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KM Overcomplicates: Heisenberg Impact on a VBA Quickie

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 8, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

Got a simple request from one of the folks in Operations; we’re sending out Excel spreadsheets for some quick data gathering, might we do a little basic input validation before they send in garbage that needs to be scrubbed? This person is very sharp, knows a decent bit about what is possible, and this is [...]

Back to the Future: Twitter "microblogging"

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ January 10, 2009 ⋅ Post a comment

“That’s pretty good, Johnny, but that ain’t the way I heerd it. . . .”I recall when all this “blogging” talk started, way back in 1999 or so (thanks to Hallett for a decent history). The idea was to post thoughts and feelings, observations about technology, society, or whatever – anything from a daily diary [...]

Dueling Collaboration Portals

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ November 23, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

I noticed an interesting phenomenon this afternoon; we are experimenting with SharePoint as our internal project management / collaboration portal. A nice platform to choose, because it’s popularity is growing, and there are a wide selection of add-on products and development partners ready, willing, and able to help us spend our money to make it [...]

No Silver Bullet for Group Collaboration over Distance?

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ April 22, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

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 [...]

Success, Failure, and Insights after 12 Months of Internal Web 2.0

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ March 10, 2008 ⋅ Post a comment

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 [...]

Butting In to the Conversation: PM Communication Tools

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 27, 2008 ⋅ One comment

Dennis McDonald and Lee White are conducting an interesting experiment on their blogs, crossposting a conversation about project management and social media. I’ll add my voice, with both input on the topic and observations on the method. (Topic) The Right Tool for The Job – depends on the Job The first part of the conversation [...]

More Challenges for Applying Web 2.0 inside the Firewall

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ July 2, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

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. [...]

Catching up on Mind Mapping; collaborative tools and some "market research"

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 13, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

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 [...]

The Joy of Programming, the Challenge of KM

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ May 6, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

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 [...]

Selfish KM, Web 1.9, and the ‘Death’ of Tagging

By Jim MacLennan ⋅ February 21, 2007 ⋅ Post a comment

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: [...]

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