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October 30, 2005
ICKM Comments
The ICKM Conference was last week in Charlotte, NC and what a wonderful city. Congratulations to the city planning officials for what they have done. We stayed at the Westin and the service and conference hosts were excellent. The conference itself was two days and was held in conjunction with the ASIS&T Annual Meeting. There was some really great research and the book is well worth the purchase price. A couple of sessions that I will highlight is the Trust and Knowledge Management Session and the one on formal knowledge repository. These two sessions really had me thinking about the application towards my own environment and how trust and collaboration can be connected. Certainly, a research opportunity that I hope someone takes to the next level. The research framework here was excellent, in which the author focused on the levels of trust, tools, and level of knowledge success. The repository session was good since it provided a cross reference from repositories, standard forms, models, and maps. This information was then cross-references with the who, how, why, and who knows points of knowledge.
Each of the sessions I attended provided nuggets of value and all of the research papers are included which is something you do not get from a professional conference. Hence, is why I like to attend both types to be sure I am putting KM blinders on.
Posted by Todd at 8:30 PM
The Elephant and the Flea by Charles Handy
This month I took time to read a gem of a book by Charles Handy. The title of the book was The Elephant and the Flea; the elephant was analogous to a large organization while the flea represented a free agent or independent worker. The book itself is broken up into three main parts. The first focus on life in the organization where the author describes is journey through Shell, Windsor Castle and many other organizations. The similarities between his experiences mirror my own and considering his path was 20 years ago, not much as changed. The middle section focused on the basic economics of a capital society. The most interesting part was when he compared four different countries attempt at capitalism and his analysis of why it works so well here in America. As a hint, he lays the historical foundation of our no excuses and self dependences. The final section describes his journey in the world of fleas. For anyone ever pondering the jump, Mr. Hardy gives you the Clint Eastwood version; the good, the bad, and the ugly. I especially enjoyed the analysis of the four different type of work: paid, gift, study, and home. My wife and I enjoyed discussing the different percentages we focus at our home. Without a doubt, one of the better books I have read this year.
Posted by Todd at 6:39 PM
October 29, 2005
ICKM Location
What a wonderful city: Charlotte, NC. I cant imagine walking through down town Atlanta with two children at 9Pm. Great Job to the city officials for making everyone feel safe.
Posted by Todd at 1:53 AM
October 26, 2005
New Implementation Strategy
If you want to build a great collaborative or metadata environment, simply follow the lead of others
Dell; Cut out all of the crap and eliminate the bureaucracy
IBM; Add Services and Solutions Galore
Harley Davidson; Brand Excessively, Tattoo’s for everyone
Home Depot; Customer Service: Hire for Knowledge and Service Attitude
Dutch Boy; Design: Don’t Be Better, Be Different
Lowes; Self Service: You can do it and we can help
Intel; Destroy your business before someone else does it for you
Ferrari; Perfection: 1971 Daytona Spyder (365 GTB)
Starbucks; Engage ALL of the Customers Senses
UPS: Growth Horizontally and Vertically, Evolve Diagonally
3M: Innovate or Die Trying
Disney: Service means Exceeding Expectations and Attention to the Details
GE: Online Integration with 75% Activities Digitalized in 3 years
Southwest Airline: Strategy: Dont just stand there, do something.
Progressive Insurance: It’s all about the Business of Speed
Posted by Todd at 7:34 PM
October 24, 2005
ICKM Conference
This week I am off to the second International Conference on Knowledge Management (ICKM2005) will be held at the ASIS&T Annual Meeting in the Westin Charlotte, North Carolina on October 27-28, 2005. The conference will bring together academics, researchers, developers, practitioners, and users in the areas of knowledge management and information processing. It will serve as a platform for networking, exchange of research ideas, practical applications and best practices.
My session will focus on the Knowledge Organization and it looks like some really great papers that are expanding the body of knowledge. My plan is to provide a 10 minute overview and then allow the presenters to deliver their content. Hopefully, we will get lots of questions and interaction since these academic conferences tend to be on the dry side.
Published Papers
Interaction Histories in Complex Information Retrieval Task Management: Results from the Evaluation of Two Search History Systems by Anita Komlodi
Citation Classification and Its Applications by Selcuk Aya, Carl Lagoze, and Thorsten Joachims
Making the Knowledge-Driven Enterprise Manageable with Semantic Technologies and Faceted Classification by Philip C. Murray
Integrating Consumer Taxonomies Within the Enterprise Metadata Environment by R. Todd Stephens
Posted by Todd at 2:48 AM | Comments (2)
October 20, 2005
Lessons on Leadership
This month I want to bring to this column an awareness of the need in the hardest hit areas as well as lessons of leadership. Nothing we do in meta data can come close to the work done when others are in need but we can relate those observations and apply them to our own world. In The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership, Maxwell (1998) comments that one of the best opportunities for leadership is in a volunteer setting. When you place people in situations where there are no financial rewards, true distinctions of leadership will emerge. The following components are my observations during this crises and the application to enterprise metadata.
Posted by Todd at 8:19 PM
Blog Usability
Nice reminder on ensuring usability for your blog by Jakob Nielsen. Here are his 10 factors
1. No Author Biographies
2. No Author Photo
3. Nondescript Posting Titles
4. Links Don't Say Where They Go
5. Classic Hits are Buried
6. The Calendar is the Only Navigation
7. Irregular Publishing Frequency
8. Mixing Topics
9. Forgetting That You Write for Your Future Boss
10. Having a Domain Name Owned by a Weblog Service
Posted by Todd at 12:49 AM
October 18, 2005
Business Books
This is hard to believe but over the weekend I heard a speaker make the statement:
The average business person only reads 0.70 business books every five years.The reason I find this hard to believe is that people that are in position of leadership constantly reference different books that they read. Reading the opinions and diverse perspectives of business authors are critical in forming your own leadership perspectives. Please, I beg of you to read as many business books as you possibly can. Why not make a goal to reading 6 per year?
