Month: December 2007

Information overload or just the wrong tools?

by

Information overload is supposed to be the scourge of 2008, reports Ars Technica, and one way to address it, according to this news article referencing the same report, is to be smarter with our e-mail.

e-mail.jpg

E-mail is like cars in an urban metropolis; neither effective nor efficient due to the fact that there are just too many of them. Instead of optimizing an almost-dead technology, I’d suggest using better tools. Set up blogs for one-to-many communications; have wikis for projects, teams and departments; and use instant messaging for quick person-to-person communications. Then keep track of it all with a feed aggregator. With these tools and practices in place, e-mail can be reserved for more official traffic, like sending an invoice or a proposal.

The kids know this already. E-mail is only used to communicate with your parents.

Some year-end stats

by

Checking some of my stats for the past 365 days and thought they might be of interest.

Search Engines that direct readers here:

  • 95% Google
  • 2% Yahoo!
  • 1% Ask Jeeves
  • 1% MSN

Browser used:

  • 51% IE
  • 36% Firefox
  • 6% Safari

Screen resolution:

  • 37% 1024 x 768
  • 14% 1280 x 1024
  • 13% 1280 x 800
  • 7% 1280 x 768

If my stats are indicative, which they may not be as many of my readers are early adopters, then Google is still the dominant search engine, Firefox is gaining ground but IE prevails, and almost everyone has a high resolution screen.

Head East

by

bridge-st-cafe.jpg

Canada’s east coast seems to have some of its happiest residents. While not rated high for all those cosmopolitan virtues that Vancouver may have, it seems that we are happy “down east”. Living in Sackville, we’re in the middle of four happy cities – Charlottetown, Saint John, Moncton and Halifax – all of which placed in the top ten. From CBC News:

According to the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, Canadians are most likely to be satisfied with the quality of life in places like Saint John, Moncton, N.B., and Charlottetown, all of which placed in the top five of a survey of 18 Canadian cities.

We also have lots of water that is not being drained to extract oil, reasonable housing prices and some interesting new businesses. So sell that expensive house and head east with the extra cash to fund the start-up that you always dreamed of :-)

Photo by gmcmullen

PKM – my best tool

by

Technology is the application of organized and scientific knowledge to solve practical problems.

I dug up this quote from my personal knowledge management (PKM) system, or outboard brain, or whatever you want to call it. The quote is from Harold Stolovitch, and it’s stored on this blog from a post I made over three years ago. My PKM system is a technology in this sense.

I know people who get hundreds of e-mail each day. I don’t. I also meet people who work in companies and have to make decisions or set direction but who do not have time to read. I can understand how time constraints force you to reduce “discretionary” activities such as reading, but how are you able to learn if you don’t take the time to read, listen, reflect and then make your own understanding explicit for others to understand?

One PKM process, of using web tools to sort [triage] , categorize, make explicit, and retrieve, is shown in this graphic:

pkm21.jpg

Some of my practical problems, when I started this blog were:

  • I needed a way to connect with others in my field in an inexpensive way (blog)
  • I wanted to mine some of the knowledge out there (feed reader)
  • After a while, I wanted to share what I was finding, or have it available when I was in a discussion (social bookmarks)

What I found out later was that I was creating a resource that I could use whenever I had some related work to do. My blog is the first place I search when I have an article or report to write. The process of writing, reflecting, discussing & annotating has given me a digital library brimming with my own sticky notes that I can easily find.

If you’re looking for a resolution for 2008, I would recommend the adoption and use of some kind of Web PKM system if you don’t have one yet. Here’s a reason why, from Ryan Lanham:

Leading, or leadership, is the process of using our own learning to enable the learning of others.

Keeping life simple

by

Are you the family ‘go-to’ geek that everyone calls upon when they have computer problems? You may want to give a Zonbu as a self-interested gift. I gave one to Andrea for Christmas and it was installed in less than five minutes. That means up and running with no EULA or anything else to sign. The Zonbu is a mini computer operating on a Linux Gentoo operating system that has been installed with a customized and user-friendly interface. The system updates itself when you go online. That means that you never have to add an update, patch, virus protection or anything else. The total cost for me, including shipping, taxes and duty was $140, less than my next RAM upgrade.

The Zonbu comes with a 4 GB flash drive, no fan, no hard drive (that means low power use), and 6 USB ports. It also has about 20 installed applications; enough for your ‘average’ computer user. I purchased a 2 year service agreement for $15/month that gives Andrea 50 GB of online storage that is automatically updated by the system.

andrea-with-zonbu.jpg

What I really like about the Zonbu is that no one can mess it up (including teenagers), because the OS is locked-down. You can buy an open version of the Zonbu, but that would defeat the purpose of paying for software as a service. For me it’s peace of mind :-)

Big Consulting Companies Jumping on Bandwagon 2.0

by

It looks like social media (wikis, blogs & social networking) are going the way of e-learning and knowledge management (KM). That means big companies charging big fees for cookie-cutter solutions. Jon Husband reports on this phenomenon for 2008 and advises Caveat emptor:

Big firms either 1) develop standardized methodologies and practices (their business models depend upon it), or 2) if their business model does not depend upon the standardization, they will charge you a mint and a half (McKinsey ?)

The organization(s) [clients] will in my opinion get better advice rooted in critical thinking and experience and focused on results, as opposed to maintaining an expensive dependency on canned rhetoric that may not be based in much experience. For example, what exactly is “Advanced” Web 2.0 technology ? Blogs with lots of colourful widgets ?

