cazh1 » Wiki http://www.cazh1.com Inspiration, Art, Science, Execution Sun, 29 Jan 2012 19:08:38 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v= Zodiac of Knowledge Capture http://www.cazh1.com/zodiac-of-knowledge-capture/ http://www.cazh1.com/zodiac-of-knowledge-capture/#comments Fri, 16 Jan 2009 04:20:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=286 The start of a new year gives me a rare chance to measure my knowledge capture output over time. I maintain electronic journals for the various projects I am driving, business units and functional areas I support, and people I work with. This results in a hundred or so separate MS Word documents, with generally the same format – still, it would be quite tedious to take a word count each week to check my outout.

However, at the beginning of the year, I start a new folder and a new set of Word files – which means that after week 1, I have the easiest scenario for figuring out how much data entry for the week. And, since last week was typical, I set out to total up my data entry – starting with tthe personal journal files, but including other media:

Format     Words
=====     ======         
MS Word   15,300 in 22 documents
Notes      3,000 in  4 documents
Blogs      3,100 in  6 entries in 4 blogs
MS Excel     500 in  5 spreadsheets
Notepad      500 in  4 text files
Mind Maps    300 in  7 maps
Twitter      900
Power Point  700 in  5 presentations
Wiki         500 in  2 wikis, 2 different dialects
          ——
          24,800 words in 1 week

Hmm, that sounds like a lot – accoprding to this guy,  I could / should be writing eight books per year …

But then I though of all of the other formats that I was not counting … texting via phone, IM over eight different accounts (thanks, Pidgin!), emails over four different accounts  (and four different clients). And what about the code? That wiki item at the end got me thinking; most wiki syntax is faux-HTML, right? But I’ve also had to do work just this week in HTML, CSS, ASP, SharePoint, VBA, dokuwiki, TiddlyWiki …

This whole exercise conjured a series of images in my mind, avatars for a new Zodiac of Knowledge Capture …

Sisyphus: The never ending task of documentation. At times, my “backlog” gets so big, I just file a big chunk away under Future Projects …

Hercules: Prodigious output should be the expectation, not the exception. The world / your work group is ever-hungry for more structured knowledge, and they don’t want to wait thru the backlog – they want stuff now!

Job: Patience is a must – you will write stuff and get no response for months … but every once in a while, a glimmer of hope. Had a conversation this week with someone who noted my Emotional Intelligence post from 14 months back (!). They had seen a class offering at a local college, and we ended up talking about how applicable the skills are to our jobs.

Mandelbrot:  You need to be facile when plotting and navigating many levels of abstraction. The reader needs to absorb slowly, peel the onion one layer at a time … but they better be able to drill to the required level of detail!

Pavlov: Repetition – Don’t be surprised when you have to repeat, repeat, repeat, over and over, until you get folks used to the idea of going to the wiki, searching the portal, reading the manual.

Deming: Constant Improvement must be in your mind all the time. There is always a better way to get an idea across (which relates to …)

Xerox: Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery. Let’s not lose sight of the goal – capture and transfer knowledge . So, if you see a more effective method of communicating – learn from it!

Tufte: Clarity in communication is everything. You might think this one should be Strunk, but Tufte drives for clear and effective communication graphically / pictorially, as well as in the written word.

Muse: Don’t rule out creativity; you are competing in the market of attention, and you need to capture the mind before it’s ready to receive. You also can’t always rely on the Same Old Stuff when capturing knowledge; keep experimenting with different tools, take the best, leave the rest.

Cthulhu (CNZ?): Develop skills at multi-tasking, maintaining many threads at once (or multiple arms). Multi-platform, multi-editor, multi-laungauge, multi-markup, etc.

Heisenburg: Be aware that documenting processes can be like measuring them – you will probably introduce some change. This is “stealth process improvement”, and might even be manifest laziness (it’s easier to document a simplified process …)

This zodiac needs a twelfth sign – any ideas?

Previously …


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All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    Creative Commons License ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/zodiac-of-knowledge-capture/feed/ 0 No Silver Bullet for Group Collaboration over Distance? http://www.cazh1.com/no-silver-bullet-for-group-collaboration-over-distance/ http://www.cazh1.com/no-silver-bullet-for-group-collaboration-over-distance/#comments Wed, 23 Apr 2008 03:59:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=246 Lots of organizations have to deal with the challenge of implementing standard work and best practices over physical distances. With sales offices, distribution centers, and manufacturing locations scattered across the country, what’s the best way to get people who know their stuff to collaborate on process improvement – and then take that knowledge back to their home office?

