Knowledge Management Systems
• Schedule
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Discuss Small Pieces, Loosely Joined
Readings Discussion
RSS Reader review
Book Report selection
Dates for Topic Reports
Working Knowledge review
• What are your conclusions about this book?
• How can you use the ideas in the book?
- For classwork
- Outside the iSchool
• What are some key points to remember?
- Organizational Culture
- Information Technology
- Measurement
Small Pieces, Loosely Joined
• How does information technology affect your
view of the world?
• How does it shape your relationships with
others?
• What implications are there for Knowledge
Work?
• Do you agree with Weinberger’s findings &
ideas?
• Is it A New World?
A New World
• “The Web has sent a jolt through our culture,
zapping our economy, our ideas about
sharing creative works, and possibly even
institutions”
• Is it about speed, reach or a coincidence of
technology, a lack of rules?
• Is this new world simply a mirror that reflects
us as individuals & groups in a new way?
(p 8)
Space
• Does the Web expand your reach or is it a different
place altogether?
- Different norms
- Culture more or less apparent?
• Is the main element of this new space the document?
- What about the individual?
- Are documents a different type of meritocracy?
• “Without links there is no Web” p54
- Is the loosely joined is more important than the parts?
- Are links too loosely joined or are they part of the tacit
knowledge of the Web (& how people work together)?
• Is it fair to use the metaphor of Space?
- Portals as something you pass through, not stay at. P55
- Where is your home space(s)?
Time
• Is the primary power of the Web asynchronous
communication?
• Another view of time: are we spending aggregately
more time to get the same things done?
- More? Less? A Different type of Work?
- What does “time spent at work” mean now?
• Is real-time interaction better than asynchronous
interaction?
- Why the popularity of chat rooms, instant messaging &
mobile phones?
- More time editing documents than creating them?
• Is technology causing a general quickening of our
pace?
Perfection - Loosely Joined
• How fortuitous are the accidental encounters
with people & information?
• Opening a conversation can be easy, and
doesn’t have to be perfect.
- Tools on the Web aren’t perfect
- People still will work with a broken tool in
comparison to not having it.
• Is the Web broken on purpose? P 79
- Are people “broken” the same?
- “Good enough” and “It works for me”
Perfection & Tools
• How difficult is it to support imperfect work
with logical tools (& systems)?
• Do centralized (top-down, logical) power and
efficiency go hand in hand? P 80
- The larger the system is, the more control required
- Does larger always mean more complex?
• How does management work in the extremes
of these worlds?
- In between?
- Reactive, not proactive?
Togetherness
• Is the Web what we were waiting on?
- A logical extension of political philosophy?
• Democracy?
• Aristocracy?
• (Intellectual) Capitalism?
- A logical result of technology?
• Metcalfe’s Law - The Network effect p105
- Utility grows as the network does
- Measurable
• Reed’s Law - More potential groups
- Larger numbers of people = more potential (overlapping,
changing) groups
- Higher chance there will be a community or subculture for
you
Matter & Hope
• Do atoms count anymore?
- Negroponte and bits
- Culture quickened by virtual relationships
• Sharing is easier in an digital network?
- Amazon reviews++
- Easier to share opinion over fact?
- Is this the metadata of the Web?
• Culture is the tacit knowledge at work?
- “A culture’s excitement about the Web is directly
proportional to that culture’s alienation from its
everyday experience.” p 180
- Implications for organizational (sub)cultures?
Web & Real World?
• What are the ways that these two worlds
combine?
• Are they really different?
- Is the means affecting the ends?
- Is the medium affecting each’s uses & people’s
preferences for either?
• Is this technology neutral?
- An opportunity for communication
- An opportunity for re-engineering (both good &
bad)
Questions to Consider
• What is KM?
• What Does KM Provide?
- Personal
- Organizational
• Best Approaches for KM?
• Is KM a process?
• Who Does KM?
• Contexts:
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Culture
Environment
Change
Cooperation
RSS Reading and Blogging
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Signed up?
Understand how to post?
What to post about
Class work posts
Book Report Selections
• Everyone?
• Suggestions?
• Let’s hear your choices