Yes, folks, this is one of the places where I am going to be hanging out for the next few weeks. A colleague of mine at work just shared over in our internal weblogging network this really fine web site that I have been checking out for the last couple of hours and that has got me hooked. It is called Woophy and it puts together something so simple yet so effective: you get to share your favourite pictures from the different places you have been to, or that you would be interested in, or that you would want to share with others. In short, you get to share pictures in a world map. How simple is that? Yes, I know, very. And perhaps that is the actual beauty from the overall offering. Or is it perhaps the huge amount of great pictures that people have been sharing already? I tell you, once you start checking out the web site you would just want to chime in and share your best photos with the community of folks who have been hanging about all along.

Woophy has got also a news section where you can see what is happening with the service along with checking out on some of the great snapshots that people have been sharing thus far. I know it would be really nice if it would be having RSS feeds, and I guess that is coming, but certainly just checking out the news section will get you sticking around for some time. Then you have got the Forum where you can interact with other members of the community about the Woophy experience. There is even a contest whether they would be gathering “a collection of pictures portraying the diversity of life on our planet“, so that would also be a nice incentive to get you going. Although I am sure that after you have hanged out on the web site for a little while you would see that it is actually worth while the experience just browsing through the thousands and thousands of photos available already.

One of the nicest things about the whole experience is how you can actually help on the community building aspects by being able to leave comments on different pictures, or by actually rating a picture, or sending it to others or just simply by checking how many folks have already visited that particular snapshot. Pretty neat that instant notification of how much people are interested in your pictures or not. Then, finally, if you would be interested in a particular picture you have the opportunity to see it in full screen displaying up to 1280 pixels which actually makes for a very nice picture, at least, from the ones I have seen already.

As I said, quite an interesting offering that I would be spending some time on. Of course, I had to go into it and create an account: elsua. Thus you can get over there and search for all of the pictures I have been sharing already thus far. There will be some more coming up but for the time being I certainly want to recommend to you that if want to check some of the most amazing pictures head over there and start enjoying the Woophy experience. Oh, and not to worry, there are actually quite a lot more features available but I would let you discover those by yourselves while you head to the homepage. And then from there I am sure that you would be whoopying around like all of us for quite some time …

Oh, and in case you are wondering if I am going to stop sharing pictures in my Flickr account like I have been doing so far, that is actually not going to happen. At least, not for the time being. I will be sharing some of the best pictures I have shared in Flickr (And many more!) over there, in Woophy, but I will also continue to share some more as usual. Thus time to have some more fun !

Technorati Tags: Woophy, Photography, World Map, Flickr

A few days ago David Goldes created a very enlightening article over at CollaborationLoop around the transition businesses are going through at this very moment from being a labour-based company to an asset / knowledge based company. In The Dawn of the Knowledge Economy David makes quite a few remarks that would sound very familiar to all those folks who have been reading elsua for some time now and it would even sound more familiar if you have been doing yourselves some work around the world of Knowledge Management or you are knowledge workers yourselves.

However, from the entire article here are a couple of paragraphs, courtesy from Chris Zaluski, that I found much more relevant and interesting to quote as it touches base on something that I have been commenting on all along:

“Knowledge management revolves around being able to harness the intangible knowledge and ideas within an organization in order to creatively guide the company. Unlike the tangible assembly line products of our forefathers, there is no easy way to gauge a knowledge worker’s productivity. Likewise, knowledge managers are left without step-by-step management practices. These are two truths that many traditional, “Tayloristic-bred” managers have trouble grasping.”

“Successful knowledge managers are able to guide an organization to reach its full potential, thus, helping everyone involved with the company, including the consumer.”

“Although knowledge workers rely on technology, technology still remains but a tool for performing knowledge work. Granted, such knowledge work does not necessarily even require technology beyond a pad and pencil, yet Collaborative Business Environment tools aid the process”

As you can see from those quotes above the key success factor for any KM strategy, Knowledge Manager or knowledge based company, is the fact that they need to shift the focus from the traditional tangibles to the intangibles, because that is what will differentiate the good companies from the great ones. Those who value not only the knowledge they have, and how it gets produced and harvested to then be reused, but also the people behind that knowledge, that is, the intangibles, the ones who get to form communities to help share knowledge and collaborate with others and the ones who would eventually be making it successfully into the 21st Knowledge Economy.

