Why Knowledge Management?

Wiki Update

A wiki is a powerful tool.

I started to research and dig into wikis in business in May 2005, and occasionally circle back to capture some of my thoughts on this technology.

A blog posting and an article are my inspiration for today's thoughts. Christee Gabour Atwood, who blogs on Succession Planning Basics - an important HR discipline - supplied some thoughts on using a wiki for HR purposes in her KM Tip of the Week.

IndustryWeek published an article this past Friday, Seven Strategies for Implementing a Successful Corporate Wiki, that has suggested that by 2009, 50% of organizations will use a wiki as an important collaboration tool. The IW article goes on to suggest 7 important strategies for using a wiki.

And circling back to Wikipedia......back in 2005, when I first researched the somewhat open doors of Wikipedia, there were 500,000 articles in English. As I write this today, there are 2,192,000+ English articles - over four times the number of articles in less than 3 years.

Wikis help serve two fundamental needs. The first is the desire of each of us to help our fellow man by sharing our knowledge (made very easy by a wiki), and second, we all crave knowledge to help us in business, in our personal lives, or just to satisfy our curiosities.

The IW article identifies some of the requirements and strategies for the creation of a successful wiki, but an important piece that is often missing (having observed some successes and some failures in wiki implementations in the past) is need...there has to be a reason....some pain-point that is best served by a wiki. A whim does not a successful wiki make.  In the absence of this strong need, very little advice about using wikis will help in creating a lasting, living, growing body of knowledge.

Learn from Living

It is interesting that during the course of any given day, there are probably at least 6 - 12 things that a person experiences that can be chalked up to Knowledge Management, or that can be incorporated into one's knowledgebase. 

Unfortunately I do not have a lot of time for surfing the web and looking for the latest news...I let Google Alerts point me in the right direction.

Well I became aware of a blog posting by David Snowden of Cognitive Edge, where he catalogs just such an experience in his day...but in his case, he was not only able to identify KM in use, but was able to isolate the various facets of the knowledge in his post Knowledge In Action. From his one experience, he was able to show knowledge in action in 4 different ways and then weave a story  that shows each's applicability.

Information Overload in the Knowledge Universe

Last week, Basex, conducted a 15 minute Webinar on the subject of Information Overload (I.O.), the video of which is still available for viewing.

Work interruptions and general overload has been a growing problem, which Basex has been following closely for quite some time (I first commented on Basex's Interruptions research back in September 2005) and while they have always garnered some press on the subject, they are starting to get more traction with the media outlets.

The vast sources of knowledge, available on the net, within the business, inside your team and now made more accessible, ensures that we're always buried in one or more of our gadgets designed to keep us in touch with our necessary resources. Then, combine that with the fact that 'knowledge' or at least content is being produced in greater volume than every before, and that managers and knowledgeworkers are not trained in how to handle the onslaught, and you have a big problem. How big?

The costs of information overload, which includes such things as email and cell phone interruptions, poor quality of search in the enterprise, and just pure volume of information are staggering at an estimated 2.1 hours per day  per knowledgeworker and dollarized to be $650 billion in 2007 in the U.S.. The unmeasured cost? Stifled innovation and restrained productivity. 

So for 15 minutes (1 minute to register and 14 minutes for the video of the Webinar), it's time well invested to better understand the problem identified, become aware of some known solutions, and to get connected to Basex who will be studying the I.O. trend and potential solutions more closely over the next year(s).

YouTube for Knowledge Management?

The headline initially startled me too. YouTube for KM? - No way.

And I'm not seriously suggesting YouTube for KM....but...

Seth McGrath's  ITWorld.com article, "Leveraging web technologies to capture and manage knowledge assets," is very insightful.

No, he does not actually suggest that you use YouTube for knowledge capture and distribution, but he does suggest using the technology (video) to capture knowledge dumps that can be prepared and stored for distribution. Face it, a video capture of someone's thoughts and actions delivered with their passion or emotion of the situation is far better (and a lot quicker) than trying to capture the same knowledge in writing.

