Build It (and they won't come)

Call them ECMs or KM Hubs or Knowledge Nets or enterprise portals. Yesterday's sand castles? Meet tomorrow's ivory towers without the sustaining investment of your content producers. Here are five KM construction fictions and the corrections necessary to debunk the myths and get your users engaged as participants.

Construction Myth 1: Increased traffic to your site(s) means that users feel compelled to share their own experiences.

The perennial, time-tested truth is that people who love to learn don't share that love for what they learn (or care to share). How do we make it worth their while?

Myth #2: Producing content is its own reward -- Users are inspired by altruism, team play, and a sense of community.

Turning users into contributors requires that we architect searches that highlight who the contributors are along with the volume and nature of what they're contributing. What are some common recogition programs that can be applied here?

Myth #3: Users want to stay in-the-loop and feel compelled to check in by using a central KM system to stay up-to-date.

No 12 step program can move forward until the addict admits that they have an addiction -- in this case relying on email to provide a dashboard-like visibility into what's fresh and noteworthy on an organizational level. How can the addict be weaned from the isolation of 1:1 asynchronous communication so that their comfort zone includes RSS readers, search alerts, and subscription feeds for staying on top of their priorities and moving targets?

Myth #4: Your search engine is revving like never before. Everyone is using it. So content submissions should be edging up too, right?

Enterprise systems are saddled with the tags we force on them to label their content baggage. But the more control we exert on our metadata the more pressure we put on our producers to execute our elaborate coding schemes. At what point can we introduce commony accepted web 2.0 fare as folksonomies, tag clouds, and ability to aggregate these terms by their popularity?

Myth #5: The case of network effects has sold itself. Your executives all agree: we've got to let our people use KM to find each other, not just documentation. How do you re-deploy an internal resource as a social network?

One of the self-fulfilling failures of expert-finding deep dives is that when you ask for volunteers your most sought-after domain leaders are already snowed under -- why would they volunteer their protected time to be officially pegged for all to see on your corporate radar? One of the many benefits of connecting metadata to search is that the engine can quantify thought leadership based on business need -- not based on who volunteers for guru status in a given topic.

Build It (and they won't come)

Call them ECMs or KM Hubs or Knowledge Nets or enterprise portals. Yesterday's sand castles? Meet tomorrow's ivory towers without the sustaining investment of your content producers. Here are five KM construction fictions and the corrections necessary to debunk the myths and get your users engaged as participants.

Construction Myth 1: Increased traffic to your site(s) means that users feel compelled to share their own experiences.

The perennial, time-tested truth is that people who love to learn don't share that love for what they learn (or care to share). How do we make it worth their while?

Myth #2: Producing content is its own reward -- Users are inspired by altruism, team play, and a sense of community.

Turning users into contributors requires that we architect searches that highlight who the contributors are along with the volume and nature of what they're contributing. What are some common recogition programs that can be applied here?

Myth #3: Users want to stay in-the-loop and feel compelled to check in by using a central KM system to stay up-to-date.

No 12 step program can move forward until the addict admits that they have an addiction -- in this case relying on email to provide a dashboard-like visibility into what's fresh and noteworthy on an organizational level. How can the addict be weaned from the isolation of 1:1 asynchronous communication so that their comfort zone includes RSS readers, search alerts, and subscription feeds for staying on top of their priorities and moving targets?

Myth #4: Your search engine is revving like never before. Everyone is using it. So content submissions should be edging up too, right?

Enterprise systems are saddled with the tags we force on them to label their content baggage. But the more control we exert on our metadata the more pressure we put on our producers to execute our elaborate coding schemes. At what point can we introduce commony accepted web 2.0 fare as folksonomies, tag clouds, and ability to aggregate these terms by their popularity?

Myth #5: The case of network effects has sold itself. Your executives all agree: we've got to let our people use KM to find each other, not just documentation. How do you re-deploy an internal resource as a social network?

