A different world

I was privileged this week to spend some time with Anna Acland, from Save the Children and Chris Catton from Amnesty International. Whilst the topic of discussion for both visits was knowledge and innovation management, I was stuck by the passion with which Anna and Chris spoke about their work and the difference that they are making. Anna told me that, like all large organisations, silos in sharing learning and expertise exist, there is a a huge amount of goodwill to change and adapt. This is because of crystal-clear and measurable organisational goals that everyone buys in to emotionally. Oh, were that the case everywhere!

'Necessity is the mother of invention' (Charles Farquhar 1678 - 1707)...
The other thing we discussed was the wonderful way staff on the ground innovate. Teams faced with both very limited budgets, resource and central support (Central Africa anyone?), finding unconventional solutions and working in unorthodox ways becomes a necessity. What these NGO's do is collect these stories and use them to envision other teams trying to innovate. Big organisations don't seem to have that imperative; instead relying on complex 'innovation strategies' and investment. Anecdote do a good job at corporate storytelling, but for real innovation, get out to Angola.

KIN Bookmarks, the experiment continues...

It's all very well setting up a KIN Social Bookmarking group, but unless the results are easily visible to KIN members, it's not achieving it's purpose. We now have three active bookmarkers: myself, Gary Colet and Matt Hill from Lloyds Register. So how can KIN members see what is being bookmarked?
Well, there are a number of ways.

• You can visit the Diigo KIN group web page where all the bookmarks are listed in reverse chronological order of bookmarking. (From this page you can also request to join the group and start adding your bookmarks.)
  
• You can visit the KIN Tags and Bookmarks page in memberspace which has a number of groups of bookmarks displayed according to how they've been tagged and a tag cloud of all the bookmarks made so far.
  
  But remembering to visit a web page regularly is a chore. And do you really what's changed since your last visit? So...
  
  
• You can put http://groups.diigo.com/rss/ki-network/bookmark in your favourite RSS reader and updates will be brought to you rather than you having to go to the updates. (You do use a RSS reader don't you? - See this post!)
• Finally, as an experiment, I'm going to use a feature of Diigo and have the week's bookmarks automatically posted to this blog.
  

As ever, feedback on the above options is very welcome.

Collecting Connections

Discussion Forums and Blogs are very good at capturing current thoughts and opinions. They are, by their very nature, chronological. This is fine when you regularly follow them but can be unhelpful if you only visit occasionally or happen to stumble across them.


Take Blogs. How do you know whether the information / knowledge / opinion given in the post made 12 months ago, has (or has not) been superceded by something more up to date in a later post. So, for example, if you came across my post about social bookmarking made in June 2008 - KIN Bookmarks - how would you know it had been superceded by the more recent Social Bookmarking Take 2 without trawling through the intervening posts or at least reviewing posts that have been tagged Social Bookmarking? (Actually, not such a huge issue since I haven't been a prolific poster; but you get my point).

Take Discussion forums. We frequently have threads where people post recommended links. (See for example Recommended Blogs and New Generation Expertise Location products.) A newcomer to the boards would be hard pushed to find links relevant to a topic they are interested in by trawling through all the boards.

This is where Wikis and Social Bookmarking tools can help. But they do need a little process and discipline.

Wikis (by which I include any form of user modifiable web pages) can be great for summarising and or aggregating information gathered over time as described in my post in February: Connecting & Collecting. To continue the examples above. If you came across the social bookmarking posts above and wanted to know for example, if you wanted to know what - if any - social bookmarking tool is in use at KIN, where would you go for a definitive answer? Well you could go to this list in Memberspace which is (or I hope will become) the definitive list of who uses what tools in KIN. (I use the term 'Wiki' very loosely here - subject of another blog post maybe!)

Likewise, I believe that use of a social bookmarking tool such as Diigo can provide a powerful means to collect and aggregate recommended bookmarks. So I have bookmarked using Diigo the links shown in both the above threads and tagged them 'Blogs' and 'Expertise Location' as appropriate. So now the easy way to see what Blogs have been recommended by KIN members and what 'Expertise Location' tools people have recommended looking at is to visit the tag cloud (and some associated lists of bookmarks generated from Diigo) on this KIN Tags and Bookmarks page.

