Comments on: Contribution and Discovery

By: Contribution Engines « Infovark

Contribution Engines « Infovark — Sun, 05 Oct 2008 15:36:43 +0000

[...] Masterton left a great comment on my post about contribution and discovery. It’s prompted me to think some more about contribution [...]

By: Library clips :: The ubiquity of social tools in context of workflows :: September :: 2008

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:13 +0000

[...] Not long ago I wrote a post called “7 seconds to knowledge share” based on a post at Infovark. [...]

By: Library clips :: 7 seconds to knowledge share :: August :: 2008

Library clips :: 7 seconds to knowledge share :: August :: 2008 — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 23:12:07 +0000

[...] Gordon from Inforvark has a piece on why KM didn’t work, due to it’s non-humanistic processes: [...]

By: Daria

Daria — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 14:02:09 +0000

Gordon,
I think the problems you are referring to can be united under one name – ease of use. Enterprise 1.0 software is complex and does not provide people with absolute freedom to contribute their knowledge to some common repository. Enterprise 2.0 tools eliminate this problem, making it easier for knowledge workers to share information and collaborate. That’s why these tools are often adopted from the bottom up

By: Gordon

Gordon — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 14:57:16 +0000

Hey Mark!

Haha - on the contrary, having been an active participant in “the great BPM lie”, I think your latest post is brilliant! - I completely agree.

Back to my post - I think you’re also right - If everything is in the cloud, tagging fits very nicely within the seven second window.

By a contribution engine, I’m talking about the “Dark Matter”. There is still an awful lot of content in the enterprise that is not visible - not REST exposed. A lot of this content isn’t taggable because it’s the byproduct of personal communication in direct channels - like email - and it’s business artifacts like documents and reports that people want to retain inside the organization.

By: Mark Masterson

Mark Masterson — Wed, 06 Aug 2008 06:29:33 +0000

Heh. I think that may well be one of the most backhanded compliments I’ve ever received — thx. My more recent post on mashing up BPM and SNS may well prompt you to come hunt me down and kill me! (But, in which case, I would suggest indicates that you’re misunderstanding me…)

I agree that talking about the naked beauty of structural holes to “normal” people is a waste of time. You’d be surprised (or maybe not) by how many people passionately interested in social software can’t even be bothered understanding stuff like that — I tried talking to Sam about it in Boston, briefly, and he fell into a coma.

But I also think you’re missing the point, a bit. End-users aren’t the audience for structural hole theory (or any other theory) — the people building social software (and the people charged with putting it in the right place in the enterprise) are. I would argue that knowing such things is not only useful, to such people, it’s necessary — otherwise, they’re running blind.

But apart from all that — the whole assertion that there is no “contribution engine” yet puzzles me a bit. Assuming your tags were never more than, say, two clicks away (as del.icio.us is for me in Firefox, with the plugin), in what way is that not sufficient? Why “put” that document anywhere? The whole point of the Web (and REST) is — leave that resource where it bloody is. Link to it. Which (conceptually) you can do, if, rather than thinking in terms of “storing” documents, you start to think in terms of “tagging” them. And it is most definitely possible to enable (rich, meaningful) tagging within the “seven second window”. Methinks.

By: Dean

Dean — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 17:02:21 +0000

Hey Bex! Why would we need to move anything to the data center? Our prescription for ending the paper shuffle is creating an indexed knowledge base on your own workstation.

If I want something that Gordon’s working on, it’s much easier for me to find it on his machine than on a central server someplace. Especially one like SharePoint, where it’s been classified according to some taxonomy that neither Gordon nor I understand.

By: bex

bex — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 21:29:37 +0000

SharePoint does seem to be going in the direction of an “attention engine.” Don’t save locally, save in SharePoint! But that just brings up another problem: bandwidth.

If doing what I do normally is an auto-contribution to my knowledge management system, then how do you solve the bandwidth problem between your workstation and the data center?

They are nowhere near to solving the “discovery” problem, tho… SharePoint is like having baby black holes throughout your enterprise…

By: Knowledge Management is Marching Along « Word of Pie

Knowledge Management is Marching Along « Word of Pie — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 02:33:08 +0000

[...] Server 2007 Overview and DemoPie on Mark Lewis at the 2008 EMC Federal Government ForumContribution and Discovery « Infovark on Enterprise 2.0, What, Why, and Knowledge ManagementChris Campbell on Mark Lewis at the 2008 [...]

By: John Tropea

John Tropea — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 00:08:32 +0000

Cool post.

I simply think blogs allow you to write how you talk, the blogosphere is like conversations we have in real life…casual and informal sometimes…and we may have those conversations with people with have lots in common with…or people we just met, so we may form a relationship (which may lead to collaboration).

KM 1.0 didn’t do any of this…it just wasn’t humanistic, it wasn’t tuned to how people work…and plus no-one wants to be told what to do…if people feel engaged they will participate.

Since unstructured content in emails is do juicy and tacit (full of know-how) the idea is to try and get these conversations to happen on the web and in blogs…and the rest happens.

I’ve been thinking about this myself lately:
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/LibraryClips/~3/342671032/
http://feeds.feedburner.com/~r/LibraryClips/~3/341678832/