building CSS and XHTML-based Web sites and templates.
Which brings me to standards and Web sites.
You all might know that I planned the Web Builder conference that happened last week in Las Vegas. What fun. I got to hang out with Jeffrey Zeldman, Molly Holzschlag, Jason Kottke, Meg Hourihan, Dori Smith, Scott Johnson, Marc Canter, and many other geeky Web types. [...more] [
Learning to Make Better Decisions
James Vornov is a director of clinical research for a pharmaco, and part-time faculty member in the Neuroscience department at Johns Hopkins. He's launched a project weblog, On Deciding...Better, dedicated to his learning about Decision Theory and the practice of Deciding. Here is just one excerpt from some of his introductory pages:I intend this website to be a tool to help myself and others learn how to make better decisions. There's a philosophy behind the site that I began to document in The Project, but its an unfinished work.About a year ago, through some contacts at my work, I started exploring Decision Theory.
By the way, I tend to talk about Decision Theory, the abstract concepts of deciding rather than Decision Analysis, which generally refers to a more applied field of analyzing situations.
To start, I recommend two books which were my start, Making Hard Decisions by Clemens and Thinking and Deciding by Baron. Both are very readable college/graduate level textbooks that will take you through the field.
After that, the kind of problems you face will dictate what kind of tools you need.
James showed up in my referrer logs, but let's not confuse this with one of those "you link to me, I link to you" return-the-favor things. Far from it. Where am I ever going to cross paths with a Baltimore-based clinical research director, or hobnob with faculty at Johns Hopkins? I'm not. Not through any normal channels.
This is one more example of the weblog phenomenon blasting away the barriers to discourse and knowledge sharing. Already in my brief blogging career I have shared conversations with men and women of exceptional intellect and accomplishment, people whose understanding and knowledge far outstrip my own. If I can give back but a tenth of what I gain, this weblog will be a success.
Monday, September 16, 2002
Defining KM
A series of quotable, and thought-provoking, definitions of KM, ranging from the ethereal to the technical. My own definition? KM is the ordered placement of what you know, so that others may take best advantage of it.
Definitions of knowledge management.What's Your Definition of KM?. Here are some definitions of KM from leading KM theorists and practitioners. [excited utterances] via [
printChannel To Cease Operations
Another small but innovative print e-procurement provider has announced a shutdown -- victim of pressures in the financial crucible formed between the shrinking economy and venture capital expectations.printChannel, a San Francisco-based provider of web technologies for on-line print procurement and order management, was funded by WarburgPincus. printChannel CEO Oliver Pflug last week announced plans to cease operations by November 15.
This closure highlights the difficulties of selling technology and infrastructure services to an industry dominated by small- to mid-size businesses. Technology is often too transient and intangible to be a comfortable purchase for such companies -- those that can build their own will do so. Those that cannot will often just do without.
While there are still a few players offering pure technology services to the print industry, the trend is to have such services come from one of two fronts:
1) Infrastructure services provided by heavy equipment vendors such as Heidelberg and Creo, designed as a value-added service for equipment purchasers.
2) Internal services from larger print providers who tie them closely to tangible goods delivery.
In the end web technologies will become transparent, an expected norm for doing business. The shift from specialized providers to expected service is a normal, but still painful, stage in the maturation of this technology.
Interview with Tom Genova of Rampage Systems
Keith Hevenor of Electronic Publishing interviews Tom Genova of Rampage in this article. Tom touches on the incorporation of PDF into the Rampage workflow, and covers the company's philosophy. The article gives a bit of insight into Rampage's plans for accomodating JDF and for becoming more compatible with some of the larger print production systems (i.e. HeiPort and Creo InSite.)Sunday, September 15, 2002
Ideas Are To Talent As Execution Is To Practice.
Poorly grounded, ill-conceived, unlikely, improbable ideas may well be easy to spew. But executing such ideas, no matter how well done, isn't going to lead anywhere. So yes, Krzysztof, ideas do matter. And the idea that Microsoft grew to be one of the world's most significant companies without innovation is untenable.
