from Windows XP to Mac OS X Leopard. I haven’t used a mac since 1992 (the good old days with e.g. Macintosh Classic). I’m really positively surprised by the user experience. It’s often “wow” in comparison to Windows.
my domains from candan.eu to united-domains.de (a smooth process – thanks to my former and new domain hosting company)
my webspace from candan.eu to metanet.ch. This Swiss company offers a very attractive packaged price – 9 GB webspace, unlimited traffic and databases for about 5 EUR per month. Not the kind of limitations which I encountered with candan and other German webspace hosting companies. The questions which arised during the migration were answered quickly. So, I don’t mind to recommend their services. Please mention my mediator # 905101 in case you transfer your webspace, too
the blogging software from MovableType 3.33 to WordPress 2.7.1
I’m happy to  focus again on content, to discover new people and to say bye-bye to technological & contractual issues. Nevertheless, I’ll publish some lessons learned in one of the upcoming posts.
Not so sure whether the web 2.0 expo title was so powerful. I’ve barely found interesting presentations on the public website:
Tim O’Reillys keynote “Web 2.0 Five Years On” outlined nothing new. We have all already heard of harnessing collective intelligence, smart grids, gov 2.0, “build a simpler system”, “create more value than you capture” and “something that we create together” pleas.
Aaron Kim from IBM compiles some important enterprise 2.0 anti-patterns in his presentation (the content related to the anti-patterns is presented in the appendix).
Eventually, the presentation from Christina Wodtke seems to be my favourite from this series. She introduces a framework to design social websites (see below):
Image from HVargas (Creative Commons License)
Managers seem to be more reluctant to make of use tools even before the current economic crisis emerged. According to the most recent survey of Bain & Company none out of 25 tools which are relevant to senior management, topical, and measurable showed an increased usage pattern in 2008. The interesting fact, though, is that this obvious result is not even reflected in the survey report.
“Knowledge Management” still belongs to the management tools with a high satisfaction rate. However, the latest reference mentioned dates back to 2006. Five tools have been added in 2008:
Decision Rights Tools
Downsizing
Online Communities
Price Optimization Models
Voice of the Customer Innovation
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off Tags: Methods (CM)
MITWorld is another good place to explore latest thinking. So, e.g. the excellent presentation of John Chambers (CEO of Cisco) on “Building the Next Generation Company”. Thanks a lot to Jon Husband, whose blog Wirearchy (BTW: good KM blog) has pointed me to the MITWorld videos.
John Chambers is an eloquent presenter and introduces his audience at MIT to the change Cisco has undertaken in the last 2-3 years during the first 30 minutes of the talk. The enterprise-wide collaboration which has been set up at Cisco has enabled the company to now drive 26 strategic priorities in parallel in 2009 (instead of 2 three years ago).
It may not come as a surprise to a knowledge manager that John Chambers outlined the importance of a threefold approach to be successful with the transition to a collaborative company: process (CEO lead, tied to market transition goals, working groups…), technology (enable innovation, collaborative tools, …), and culture (viral, accountability, reward, enforce common processes, adopt or eliminate,…). John also talks about his personal change management experience while implementing collaboration at Cisco: from command + control to listen + trust.
Pattie Maes and Pranav Mistry from the MIT Media Lab demonstrate a new way to access, manage and create information in daily life with a portable device. The sixth sense project shows how powerful a combination of off-the-shelf devices, smart software, and mobile information will be in the near future. Once again, a wonderful TED presentation.
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off Tags: Examples (IM)
I’ve been invited to take part in the OpenTeams group at LinkedIn. OpenTeams is a SaaS collaborative software that offers a pretty ambitious value proposition. The strange thing is that at first glance OpenTeams offers just a tool (a kind of improved wiki), nothing else. So, how will this value be delivered? I assume that it will not be delivered: there is no indication of success stories on “enabled innovative enterpreneurial organizations” or similar examples on the website.
At second glance (and to be fair) there is not only the tool but a new management model which has been implemented at OpenTeams LLC. Tory Gattis, the founder and president of OpenTeams, calls himself a social system architect, a role which he plays e.g. in his hometown Houston (Texas) and describes in his blog Houston Strategies.
Arthur Shelley, the Global Knowledge Director of Cadbury Schweppes, has presented a bunch of slides on using animal metaphor for understanding behavior and building relationships during the most recent SIKM call.
The good thing is that he has clearly stated that each of us is typically a mix of some of the identified characters (see also the following presentation). I’m always averse to pigeonhole somebody based on a few characteristics. Arthur’s point is that it’s in many ways easier to discuss on the impact of the behaviour of a specific “animal” than to discuss about a specific person. The metaphor helps to separate between the person and his behaviour. Thus, avoiding unnecessary confrontation. According to his experience the usage of the organizational zoo method
“creates an environment where trust can develop and stress reduced, leading to improved knowledge sharing and more interactive people.”
Another good point in his presentation (slide 11) has been the multidimensional definition of performance. I’m looking forward to Artur’s next developments; e.g. he will soon start an organizational zoo character profile (beta version).
Posted in Uncategorized | Comments Off Tags: Methods (KM)
One of my favourite magazine, the German c’t, has recently published a story on the visualization of complex information. The article contains a lots of interesting links to information visualization sites that I would like to share with you. Thanks to André Kramer who has written this excellent article. Information design offers a lot of interesting insights for knowledge managers. Please have a look:
The visualcomplexity.com site offers more than 600 examples of information design. Of them, nearly 100 belong to the “knowledge networks” domain.
Andrew Wande Moere, a senior lecturer of the University of Sydney, offers information design example on a continuous basis in his blog information aesthetics.
WinDirStat is a treemap file explorer. Each file is represented by a colored rectangle.
LiquiFile could be the file explorer of the next generation. The good news is that the inventor is based in Germany. The bad news is that’s available for Mac only.
Who ever wonders what top managers think about in tough times may have a look at the EnronExplorer. The 200’000 e-mail archive offers insight into the lives and preoccupations of Enron’s top executives during the 1999 – 2002 period.
Last but not least Gapminder shows really astonishing relationships that debunk myths thanks to historic statistical data. The powerful visualization combines three types of data in one chart plus the timeline for each combination of countries in the world. Hans Rosling offers the most useful information design tool (see video).
Each knowledge manager in Germany, Switzerland or Austria (hopefully there will be an English version) should have a closer look at the series of presentation on “Enterprise 2.0 Enabled Knowledge Management” by a T-Systems team. The three presentations are visualized in an excellent way; it looks like they applied Garr Reynold’s best practices.
The third presentation on how to implement knowledge management 2.0 is the best one. It also shows that the frameworks and experience of knowledge management 1.0 programs can be leveraged, e.g. the content of the slides 26, 46, and 60 have been also part of knowledge management 1.0 presentations. Therefore, use the best of both worlds, implement it step by step, embrace the change management issues and your company will stay ahead of competition (it sounds more like an evolution than a revolution;-).
I grew up in Switzerland, studied in Zurich, worked in Berlin, Bonn and Africa. I'm curious by nature. Therefore, I present and share parts of my learning journey as a knowledge manager in a large blue chip company.
