Work is learning. Learning is the work.
Voici un nouveau blog en français, de Geoffroi Garron, à Montréal: BIOTOPE:
Both Lilia Efimova and Denham Grey talk extensively about personal knowledge management (PKM). They have studied this field much more than I have, and if you’re looking for in-depth analysis then please look at their sites.
This post is more of a how-to for anyone new to blogs, aggregators and social bookmarking. I have mentioned how blogging is useful for me as a free-agent, consultant, knowledge worker. etc. Above is a overview of how this site is constructed to help me in managing my own knowledge flows [this is a screen shot of my previous Drupal installation and doesn’t reflect the current WordPress configuration]. It may also provide an argument on why you should have your own blog for work. First of all, Harold’s blog is the platform by which I try to make implicit knowledge (e.g. not codified or structured) more explicit, through the process of writing out my thoughts and observations of what I have come across in my work or on the web. A lot of these observations come from the web sites that I visit regularly.
These feeds are aggregated in my Bloglines account, which is publicly available, so anyone can see the sites that I read. This feed aggregator is sorted into various folders and feeds are routinely added and deleted depending on my preferences and information needs. If I’m working on a project in a specific field, like healthcare, I may add some feeds for the duration of the work. I also keep a couple of feeds that have little relation to my work for any serendipidous learning. My account usually runs at about 100 feeds, and the ability to preview and save posts makes this simple and easy – much easier than visiting each site.
There are also some web pages, posts or sites that I find interesting but are not worth the effort of writing a blog post (these take some time and effort). For these sites I use Furl because it not only saves the page but allows me to tag the item by category. For example, I have been using Furl to keep a list of items related to Public Education as well as Small Businesses that have blogs. My Furl archive is also public.
Because my website is searchable, I’m able to retrieve thoughts and comments and easily review them. Others can do the same. This is quite practical for presentations and papers.
Finally, I have links to my Associates. These show who I’m working with and can be helpful in redirecting people. For instance, the Atlantic Wildlife Institute’s URL is an amalgamation of the English and French acronyms (AWI + IAF = AWIAF). It’s not that obvious, so I tell people to go to my website and follow the link – much easier. Sometimes I’m in a conversation and someone asks for more details on a subject. In many cases I’m able to point that person to my website with either, “search for this term” or “follow this link on the navigation menu”. I will even access my website from a client’s office and use some article to reinforce or explain a point – quite useful.
I thought that I had it all under control. Then the spammer attacked, including all kinds of PHP code to undermine the system. I thought that I could control it, so I adjusted the spam filters for URL and specific phrases. It worked for a while (about 30 minutes). Then my system (or the spammer) erased all of the accumulated comments on this website. I can’t find a single comment that has been made for the past year. For now, I’ve turned off comments altogether and I’m calling it quits for the night :-(
Time for a beer.
Update: Tues AM, comments enabled & spam filter adjusted (thanks Boris). Now waiting to see if all those deleted comments can be retrieved. Looks like that deletion was my fault.
Elliott Masie in his latest Trends newsletter asks this question:
My experiences in instructional design over the past ten years is that it hasn’t changed too much. In the military I learned how to apply the systems approach to training as well as how to create computer-based training, instructor-led training, etc. My conversations with e-learning companies, instructional designers and academics shows that instructional design is still wedded to the course as the basic unit of instruction (I use instruction instead of learning because the former is usually the focus). I believe that there is still a huge gap that instructional design could fill, given the right tools and perspective.
Let me start by saying that my most memorable projects in the learning field have been those that created non-instructional solutions, specifically performance support. These have included online job aids and just-in-time tools to do some specific task. The tools are not that fancy but the analysis required to find the right tool for the context can be quite time-consuming. The cost savings are usually evident and rather significant.
However, you will be hard-pressed to find a program that focuses on ‘how-to’ develop performance support solutions, because developing courses is so much easier. Don Clark has a good graphic on Performance, Learning, Leadership & Knowledge. This is a good place to start to look at the non-instructional side of performance design. My own experience shows that non-instructional interventions (EPSS, KM, CoP) are very intensive at the front end (analysis) but require fewer resources in the middle (design).
