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Using Wikis for Internal Documentation: ICT Hub Knowledgebase

Most organisations have (or at least should have!) internal documentation that outlines procedures, best practices, and tips to help make every on e’s job easier. For instance, an organisation might write up: How to add a new constituent to the tracking database , or how to send an email newsletter The steps to follow to request office supplies, or to get ready for a new staff member The thought process that went into a complex set of decisions A list of local take-out restaurants, or good hotels for visitors This type of documentation helps train those new to the organisation or to a role, saves staff time in the long run, and can save your skin if you (like many voluntary and community sector organisations) have a lot of employee turnover. Unfortunately, creating this documentation is seldom a coveted task. It often goes unwritten—or once it’s written, it languishes in obscurity and slowly goes out of date. ^{link »}

it’s best to choose one person to oversee the organisation of the wiki as it grows. This will be an ongoing, active role—your original outline will be a good start, but because wikis allow many to contribute, things will tend to stray from the plan from time to time. The person who does this work, trimming one branch of content, planting the seeds for what will turn into groups of pages on particular topics, is called the wiki gardener . ^{link »}

But flexibility poses challenges, too: a wiki can gradually turn into an unfriendly tangle of links, as staff add new pages and topics. So it’s important to define a workable structure at the outset—and encourage staff to stick to it. ^{link »}

Is Social Media ROI Important? - PitchEngine

isn’t it sad that most companies haven’t even upgraded the technology used on their websites to enable commenting and conversation. Of course, it’s even more sad that if they had the technology right, they’re still afraid to use it. ^{link »}

“Ultimately, the key question to ask when measuring engagement is, ‘Are we getting what we want out of the conversation?’” ^{link »}

If you want a return on social media then focus on conversations that build lasting relationships based on value exchanged and create great experiences. ^{link »}

Enterprise 2.0 Blog » Blog Archive » Social Media vs. Knowledge Management: A Generational War

Is it a good idea to break down KM and SM adoption in the enterprise by age? I am not sure. Dave Snowden's comment to the article is quite clear that it does not. I am on the fence, but I think that the summary is true, Social Media type applications will gain more prevalence in the enterprise simply because so many baby boomers are beginning to clear out and so many millenials are moving in. If some boomers are in favor of social media then all the more reason for it's rise. ^{link »}

The technology stuff is reasonable, but the crude characterisation by age group is a nonsense. So called Boomers are amongst the highest adopters of social computing. Interestingly putting things into crude categories is a process based approach. People do not have ideas and attitudes by age group ^{link »}

KM and SM look very similar on the surface, but are actually radically different at multiple levels, both cultural and technical, ^{link »}

Nothing describes the motivation behind the creation of Facebook better than “because it was possible.” ^{link »}

It takes no great genius to predict how the war will end. The Boomers will retire and the Millenials will win by default, in a bloodless end with no great drama. KM will quietly die, and SM will win the soul of Enterprise 2.0, with the Gen X leadership quietly slipping the best of the KM ideas into SM as they guide the bottom-up revolution. ^{link »}

The 10 Faces of Innovation | Fast Company

The devil's-advocate gambit is extraordinary but certainly not uncommon since it strikes so regularly in the project rooms and boardrooms of corporate America. What's truly astonishing is how much punch is packed into that simple phrase. In fact, the devil's advocate may be the biggest innovation killer in America today. What makes this negative persona so dangerous is that it is such a subtle threat. Every day, thousands of great new ideas, concepts, and plans are nipped in the bud by devil's advocates. ^{link »}

"People implementing new ideas that create value." ^{link »}

I really love this definition because it is so simple. It is easy to break down and explain to people, and allows you to see Innovation as a people driven process. The inclusion of the implementation portion is important as well. ^{link »}

Your say: Personal knowledge management - Inside Knowledge

identified and built on their employees' competencies, or ensured they are motivated to deliver the best of their work and share knowledge. ^{link »}

One of the founding principles for KM is that you don't know what you know, until you need it. This fact has huge implications for any organisation putting a knowledge-management initiative in place: if individual employees don't know what they know, how can a company capture, harness and exploit this knowledge? ^{link »}

organisations stand by the stock statement that 'our people are our greatest asset', but in practice they remain unreceptive to concepts such as PK M ^{link »}

we have since made 95 per cent of work invisible." McGee notes that it is easy to see a messy, disorganised office, but a messy, disorganised hard drive or e-mail inbox is invisible. ^{link »}