As long as they keep the focus. That is where the key challenge is going to be: focusing where you would need to focus, on the people, who are building up further on that knowledge, and the rest will follow naturally.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Economy, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Communities of Practice

Here we go again with another LinkedIn Bloggers group blog boost. Indeed, like I have been mentioning a few times already, every week the group of LinkedIn webloggers actually gets to post an article in their corresponding weblogs about one particular weblog that gets selected and that we all get to boost by linking to it. Like I have mentioned elsewhere this is actually one activity that I get to enjoy quite a bit because it allows me to get to know other members of the community at the same time that it allows me to build a connection with different webloggers where we may share common interests in different topics. Pretty much a similar case to what I have mentioned yesterday when establishing a connection between communities and weblogs.

So this week I was really delighted to read that the blog boost is on Des Walsh’s weblog Thinking Home Business. Reason why I am saying delighted is because I have actually been following up on Des’ weblog for some time now and every time that he gets to post something it will actually make you think a bit. Des gets to weblogged on a regular basis about different topics but the ones that I have been enjoying the most are about weblogging itself and social networks.

However, if there is a section that I have been enjoying quite a bit from Des’ weblog is his different weblog posts around the topic of Coaching. In fact, if you are looking for some really good tips on coaching related topics then I suggest you head over there and read some more about because Des has got a good amount of posts to get you started. Like, for instance, the one on Principles for a Balanced Life; a weblog post that I am sure will hit home with quite a few people who may be working remotely at different sites or from home as it basically puts things into perspective where sometimes it is actually a good thing to let it go and enjoy life. Just for the sake of it. Just to re-energise yourself once again. And why not? Sometimes it is good to get pushed a bit to make it happen.

Technorati Tags: LinkedIn, Metablogging, Social Networkings, Thinking Home Business, Home Business, Work Life Balance

Earlier on today, I attended one of those conference calls that I was really looking forward to for quite some time now. It was organised by Stan Garfield, leader of the SIKMLeaders group (System Integrators KM Leaders), and it was actually organised as part of their Knowledge Management monthly calls. This time around we had the opportunity to attend a session where the presenter was Jack Vinson, who gave a great presentation on the following subject: Blogging and Knowledge Communities - Is There a Connection? Yes, indeed, another good reason for making it into the event. No doubt.

The reason why I was really excited about this particular call was because it was the first time that I actually managed to attend the call knowing that I would be meeting up some of the different KM webloggers I have been following up on for some time now. So I got the chance to put a voice behind the weblogs of folks like Jack, Stan and a few other folks, along with listening to a very interesting presentation. Just being there and listening and engaging on the different conversations was worth while the full hour. However, I just thought I would let you know some more about the presentation itself that Jack went through.

In Blogging and Knowledge Communities - Is There a Connection? Jack tried successfully to create a link between communities and weblogs and how there are different signs when engaging in weblogs that could help identify them as potential community tools that would help the different webloggers become much more involved with the group and share and collaborate with one another. So, like he said, a community of webloggers would be that one that would have a common set of topics to write about, that would get webloggers reading from each other’s weblogs, that would encourage webloggers to get to know one another and to help expand further on their own ideas by sharing their own point of view on those similar ideas.

While Jack was going through the presentation I just couldn’t help thinking about the good amount of similarities with the whole purpose of why we first got started with the KMBloggers community. A community space for KM webloggers to connect with one another, reading from each other’s weblogs, expanding further on each other’s ideas and to provide a platform that would help encourage all of us to try to reach out there. Thus if you feel that you would want to become part of that KM Community just go ahead and join the KMBloggers community

If you would want to read further from Jack’s presentation you can download the slides from here. Notice that you will need to register with the SIKMLeaders Yahoo group in order to access them. If you would want to have a look into them without having to register let me know and I will share them elsewhere.

