Sorry for the long time no posting.. life has its way of keeping you busy at times.. (comments welcome :-) ).

I think that I will change the intention of the this blog a little. For a while I want to try if it is not more informational to you readers if I keep it as a kind of diary. Feedback welcome.

..tbc..

Find of the day (well its 9:29am, but its already pretty good!):
http://www.tfstech.com/solutions/products/tfssecuremessaging/free250/techreq.htm
A free (up to 250ppl) secure messaging server. I do not endorse the product, but in terms of hosting your own email system, this is interesting. If you have your own small company, definitely something to think about. Once I have implemented it, I will post installation and usage reports.

more to come..

My thoughts on.. follow a thought
The internet is great for a lot of things. Not for others..
If one has a thought - it is great.. just type it in Google or any other search engine and see where it brings you..
I like this ladies blog for that she has some very interesting ideas related to social networking, definition of KM and knowledge work. Check it out:
http://radio.weblogs.com/0121664/2003/06/12.html

News of .. .TODAY, 5/3/4
HP offers free Pocket PC classes. Again FREE. Check it out here

Thoughts on.. JIM MCGEE
Have you met him ? Do you know him ? No ? Well, you should ! Checkout his blog. We had him as a speaker for one of our KMPRO events and he was most excellent. Smart, funny, hands-on. An expert to remember and keep on the short list of your social network.
..No, I was not getting paid for this comment :-)

Thoughts on .. PERSONAL KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

Let's see.. blogs.. wikis..CMS's..instant messaging..email..spamfilters..search engines..etc etc etc..

As it turns out there is so many things one would need to really manage one's own knowledge effectively.. (now i know why i have so many servers running at home)..

But then again.. there is no one service that provides this all to you.. and if.. well, it would not be free..

Look at Plone (plone.org). It is a CMS running on top of Zope that is growing into a KM system. It is free, powerful, easy to use and it continuously expanded to include more and more functionality (search engine, templates, taxonomy, etc. etc.). Way ahead of a lot of professional ($$$) CMS solutions.

Once again, this is only my $.02..

Thoughts on.. THE STATE OF KNOWLEDGE MANAGEMENT

I am a Knowledge Management Expert. That's what I do, every day, for nearly 14 years now. Day and sometimes Night (ask my wife). I continuously follow the market, look at the vendors and service providers, and companies and what they are trying to do with KM.

My observations are the following:
-The government knows it has issues (knowledge sharing, retention) and needs to do something. The have big KM efforts going
-Vendors still think KM is technology. My advice: RETHINK - talk to KM consultants and listen
-Service providers think there is no money to be made with KM. My advice: RETHINK - Knowledge work is the commodity of tomorrow, you better prepare to offer this service.
-On a daily basis KM is in people's mind and words - more and more. Do a google search on KM :-) (3.200.700 as of 4/23/4)

..to be continued..

Thoughts on.. Corporate Blogging
aka Weblogging.. Blogging is a hierarchical capturing of a persons thoughts, knowledge snippets, pieces of work.. etc etc.

For those who have the time, ambition and skill to do that.. it may be very helpful. It really comes down to one's point of view on sharing. Bloggers are sharing people, they want you to know something. In a corporate environment this can be really helpful, but it will come in short on the fact that not everyone will use it. There are always those who think knowledge is power - at that is something I DO NOT want to share. So let's look at it as another tool in the toolkit for knowledge workers. Also see my posting on the benefit of wiki's over blogs.

Thoughts on... OUTSOURCING
Outsourcing is a good idea... but needs to be very carefully approached. I am a consultant and advise my clients on such matters. Some facts:
-Outsourcing can help focus on important business objectives
-Outsourcing can save money
-Outsourcing can risk loosing core business knowledge
-Outsourcing is big.. specially to India
-Knowledge Management is huge in India's companies
-Read the two lines above again and reflect on it !!!

Thoughts on...
Knowledge Management and email chain letters

On the one side it is really nice that people send me all those emails that will make me happy, rich, sexy, horny, and whatever else if I forward this email to a gazillion more people via email.

On the other side it is a REALLY bad example of knowledge sharing. First you would think - well, no it is perfect knowledge sharing.. I share something for your benefit !. But that is not true. Knowledge is something that is experienced, information put into action. If you personally experienced that Microsoft pays every email recipient money (very popular hoax), than that is Knowledge created and I will definitely not mind that you send me that email sharing your personal knowledge. BUT YOU DONT KNOW. You have not experienced what it says in the chain letter. So PLEASE STOP SENDING EMAILS THAT YOU HAVE NOT PERSONALLY CONFIRMED AND EXPERIENCED !!!

Sorry - it needed to be said.
I am stepping down from the chair now :-).
as always - my $.02

Daily Experiment:
For the curious - here is a link to a wiki I set up for everybody to play around with

Daily Observation:
Hmm.. while weblogs are nice.. they dont really capture the way we think.. they are designed to be a timelined thought capturing tool.. missing to support how we remember information and how we tie knowledge together in our mind.

I think that Wiki's in combination with Blogs can be more helpful.. I probably get flamed from Bloggers for this statement.. but seriously, please go and checkout the wiki's that combine wiki and blog functionality.

my $.02 for the day..

The Knowledge Dude is here again....

sorry times have been busy. Knowledge Management is again gaining momentum.

There are new 'personal knowledge management tools' that are really helpful. Check these out:

tool: Google News Alerts
link: http://www.google.com/newsalerts?hl=en
what it does: it send you an email with new links based on the
keywords you entered in the news alert
result: very satisfactory.. my alert on KM is really helpful

too: Kartoo Search Engine
link: http://www.kartoo.com
what is does: it is a concept map based meta search engine. it
represents the results in form of a concept-map
that links the results together by keywords. it also
searches multiple search engines
result: most excellent.. wonderful for researching
something you dont know much about.. clicking on
keywords in the results refines your search.. you
can save a search.. visually supportive