A New Special Interest Group - Enabling Technologies

Why a new SIG?
At KIN, we constantly strive to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our members. Over the last year, we have solicited input in various forms, mostly from KIN quarterly workshops. We have consolidated the inputs we have received (along with a few ideas of our own) and by the time you read this KIN members will have completed a survey that we initiated to more accurately gauge the level of interest in a range of topics so that we can ensure that the programme of events for 2009 truly meets the needs of our members.

We are using the results of this to prioritise which events to organise during the course of the year and to organise SIGs to meet member demand as far as we are able.


We tagged all of the inputs we reviewed prior to the survey being undertaken and generated the above 'tag cloud' based on the number of times a topic or theme was mentioned as an area of interest to KIN members. It was apparent that there was a lot of interest in what we loosely termed 'Collaboration Technologies'. So, we believe that there is sufficient demand for a new SIG based around 'Enabling Technologies'. We decided on 'Enabling Technologies' rather than 'Collaboration Technologies' so that we could encompass a wider range of tools than just those implied by the term 'Collaboration Technologies'.

What will be included in the 'Enabling Technologies' SIG.

When we undertook our review of the member inputs, we grouped the topics under the three themes. People, Process and Technology. The topics that were listed under the Technology theme were:

Seeking and finding	People and expertise search, Enterprise search strategy, Enterprise search tool selection, Metadata, RSS
Platforms and Intranets	Team/Community Workspaces, Collaboration technologies, SharePoint, Knowledge platforms, Portal/Intranet strategy, Discussion forums / boards
Wikis	WIKIs for Lessons Learned, Implementing Wikis, Practical Usage of Wikis, Encouraging participation, How do Wikis help
Web 2.0 and Social Media	Practical usage of Blogs,Social bookmarking,Social networking & media. Openness vs security of social media,Social networks vs heirarchy,Participative media
Knowledge capture tools - IT	Technology for capturing lessons learned ,Knowledge elicitation tools,Decision mapping tools
Information Management	Information and records management (not paper), Document management (including paper records), Content management

What will this SIG do and how can I participate?

This SIG will address many of the topics in the Technology theme. Clearly, none of the Technology things are 'just about the Technology' but have People and Process aspects also. My current intention with the ET SIG is to address the People and Process aspects which are 'driven' by the usage of specific enabling technologies. (This will, of course, be validated by canvassing the views of any and all KIN members who would like to participate in the ET SIG.)

So we won't be just talking about the technologies themselves, but looking at the pragmatic issues around their implementation and effective use. My initial thoughts are that the most useful thing that this SIG could do would be to pool their knowledge and experience and develop a set of guidelines and good practices and example policies for the implementation of Knowledge Sharing Enabling Technologies.

As with all the SIGs, there will be a range of Roundtables, Masterclasses, Webinars and Peer Assists organised.

So if you want to be part of this exciting new SIG (and you are a KIN member, of course) drop me a line I will ensure you are kept informed of future events.

Connecting & Collecting

Nick Milton just posted a good article about Connect & Collect on his blog. And I think he's absolutely right - you need a bit of both. I've been doing a bit of both myself only this morning.

I've just recently bought a Popcorn Hour Networked Media Tank. It's a bit of a mouthful, but essentially it's a piece of kit that allows me to stream Video, Music and Photos from my PC to the TV and A/V amp in my living room. It's a great piece of kit, but it does take a bit of technical savvy if you want to get all the bells and whistles jangling and tooting.
So I've been trawling the User Community bulletin boards for advice and solutions. There's lot's there, but it takes a bit of digging out.
There is also a Wiki. But at the moment the content on the Wiki is a bit sparse. So I decided that, when I find a nugget of useful information that helps me, hidden in the depths of the bulletin board, I will incorporate that nugget on the appropriate Wiki page. Hopefully others will too.

So those of us 'connecting' using the bulletin boards will 'collect' the helpful knowledge in the Wiki where it is more readily found.

2009 and all that

So let's see if I do any better with regular posts to my blog this year than I did last year. (The road to hell is paved .... etc)

So to start 2009, a post which rambles across a few topics but ultimately is about the power of the Web for sharing of Knowledge.

I have been affected by the cold winds blowing in the retail sector. Empire Direct has gone into administration taking some of my money with it. I paid by credit card, so I can reclaim from the credit card company. In fairness to them, they've been very good in handling it so far. Provided you get to talk to a person. And there's the rub. You know how it goes... "For another menu option, press 1; to listen to dreadful music, press 2; to talk to a person, you're SOL (an acronym I picked up from some American colleagues the polite form of which is 'Sadly Outta Luck'). Well I did eventually get through to a human, and they were very helpful.
Then yesterday, while browsing some blog posts (like you do) that came up in my RSS aggregator I came across one which mentioned a website called get2human.com. The beauty of this site is that it tells you the number to call and the appropriate key presses to reach a human for a range of organisations. And, of course, anyone can submit entries to the database. Very useful knowledge shared, I think. I'll add it to my list of useful websites right next to saynoto0870.com and fixmystreet.com

The documentation tool I was looking for ?

On my very first blog post I wrote "I found myself in a bit of a quandary about as to the best way to document [the roundtable]".

Well I don't think it's the final answer but I have to admit to be grudgingly impressed with Microsoft's OneNote. Having seen many blog posts talking about it, I finally downloaded a trial version to play with. Microsoft gives you 60 days after which you have to pay. Well I've got about 50 days left, but I'm already thinking I might just have to bite the bullet and contribute to Redmond's profit line.

So what is it that has impressed me ?

Basically, it's the ability to mix and match text, pictures, screen clippings; drag them around and position them in a non-linear way and create what looks quite a bit like a web page with very little hassle. And then you can output in various formats.
I've just used it to do a write-up of KIN's latest roundtable / masterclass and was able to incorporate pictures taken at the event with screen clippings of bits of presentations and annotate with bits of text in a nice free-form way.
I've tried generating a .mht web page which looks pretty but is way too big and consequently takes too long to load. (I'm probably doing something wrong here). I also generated a .pdf file which comes out very well (a couple of glitches, but not too bad at all).

KIN members can see the results of my efforts here.

I will continue to experiment and let you know how I get on. In the meantime, are there any other 'Onenote' users out there that would like to share their experiences. Also, are there any alternatives I should be considering ? Here is a post comparing Evernote and Onenote.

Moving to the Cloud ?

One of my earliest blog bosts was Thinking out of the Inbox - More Collaboration through less e-mail which referred to Luis Suarez's experiment in giving up email.

Partly inspired by that, partly by a series of posts by Aliza Sherman:

Official Google Docs Blog: Aliza's chronicles: climbing out of document hell
Official Google Docs Blog: Aliza's chronicles, part 2: surviving the computer shuffle
Official Google Docs Blog: Aliza's chronicles, part 3: collaboration and the long haul
Official Google Docs Blog: Aliza's chronicles, part 4: collaboration, quick and easy
Official Google Docs Blog: Aliza's chronicles, part 5: the personal stuff

I have decided as an experiment to see whether it is possible to migrate my KM work to 'The Cloud' and just how much it is possible to do with online tools.

I am already a user of Google Mail and Google Calendar so I am going to see just how much of my word-processing, spreadsheet and presentation work can be done using (mostly) Google Apps. I say 'mostly' because I will also plan to try out other tools such as Sliderocket.

I'll let you know how I get on !