While wrestling with this challenge, one executive I know preemptively ruled out videoconferencing. It’s a common suggestion, but the general feeling was that it’s just not useful, has never proven itself in practice.

I happened to agree with the idea that videoconferencing wouldn’t help in this situation. The team was talking about productivity improvements for an assembly process – workstation layout and hands-on participation was required to effectively work out the wasted movements. However, when defending the No Webcams position to some gadget freaks around the table, we came up with a/the fundamental flaw with remote video: it lacks spontaneity.

Historically, videoconferencing was set up in specific rooms that had to be reserved in advance. For higher quality connections, equipment is expensive, and the expense had to be pre-approved. Advances in digital cameras brought devices mounted on desktops, but this tied you to that specific location. Today’s nifty notebooks have built-in cameras, but these can be tough to use with a group of people (crowding around).

Yes it’s possible to use videoconferencing, but the physical limitations tend to quickly dim the excitement of all but the most diehard tech fans. In practice, local process improvement teams would just walk over to the workstation in question, skull out the best way to do something, and take a break for some coffee by the time we had the webcam hooked up …

Lack of spontaneity is probably why the vast majority of PowerPoints are delivered with printed decks, and not overhead projectors. It’s still more time efficient to quickly print off a few copies than it is to chase down a projector, lug it and your notebook computer into a conference room, get everything hooked together, and try to remember how to switch to the external monitor. (Hmmm, good thing they added all those cool slide transition effects …)

Truth is, having paper copies isn’t all that bad. Some folks like to take notes on their handouts and file them away for future reference. The medium of communication has its own utility, a sort of residual value that most people understand how to use. The same is true for fancy collaborative technology like videoconferencing. The magic is in the actual conversation, but that can get lost in the struggle to get the technology working before you can actually use it.

Does this mean that collaboration technology is doomed to failure? Of course not – knowledge capture and reuse, and differences in physical location and time zones, are still problems for organizations that rely on the “old way of doing things”. You just need to pick your tools judiciously, and build up to the fancy stuff over time.

  • Wiki’s will not work if people don’t already have an interest / desire / skill / method for creating documentation. Wikis solve distribution and access problems, but they don’t make people suddenly want to write.
  • Blogs will not work if people don’t already have the need to communicate while competing for people’s attention. Blogs solve time and distance chanllenges and facilitate simple Q&A, but they don’t automagically endow authors with reader empathy.
  • Collaboration Spaces will not work if people don’t already have the need to share documents and edit them within a group. Collaboration Spaces solve version control and tracking hassles, but they don’t help groups create impactful documents where none existed before.

We needed to see productivity improvements in component assembly within 60 days, so flying a couple of key people around the country was a small price to pay for the quality of work that we got. We took a small step forward – getting process experts to a different location, to put faces to names, and empathize over common challenges, experience the satisfaction of defining a workable solution – and experience the joy of business travel. Maybe next time we could look into videoconferencing, because interpersonal relationships and understanding of the power of shared best practice has already been established.

Previously …

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All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    Creative Commons License ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/no-silver-bullet-for-group-collaboration-over-distance/feed/ 0 Rules of Golf – Project Prioritization Process Needs Clear Documentation http://www.cazh1.com/rules-of-golf-project-prioritization-process-needs-clear-documentation/ http://www.cazh1.com/rules-of-golf-project-prioritization-process-needs-clear-documentation/#comments Tue, 19 Feb 2008 04:17:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=230 Different areas of our IT department are using internal blogs, wikis, and collaboration spaces, with varying degrees of participation, readership, and success. Some observations:

Blogging is Easy …

The blogs and wiki(s) have effectively removed the hassles of capturing and distributing information quickly. One important early decision was to not implement an editorial approval process for the wiki, and most blogs are wide open for public comments. No more excuses or complaints about a lack of documentation; if the explanation is not clear, or needs examples to make it relevant to multiple situations – all are fully empowered to fix it.

Some find the blog to be an easier way of communicating because of the “immediacy” – a sudden insight or pithy observation pops in your head, so you jump on the blog and capture the thought. These are the folks that have had a little insight, and gone beyond the idea of blogs as just an electronic replacement for a weekly status report. It might be difficult if you feel an obligation to say something every day – but if you really understand what you can and should be writing about, you’ll probably make multiple entries every day.