Expertise Identification within KIN

Scott Gavin's post It’s more important than ever to identify subject matter experts in your company makes interesting reading. It chimes with thoughts I've been having recently about KIN and the wealth of expertise which is available within the Network. One of the things, I think, that KIN excels at is providing the opportunities for the individuals within the member organisations to connect, network and exchange ideas and expertise. However, I think we could do even more.
In his article, Scott says that subject matter experts are identified by "... a mix of self declaration, identification by others and by the real life information someone interacts with."

So where could KIN add more value?

Well the KIN facilitators already do quite a lot to help match members' needs with members who have some know how (identification by others).

Where I think we could do more is by facilitating more of the 'self declaration' and 'the real life information members interact with'.

Self Declaration.
A number of members are good attempting to answer questions on the KIN discussion forums (self declaration). And as I noted in my making connections post, "if we think we know someone who might be able to contribute, we will normally alert them to the posting"
Another provision for self-declaration is the Member Contacts List which allows for members to list their expertise and experience. However, I suspect that few members a) maintain/update the information in this list and b) use this list to identify who knows what. The problem is that these days there are so many places we maintain profiles, this is just one extra chore. People are much more likely to maintain and keep up to date profile information which has multiple uses and in which they have a real investment.
I would suggest, therefore, that members profiles on LinkedIn are much more likely to be up to date and relevant. David Gurteen noted recently that "LinkedIn is slowly moving away from being a static depository to store your CV and connect to close professional colleagues and is starting to become a more interactive and participatory place. And I am starting to use it myself more and more"
KIN has a group on LinkedIn specifically for KIN members. If you aren't already a member, you may well receive an invitation soon!
The limitations of the above are a) they list what people say they are interested / expert in - this is not always borne out in practice.


Information members interact with.
A better way of identifying what people are really interested in / knowledgable about is to see what they do and say. As KIN is by its very nature spread across a number of organisations, this can be tricky. The discussion forums are as good a starting point as any. Then there are members' Blogs. I've started a list of members' blogs and will add more as and when I become aware of them. And if anyone wants to contribute to this blog, they would be more than welcome.
Another possible way of identifying knowledge networks is by what people bookmark. Which is one of the reasons I have started (see this post) the KIN Diigo Group as an experiment to see if there is value to be gained here as well.

So what other ways are there that KIN should try to help its members?

Social Bookmarking - Take 2 (Pt3 - Some Results)

(Number 3 in a series of posts - see also part 1 and part 2)

I've only been playing with Diigo for a few days and I'm starting to see how it can be used to benefit myself and KIN.


Firstly, I have created a Diigo KIN Group. As I bookmark things, any that I think are of interest to KIN, I add them to this group. Now in itself I think this is useful. Where it has the potential to be really useful is if other KIN members also start to add bookmarks to this group.

The bookmarks in this group can be seen here. Note the Tag Cloud in the panel on the right.
I have embedded the 'Tag Cloud' for the group links in the ET SIG Home Page, here and below.


I have created a list of bookmarks relating to the recent Wiki roundtable event and embedded this list in Memberspace.

I have tagged some bookmarks 'Prediction Markets' and embedded these links in the Winter 2009 workshop site (bottom right). The bit that's really cool - I think - about this one is that it has an RSS feed so those of you using feed readers can pick this list up directly!

I'm experimenting with what else I can do on the ET SIG site in 'Resources Pages'.

Key Advantage
In all of the above, the lists as seen in memberspace are not static. i.e. if I add bookmarks that meet the criteria, the lists as viewed will change.

Minor Disadvantage
Using the standard Sharepoint Link Lists, you can set up an alert to be notified of any additions to the list. Such alerts will not work for these lists.

Personally, I think the advantages far outweigh the disadvantages. What do you think?
Does anyone else use Diigo, and what features do they like best?