Infovark

Jim McGee posted a list of essential Enterprise 2.0 articles to the FastForward blog. I’ve read many of them before but found a few items worth looking at again, as well as a few gems I’d missed. I’ve bookmarked it for future reference.

I’d also like to add a few other articles to the list. The first two have to do with managing collections of information. Information is the raw material knowledge workers process into insights, analysis, and innovation. In today’s environment, when there’s more information available than ever before, it’s worth spending some time thinking about how we collect and manage all that data.

• Metacrap — Cory Doctorow. The definitive rant against human-driven metadata classification systems. No organizational system can ever be complete, nor will everyone agree to use the same one, because we all have different perspectives and different goals.
• Ontology is Overrated — Clay Shirky. A classic discussion of the reasons for a shift from formal classification systems to more probabilistic approach. Authored in 2005, just as the term folksonomy gained wide acceptance.

The last link has to do with social networks and is perhaps more relevant today, post-Facebook, than at the time it was authored in 2003.

• A Group is its Own Worst Enemy — Clay Shirky. An article that explains why social networks are different from physical networks: In social networks of a certain size, there are diminishing returns to scale.

I’m sure I’ll think of more, but these are the most obvious and most readily available articles missing from Jim’s list. Happy reading!