… but Empathizing (with the reader) is Difficult

I still get pushback on the blogs – even among the groups that are currently our “best demonstrated practitioners”. These folks are generating a decent amount of participation and content – but still not quite enough stuff to be effective. The challenge, it seems, is to get folks to empathize with the reader – a skill that I’m surprised more folks don’t have, because many like to complain about what they don’t know, or should know, or wish they knew.

Always ask yourself, what did I do or learn today that others would find interesting? No, it’s not that the world wants to understand how my day went, or how I’m feeling. But I like to hear when people are starting (or stopping!) projects, or attending meetings and learning about events or decisions that may have an impact on my my work over the next three months. Empathize with your [potential] readers, anticipate their interest, and practice what I call the “beneficial assumption” …

  • Most people think the same way I do …
  • … so I will anticipate what I’d like to hear about my organization, my projects, and my meetings …
  • … and write about that

Self-Policing the Content

What about stuff that [possibly] doesn’t belong in a blog – even though it’s internal? Key thing is to use common sense; the blog entry is just as permanent, and much more public, than an e-mail. Especially when it comes to “negative events’; sometimes the specifics aren’t really relevant and don’t add much value. Specifics, like somebody made a fat-finger mistake and deleted some data, or opened a hole in the firewall, or copied the wrong file. A blog is typically not a root-cause, problem analysis tool … it’s a general FYI platform, and specifics (especially the negative ones) moght be taken out of context by the readers.

Of course, we note that content should not be limited to all that is sweetness and light. There’s nothing wrong with fact-based bad news, but there’s a lot wrong with bad news that no one finds out about and then gets worse, or no one learns from. We don’t write about this stuff to get folks in trouble, but we definitely do it to prepare, inform and educate.

Communicating is Still an Art

Some folks will rattle on in too much detail, while others are too terse. The fundamental challenge – most folks can write acceptably, but may feel they can’t write well – they lack the confidence to capture it on paper. Confidence is something that comes with practice, but mandating participation is not going to encourage spontaneous composition.

Where Are the Comments?

Some folks surprise themselves with a good blog entry, and then become doubly surprised when then get no comments. Bloggers in a closed community / internal blog can’t judge themsleves based on numbers and responses that you mgiht see on the Internet – heck, it’s taken me two years to get up to about 50 subscribers to my feed [feel free to subscribe, dear reader!].

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All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    Creative Commons License ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/rules-of-golf-project-prioritization-process-needs-clear-documentation/feed/ 0 More Challenges for Applying Web 2.0 inside the Firewall http://www.cazh1.com/more-challenges-for-applying-web-2-0-inside-the-firewall/ http://www.cazh1.com/more-challenges-for-applying-web-2-0-inside-the-firewall/#comments Tue, 03 Jul 2007 02:49:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=193 After my last post … more experiences at work, and observations in the trades and other blogs, regarding Web 2.0 tools for use in business …

Improving Knowledge Capture is Half the Battle

In last week’s Information Week magazine, the story of Procter & Gamble’s push towards collaboration – the tools can meet some resistance. A critical quote: We consistently hear that information posted to the intranet is incremental work. Similarly, in my organization, I have folks continuing to send out eMail project status updates
- and then copying the updates to our project database.

Double work, yes – but is this wrong? Actually, I think it’s required, because teaching the content creators to use new knowledge capture tools is only half the battle. We also have to coach the knowledge consumers that the updates they seek are available elsewhere. So why are we surprised when there is some resistance? You are, in effect adding incremental work; at first blush, it doesn’t matter if the information is easier to use – it’s still a different application than I’m comfortable working with.
Matt Asay has a great post on this concept – hits the nail on the head!

Windley’s post has a great title – Are MBAs Too Dumb to Use RSS? He uses it as a mild perjorative, but there is a nugget of truth here; many folks don’t know about or understand what feedreaders (etc.) can do. Experienced systems implementers know that the pioneers and early adopters are easy converts, but the magic happens when you can connect with the early
majority.

