.. but see Lee’s comment and the Committee response.

In fact, the whole thread is worth reading. There was also this great comment by someone called vb working for the UN Working Group for Internet Governance who knows some of the Iranians involved:

It’s a principle of the Internet - if you connect with other people, both of you gain, and both of you start to listen to each other. If you break connections, on the other hand, both of you lose and nothing happens.

That clinched it for me, though I think Lee’s general point about focus, and being able also to focus inwards (on Western countries) with these campaigns holds true.

[Update: BBC article on it here]

Three cheers for incorporated subversion’s James Farmer and his theory about the naming of Google.

You see the real source for the name [Google] is Enid Blyton, in particular from The Magic Faraway Tree series where Silky and Moon Face are forever serving up google buns, pop cakes and toffee shocks. I know this because I’ve been reading them to our two beautiful girls over the last year and can prove it

Well, I’d completely forgotten about Land of the Slaps [now banned?] and Saucepan Man, which I loved when I was younger, and now I haven’t. Plus, let’s face it, it’s more fun than googol as a source.

Thanks James - made me smile

This from John Maloney (an ex-HP man)

“In the sixty years before ‘CarlyCo,’ HP led incredible growth through highly distributed, individualized models. The dignity of the individual was paramount. This single solitary value pioneered legendary worldwide practices as flex time, open-door, no-layoff, profit sharing, pay-as-you-go, community concern, product environmentalism, next bench engineering, distributed ‘loose/tight’ leadership, stock options/purchase plans, management by wandering around, beer busts, open offices, employee & spousal educational benefits, employee autonomy, etc., etc., aka, the HP Way. Did it ever work — from 1938 to 1998, HP grew more than 20% a year without a loss — giving it the longest period of fast growth in the history of American corporations.“

[First emphasis mine, second his]

Via the KM Cluster, there’s going to be a London Symposium on “Enterprise Value Metrics and Measurement: Advancing Intellectual Capital Leadership”.

Time and Date:
Friday, April 29, 2005
8:00am - 5:00pm

More details here, though not yet seemingly. Still, if it’s anything like the last one then it’ll be an interesting, useful gathering.

February 21st 2005 | Comments(1) | Asides on events, KM, London measurement

Sounds like David Weinberger was at an interesting meet the other day. People from IBM and Autonomy were explaining the view from the provider side. IBM’s WebFountain is still structuring that sea of data for us (or for Factiva at least). I still think they need to bring in some web gardeners to make those fountains look pretty, but it’s a good reminder of the brute power of silicon.

More contentious, I thought, was this:
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As serendipity would have it, there’s a discussion over at AOK being hosted by Dave Ulrich. In it Dave and Jack Ring came up with this:

“… the key point … “Once we know the capabilities required, we
can begin to see how to organize resources to deliver them.” which prompts me to ask why we should presume that an HR function is appropriate for an enterprise intending to excel in KM before we are clear on the capabilities required to make KM happen.”

Not too long ago (and this is the coincidence) I snipped a quote from E.O. Wilson’s Consilience. Perhaps it can now be rejigged:

“The message from HR to intellectuals and KMers is this: choose the organizational culture you want to promote then prepare to live with the way individuals react to it. Never favour the reverse, of promoting KM policies to change behaviours. For best results, cultivate individuals, not groups.”

Apparently, the tension created between the supposed egalitarianism and the hierarchical realities of the American workplace can often cause conversational “black holes” during which employees avoid calling their bosses by any name, according to a Penn State researcher. Yup - any name.

Who’d be a boss eh?

One of the things I’ve been thinking about recently is a training manual for people who need to do a bit of personal knowledge (or something) management. At the risk of banging on about it, one of the things that struck me about van Riper’s fluid, networked approach to operations was the emphasis on training the nodes in the network. For - in this case - Network Centric Warfare to work, there needs to be a heavy confidence and reliance on the personal ‘nodes’, and part of that seems to be achieved by training them. Good basic training and drill.

So I’ve been thinking presumably, with network-enabled organisation, to optimise efficacy, there needs to be continual basic training of the employees. And if that’s right, then perhaps that training is effectively what PKM is really about, and I wondered, if I were a new employee of one of these network-enabled organisations, what sort of handbook would I like to get to get me started from scratch?

