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

A – Z of Professional Blogging – What Every Blogger Should Be Aware of

As I keep encouraging both people at work and outside work to explore all these relatively new social software tools available out there: wikis, weblogs, social bookmarking, web syndication (RSS / Atom), podcasting, and whatever other social networking tools, in order to improve and augment the way they may be sharing knowledge and collaborating with other knowledge workers, I have always been encouraging them to go out there and start playing with all these tools; trying them out to see if they would fit their needs or if they are tools they would want to explore further at some point in time. And in the world of the Blogosphere time and time again I keep getting back to one of the fundamental resources, in my opinion, for every weblogger out there who may want to expand their weblogging boundaries.  Yes, indeed, that key fundamental resource is Darren Rowse‘s ProBlogger: one of the most relevant and resourceful weblogs out there that helps people  improve their weblogging experience a huge deal !

If you haven’t check out his project on 31 Days to Building a Better Blog you surely should ! It is one of those must-read series of weblog posts that will certainly help you getting started with your own weblogging experience and much more importantly it will provide you with an extended set of tips you could make use in order to get your own weblog where you always wanted it to be. Worth while a good paused read, for sure. But that is not the reason why I am actually creating this particular post. It is actually for one weblog post that he has created that can certainly keep you busy for a whole weekend reading through it all.

A couple of days ago Darren created what has been, up until now, one of my favourite weblog posts of all times and one post that I have been already using a few times to spread the message around about weblogs and weblogging in general. It is titled A – Z of Professional Blogging and in it you would be able to find an impressive list of 130 tools and platforms, thus far, all of them related to weblogging or to your own experience with this relatively new social  software application. Yes, indeed, quite impressive!

That is why I wanted to create this particular post today, Friday, so that folks out there who may be interested in reading further on some of those tools or applications would have as well, at least, some time to play around with them. As I said the list is huge and it has got some really handy tips on weblogging tools available out there. By no means it is a complete list, but it surely is a good start and I am sure that as time goes by and people continue to provide more feedback on missing tools Darren would be updating the list to make it even much more resourceful. I haven’t yet gone through the entire list of tools put together, that is going to be my homework for this coming weekend but I can see already a couple of weblogging tools that I am using that are not in the list, so perhaps beginning of next week, when I have dug into the already existing ones I would be updating this particular weblog post to include the listing of those which have not been included just yet and, hopefully, Darren will include them as well as part of the list.

Let’s see if I am able to finish the homework or not. But either way, just get yourself over there and dive into it. I am sure that weblog post will keep you busy for a few hours with some fun exploring to do. And if you are using a weblogging tool that is not in the list, by all means, please let Darren know so that we can all make it grow bigger and bigger by the day. After all, it is our weblogging guide, right ?

Tags: Professional Blogging, Metablogging, Darren Rowse, ProBlogger, Blogging Tools, Knowledge Management, KM

Expertise Location without Technology – The Power of Storytelling (Part Deux)

A couple of days back you would remember how I actually created a follow up weblog post around the subject of expertise location to the superb article that Jack Vinson created over at Expertise Locators on the Brain (Worth while reading material for sure). And today I thought I would also point you to another fantastic, must-read, follow up post that Shawn Callahan put tog ether not long ago, where he actually tried to approach expertise location from a different point of view: "[...] what if we put effort in helping individuals find relevant expertise when they need it and without the use of technology?" and he actually succeeds at it, big time! The weblog post is titled Expertise Location without Technology and you can read it over here. And it basically comes to talk about a new and refreshing way of treating expertise location by not focusing on the technology itself but just on a way to find the experts the way we have always been doing: through our social interactions. Because that is what we all do. Search for those experts that are the closest to us.

Fascinating thoughts, indeed. Something that perhaps not many people may have thought about but which certainly comes to indicate how social networks are becoming increasingly important in helping finding those experts. Something that although we may not have been aware of it all along it has certainly been there for hundreds of years. Shawn talks about "The next expertise locating skill I’d help people develop is what I call pre-emptive expertise location" by which "to be good at finding expertise you need to be connected before you need the expertise." Exactly! And without the technology what would be the best way to connect with other people and share that expertise? Any suggestions?