Web 2.0 Technology is Half the Story

Dennis McDonald has a number of recent posts about Corporate IT and Web 2.0 – as if the new technology is the tail wagging this dog. In some ways, I agree with some of these ideas:

  • Collaboration doesn’t have a chance if corporate IT doesn’t allow it on the network
  • Corporate IT – especially in public companies – is risk averse, and wants the big vendors
  • Corporate IT has to be involved, but not necessarily the driver

That last point is key, because you can lead the corporate horse to the Web 2.0 water, but you can’t make them collaborate. It’s a different set of skills – some folks will get it, and some folks will fight it – but I think most folks will stand by, bemused, and watch it all go by, until it becomes a job requirement. That’s not cynical, it’s reality; 500,000 people stood in long lines to get their first-edition iPhones, but most of us stood back and wondered where the cost/benefit really is on stuff like that.

Pick the Best Tool for the Job

More examples at work this week where folks have good stuff to contribute – but where to put it? Is this a blog post, or an FYI / Announcement – or should I start a Discussion? I’m starting to develop some prose to help folks pick the right tool …

  • A blog is more like a diary, a running commentary – especially suited for status updates on a project. Think like a personal notebook, or a lab journal, that folks can browse and search. Content here should be more around insights, observations.
  • Announcements – think bulletin board – is this the type of thing you would tack up for all to see, or send out an eMail to All?
  • A wiki is a searchable reference guide – an online book with many authors, but a single, commonly understood view.

    A discussion forum is an electronic conversation – with many voices, but with multiple views.

You can stuff your SharePoint site with all of these great tools, but if you don’t give some sort of guidelines on which one to use – well, don’t be surprised when participation tails off …

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All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    Creative Commons License ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/more-challenges-for-applying-web-2-0-inside-the-firewall/feed/ 0 Catching up on Mind Mapping; collaborative tools and some "market research" http://www.cazh1.com/catching-up-on-mind-mapping-collaborative-tools-and-some-market-research/ http://www.cazh1.com/catching-up-on-mind-mapping-collaborative-tools-and-some-market-research/#comments Mon, 14 May 2007 02:05:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=181 I’ve written about mind-mapping before – definitely a fan of the concept, I’ve used it for project tracking, organizing threads for blog topics, and even planning major multi-project initiatives. Here’s a quick catch-up on some links I’ve been seeing over the past few weeks …

  • From Vinson, a link to Keldsen’s latest podcast on mind mapping tips from a “master”. Not the highest quality podcast I’ve everheard,
    but some interesting insights. He also gave a decent explanation of why the curved lines; it’s all about providing visual variety; straight lines make different mind maps look the same. Sounds like part of the challenge for a mind mapper is to think of the presentation of the overall picture – it’s just as important as the flow of ideas you are mapping.
  • Many links pointing to Mindmeister,a
    collaborative, web-based mind mapping tool. Like previously mentioned bubbl.us, it’s web based and facilitates collaborative brainstorming with others. A nice feature for the experienced mind mapper – it can import from MindManager (commercial)and FreeMind (FOSS).
    I like the idea of collaborative mapping, and I certainly like being able to reuse all the work I’ve done in MindManager, but I still like the “fat client” interface – handles navigation, zooming, etc. a bit better. Still, pretty impressive stuff – I may suggest converting to this tool for my international collaboration.
  • Chuck Frey has conducted a pair of surveys on mind mapping and mind mapping software. Interesting to see how others have been introduced to this concept (found on web sites, referred by friend, replicating a pen and paper process). The older survey (from September 2006) talks about things like why the idea is being held back at work; interesting to note how internal IT continues to take the hit (at times) for stifling innovation.
  • Also via Vinson (thanks, Jack!!), a nice list of keyboard shortcuts for MindManager. It never ceases to amaze me how much time can be wasted by reaching over for the mouse to do repetitive actions.
  • From the download squad – news that market-leading MindManager is teeing up version 7.0 – I hope it’s more than just a user interface facelift, to match the Office 2007 look. Mindmanager does have an impressive connection with Office, but I’m curious about any other new features … I can’t find mocuh info yet …

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All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    Creative Commons License ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/catching-up-on-mind-mapping-collaborative-tools-and-some-market-research/feed/ 0 The Joy of Programming, the Challenge of KM http://www.cazh1.com/the-joy-of-programming-the-challenge-of-km/ http://www.cazh1.com/the-joy-of-programming-the-challenge-of-km/#comments Sun, 06 May 2007 04:26:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=179 alternate title – Techs Managing Techs; not Required, but it Helps

This evening, catching up with my RSS feeds, I happened upon this old screencast from Jon Udell, looking over the shoulder as he and Anders Hejlsberg take a look at LINQ, a work-in-process set of extensions
for the .NET framework. Udell captured my curiousity with this description of the session …

You have to be a certain kind of person to enjoy watching Anders run LINQ through its paces, Intellisensing his way through the construction of C# queries against object, SQL and XML data, but I am that kind of person, and I find it utterly hypnotic.