One of the self-fulfilling failures of expert-finding deep dives is that when you ask for volunteers your most sought-after domain leaders are already snowed under -- why would they volunteer their protected time to be officially pegged for all to see on your corporate radar? One of the many benefits of connecting metadata to search is that the engine can quantify thought leadership based on business need -- not based on who volunteers for guru status in a given topic.

KM 2.0: Idle Worship?

gossip
Originally uploaded by t-squared

Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.

- David Brooks, The Great Forgetting / Published: April 11, 2008 copyright New York Times

KM 2.0: Idle Worship?

gossip
Originally uploaded by t-squared

Some vaguely familiar person will come up to you in the supermarket. “Stan, it’s so nice to see you!” The smug memory dropper can smell your nominal aphasia and is going to keep first-naming you until you are crushed into submission.

- David Brooks, The Great Forgetting / Published: April 11, 2008 copyright New York Times

KM 2.0 -- Real or Hype (or a Simple Case of Reflexivity?)

The Boston KM Forum convened at Bentley College this past week with a blend of academics, practitioners, vendors, and evangelists appending the big 2.0 to their own take on the topicalities of what David Brooks is calling the Bad Memory Century. In The Great Forgetting Brooks pits the memory-haves against the memory-have-nots for control of total ... well incomplete recall. Faulty wiring challenges our recollections of whether we've: (1) intentionally deleted KM 1.0 or (2) reigned in an excessive 2.0 that discards all remembrances of where 1.0 was heading when 2.0 took over.

Bentley CS Professor Mark Frydenberg asked us the main difference between the two releases. I don't know whether it was more telling that no one answered his question because it was too obvious -- or really that hard to answer? He said the 1.0 was about getting to content and 2.0 was about getting to people. Hard to refute? I guess.

But to me the greater divide harkens back to The Machine is Us(ing) replay that began his discussion. Is it really about how we use technology? If we reverse roles with our social 2.0 toys could we really prove they were helping us get where we wanted 2.0 to take us? Did we even have a destination in mind?

Don't get me wrong. I can see how a LinkedIn profile or even a Facebook page could make the difference between landing a contract and receding into the dead contractor pile. But is eavesdropping on the recent bookmarkings of a Del.icio.us tagger a course of action? Is observing a bunch of Beltway commentators yammering on and then blogging about it a call to action? More to the point: has our technology convinced us that the gossiping of speculations and observances are substitutions for taking a risk or bringing an idea to life?

If I vote for a news story on Digg about George Soros and reflexivity do I expect an uptick of interest across the blogosphere in perception measurement? There's a difference between an action item and a thought bubble. And when I last cracked the window most realities looked at the experiential world through the lens of direct engagement, not high def screens, taking leave of one's chair, not our other senses.

If I choose not to answer Frydenberg's 2.0 quiz out loud but look for unverbalized responses on Twitter does that enrich those fleeting moments before the Great Forgetting reasserts itself? If you're performing on stage living in the moment can be a redemptive, even sacred part of a luscious experience. But in a 2.0 state, life is no longer the contact sport we were raised to play. It is a fantasy league.

Maybe that's the 2.0 world that our children will look back on when the dawning of their 21st Century begins to fade? Living in our heads. An entire to-do list mapped out in a series of keystrokes. For digital immigrants like me short-term memory is trapped in the immediacy -- dare I say the tyranny -- of now. To indulge this temptation any further would be to grade the notes passed in class with the same deliberation we once reserved for term papers.

KM 2.0 -- Real or Hype (or a Simple Case of Reflexivity?)

The Boston KM Forum convened at Bentley College this past week with a blend of academics, practitioners, vendors, and evangelists appending the big 2.0 to their own take on the topicalities of what David Brooks is calling the Bad Memory Century. In The Great Forgetting Brooks pits the memory-haves against the memory-have-nots for control of total ... well incomplete recall. Faulty wiring challenges our recollections of whether we've: (1) intentionally deleted KM 1.0 or (2) reigned in an excessive 2.0 that discards all remembrances of where 1.0 was heading when 2.0 took over.

