On books (31/07/07)

I have a ”to read” pile of books that I try and work my way through every month. I always have more books in my reading pile than I can actually find the time to read, including any new books purchased that month as well.
At the end of each month I rotate the books from the “to read” pile [...]

On KM Australia 2007 (final)

I had intended to give a brief synopsis and some comments on the remaining presentations that I heard at the KM Australia 2007 conference but I have decided to concentrate on the final presentation by Etienne Wenger.
Wenger is best known for his work on communities of practice (CoP). I have read some of his published [...]

On KM Australia 2007 (Part 3)

The highlight of the KM Australia 2007 conference was the presentation on the afternoon of Day 1 by Michel Bauwens on “Peer to peer: the new paradigm for social innovation”.
Michel believes that free agents are becoming the dominant form of economic activity in the post-dot com world. As a result, people and their networks are [...]

On KM Australia 2007 (Part 2)

Dave Snowden was the opening morning keynote speaker at KM Australia 2007 and presented on narrative and sensemaking. He emphasised that one of the problems with management and business strategy was the reliance on past performance and hindsight to predict the future. Hindsight cannot predict the future - the context is different and hindsight selects the [...]

On taxonomies

Patrick Lambe presented this evening on taxonomies at the NSW KM Forum in Sydney - not sure if the slides will be available or not (I will need to check later with Patrick or James).
Firstly, Patrick should be congratulated for making a potentially dry topic most interesting and informative. Of note was Patrick’s “Map of Findability” [...]

On KM Australia 2007 (Part 1)

Wow. Today was the first day of the KM Australia 2007 conference in Sydney. I was very impressed with some of today’s presentations, although I must say it was sometimes difficult to hear the speakers due to the noise coming from the vendor and catering area next to the stage.
Not surprisingly, Dave Snowden was in fine [...]

On the cult of the amateur

I have on my “to read” list the book, The cult of the amateur, by Andrew Keen. I read the review of Keen’s book in the NY Times recently and hastily sent off for a copy of the book [the book has now arrived as at the 23rd July].
The basic premise of the book is that the internet and [...]

On “words are powerful”

Words are a powerful communication tool if we use them wisely. This is another “isn’t this obvious” statement, surely. However, the reality is that people are often sloppy with words and use them in ways that are actually completely unhelpful.
I have almost finished Martha Beck’s book, Finding your own North Star, about finding your own authentic [...]

On writing web content

When I did my professional business writing courses (with Rob Rudigear from Melbourne), one of the key messages was that just because writing is ubiquitous, it doesn’t mean that everyone can write well. The same message holds true for writing and organising information on the web. 
One of the weaknesses in writing for intranets and internets [...]