I love listening to Hejlsberg narrate result sets as blah blah blah blah blah, and Udell calling out the power of muscle memory and his triple quoted multi-line literal with percent markers in Python. In the screencast, we see Hejlsberg type and retype, fixing typos and narrating his stream of programming consciousness while we hear the clack of the keys in the background; Udell drops in occasionally to interrupt the stream for a quick explanation. It’s the kind of web video I just
won’t show to my family; they’d get that look of pity in their eyes, as they fight to hold back the derisive jokes …

But seriously, it is an interesting process to observe. I found myself drawing parallels to other programming projects I have in the hopper, and even caught some hints on how Intellisense / autocompletion works (sounds like it could be driven dynamically by a well defined XML schema; hmmm, I could visualize how that could work …).

I found myself thinking about a presentation I gave yesterday, to an application development group on a range of topics, business and technical. One of the sections that generated the most boisterous conversation was one predicated with an admission – this is the toughest topic to discuss with techs. The general message was Knowledge Management, the specific issue was documenting code and configuration changes to production systems. Examples of good and bad brought a healthy give and take discussion that
culminated in a terrifically honest question – why do we have to take such care in documenting these changes? Who does it really benefit?

  • Approvers (so they don’t have to chase you down for an explanation)
  • Auditors (so they don’t have fodder for audit findings

… and the most important, the most self-serving, and the best reason …

  • Authors (so they can remember what they were doing six months later)

The best reason to document is entirely selfish – do it to guarantee your own productivity.

This was something I could attest to, from personal experience. I think I am a very good commenter / documenter, because it has paid off for me in the past. I’m still a coder by training, and I definitely remember when I didn’t document as much. It only takes one …

… bad experience of having to reverse engineer my own code – because the comments just stunk.

… good experience of being able to pick up a piece of code I haven’t looked at in six months and quickly get back into it – because there were well-structured, decent comments in place

It’s the kind of observation, made from experience, that can resonate with technical folks. It’s the same kind of ongoing, hands-on interest in the art of technology that makes screencasts and prose from folks like Udell really interesting, and (I believe) a required part of any tech managers job – balanced, of course, with the business of technology.

I don’t think deep technical experience is required for managing techs – but it certainly helps.

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All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    Creative Commons License ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/the-joy-of-programming-the-challenge-of-km/feed/ 0 Selfish KM, Web 1.9, and the ‘Death’ of Tagging http://www.cazh1.com/selfish-km-web-1-9-and-the-death-of-tagging/ http://www.cazh1.com/selfish-km-web-1-9-and-the-death-of-tagging/#comments Wed, 21 Feb 2007 04:21:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=161 In a recent NetworkWorld piece, Gibbs wrote about the tagging meme, and where it apparently sits on the technology life cycle. No new insights
for me there (but possibly fits the CEPP rule for others); I was involved in a number of knowledge management (KM) projects back in my Monsanto days (IAPL) [note to self: too many acronyms, hhh] and
we hit many of the classic walls;

  • CRM systems that failed because sales reps guard their customer intelligence
  • Collaboration spaces that failed because corporate and international culture equated “asking for help” with “weakness”
  • Document management systems that failed because arriving at consensus around a taxonomy is difficult

Ok, well, I guess failure is too harsh in all of those cases – it’s just that the ultimate deliverables got toned down a lot, because we were oversold on the value of things (like ubiquitous tagging) without appreciating the difficulty of implementation (ie. you say poe-tay-toe, I say poe-tah-toe).

Even in those days (mid-90′s), I never really understood why folks got all fired up about keywords for categorizing documents; Google and Yahoo and other online knowledge bases showed that searching for words and phrases was plenty effective. No need to browse tables of keywords looking for articles by category – most of the time, folks were looking for a needle in a haystack and needed
the right water tank.

Besides, MS Office documents have supported document metadata for eons, but few even know it exists (try File, Properties) … how many Word documents have you received (or created!) where the Author was set to “Corporate User”?