As I’ve said before, Free-agents and natural enterprises are better. The upstart independents and small consultancies have Clayton Christensen’s disruptive Sword & Shield which the incumbents (large consultants) don’t have. With early motivation to enter this emerging field (Shield) and now with with years of experience and skills (Sword), we the “upstarts” should be able to hold our own.

When e-learning and KM first came out, it was difficult to market your services without expensive campaigns. On top of that, the IT tools were expensive. Now the best tools are open source, leveling the playing field even more. The rules have changed for 2008, and we upstarts can significantly engage in a conversation with our markets using our own tools with which we’ve developed a certain expertise.

The game is afoot!

Blogs at the core of KM & Collaboration

by

I’m helping to create a collaborative work and learning space for a group of executives and this is part of the introduction to the site:

Blogs: The main communication tool is your blog, which each participant has registered in his or her name. Think of your blog as a professional journal, where you can record your thoughts and ask questions of your peers or the staff. Each blog post has a unique identifier, called a permalink, which can be referenced by others. Blog posts do not need to be perfect essays. Blog posts can help make sense of your learning process. Comments can be made on another person’s blog, or you can discuss it on your blog and then connect with a hyperlink to the other one. This creates a network of the conversations around an issue or topic. Here’s a video called Blogs in Plain English.

Wikis: Blogs are personal, while wikis are for groups. A wiki is a collaborative web document that records all activities so that any person can add to it, without losing what was previously written (it’s like “track changes” in MS Word). Here’s a video called Wikis in Plain English.

Jon Husband has dusted off a piece on blogging and dialogue that he wrote in 2004, which I think bears repeating:

  1. Firstly, individual or group blogs that are focused on a domain of information and expertise chronicle and catalogue the blogger(s)’ knowledge. Over time, this grows to create a recognizable “body of knowledge”.
  2. Secondly, by offering the capability of commenting and interacting, the information on offer can be better defined, refined, explored, tested, and built upon.
  3. Thirdly, the information on offer provides a latent platform for action – information that can be acted upon often turns into knowledge that can be shared and used in various ways.
  4. Fourth, by linking to the blog or blogs that offer related information, the knowledge that is built can be shared more and more widely, if desired.
  5. Fifth, the rhythym and cadence of the posting, reading, commenting and linking replicate the dynamics of dialogue in very effective ways. There aren’t the same kinds of interruption and distraction that so often occurs in conversations that only weakly replicate the dynamics of dialogue.
  6. Finally, an ecosystem of knowledge can develop that consists of the aggregated sets of links and content the participants in a blogalogue create. And this “body of knowledge” and understanding remains online, available to anyone who cares to become involved.

The more online communities and social networks that I’m involved with, the more I view blogging as a core process that keeps them going.

Learning Classifications

by

Readers

Informal learning is a theme of this blog and has been an area of professional interest for the past couple of years. There is a link between informal learning and collaborative work; the latter is a key focus of my consulting. This link was highlighted by Teemu Leinonen in a recent post on networked learning, starting with a definition of informal learning:

Informal learning means learning that is taking place in every day life situation when we are interacting with the outside world or with our own inside world. Most of the learning is informal and purely accidental and random.

This is an adequate working definition, in my mind, but what I find most interesting is Teemu’s definition of non-formal learning, a term that I haven’t used much or really noted:

Networked learning can also be non-formal. Non-formal means that it is informal but with objectives. If a group of criminals are organizing a discussion group in a bar to share ideas about latest burglary techniques they are having a non-formal learning session. It is informal but with an objective.

Given these definitions, I would say that much learning in intentional online communities (such as a community of practice around knowledge management) is non-formal, whereas it is more informal in looser social networks like Facebook. My sense of this is that non-formal learning would involve mostly self-generated objectives though objectives could also evolve from the group. Formal learning would differ from these in that most, if not all, objectives would be externally directed.

These three working definitions may help in defining and explaining different approaches or strategies when working with communities of practice, work groups, professional networks or even classes.

Own Your Data

by

The impending closure of the Eduspaces service has many people wondering what to do and several options are cropping up in the online discussions.

For those not in the know, Eduspaces is/was a free, social networking and blogging service built on the Elgg open source platform. It used to be called elgg.net but was changed to Eduspaces when it became obvious that the community came mostly from the educational sector. I’ve used Elgg for some of my clients and have had an Eduspaces account, but my main site has always been here. I pay for my hosting, own the data, and use an open source platform so that I can export my blog in the event that I want to move to a different service provider.

Anyone who asks me about blogging or setting up a community on the Web using wikis or some other application is given pretty well the same advice.  If the site is important and the data are of some significance for the long term, then:

  1. Use an open source platform from a stable and functioning community.
  2. Own your own domain, and have a Service Level Agreement for your hosting.

Using open source gives you freedom from vendors and ensures that you are not handcuffed to your technology provider. Having your own domain name and paying for a service provider (or hosting on your own server) ensure that you have control over your data.

The users of Eduspaces are in a much better position than would be those of Blogger in a similar event. At least the Eduspaces community can migrate to another Elgg host. There is no other Blogger platform to move to.

If I had to move a large Eduspaces account, I would find another Elgg installation. I migrated from Drupal to WordPress (which I don’t regret) a couple of years ago, but it’s a heck of a lot easier to stick with the same platform.