Great business without innovation. You don't need an ounce of innovation in order to have a very successful business. At least according to David Wheeler. I guess David's intention was just to show Microsoft in bad light but if you put 2 and 2 together, the inevitable conclusion is that you don't need any innovative ideas in order to have good business, sometimes even extremely good business. I guess many people (those hung up on "innovation") don't get, but it's just one of many examples that "innovation" per se is not equal to "good" or "profitable". Ideas are worthless, execution is what matters. [
Wheeler's point -- that Microsoft products are not innovative -- may or may not be accurate, but it is irrelevant. Gates is one of the most innovative businessmen since Rockefeller. He has steam rolled his competition. He has refined the concept of "good enough" to an art form. He has built a virtual religion on the Redmond campus with tens of thousands of converts. He has arguably created more millionaires than anyone in history. These are not the accomplishments of some mindless troglodyte executing flawlessly on the concept of ditch digging.
Frederick Taylor literally remade the industrial revolution because of his ideas about the nature of execution. Henry Ford remade the auto industry because of his ideas about the nature of manufacturing. Ideas matter. But good ones require development -- deeper thought, better questioning, perhaps even collaboration. Only then does execution matter.
John Nordstrom is credited with uttering the phrase, "Execute, don't innovate." But at the heart of Nordstrom's success is the idea that customer service matters, and Nordstrom's innovation was to find new ways of serving his customers.
Ideas are talent, execution is practice. In professional sports I'll place my money on the team with more talent over the team with more practice any day. Business is no different. All else being equal, execution is the determining factor. But if you're executing flawlessly on the wrong idea, you're doomed.
RAID-on
I have just one suggestion, Hugh. American Invisible has been down but not out due to a failed drive. To keep this hassle to a minimum next time invest in an inexpensive RAID card and an extra drive. Set it for mirror (RAID 1) and the next time you have a drive failure you won't miss a beat. And it takes less than an hour to rebuld a second drive.
At Last!
I can't believe how much time and trouble it takes to install a new C: drive, operating system, Office, drivers, firewall, anti-virus, then persuade Norton that we really did renew our subscription for a year, not just for the initial 90 days that Dell gave us, then restore all our data, then install my blogging software, then configure it, then....
Sorry, I'm ranting. I'll get back to work on Time, Please. I just hope this disk lasts longer than the first one did.
[
Honey, I Shrunk the Conference
Some notes from the PDF Conference at the shrinking Seybold San Francisco. I didn't make it this year (for the first time in years) and the only thing I really regret not seeing was some of the web services sessions, including the one by Jake Savin. Maybe I can pick that up somewhere else.
It's been several years since I attended Seybold San Francisco and, given the economy and the somber time of year, I expected the conference to be scaled back. Still, it was a bit sad to see that the North Hall of Moscone was closed off, and the expo on the South Hall floor was pulled in from the walls, bracketed by black curtains. I remember when it was wall-to- wall in both halls and it would take a day and a half to properly explore all the booths. Had I been ambitious, I could have hit all the vendors on my "surgical strike" list in an hour and a half. So I paced myself by attending sessions, eating, walking around the block, eating, talking to vendors, eating, seeing industry friends, and eating. I did not lose weight on this trip.[more...][
If you're interested in how some big-time publishers are building their businesses around the PDF format this is worth a read.
IA-CMS Mailing List
The geek factor on this list is decidedly higher than on SIGIA-L, but the initial few posts look interesting. Much for me to learn. Some months back Jenny Levine at TSL introduced me SIGIA-L, which seems geared primarily to GUI designers. IA-CMS seems, at first glance, to be oriented more to database structure. Both are areas that need much discussion.
New mailing list. David Heller has just started up a new list, IA-CMS, devoted to the application of information architecture to content management... [
More Info For weblogRecentPosts
This mod to weblogRecentPosts is a stellar improvement for those using Radio as a personal or professional KM tool. Now a quick glance at the Desktop Home Page shows you which posts are published, and to which Categories. Excellent!
Update to weblogRecentPosts.Rapidly becoming one of my how did I live without it productivity tools for Radio blogging.
[Bravo! weblogRecentPosts tells you if it's published or not..
Brian St. Pierre has modified my weblogRecentPosts hack to tell you which items haven't yet been published. His timing couldn't have been better -- I have three unpublished items at the moment, and to see them displayed as such is delightful.
I've incorporated Brian's changes to my copy also, so jump to either of our posts to download the code and read the instructions. :)
[Deadly Bloody Serious]
This required almost no effort to setup -- I had it working in less than two minutes -- and it is precisely the sort of thing that must be built if Radio is too work in a consultative/confidential environment. It isn't enough to take great care in clicking categories. The default Radio setting of sending everything to the Home page practically ensures that you will, at some point, erroneously publish a private post in public. Not good.
While this litle fix won't solve the bigger issue, it is a great interim step and works like a charm.
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