I think the fundamental flaw here is the premise that tagging is done for other people’s benefit; my tagged content can be useful and relevant and helpful for you. The truth, however, is that it’s very difficult to control and/or predict how other people receive your message and understand your meaning. Again – why is Search often referred to as the next Killer
App? Because the better engines pull commonalities from the content, and don’t rely solely on tags / categories.

McDonald writes about a personal bookmarking strategy and calls out some of these same ideas – a large chunk of the knowledge gathering and retention work we do is for our benefit, not for sharing. Nielsen has a nice
article that calls out how a small percentage of users on a given website account for most of the activity, while the majority are lurkers, looking for information for themsleves, not sharing. This is not a bad thing or a good thing, it’s just a thing; the foundation behind the Law
of Large Numbers.

So why tag? Well, it’s actually a fairly common productivity device – the manila folder, the cool labeler that all the data center guys like to play with – it’s human nature, we just like to categorize. I’m actually a big fan of tagging, but for very selfish reasons; my tags become useful KM tools for me across all of the various sites, services, and tools that support the idea. “Selfish
KM”, or “Web 1.9″ – a slight step backward from the utopian view, maybe a bit more pragmatic.

I’ve launched into a mini-project to standardize tags for my del.icio.us links, blog content, and other stuff. A real hassle, for some of the reasons Gibbs calls out, especially when it comes to “syntax”; I use TiddlyWiki for my personal wiki, but it can’t handle tags made up of separate words, so I have to allow for CamelCase - ugh.
I will, however, document my cross-platform (sic) tagging standards there, and slowly push them out to my other public and private knowledge bases.

I think the death of tagging has been greatly exaggerated, it’s just moving to a more pragmatic place in our KM toolbox.

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All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    Creative Commons License ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/selfish-km-web-1-9-and-the-death-of-tagging/feed/ 0 Two candidates for the KM Killer App http://www.cazh1.com/two-candidates-for-the-km-killer-app/ http://www.cazh1.com/two-candidates-for-the-km-killer-app/#comments Wed, 07 Feb 2007 04:53:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=158 Vinson had a post recently, discussing the concept of the Killer App and what might fit that bill in the KM world. His list contains all the usual suspects in the area of “knowledge presentation”, but skips over what I think is
the most critical KM element; how to capture all thatknowledge in the first place.

I’ve written recently about the wiki,a
nice tool for tearing down the distribution and format barriers to knowledge capture. Good stuff, but it’s focused on knowledge that’s relatively structured – at least, structured enough such that the author can throw it into the wiki and let the “backbone” that is the Table of Contents take shape naturally.

But how do individuals capture the ideas that are floating around in their heads that don’t have an apparent structure? Enter the Mind Map, a technique for throwing ideas on a wall, just to see what kind of structure begins to take shape. Of course, “drawing” the connections and structures between ideas is somewhat labor intensive, until you start playing with software that facilitates the construction of these maps.

Since I’ve written about MindManager, I’ve come across a number of interesting sites …

… and software packages …

  • bubbl.us (via Lifehhacker), a simple, web-based, sharable brainstorming tool. Very web 2.0-ish
  • Thinkature, another web-based collaborative drawing space
  • NovaMind, which was one of the few tools I saw that supported the smooth curves “required” by Buzan
  • Mind Map Software talks about ConceptDraw, another curve-drawer, whose mind-mapping software is apparently one of a family of drawing tools
  • FreeMind, the GPL software that delivers mind mapping on the cheap. I like these folks, because they provide an outlet if they make you angry …

<aside> Oh yes – what’s the 2nd candidate for KM Killer App? Why, it’s Search – because it does double duty. Sure, it provides the knowledge presentation layer … but it also enables knowledge capture by making the tool (Word, PowerPoint, Excel, Wiki, PDF, SQL, Notes, etc.) unimportant.</aside>

Updated 2/10 – Fixed Vinson link

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All articles, blog entries, and other content on this site are licensed under a Creative Commons License    Creative Commons License ]]> http://www.cazh1.com/two-candidates-for-the-km-killer-app/feed/ 0 Digging into open source for a New Big Project leads to Yak Shaving http://www.cazh1.com/digging-into-open-source-for-a-new-big-project-leads-to-yak-shaving/ http://www.cazh1.com/digging-into-open-source-for-a-new-big-project-leads-to-yak-shaving/#comments Sat, 05 Nov 2005 04:03:00 +0000 Jim MacLennan http://qc.cazh1.com/?p=109 Well, it’s been over a year since I started this site / blog, and it’s about time I listen to my own coaching, and dig into some new technology, and get my hands even dirtier with Open Source. I have an idea for a New Big Project, something to keep me busy through the upcoming winter months, but I need to stop looking at the cool new toys I’m going to open up, and think through my basic toolset.

