Dina Mehta wrote today about implementing Weblog, Wiki, IM, and other collaboration technologies into an Intranet environment, to replace an "archaic" Knowledge Management system and improve inter-office communication. I'm embarking on similar activities with the company I work for, so I'm eagar to read about others experiences. In my work, I've made a couple of proposals to IT mgmt about using weblog and wiki technologies. They seem interested, so I'm now going to set up some test runs using open source technology. I've got my eye on Twiki as an Intranet-focused wiki and Movable Type as an extensible weblog system. I'll be writing about my experiments with these two products in the future, because I'm as curious as everybody else how "normal people" will react to this technology in a corporate setting. Especially as I not only have to convince business people, but IT people too.
Dina also adds, about KM in general:
I'm not sure this fits into traditional definitions of Knowledge Management (i really dislike the term) - i wish someone would coin a really neat term for it.
I feel the same about the phrase "Knowledge Management". To me, KM is full of fluffy words and phrases that have little practical value in the real world. It's too easy for so-called "Knowledge Management Consultants" to swan into organisations and pontificate about leveraging 'this' and setting up processes for 'that'. It's all so top-down, all talk and no action. The thing I like about wikis and weblogs is that it's bottom-up, there are no rules or processes or KM systems trying to pen workers in like sheep. KM is like a sheepdog and KM Consultants are the Shepherds. Except the 'sheep' are actually people, not sheep, so they resist herding.
With wikis and weblogs, people can just click a button and type (notice I said 'can' - it remains to be seen whether they actually do). People can produce information, subscribe to information they value, edit each others information. It's like a flow of information and Knowledge gets created in the mix and mingle of it all.
Information Flow is the term I suggested to Dina to replace Knowledge Management. It's not an original term, I've heard people like Dave Winer use it. Information Flow is what wikis and weblogs enable. To "manage" knowledge suggests a top-down approach where we get to tell Knowledge what to do. Well guess what, knowledge can't be ordered around. Information routes itself around of its own free will. What's more, Knowledge is in the eye of the beholder - i.e. it's a Subjective thing, not Objective. Am I mixing my metaphors? Sorry, it is late on a Friday...
Hey, maybe I can style myself as an "Information Flow Consultant" :-) I'll get the business card made up on Monday morning!
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We've been using TWiki in our development group of twenty or so engineers for about a year now. I'll be interested to see how you use it alongside Movable Type.
Getting content onto it still seems to be a struggle, although it is proving useful. It helps when you can answer "It's on the twiki" when asked about something. A lot of the knowledge that flows around the office is still done with email, and the twiki suffers from stale information persisting.
All that said, it's the most maintained store of internal information that I've seen.
Posted by: Adrian | February 20, 2004 11:48 AM
How about introducing some fun into your company with Flickr? I know its in Alpha still so a little early but interesting as the beginning of a collaborative environment with IM, chatrooms around topics and photo exchange plus traditional bulletin boards if you don't want to get *live* with people. Interesting. Come over sometime and look me up, Richard. - JT
Posted by: Janet Tokerud | February 21, 2004 11:10 PM
Hi again. Are you aware of Denham Grey's blog: http://denham.typepad.com/km/? He's got lots of great content there.
Posted by: Janet Tokerud | February 21, 2004 11:35 PM
Adrian, that sounds promising about Twiki. I will keep you informed of my progress with it.
Janet, Flickr is interesting but not really my cup of tea. I'm not much for IM or photos, I'm more of a traditional text person ;-) Plus the company I work for is quite conservative in that area too. I'll check out Denham's weblog.
Posted by: Richard MacManus | February 22, 2004 1:32 AM
I thought maybe it would be way ahead of the curve for your company. But was more interested in you checking it out. I'm not much for IM - yet. But I like the presence thing when it's limited to friends at least so far in my limited experience. Keep on writin' - I like your original thinking and the way you stubbornly stick to your own way of seeing things and expose that for the world to see. This is a good kind of stubborn that contrasts with a sort of *me too* approach to thinking. Your exploration of publishing options is always interesting to me.
Posted by: Janet Tokerud | February 22, 2004 1:57 PM
Well, you know I'm going to say that you should avoid weblogs in favor of TeamWiki and ProjectWiki approaches... http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/TeamIsTheFocus
Then consider adding: http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/IntraNet
1. enterprise-wide SearchEngine to scoop up all that stuff (if they feel OK about sharing that widely)
2. web-based RSS aggregator (does Bloglines have an enterprise system yet?) for people to track the flows that interest them (make sure you WikiEngine has RSS support - most do).
3. consider whether/how to integrate email and IRC into those wiki spaces... http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/WikiAndIrc http://webseitz.fluxent.com/wiki/EmailDiscussionBesideWiki
Bill Seitz • 2/25/04; 7:11:35 AM
(nb from Richard: I manually copied this comment from my old radio userland comments server, as it arrived in-between the swapover to the new PyCS server).
Posted by: Bill Seitz | February 26, 2004 2:09 AM
I implemented a Twiki in a corporate environment. People liked it and used it, so I'd consider it a success. But management was incapable of grokking the idea that anybody could edit, so I was forced to create a restrictive authentication system, which annoyed users a lot and led to less use.
Lucas Gonze • 2/25/04; 7:45:20 AM
(nb from Richard: I manually copied this comment from my old radio userland comments server, as it arrived in-between the swapover to the new PyCS server).
Posted by: Lucas Gonze | February 26, 2004 2:10 AM