Posted by Todd at 1:21 PM
October 17, 2005
Open Source Chapter Accepted
A new book should be published next year on open source; focusing on the technical, economic, and social implications. My perspective will bring the concepts around the Open Source Repository and Governance of the environment. The goal is to ensure the basic concepts of metadata are included that make open source such a viable option in todays corporation.
Basic Rationale
This chapter is intended for individuals who will be faced with implementing and governing the open source environment in a large organization. Governing the open source environment requires more than the indemnification of the product. Open source governance requires that the organization establish architecture standards, centralized location for downloading certified open source products, tracking usage, ensuring compatibility between components, and metric applications that allow the organization to evaluate the business value to the company.
The business must drive the technology decisions and architecture should enable this activity by minimizing unintended effects on the business due to technology changes. Utilizing an Open Source repository for impact analysis will ensure that proposed changes will not create catastrophic events within the business itself. The repository provides the mechanism for inventory management which allows organizations to see what is already acquired, deployed, and supported within the environment. In addition, efforts like domain analysis, reuse, and release management are essential to the implementation of open source as an enterprise asset. When organizations embrace open source as a viable alternative to in-house or outsourced development, they must accept the responsibility and implications of transforming it from code to an asset of the corporation.
Posted by Todd at 2:34 AM
October 13, 2005
Dublin Core ROI Update
The Global Corporate Circle web page has recently been updated to include our new activities for the year, along with some new resources. We have posted our bibliography on the web page. There is still a bibliography on the corporate wiki, which you are all encouraged to add to. Since the wiki is password protected again unwanted spammers, we thought it would be a good idea to publish the bibliography to the regular working group page. We will update the bibliography quarterly so that any additions made to the wiki will be included.
We have also posted our generic presentation to the web site. This presentation, developed largely by Todd Stephens and Joseph Busch with input from Paula Land, Michael Crandall, Paula Markes, Igor Perisic, Kelly Green and myself, provides slides that you can customize for you own use in showing the ROI of Metadata in an organization.
http://dublincore.org/groups/corporate/
Posted by Todd at 1:46 PM
October 11, 2005
Seven Technologies
Interesting article written by Om Malik and Anders Lotsson, on seven technologies that will change everything. Specifically, I like #3 has it addresses the dark side. Maybe metadata should be on the dark side after all.
WHAT IT IS: Technology that boldly goes where no search engine has gone before. WHY IT'S HOT: Google may have already indexed 8 billion webpages, but thats just the tip of the iceberg. Many more pages are hidden behind corporate firewalls or in databases waiting to be indexed. By some estimates, this so-called dark Web is 500 times bigger than the World Wide Web as we know it. Unlike the public Internet, however, it can't be retrieved by the usual Web crawlers. Instead, the information must be fed into search engines mammoth databases using special retrieval techniques.Before the advent of desktop search, our PCs were part of that invisible Web -- connected to the Internet but not indexed. File-sharing networks already search your PC for MP3s, but there are tricky privacy and security issues to resolve before your hard drive can join the visible Web. There are also millions of digitally transcribed books waiting to be connected. Ultimately, deep Web search could answer a direct question better than hundreds of links, because many of the most authoritative sources have yet to make it online.
Posted by Todd at 1:05 AM
October 4, 2005
CIO Magazine Rant
Published in the October Issue of CIO Magazine
In Bricklayers or Architects? [Aug. 1], Gary Beach asks what we can do to make a difference in the U.S. education crisis.
First, we must change the mind-set of the individual knowledge worker. Whether you are moving from company to company or project to project, you should have a skill portfolio that can be transferred easily. Job erosion, evolving business models and technology change are here to stay, and the long-range risks and costs of comfortable inaction are deadly to your career.
Also, we must address the development of skills for our youth. In the days of old, careers and skills could be developed over a long period of time with apprentice-type programs. Our current environment does not provide the time to build anything beyond basic skills. More importantly, organizations don't care what I did five, 10 or 15 years ago. This myopic view, and the continuous evolution of the technology environment, requires adaptability, not conformity.
Finally, we must raise the standard by which we measure ourselves. I am always amazed when so many parents say they have gifted kids. They can't all be gifted, and the only area in which our children are leading the world is in thinking that they are.
It's not only the teachers support but also the environment and community support that needs to be addressed.
Posted by Todd at 3:43 PM
October 2, 2005
TDAN Article
Career development is one of the most important topics today with the advancements of technology, out sourcing of jobs, and continuous evolution of standards. Our employment environment is changing and we need to ensure that we are focusing on career development for jobs in the next 5 - 10 years. This articles reviews career planning from four perspectives: professional, academic, corporate, and Entrepreneur.
Posted by Todd at 6:24 PM
Wisdom of Crowds Review
This month I take a look at James Surowiecki's book called The Wisdom of Crowds. The book was published in 2004 by Double Day publications. The sub title reads Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations.
Posted by Todd at 4:14 PM
October 1, 2005
Limited Blogging
The first thirty minutes are the most difficult, that’s when the smell, devastation and enormity of the tasks at hand hit you. The stench is from the mold, mud, spoiled food, and rot that emerges. The devastation of a 20 foot storm surge resembles bomb blast with boats sitting on dry land, cars on top of cars, trees on top of houses, and houses that floated down the street. This past week, I headed to Mississippi to help those in need rebuild. I will post more on the trip later.
Posted by Todd at 10:49 PM