<takeaway> Remember, dear reader, a fundamental philosophy of this web site – if you can’t do IT “stuff”, even on a small scale, how can you credibly pitch to the business, manage creative and talented people, and/or understand when the sales reps and consultants are shoveling it? </takeaway>

Cursory examination of MediaWiki (my first Wiki! New Big sub-Project #3) and WordPress (swap out from Blogger! New Big sub-Project #2) leads me to believe I’ll get exposed to lots of “stuff”, but I’ll be able to get some basic web apps up with a reasonable amount of effort. The key thing that I now realize is that the ongoing maintenance of the content is where all the magic is – so, I’ve got to handle some nagging issues I’ve been off-and-on with re: my existing site / content.

<aside>Here’s where the yak-shaving really kicks into gear – an explanation of the term, from a posting by Godin.</aside>

For example – the whole push-to-production model I have in place is slightly kludgy. That, and the fact that I’ve switched primary machines – just means I have to re-open my Eclipse notebook (integrated development environment! Big sub-Project #1) and get the latest installed, see if the basic web / HTML development tools and process have been updated. I went back out to eclipse.org to grab the latest ; no reason to maintain local copies when the latest and greatest is easily accessible. Since the last time I went through this process, the version has updated from 3.0.2 to 3.1.1, so I’ll have to add a version check process ongoing.

  • Note that I need a Java runtime environment; that piece is a bit more stable, does not seem to go through the version update cycle as fast as Eclipse. I went with Sun Microsystems, just to needle IBM a tad.
  • I remember last summer installing the basic environment, then finding the Web Tools project – and that download / install seemed to re-install the basic package. However, I’ve also figured out the Eclipse Update Manager (UM), a much nicer way to extend the basic package. So, after the standard 3.1.1 install, I used UM to grab the Web Tools Platform components.
  • Unfortunately, I still didn’t get the key piece I needed – FTP-WebDAV, so I can push to production from inside my Eclipse IDE. I finally found the module here (scan down to where it says FTP and WebDav support); hmmm, had to install that “manually”, I can’t seem to see this on any update sites (accessible via UM).
  • PHPEclipse is a nice set of plugins for Eclipse, especially since PHP is the language underneath MediaWiki and WordPress. After finding the update site, I pointed UM in that direction and grabbed the required files. When going through the documentation to set up my first project, I realized I needed …

<aside> Here’s where the yak-shaving really kicks into gear – an explanation of the term, from a posting by Godin. </aside>

  • … a nice, full-featured development server environment on my local machine. To pull this off, I am installing XAMPP – a sweet little Apache distribution containing MySQL, PHP, and Perl. I’m getting rid of IndigoPerl and switching to this collection. This is awesome – I’m going to be able to install all of these applications, develop and debug wherever I want – even detached from the Internet – and “push to prod” (production) whenever I want.
  • At first, I wanted to skip the installation of all of the XAMPP chunks as services – why waste the memory / processor thru the day? I also (thought) I wanted to be able to control the services from within Eclipse. After hacking away at that approach for a while, I remembered that previous experience with Visual Studio and Source Safe made me realize that the 100% integrated IDE idea was a bit overrated, and usually somewhat clunky. Also, I’m going to want to implement a local wiki for my own “knowledge management” – so, I leverage the XAMPP control panel and have MySQL, Apache, et al loaded and running at all times.
  • I’ve set up multiple VirtualHosts on my machine, and sepnt a huge chunk of time getting the SSI feature to work. Found this section in the http.conf file, had to commnet it out to get everything to work.
<Directory/>
Options FollowSymLinks
AllowOverride None
</Directory>

  • In going thru this debug process, I’ve switched my meme a bit – I have a Crimson Editor project that loads all the critical config files for my development environment, and make all the tweaks and such from that editor. The source code will be aintained from within the IDE.

Enough for now – next steps will be to vet the development cycle and “push to production” for a collection of web sites.

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