Bentley CS Professor Mark Frydenberg asked us the main difference between the two releases. I don't know whether it was more telling that no one answered his question because it was too obvious -- or really that hard to answer? He said the 1.0 was about getting to content and 2.0 was about getting to people. Hard to refute? I guess.

But to me the greater divide harkens back to The Machine is Us(ing) replay that began his discussion. Is it really about how we use technology? If we reverse roles with our social 2.0 toys could we really prove they were helping us get where we wanted 2.0 to take us? Did we even have a destination in mind?

Don't get me wrong. I can see how a LinkedIn profile or even a Facebook page could make the difference between landing a contract and receding into the dead contractor pile. But is eavesdropping on the recent bookmarkings of a Del.icio.us tagger a course of action? Is observing a bunch of Beltway commentators yammering on and then blogging about it a call to action? More to the point: has our technology convinced us that the gossiping of speculations and observances are substitutions for taking a risk or bringing an idea to life?

If I vote for a news story on Digg about George Soros and reflexivity do I expect an uptick of interest across the blogosphere in perception measurement? There's a difference between an action item and a thought bubble. And when I last cracked the window most realities looked at the experiential world through the lens of direct engagement, not high def screens, taking leave of one's chair, not our other senses.

If I choose not to answer Frydenberg's 2.0 quiz out loud but look for unverbalized responses on Twitter does that enrich those fleeting moments before the Great Forgetting reasserts itself? If you're performing on stage living in the moment can be a redemptive, even sacred part of a luscious experience. But in a 2.0 state, life is no longer the contact sport we were raised to play. It is a fantasy league.

Maybe that's the 2.0 world that our children will look back on when the dawning of their 21st Century begins to fade? Living in our heads. An entire to-do list mapped out in a series of keystrokes. For digital immigrants like me short-term memory is trapped in the immediacy -- dare I say the tyranny -- of now. To indulge this temptation any further would be to grade the notes passed in class with the same deliberation we once reserved for term papers.

The Genuine and Discredible Blog

To blog or just to have dinner conversation?

Chatting up one's own crowded company of ardent opinions and and defensible positions is the stage personality -- the celebrity of blog. But that's pretty bland. It's passive recessive. It's almost like a media reporter who leads with the wink/nod that the Blogosphere is what blogs are known for.

Do you blog for the sake of touting your blogging credentials? Do you wave your blog pass to get into sites and discussions otherwise off limits? Didn't think so.

Blogs are vessels. They hold our peeves and praises in an editorial without editors. It's a one-sided debate from all sides of the aisle. But the most hermetic blog is porous with links and collaborations inspired elsewhere. Blogs live on an island where the word "my" is implicit. Any other pronoun will not do.

As a communications medium blogs fall much closer to closed circuits than printing presses -- confessionals, not tabloids. The cover charge for entry is a medium ego or larger: Yes, that's your personality on my screen. Where "the media" revolves around third-party celebrities and consumed by third-person audiences, blogs are decidedly first-person, singular. The moment a second party is involved a blog loses its "come-as-I-am" authenticity. When you're dressing your blogger in bedclothes or tuxedos, you know the jig is up. Keeping up an appearance is no more heroic than leaving your journal out to be read.

It's not a pretense to long for that same third-party bonding shared by media creations and their legions. What could be more flattering than the attentions of a stranger? But it's less than sincere to pose as a broker, referee or huckster whose credentials rest on their own blogging rites. Blogs are devoid of credibility just as an individual cannot confer credibility onto themselves no matter how big their name, persuasive their fight, or widely held their blogging postures.

* Tagging productive reference sites
* Endorsing content and then commenting on its impact
* Using a blog roll to reflect on your own aspirations
* News feeds that synthesize the thinking of otherwise disconnected worlds

That's where blogs become bigger than the bloggers who blog them and the self-referential nature of first person communications.