It has been a little while since I have last weblogged about some interesting knowledge, collaboration and productivity tools, specially those who may help increase our knowledge skills, so I thought I would just share with you a nice tool I bumped into earlier on today thanks to one of my colleagues, Stefano. We had a conversation earlier on where he mentioned how he has been watching some of the different screencasts that I get to publish internally on a daily basis where I mainly focus on introducing people to knowledge and collaboration tools and he was suggesting if I could share those screencasts in .AVI format as opposed to making them available as streaming video.

At the beginning I was a bit curious about why he would want to have in AVI format all of the screencasts that I have been creating and then he just shared with me this gem: Free iPod Video Converter. What an incredible piece of freeware, folks! Stefano explained to me how he managed to get an .AVI file from one of the screencasts I did in the recent past and how he converted it, in some very easy steps, into an .MP4 format that could then be used in the video iPod and played right away. WOW! Fantastic !

Now, imagine this. Some time ago I created a weblog post where I was mentioning how powerful screencasting is in augmenting instruction; so think if all those screencasts could then be converted into an .MP4 format for the video iPod and converted thanks to the Free iPod Video Converter. People now would be able to take that learning with them while they are travelling, commuting, on the road, while working remotely disconnected, you name it. And still be able to shape up their skills in whatever the tool by making use of those converted screencasts and their iPods. Really nice !

I guess that with the opportunity to take those screencasts with you wherever you may go you would have the opportunity to improve your knowledge skills in whatever the learning activity in such a way that you would now then define the pace, length of study along with the time invested without having to depend on a network connection or being closed to a computer. Now you can take your potentially favourite media player and while you are enjoying it learn something in the process.

I do not have a video iPod yet, but if I ever get my hands on one of them I know exactly what I will be doing with it. Take my favourite learning screencasts with me and digest them at my own pace, at my own convenience. How effective would that method of learning and knowledge sharing be? I bet that perhaps quite a lot actually based on a new factor introduced with the usage of the iPod: The fun factor. Perhaps one of the most powerful ways of learning currently available. Don’t you think ?

So if you would want to give it a try just go ahead and download Free iPod Video Converter and start converting all those videos you have been piling up in your computer and that you didn’t have enough time for to go through them! You will now be able to change that with such a handy piece of freeware. I tell you. Fantastic find ! Thanks, Stefano !

Technorati Tags: ipod, screencast, ipod video converter, learning, eLearning

Through Centrality Journal’s weblog post on InformationWeek Curious About Social Network Business Model by Lynda Radosevich I have bumped into Thomas Claburn’s InformationWeek news article titled Social Networking Connects For Businesses where Thomas questions the business value of social networking companies since they are not having concrete business models to rely on. And I must say that after having read both Thomas’ and Lynda’s further commentary on the article itself I tend to agree with Lynda. I do not see the need for social networking companies to have concrete business models when they are already providing some incredible business value. At least from a Knowledge Management perspective.

You may be wondering how, right? Well, in my opinion, by providing a unique characteristic that not many other fully funded business models have been able to provide all along for a number of years: ability to facilitate the creation of connections between end-users. Indeed, all of the different social networking companies that have been flourishing at the moment are actually trying to fill in a gap in the current business models: facilitate the creation of those connections in order to help end-users collaborate closer with one another and share / exchange knowledge thanks to those relationships that these offerings are constantly promoting.

Indeed, whether we like it or not, more and more of these end-users / knowledge workers are actually starting to make use of those social networking companies because they are actually finding out how they facilitate collaboration and knowledge sharing, specially when working in multiple distributed teams where it would become much more difficult to establish relationships than through a face to face interaction. These social networking offerings are the primary reason why social capital is becoming increasingly much more popular than ever before and therefore how more and more businesses are seeing how their employees are now more keen to go out there, engage in the conversations, share what they know and look for that all forgotten balance between a explicit knowledge and tacit knowledge exchange.

And by the looks of it we are seeing how it is starting to pay off. Knowledge Management is becoming increasingly popular again and not just because of the different traditional knowledge repositories that everyone is used to but more thanks to applications like Wikis, weblogs, social bookmarking offerings, podcasts, web syndication, VoIP and so forth that are providing knowledge workers with the opportunity of collaborating and sharing content on the fly and without any further intervention from many of the traditional cumbersome processes we have been exposed to all along. Indeed, power to the people when sharing what they know with whom they connect, wherever they may be.