Yes, certainly through stories, i.e. the power of storytelling, something that I have already mentioned over here some time ago a couple of times. Through storytelling seekers have got the opportunity to get to know experts who in their turn also connect with other experts while they all continue to nurture those relationships by interacting in those social networks. And all that without potentially making use of expertise location technology, just the traditional methods of knowledge sharing and collaborating through talking with other people. And that is perhaps one of the reasons why in this distributed world we are in today weblogs may well be one of the most interesting options out there to help people tell stories, their stories. Because after all that is what weblogging is all about. Get your story out there and get yourself known to others. Make that connection,  nurture it through your own voice. Your weblog. As long as you do not have the opportunity to nurture them in real life, that is.

Another interesting aspect from Shawn’s weblog post is a short description of eight different aspects of expertise, taken from Gary Klein, that is also some interesting reading and which helps clarify how experts are different from the seekers. I am not going to reproduce them over here, you can go there and read some more about them over at Shawn’s weblog post but, as a teaser, I am going to just briefly name them over here:

1. Patterns
2. Anomalies
3. The way things work
4. Opportunities and improvisations
5. Past and future
6. Fine discriminations
7. Self aware
8. Decision makers

As you will be able to see there are actually a whole lot more aspects to take into account than just the technology when talking about expertise location and perhaps one key fundamental aspect to make it all work may be just related to something that I have weblogged about earlier on today: the power of communities and their stories.

Tags: Expertise Location, Expertise Locators, Social Networks, Social Networking, Storytelling, Knowledge Management, KM, Anecdote

Meebo Extension for Flock

I couldn’t help it. I just couldn’t. On a time where I was almost on the verge of giving up on Instant Messaging altogether here comes a really nifty productivity tip that I couldn’t ignore. On the contrary. Some time ago you would remember how I have weblogged about one particular offering in the Instant Messaging space called Meebo.In fact, you may have noticed how, so far, it is one of the most read weblog posts here in elsua. Well, as I have continued to like the service more and more by the day, specially when I am away from my own computer travelling or working in whatever other remote environment, Meebo has increasingly become one of the tools that I have been making use of in order to keep in touch with those folks. So, as I said, it looks like I may not be giving up on Instant Messaging that quickly after all.

Specially even more when it looks like one of my other favourite applications, my default web browser, Flock, has been enhanced with a new extension that would actually help you make use of Meebo in the sidebar as opposed to its own window. That is right. Tones has just released an extension that allows you to integrate Meebo into your Flock browser (Or FireFox for that matter) so that you can browse around at the same time that your buddy lists are available to you at all times without the need of having to install additional software nor work with a separate browser window. It is all nicely integrated into a single experience.

Download Squad, 21talks and Techcrunch have got all of them some very helpful reviews of how it actually works. And, of course, I had to try it out and, like it has been mentioned already it, it works in exactly the same way as advertised. Quite nicely. With this new extension you would be able to access the IM protocols that Meebo was putting together already: AOL / ICQ, Yahoo, Google Talk / Jabber and MSN, but all of them nicely embedded on a sidebar so that you can continue browsing the Internet without losing eye contact with your buddies. As I said, pretty interesting capability that would certainly make Flock a truly Web 2.0 browser, because with extensions like ChatZilla, we now have the capability of collaborating and sharing knowledge both in real-time having IM and .I.R.C. capabilities and the standard offline capabilities of working with other asynchronous tools, like wikis, weblogs, social bookmarks, photo sharing, etc. etc.

Thus there you go, if you would want to increase even further your overall Web 2.0 experience you may want to give a try to Flock’s Meebo extension. I have been testing it out myself for the last few hours and I can certainly recommended.

Tags: Tones, Meebo, Flock, FireFox, Flock Extension, FireFox-Extension, Yahoo, MSN, AOL, ICQ, Jabber, Google Talk, Instant Messaging, IRC