"Employers do not own personal knowledge, they merely tap into that part that employees are willing to share," ^{link »}

On an information-management level, PKM involves filtering and making sense of information, organising paper and digital archives, e-mails and bookmark collections. ^{link »}

The personal side tries to understand how a knowledge worker's activities contribute to their performance. It is this side that is often neglected as KM initiatives do not correlate with an individual's existing practices. ^{link »}

T he objectives for PKM extend further than giving employees access to intranets, systems and standards. "Most organisations do not release or optimise the value in their people ^{link »}

"As I understand and add to my portfolio I also develop a better sense for where the holes are, what I need to learn and who can fill in the rest of the picture." Individuals will be better equipped to work and, as Davenport says, they will demonstrate better knowledge-based action and decision making, with less time needed to access and synthesise the knowledge needed to act intelligently. ^{link »}

If the end result of a KM or PKM initiative is that each employee feels they are better able to do their job and that they like coming to work more then the project has been successful. Measurable gains in productivity will be a natural result. ^{link »}

"Organisations need to recognise that employees are investors that bring their expertise to a company and can withdraw it if the ROI is not compelling." Companies must create the conditions for PKM to emerge among knowledge workers; however the organisation must first want to support employees in this way. " ^{link »}

Above and Beyond KM: Top 10 Knowledge Management Myths

KM can be outsourced ^{link »}

KM can be solved by buying the right software ^{link »}

Communities of practice can be established by the top ^{link »}

KM is an IT function and should be given to the CIO ^{link »}

I need to get out of the KM=Software mindset. ^{link »}

Op-Ed Columnist - 9/11 and 4/11 - Op-Ed - NYTimes.com

President Bush is well on his way to being remembered as the leader who wasted not one but two crises: 9/11 and 4/11. The average price of gasoline in the U.S. last week, according to the Energy Information Administration, was $4.11. ^{link »}

We don't have a "gasoline price problem." We have an addiction problem. We are addicted to dirty fossil fuels, and this addiction is driving a whole set of toxic trends that are harming our nation and world in many different ways. ^{link »}

I understand why consumers think we have a gasoline price problem - because they are immediately hurt by higher gas prices and the pump is where most people touch our energy system. They tend not to see the bigger picture. But that is why you have a president: to explain that and lay out a response. ^{link »}

read the speech that Al Gore delivered on Thursday to the bipartisan Alliance for Climate Protection. Gore, the alliance's chairman, called for a 10-year plan - the same amount of time John F. Kennedy set for getting us to the moon - to shift the entire country to "renewable energy and truly clean, carbon-free sources" to power our homes, factories and even transportation. ^{link »}

It amazes me how inadequate his response has been. By hectoring the nation to simply drill for more oil, he has profoundly underestimated the challenges we face ^{link »}

Hi-tech is turning us all into time-wasters | Science | The Observer

one person in five now suffers from the problem so badly that their careers, relationships and health are threatened ^{link »}

chronic procrastination is now so serious a condition it needs to be recognised by clinicians. In a study to be published later this year, he estimates that 15 to 20 per cent of people are chronic procrastinators. ^{link »}

Even the beeps notifying the arrival of email are said to be causing a 0.5 per cent drop in gross domestic product in the United States, costing the economy $70bn a year. ^{link »}

less convinced that new technology is to blame for time-wasting. 'People have wasted time for centuries,' he said. 'Lots of people, particularly people who often have to work under time constraints, put work off because they kid themselves that they work best when under pressure, when there's a deadline. ^{link »}

Wetlands Update--Has Preservation Had an Impact?: Scientific American

During the 1990s the rate of wetlands loss in the U.S. declined by some 80 percent over previous decades. But the nation is still losing upwards of 50,000 wetland acres per year, according to the U.S. Fish & ^{link »}

Wildlife Service ^{link »}

Still some very sad numbers. ^{link »}

Above and Beyond KM: The Point of KM is Innovation

So what does it take to create an environment that fosters innovation? One key component is having ready access to the available knowledge. This reduces the danger of reinventing the wheel and provides a solid foundation on which innovation may be built. ^{link »}

This is what the IT department does not get. ^{link »}