So there you go, there is your business model for social networking companies. Initially they may not be having robust business models but they surely are providing an incredible business value that somehow it is not going by unnoticed. And if not look at the good number of recent acquisitions in that particular space. Do social networking offerings need right from the start business models for the value they are providing already? I doubt it. They are already proving themselves as key enablers to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration and all of that without even having a business model. So imagine what they would be like if they would have it.

Technorati Tags: Social Networking, Knowledge Management, KM, Social Capita, Tacit Knowledge, Explicit Knowledge

As you may well know already, since I think that I have been mentioning this a couple of times already, I have been weblogging for a bit over two years when I first got started with my Intranet weblog and then just a few months ago when I decided to dive into the Internet blogosphere having both elsua and elsua @ ITtoolbox. Throughout that time I keep having folks asking me over and over again, I guess that will never stop, how I manage to create multiple weblog posts a day for all of the weblogs I maintain. They all seem to be surprised at the fact that every day there is always something to read in each of the weblogs. So next to the question as to how do I do it there is also another one that I think pretty much would answer the first one: “Why do I bother to maintain all three weblogs with daily updates?“

Well, to me the answer would be rather simple, but instead of me just explaining it through some words I thought I would just reference a picture that I clearly think would be just as powerful in explaining why I try to keep up with weblogging on a daily basis. And here it is:

Indeed, that picture comes from a weblog post shared by Dean Shareski over at Ideas and thoughts from an EdTech and which references another weblog post from Presentation Zen: Clear visuals with as little text as possible, and I just couldn’t have agreed more with that concept of what weblogging is all about. To me it is that shark that needs to be constantly in motion, that beast that needs to be progressing and moving forward all the time or it will go dormant and eventually die out. That is what weblogging is all about. A shark, a constant move; engaging in the daily conversation(s) because, after all, that is what we all do on a day in day out basis. No exceptions.

I am not going to deny that there are times where we would need to take a break, pretty much like we would do in real life when we would want to take a break from everything and therefore try to disconnect. The same would apply over here, no doubt. So far my disconnect is happening during the weekends where I feel I need to step back and revisit what my sharks have been doing during the course of the week and then prepare the rest of the week ahead. So far that seems to be working just fine with me, at least, for now. But perhaps that may change in the near future. I don’t know. One thing for sure is that whenever that happens I would need to be ready to decide what I would want to do with the sharks.

But for the time being, there you go. A powerful analogy that describes what weblogging has meant to me over the last two years and a couple of months since I first got started with it all. Things have changed quite drastically since then, but, at least, they have kept moving all along. And, for as long as I can keep those sharks moving, things would remain the same. Blog on !

Technorati Tags: Metablogging, Conversations

Earlier on today I read through another interesting, and thought provoking, weblog post over at Knowledge Jolt with Jack titled Link between KM and Social Software, which in return referenced another great, worth while reading, weblog post by Mike Gotta: Social Software: Knowledge Management Redux? In that particular weblog post Jack comes to augment what Mike is already stating over at his weblog with some additional commentary and something that I have been commenting all along over here: Knowledge Management is all about the people, about making it easier for knowledge workers to share what they know so that it could then be easily reused by others.

However, and while I certainly agree with what Jack mentioned over at his weblog, I also think that it would be worth while stopping a few more minutes and share some gems that Mike has been sharing over at Social Software: Knowledge Management Redux? I wish that particular weblog post would have been available a few years ago to show them where the focus should have been in KM from the moment it was born. Here you have got some interesting quotes from the article itself:

“KM generally fails when it is pursued as a holy grail, in and of itself, and especially when it over-prioritizes technology.“

If only people would have realised about this years ago ! Right from the beginning, people thought that everything could fall under the ever growing KM umbrella where the main focus was on the technology, on the tools themselves, i.e. the explicit knowledge. That might have worked out all right for a couple of years but there was a huge void been created by neglecting the power knowledge workers would have by making use of their tacit knowledge while collaborating with others. Yet, nobody seemed to care too much about it, and probably because of what Mike mentioned already. KM was considered the holy grail from every organisation interested in knowledge sharing and collaboration. Things could have been just so much more different! Sigh

“The focus on interaction, trust, reciprocity, conversation and storytelling is also the point where social software reframes some of the challenges faced by KM teams, offering a different set of tactics complimentary to historical KM best practices.“

I couldn’t have agreed more with Mike on that statement. All those focus areas that he mentioned are, whether we like it or not, very much related to the tacit knowledge exchange that I mentioned earlier on, and which would be a key fundamental success factor for any KM strategy because the focus is right there where it belongs: the people. So a balance between both approaches could certainly provide that unique advantage that differentiates a successful KM strategy from another one that is just attempting to achieve something in between. And this is perhaps where all the hype going around Web 2.0 offerings, the so-called social software, could come to the rescue as it could well be the perfect enabler to strike that balance between the two.

