On advertising and web 2.0 for knowledge management

Just received my latest UTS Alumni email newsletter.  I completed two postgraduate degrees from UTS.   I was pleasantly surprised to hear that the The Fred Hollows Foundation won the world’s best not-for-profit television advertisement at the International Fundraising Congress in the Netherlands.  Readers may recall that I did a nine month contract with The [...]

Using social media

I often hear that some people are reticent to use social media in organisational contexts because they feel that unless they have high quality production equipment, there is no point.  I must say that I have some sympathy to this view. However, I also believe that having simple equipment can also be effective so long [...]

On determining purpose and need

I was reading the latest blog post from Gerry McGovern this morning. Gerry highlights the fact that Craigslist is an immensely popular website, even more popular than bookselling behemoth Amazon, but the site is incredibly ugly.  Craigslist, in case you don’t already know, is a webite for localised classified ads and discussion forums. Craigslist is successful not [...]

On outcomes and impact

There are many ways to find out about things. Research is obviously part of that. And research likes to use quantitative measures in order to maximise objectivity, even if these measures don’t give you much meaning.
Let’s look at hit rates on a website – a metric commonly used for “statistical purposes”. What does it mean? [...]

On making patterns and links – meaning and illusion

One of the natural wonders of human life is the way in which we look for connections, patterns, and links. We try and make sense of potentially unrelated events and actions by looking for relationships between them. One of my high school teachers told me that I look for things that aren’t there, so I have a strong [...]

On what I’ve been doing

It has been about two months since my last post. In that time I have been busy at my new workplace (AusAID) understanding how things are done, going to meetings and internal courses, and managing a library and information service that is quite specific to the internal needs of the organisation. Certainly, working in a [...]

On communities of practice – an example

A workplace initiative at a former workplace that I am really proud of was the introduction of communities of practice (CoP’s) - I named them ”Pubs”. The pubs connected people with a common interest and a common workplace need across three key business units (and some others), and across geographic space in Australia and New Zealand. I have elaborated on this before so [...]

On conference presentations and workshops

I promised to report on the act-km conference (day 2) that I attended on the 15th October. The papers from the conference are up on the web site.
I won’t go through my notes on this one because I want to focus my thoughts on a broader discussion around conference formats. In particular, I want to discuss [...]

On narrative capture and drought

Having followed complexity theory and narrative for some time in the knowledge management literature, and enriched by the Cognitive Edge accreditation course I undertook this year, I have become more attuned to opportunities where narrative capture and sensemaking can be used to provide meaningful information for organisational development and as a guide for government policy.
I was therefore interested to read today [...]

On new ways to connect – the three minute soap

I was reading today’s Sydney Morning Herald online when this article caught my attention. The article is about a new web-based soap that will launch on Bebo next month. Mind you, this is not the first time I’ve commented on this type of thing – see a previous post on snack drama.
The really interesting thing [...]

On content management and information architecture

One of the interesting dimensions in content management is how information architecture (IA) affects reader use. The way a web site is structured is integral to the success of that web site, so long as the content meets the needs of the target audience.
Imagine the way a car is produced. Does the design team for a mass [...]

On the Sydney records management convention – Day 1

I attended the first day of the Records Management Association of Australia (RMAA) Convention at Darling Harbour in Sydney. It’s the only day I could have attended out of a three day program. I also took advantage of the extensive trade exhibition to talk with a number of vendors and records managment service providers.
I took [...]

On purpose and language

I want to emphasise the importance of defining and understanding purpose, as I touched upon in my blog post from yesterday. Defining and understanding purpose is critical for information architecture, communication strategies, knowledge management and communities of practice.
One of the difficulties in looking at purpose – the reason why – is from whose perspective one looks. [...]

On information architecture (2)

A couple of people asked me today what I thought about the information architecture (IA) of Google and Amazon. I think they wanted me to say that the IA was weak and rather boring in both cases.
I happen to think, from the user’s perspective (forgive me Gerry for using that term), that Google has a great [...]

On information architecture

I have been doing some studies in my Masters degree covering information architecture. I really love the subject but wish I had more spare time to give it some really solid attention.
I found a couple of items on information architecture that I really enjoyed:
Keith Instone’s IA Summit 2008 notes
Oz Information Architecture 2007 (some great podcasts)
Matt’s [...]