PIM
In preparation for this class, we were asked to describe our personal knowledge management (PKM) schemes. How did we organize e-mail, paper, bookmarks, files, etc.? There were, of course, a variety of answers:

  • to do, doing, done
  • the 4 Ds: deal with it, delete it, delegate it, date activate it
  • in the head
  • in directories
  • by devices such as PDAs and
  • through meta data

Someone pointed out that the exercise was really how we describe our personal information management (PIM) schemes, and as the exercise was written, I can’t disagree. Someone else asked me later what value the exercise had — of course everyone’s personal organization was going to be different, what did that reveal? I think that a study of PIM does show things that can be valuable to a study of knowledge management:

  • Each person’s organization of information is as unique as their schemas
  • Imposing a rigid organization of information on people ultimately fails because that organization is not personally meaningful
  • If PIM is looked at an aggregate level (through how they tag information: see flickr or del.icio.us; or search engine queries: see The Database of Intentions), conclusions about how people think about and search for things can be seen. Personal organization of information/data on-line is driving persuasive technologies such as recommendation engines (see Amazon’s “Better Together” and “Customers who bought this book also bought” features).
  • Certain technologies, such as browser-based bookmarking tools (furl, del.icio.us), show people how many times they’ve used a resource so they can see how a resource is valued.
  • These tools also recommend content that was tagged in a similar manner by other people, so an inquiry into a certain subject can be supplemented by what others think of that subject.

The transparency of how information is organized and used, particularly on the Web, can give individuals and companies insight into what is valued and provide avenues for each to grow and capitalize on connections.

Quality
A little later, we discussed what knowledge work was, and if it was possible to make knowledge implicit and then explicit. There were many viewpoints, but I didn’t walk away with a solid answer I could work with. In truth, I was a little tired of the theoretical talk and felt the need for something practical to make the discussion meaningful to me. But then someone threw out an example someone made of two cooks following the same recipe. One cook followed the recipe exactly, the other made allowances for what was in season or what ingredients looked better. The comment was made that part of what drives knowledge work is some desire to think about and improve upon what you’re doing, and an ability to act beyond step-by-step instructions. Strangely enough, the entire discussion put me in mind of Robert Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. Pirsig spends a large part of the book discussing the definition and pursuit of Quality:

“It’s this understanding of Quality as revealed by stuckness which so often makes self-taught mechanics so superior to institute-trained men who have learned how to handle everything except a new situation.”

It’s an interesting book and I think it drives to the question of values and what motivates people to pursue excellence. I feel it’s an important consideration, particularly for organizational cultures that don’t encourage or seem to appreciate varying viewpoints.

Nonsense
The really interesting question of the evening, for me, was how do we translate these concepts of knowledge management to people who’ve been swamped with the term and its now diluted meaning. How do we state our concept of knowledge management without running into others’ entrenched ideas of what that means? How do we state that information management is not equal to knowledge management when management doesn’t see the difference? What will convince management that dealing with information by itself will not guarantee a successful KM effort?

I liked the thought that as knowledge brokers we could be considered intermediaries between technology people and business people, and translate KM concepts back and forth between the two groups. That did ring true to me, but I struggle with how to get support from both sides to try a new sort of KM effort.

Trust
Someone wondered how trust could happen on the Web when anyone could see and use your ideas. I thought it was a good question, and my answer to that is that the transparency of the Web makes it increasingly difficult to take someone’s content and reuse it anonymously. For example, every time my work or my Web site is cited, I have a technorati search that reports it back to me. I also have particular keywords that feed back to me, so I know when my stuff’s being used — the Web is smaller than you might think. Besides, an individual’s voice can’t be stamped out of their writing. Individuals know their own work, and so do their audiences (who report back when stuff is lifted). Once someone has lifted someone else’s writing or other work without permission, the consequences on the Web can be serious — credibility is shattered, and you can’t get that back. Also, everyone leaves a trail on the Web. I once found one of my photographs on another site after I had looked at the logs for my site and followed the trail. They took my picture down after I contacted their ISP.

The other thought is that work that is posted on the Web no longer belongs exclusively to the individual who wrote it. Attribution of individual work is extremely important; however, what makes the Web valuable is the endless reworking of an individual’s content — the remixes, comments, fisking (taking an article apart line by line), additions, arguements, etc. As someone who posts on-line, I am thrilled when I’m cited or get comments on my posts. It raises the level of work that I produce knowing that it will be seen and possibly used by others.