“In any case, the unforeseen discovery of peers doing similar things that result in purposeful action as a derivative outcome of informal interaction across small groups, larger communities and loosely-coupled networks makes social software quite consistent with KM goals [...]“

Indeed, the well known, and greatly ignored, power of social capital skills. How many times have we been told that trying to nurture and look after those social capital skills would be a waste of time and will not help produce the desired business results in whatever the KM strategy put together? How many times management has been neglecting the key role that those social capital skills play in the well building and further development of a group, whether it is a community or a team? You name it. Yet it looks like it is just now that those same managers are realising that perhaps cultivating and nurturing, as well as augmenting, that social capital will help KM get back in track into what it once was supposed to be: an almost perfect blend of people and tools, i.e. tacit and explicit knowledge. About time you would think, right ? I surely think so !

Technorati Tags: Social Software, Knowledge Management, KM, Tacit Knowledge, Explicit Knowledge, Web 2.0

It doesn’t happen very often, I must admit, folks, but when it does, it surely puts things back into perspective and helps you realise that weblogging is just so much more than just hype. Indeed, over the weekend I experienced something that at the very beginning I was not really sure about what would be happening next but over time I have gotten used to the idea that without this weblog things would not have happened in that way. It is all about engaging in the conversations, folks, whether they are happening over here or elsewhere.

During the course of Friday, and over the weekend, I got approached by the folks from Web 2.0 Journal asking me if it would be ok with me to publish in their online web site a recent weblog post I created not long ago around the subject of social software and the impact it is having in virtual communities and Knowledge Management. Of course, I would be ok with that ! Who wouldn’t! So after a couple of quick e-mails What Are the Drivers of Social Software’s Success? was up and running and available for further reading.

What an experience ! I had, for the first time, my five minutes of Internet fame in a place outside of my own weblog but with content related to it. How cool is that ? I know that this may be something trivial for most of you, folks, but when you get featured in such a well respected resource related to Web 2.0 topics like Web 2.0 Journal and you head over to Google News and search for social software and find out your article is listed in the top 3 most relevant results, at several times during the course of the day, is something that I quite didn’t expect. And for that I am totally delighted and grateful to the folks of Web 2.0 Journal who got in touch with me in the first place. Thanks a bunch !

There is no denying that it is a good feeling being recognised out there when there are so many strong and wonderful voices providing some very interesting messages out there. Today, I am enjoying one of those moments. My 5 minutes of Internet fame. So I may as well enjoy them !

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, KM, Social Software, Web 2.0, Web 2.0 Journal

Over at Chronicles Beth has just shared a weblog post that I have enjoyed quite a lot, not only because of its message but also because of the scenario where it is coming from. The title of the weblog post is Centrality Journal and in it she is referencing another weblog around the topic of social networking, Centrality Journal, where she has found this gem: A YouTube (You have got to love YouTube!) video from The Daily’s Show on social networking sites.

The video itself is really worth while watching, I tell you. It will give you an idea as to why social networks are becoming more and more popular that they even make it on to the main stream media big time. However, what I really found interesting from the video itself is the actual parody itself. It clearly reminded me of what happened a few years ago when Instant Messaging first came out. Everyone thought that it was just meant to be for kids, their pastime to kill all of those idle hours. However, throughout the years IM has proven to be the killer application for instant, real-time collaboration not only amongst regular end-users but also amongst knowledge workers as a way of helping them become much more productive in such an on demand world as today’s. So much so that today in many companies it is considered a business critical application in order to get distributed teams together in a much more efficient way. And hardly anybody thinks that IM is just meant for kids any longer. Everyone is using one IM client or another, that is for sure.

So what it looked like was not going to make it into the real business world turned out to be one of its many key components. And by the looks of it I would think that we are now witnessing the exact same thing with Social Networking. And The Daily’s Show video on social networking sites is just another proof of that. Oh, we also have to remember that even if social networking could be considered one of the main options for our youth to hang out we have to remember that those same youngsters would be the ones ruling this world not too long into the distant future. So if they are making use of those social networks offerings and they are enjoying them quite a lot to get together with other people, then there is a great chance that they would be using them when they grow up. And, like a good friend of mine once said, no company would be able to ignore that fact, whether we like it or not. Social networks have been grabbing more and more focus from businesses but more specially by those who will not long from now will be our coworkers, managers, team leads, you name it. Thus are you ready ?

Technorati Tags: Social Networking, Knowledge Management, KM, Instant Messaging, IM