More specifically, he had several great ideas (though the article is a great setup and delivery - much better than this footnote):

1. Use video to capture knowledge and a YouTube-type repository for storage and distribution.
2. Use Social Network applications on the local intranet.
3. Use Blogs for day-to-day capture of activities and what is being worked on.
4. Use a Wiki for collaborative projects.
5. Use a  del.icio.us-style tagging system for classification.

....and more.

McGrath's suggesting the utilization of today's most popular technologies for knowledge management purposes is strong and useful advice.

Google Expands Knowledge Management Presence

A recent Google Alert from CMSWire released news that Google has begun beta on a new project called Knol. The January 2nd, 2008 Press Release announced Google's intent to move deeper into KM with a  Wikipedia-like site.

Knol is the name of the project, and it is also used to describe a specific page within the project, which is a "unit of knowledge."

A check of the Official Google Blog, found a December 13th announcement from VP Engineering, Udi Manber. The main goal of the project is to create a way for people to easily contribute knowledge. In the beta format, Google is inviting a small circle of authors to contribute pages/articles/knols on subjects in which they are expert.

One difference from Wikipedia is that Knol will acknowledge the author of a unit of knowledge, and let the community contribute, but in the form of comments and supplemental information. Once Knol is open to the public, questions, reviews and ratings can also be added by the community, and Google will be responsible for providing an effective ranking for searches.

Google intends to provide easy-to-use tools for the writing and editing. The hosting and the formatting will all be managed by Google leaving the authors to focus on the units of knowledge, units that will cover subjects from the scientific to pop culture. The content will not be edited by the host, and the host will not bless any articles.

Important disclaimer - quality of knols will not be policed, except by the community in their reviews, ratings, comments and questions.

Another striking difference between this collection of knowledge and that contained in Wikipedia, or even About.com, is that authors will be encouraged to put their reputation on the line with their opinions, and that sectors of knowledge may have competitive knols, thus acknowledging different points of views and different trains of thought on a subject.

Last, and certainly most interesting, is that an author can agree to include ads in their unit of knowledge. Google promises, "substantial revenue share from the proceeds of those ads" to the associated author.

Check out the beta view in this knol.

Business Analytics Software as a Service

Business Analytics (BA) which includes such technologies as query, reporting, analysis, data mining and data warehousing is in the process of being packaged and presented as the latest Software as a Service (SaaS) marketplace.  Software as a Service is a software delivery model where the software developer creates a web-based application and hosts it and the data; customers do not buy the software, but rather pay for the use of it.

In KMWorld's January 2008 edition, the page 1 story provides many business reasons why this may be 2008's lead technology. For instance...from the article:

• Budget constraints and corporate capital expenditure policies faced by many departments make it time-consuming and costly to purchase large software purchases.
• IT department resources are constrained and may not have time to build or evaluate and buy specific solutions for every business problem.
• Mature software functionality built on newer technology platforms is suitable for SaaS delivery  because of years of functionality definition and development have established widely accepted best practices that can be configured, rather than customized.
• Budgetary constraints may prevent large acquisitions of traditional business analytics software.
• Companies will focus on core competencies and rely on service providers for more and more support for on-core operating processes.

The article indicates that the Business Analytics market in general is expected to grow, and so why not BA SaaS given the above arguments?  No good counter-reason, it makes sense. SaaS is a rapidly growing market for many types of applications, and BA apps seem a perfect fit.

Important note: traditional purchase of Business Analytics software is expected to remain the mainstay in the short term.

Information Overload

We've heard a lot of "Information Overload"....In my mind, probably so much that we're sick of hearing about it. But, it's probably just that so little has been done about it that it still has a major impact on productivity. Basex in December honored (?) Information Overload (IO) with their 2008 Problem of the Year award.

As much as I may be getting tired of hearing about IO, it is probably only the beginning.

On December 20th, Steve Lohr had his article, Is Information Overload a $650 Billion Drag on the Economy?  published in the New York Times.  The 650 billion representing the cost of interruptions on Knowledgeworkers.