改善

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February 15th 2005 | Comments(1) | Notes on Japan, Knowledge Management, Learning networks

This brightened up my Monday morning. Heard news of it over the weekend, but the rather brilliant Natalie ‘Bawdy Nan’ Steed has been doing some knitting. And her rather brilliant husband Jeremy has been doing some packaging. And they’ve invented the produced a rather wonderful iPod sock, as seen below.

Should keep your tunes toasty warm …

February 14th 2005 | Comments(2) | Life on friends knitting

I’ve recently been thoroughly enjoying Lloyd Davis’Podwalks round London.

I’m curious to know how much sense it makes to those who can’t visualise where he is, but if you can, it’s compelling listening, especially being able to hear the little beep signalling another photo for Flickr.

Some favourite excerpts from the last one (round South Ken):

“… there, damn, I’ve now insulted catholics, Americans and fans of Princess Di …”

(while taking photos of Harrods’ mannekins)
“… I won’t take a shot of her because she’s got her skirt up round her ears … and she’s got no knickers on …”

… and of course the theme tune. Thanks Lloyd!

[Update: I’m conscious I might be making it all sound much more jingoistic etc than it is. Listen to it - it’s charming, and in terms of adding texture to London, about as honest as you get]

February 11th 2005 | Comments(2) | Asides on London, podcasts walks

The message from geneticists to intellectuals and policy-makers is this: choose the society you want to promote then prepare to live with its heritabilities. Never favour the reverse, of promoting social policies to change heritabilities. For best results, cultivate individuals, not groups.

- p.156, Consilience, E.O. Wilson

February 11th 2005 | Comments(1) | Notes on groups, individuals, policy, Quotes science

Martin has pointed, via Ray Ozzie, to “A MUST READ for all knowledge managers”. It’s called Power to the Edge and has been produced by the US’s CCRP (Command and Control Research Program). In fact, there seems to be a goldmine of van Riper style potentially interesting pieces to have a look at.

Anyway, Martin seems to be sold, which is a good enough reason for me to have a read. Will report back. Sir.

[And sorry for all the trackbacks Martin - don’t know what happened]

February 09th 2005 | Comments(1) | Asides on army, leadership, networks, research strategy

This is exciting from the New Scientist: apparently New roads can cause congestion. [via 3quarks daily]

Traffic should flow best in cities when only a limited number of roads lead to the centre. This counter-intuitive finding could allow planners to prevent gridlock by closing roads rather than building new ones.

It comes from a new way of thinking about complex networks developed by Neil Johnson, Douglas Ashton and Timothy Jarrett at the University of Oxford, UK.

Fascinatingly, the article goes on to say:

The same process of analysing the costs associated with moving across a network could help solve a long-standing problem in biology: why some natural networks are centralised like cities, whereas others are decentralised like the internet.

“Organisms such as fungi have managed to evolve a complex network in which there are centralised and decentralised pathways to move nutrients around,” Johnson says. “Now we can look at biological systems in terms of the ‘costs’ and ‘benefits’ of the connections rather than in terms of the physical structures themselves,” he says.

Makes you wonder. If you can mathematically model the benefits of “top-down” and “bottom-up” approaches to relieving information congestion, then you might have a great basis from which to improve knowledge flow within an organisation. Lots of those types of questions.

February 03rd 2005 | Comments(1) | Notes on benefit, bottom up, cost, flow, models, networks, physics top down

I’m currently trying to get some friends playing around with TikiWiki for a mini-project. They’re all bright but they’re not particularly tech-savvy, and the idea of growing a site, rather than designing everything perfectly at the outset, seems to be filling them with a little dread.

So I wrote them a little story to try to help them “get” the wiki approach. They’ll probably think it’s ridiculous, but hey. Anything to get them going. I’ll let you know how they react. (The story - I think - is a bastardised version of something from Arno Penzias early days but could well be wrong … )

Once upon a time, a young hopeful got an apprenticeship with a famous architect. He turned up at the architect’s practice, and was immediately given some pens, pencils and paper and told to design a house. He stared at the blank sheet for a while, thinking about how to build the perfect house. And then he stared some more.

By the time the famous architect came round that afternoon, the young hopeful - despite all his training - still had a blank page in front of him. He apologised but the famous architect said not to worry, it happened all the time. The famous architect stood next to the young hopeful and asked him to draw the outline of a house, to have the front door going into the toilet, to have the back door going into the hall, to have the stairs going down into the cupboard. And so on. After a while, master and apprentice finished.
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February 02nd 2005 | Comments(4) | Thoughts, Life on architecture, Creativity, design wiki