E L S U A ~ A KM Blog Thinking Outside The Inbox by Luis Suarez

Welcome to the KMBloggers Community!

A couple of days ago you would remember how I created a weblog post on the topic of Coming to Terms with Knowledge Management Webloggers where I was indicating how it would be a good opportunity now to establish a community of Knowledge Management bloggers where we could get together to share some of our thoughts / ideas on the KM happenings taking place out there in the blogosphere and elsewhere, of course. So after having received several e-mails from folks, who would like to become part of that community, and having had a number of discussions, I am glad to present you the KMBloggers Community.

During the course of those discussions with different KMers on how to get started with this community of KM bloggers, we decided to get things going by making use of two different tools in order to help us get together. I am sure you would be aware of both tools since one of them is a key resource for KMers alike and the second one is just one hosted in one of the most popular group tools out there.

Indeed, after having considered a few options we have decided to have:

• A Yahoo! group: KMBloggers.
• A Wikispaces wiki: KMWiki (A space originally put together by Denham Grey).

In principle, the community is open to everyone interested in Knowledge Management and related topics. However, we encourage as well that KMers who maintain a weblog on KM related topics would become part of the community in order to get involved in the different conversations. Thus if you feel that you would want to contribute into this new KM space where you will be an integral part of it feel free to signup at KMBloggers and register into the KMWiki.

At this very moment KMWiki has got already lots of different content, including a starting list of KM bloggers and although the KMBloggers Yahoo! group has not been populated yet with content it will start getting some over the course of the next couple of days. Thus go ahead and sign up now while we get ready different bits and pieces.

If you have got any questions or further comments feel free to append them over here or just contact me offline. Feel free as well to pass this message along to all those folks interested in KM who you feel would be keen on becoming part of this new community around the role that social software like wikis and weblogs is currently playing in the Knowledge Management world.

Hope to see you there soon !

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, KM, KMbloggers, KMWiki, Social Software, wikis, weblogs

Top Ten Tips for Creating Effective Screencasts

If you remember, back in January I created a weblog post regarding how good screencasts are to augment instruction and knowledge sharing, specially when you would need to conduct demos or show people about a new tool, a new process, whatever, you name it. Having the possibility of not just listening but also viewing something on your computer screen is perhaps having the best of both worlds, both audio and video. And specially for visual learners it is a must-have, I would imagine.

Back then I mentioned how for quite some time now I have been trying quite a few options till I actually found the one that I am sticking around with till now (Oh, by the way, did you know that there is a new version of Wink, v.2.0, with a whole bunch of new features, including audio? Worth while a try for sure). And that would be TechSmith Camtasia Studio. Well, just this morning, and while going through my daily RSS feed reading, I bumped into this particular item by Bill Myers Online that I am sure you would also find very beneficial: Top Ten Tips for Creating Effective Screencasts.

Indeed, even though I have been using Camtasia Studio for some time now after going through those Top 10 tips I actually got to learn a trick or two that I was not aware of and that I am sure that they would help me get better and better at doing screencasts. Thus I just had to weblog about it so that I would not forget about them and could then apply them right away in my next screencast shows.

Just in case you may not have time to watch the actual screencast Bill Myers Online has put together on the subject, or to read the actual ten tips here you have got a teaser description of all of them to give you a quick overview of what they are. At the same time this would also help me keep track of them and remind me of trying to do better and much more effective screencasts and with these tips I am surely going on the right track. Thus here they go:

Top Ten Tips for Effective ScreenCasts:

1. Start with Camtasia Studio: indeed, my favourite tool so far from all the ones I have tried so far.
2. Use a USB digital microphone.
3. Position the microphone to prevent popping.
4. Use an enhanced cursor.
5. Close unneeded programs.
6. Set the size of the stage.
7. Do a trial run.
8. Plan to make mistakes.
9. Edit ruthlessly.
10. Publish to flash.

Good stuff, indeed ! A big thanks from here to Bill for sharing these tips with us and help us get the message across that screencasting can certainly be very helpful while trying to promote eLearning, collaboration and knowledge sharing within any organisation.

Technorati Tags: Screencast, Wink, Camtasia, Learning, eLearning, Knowledge Sharing, Top 10

Wikis and Blogs Transforming Workflow

How many times have you seen how different people just don’t seem to get it? How many times have you been confronting yourself with skeptics saying that both wikis and weblogs could not possibly work in a corporate environment? How many times have you seen how folks feel that one of the most powerful collaboration and knowledge sharing tools is e-mail as opposed to others? How many times you wished you had some good reference material, apart from a good reading, that would help you convince those skeptics not just with some fancy words, but also with some hard facts, about how a growing number of different companies are making good use of this new tools suite that is social software to help improve their already existing Knowledge Management systems?

Yes, I know, quite a few times. I have been there myself, and several times. However, I think that from now on I would be able to have some good reference material that I could use to help people get it. Check out Wikis and Blogs Transforming Workflow, written by Shamus McGillicuddy. Over there you would be able to read how wikis and weblogs can be used successfully within any organisation in conjunction with other communication tools like e-mail, in such a way that collaboration and knowledge sharing gets together in wikis and weblogs, amongst other KM tools, in the place they ought to have from all along, and e-mail is just used for what was meant to be.

There are lots of interesting quotes that I could go through but that would make this weblog post far too long, so instead I am just going to quote a couple of my favourite ones and from there onwards I would encourage you to go to Wikis and Blogs Transforming Workflow and read on further:

“E-mail has proven itself to be an indispensable form of communication, but it has limits as a collaborative tool, experts agree. Enterprise content management systems are important for codifying and organizing important corporate data, but they can be expensive and inflexible. Blogs and wikis can fill in the collaborative gap.“

[...]

“Blogs and wikis “capture the working communication” that surrounds content management systems, he said. “It has to do with individuals and product teams, making what people do visible to others in the company,” Lloyd said. [...]“

And how about this one:

“Murphy said wikis and blogs are a good way to capture information that might otherwise have no other easily accessible place to be. In IT departments wikis could help track change management. Instead of commenting within software code to explain why changes are made, programmers can explain the changes in a wiki.

“

Is there anything else that would need to be added? … Yes, I know, that is what I thought.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, KM, Social Software, Wikis, Weblogs, Enterprise Collaboration