Basex also quotes Intel engineer, Nathan Zeldes, who studies computer productivity issues, who said, "at Intel, we estimated the impact of information overload on each knowledge worker at up to eight hours a week."

If Intel is studying it and it's as much as 8 hours a week - that's serious. Tired of hearing about it or not, perhaps IO is about to hit critical mass in its effects and the creation of new solutions.

2008 Content Management Predictions

Content and Content Management continue to be critical strategies for business and the individual. Search, as mentioned yesterday, is an important related technology. More evidence of this -->

CMS Watch, a company that evaluates content-oriented technologies, publishing head-to-head comparative reviews of leading solutions, has announced their 12 predictions for 2008 in the content arena.

Four of these are directly related to what I would classify as Content and Search....they are:

• Archiving becomes a prime focus for E-Content Management vendors
• Google will make a bid to become the World's Content Repository
• Search is NOT dead!
• There will be a move toward productization of Search Platforms

So I hesitate to use the words "Information Overload" which is overused - but it will continue to be an issue, and the above predictions by CMS Watch as strong strategies for 2008 would tend to support this. There are some recent articles on I.O. that I'll need to note here over the next couple of days.

But the other predictions...just for the sake of watching them over the next year are:

These next four predictions are just plain interesting:

• Finally bridging web analytics and online marketing (this one begs for some research and blog-watching)
• Social Software vendor collision (social networking is another category at this site, so this could spark a few posts)
• Facebook backlash in the enterprise (yeah - just the sound of it is intriguing)
  
• Security and Identity Management trump functionality for buyers

And three more are:

• MOSS (Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server) enters the valley of disappointment
• Return of the buyers' market (in content services)
• Web 2.0 exhaustion (and the rise of Enterprise 2.0).

Of course, the 12th prediction is that there would be 12 more predictions for next year!

Well, it's all interesting on January 1st....let's see how the year unfolds.

A Year of Content in Review

I received a few interesting facts in my email box today from the insouciant, yet prolific company, Eat Media. Eat Media is a Content Management (CM) company that can provide some or all of a company's content management needs. They had gathered and were passing on some this-year survey statistics related to Content.

Out of 9 content related subject matters, including email campaigns and online analytics, Search Engine Optimization is now ranked as the number 1 priority, but was ranked 4th in terms of time and budget. 

Eat Media also reported that the Coremetrics Second Annual Face of the Media survey indicated that Email campaigns demand most of marketers time, at 22%.

As might be expected, the largest part of the budget at 33% is online advertising.

It's interesting that at last year's Gilbane Conference, Search and Search optimization were well attended sessions that generated a lot of questions and a lot of interest. I remember returning from the conference hot to make some changes and additions to our CM strategy to make our content more accessible.

With information overload an existing and growing problem, search will continue to be at or near the top of the list.

Back to the Wiki

Thanks again to Google Alerts for bringing to me each day a small list of articles and posts that are wide in range but regularly have some gems.

I'm a bit behind, as the original post was from Nov 8, but Neil McIntyre, a Toronto accountant, posted some great thoughts at his site in his post, Using wikis or blogs to manage knowledge in firms.

Neil was taking WebCPA to task for espousing that accounting firms need to take on 'formal' knowledge management programs.

Rightfully, McIntyre points out that wikis and blogs (which are not very 'formal') are excellent tools for sharing knowledge and can be an excellent starting point that may develop into a more formal program based upon the users and its use. 

I would add to his argument that both wikis and blogs have a low cost of entry, and particularly in the case of blogs, are very easy to use.

Wikis and blogs can be setup rapidly, and with minimal training can be optimized for search.

The last argument (for today) that I would make about wikis and blogs is that while they may not be the best tools for capturing, categorizing and disseminating knowledge, they are a great place to start - and offer a lot of freedom - that will help define the needs and requirements for your knowledge management process.  You may opt to maintain the blog(s) or wiki(s), or then select another solution.