In traditional instructional design you may spend up to 20% of your project costs on analysis, but for performance support this amount could go up to 80%. Once the solution is clearly specified, it doesn’t require a factory floor of instructional designers and can be developed by a small team of programmers, graphic artists, etc.
The next role for instructional design should be to get out of the course in a box metaphor. The web as a medium is better suited for non-linear, non-instructional learning programs than for ADDIE-developed courses. Just as the printed book changed academia, so too the web is changing training and education. Get used to it.
In my continuing search for examples of Small Business Blogs, I came across Industry Blogs, a listing of more serious, business-related blogs. I even got my own site registered. This aggregated site is still in its early stages but may grow. Many of the the sites are from the UK.
Once it fills up, this could be a good starting point for someone looking for examples on how to start blogging for business.
Well it seems to be that my problems with the comment spammer are over for now – you can now make comments anonymously or as a registered user (though it’s aways nice to know who you are). I got a lot of helpful pointers from Boris Mann, Robert Douglass and James Farmer, but in the end I think that it was an incorrect setting on the server. That means that Drupal is spam-resistant if you set it up correctly. It also means that there is a great support community to help you out if you have any problems – thanks very much guys.
In my previous post on Obsolescing the Middle Men, I had referred to commons-based peer production. From George Siemens I learned that Irving Wladawsky-Berger, VP Technical Strategy & Innovation at IBM, takes this form of production very seriously. Wladawsky-Berger states that :
Clearly, despite having built a highly successful, profitable business on a proprietary model, IBM takes the open source movement in its many manifestations very seriously. Working in an open community is for us a no-nonsense business decision, made only after considerable analysis of the technology and market trends, and due diligence on the community, its licensing and governance, and the quality of its offerings.
I think that we are seeing the next phase of open source getting bigger and more serious. Even more traditional business publications, such as Knowledge@Wharton are discussing open source models. This is a practical and pragmatic way of doing business which can be profitable, but also idealistic in that it fosters the common good. This may be the new model that our antiquated managerial capitalist world needs.
Commons-based peer production is a BIG idea.
For the past several years I have participated in a number of regional economic and industry-focused development initiatives. They have focused on how a region can be more innovative, get more jobs, create wealth, etc. In all of these cases the status quo remains, in terms of power and wealth. I also don’t see much real innovation, especially the quantum type referred to by Franz Johansson. The Commons could be the unifying idea that allows companies to make profits, individuals to opt-in on their own terms and non-profits to participate and benefit. However, to really make commons-based peer production work, the traditional power centres (corporations, executives, bureaucrats) will have to give up control, and that could prove to be most difficult.
Perhaps it could start with the CBC?
I’m still receiving about 5,000 spam pings per day on my website. Since trackbacks and comments are turned off, none are getting through. I also thought about re-activating my old Blogger site, but as soon as I made my first post I received 6 comment spams (not from my personal gambling spammer though) in the first 15 minutes.
My key difficulties seem to be:
1. Spammers can post to deleted nodes and I cannot stop them unless I do a global "no comments allowed".
2. I can’t block-delete a number of comments in Drupal, so I have to individually review each comment spam before deletion – and these can quickly get into the hundreds.
Yes, I have the spam module activated, but it doesn’t address the deleted node problem. Am I the only person who has ever deleted a blog post?
So my situation is that I want to keep the +500 posts that I have made on this site. I also like most of Drupal’s functions. However, I am seriously looking for alternatives. Perhaps archiving my Drupal blog and adding a link to a better blogging platform would be a solution. Unfortunately this would mean running two systems. Another option would be to try to transfer the database to another system. Has anyone ever transferred from Drupal to another system?
Comments to – hjarche(AT)gmail(DOT)com
I finally sat down to watch The Corporation, as I could never convince the whole family to watch it with me. This is a great film, and unfortunately not much is surprising. We have arrived at a point in our history where the dominant power structure has outlived its usefulness to human kind. My most memorable line is from Ray Anderson, CEO of Interface, who has seen the edge of the corporate/industrial cliff:
After the documentary was about 3/4 over, my boys came home from their pizza party and watched the rest with me. Now they want to see the whole thing :-)
Information on how to buy a personal copy of the film is available on the website.