Technorati Tags: Communities of Practice, Communities, Knowledge Management, KM, KMBloggers, Jack Vinson, SIKMLeaders

Today is a sad day, folks. A very sad day. At least, to me. Over at Green Chameleon Patrick has just shared one particular weblog post that made me feel very sad and equally sorry. Appalling! In Knowledge Is a Thing he has embedded a YouTube video clip of how a teacher treats his students when they have got whatever questions / comments. That folks is NOT the way you treat your students. Not now, not ever! Students are supposed to be learning stuff. Lots of it. But never ever be exposed to such behaviour, specially coming from your own teacher!

Being a teacher myself, I can only feel very sorry for all of the good teachers out there because attitudes like that one are not helping us a great deal. We are in the 21st century and it is a real pity that there are still people out there who behave like this. I just run out of nice words for that particular individual so I am going to stop here and let you watch the video clip. See what you think about it yourselves. One thing for sure is that whoever is responsible for that teacher in whatever the school I hope they could take some good measures not to allow him to teach again. Not now! Not ever!

Technorati Tags: Teaching, Teacher, Knowledge Transfer, Punishment

Last week Steven Tedjamulia created a weblog post that I feel should be a good reference to every single knowledge worker out there. Indeed, in How Knowledge Workers Would Like to Work Steven just mentions some of the details and key findings from a set of recent interviews he has done on how enterprise level employees would like to work. I must say that I found the weblog post quite an interesting read, to say the least, as it would actually help business what would be some of the main major needs that every single knowledge worker faces at some point during their professional careers. The article itself makes up for an interesting reading, and as teaser here are some of the areas that he touches base on and that I thought about sharing a couple of comments on:

A Standardized Collaboration System: “[…]Two things upset users: (1) not having the proper tools to collaborate efficiently and (2) having too many tools that do the same thing […]” While I certainly agree with that statement it is not that easy to actually find the one and only collaboration tool that will do everything. In fact, I am not even sure that would be worth while creating it in the first place. Knowledge workers have got, all of them, different needs and requirements and as such what would work for one may not work for another. Some of them would prefer to collaborate in real-time, others in offline fashion, some using one tool and others another tool and the fact that so far nobody has come out with that killer app. to help boost collaboration could probably indicate how difficult such task would become. In fact, from Steven’s set of functionality that he suggests I am missing, big time, a few items: social software, expertise location, learning, amongst others. As I said, not an easy task, for sure. However, if we would take things from the other end we could probably be much better off. Why not, instead of creating the killer app. that does it all, we actually integrate some of the most popular tools that currently a particular business is using and provide more of a collaboration tool suite? I think that the key is more on integration of existing tools than in creating new ones on top of those already existing.

Content Management Is Equally Important: Yes, indeed, I agree with this one as well. Perhaps one of the biggest challenges for any successful KM strategy is to have a content management tool suite where knowledge workers would feel comfortable with sharing their Intellectual Capital that could then be reused at a later time. All along, however, this may not have been the case since lots of companies have always placed a much heavier focus on explicit knowledge exchange than tacit. On the other hand, with the recent hype about social software this may be about to change, once again. But this time for the better. Balance would be the key.

Super Users Want Full Control: Who wouldn’t, right?

Expertise Location and Content Delivery: Ah, very good, for a minute (See above comments) I thought that Steven had left out some major key areas from Knowledge Management that every knowledge workers is fully aware of. Certainly, locating experts and delivering content in a much more personalised and effective way is something that we all know would be crucial to any collaborative efforts. First people would focus on creating the content they would want to share, then they would want to find the experts, or other knowledge workers, they would want to share their information with and, finally, they would want to get notified whenever there are changes to the content that has been made available in the past. And all of this with some nice touch on that social software items that I mentioned above as well. Good stuff!

Data Integration and Personalization: Ha ! it looks like Steven was actually preparing everything for when this would come up. “[..] Users ultimately want a dashboard that they can manage whose components can be manipulated in a portal environment. Users want a portal dashboard that can be customized and can include the content, data, and collaboration tools they need to get their work done more efficiently and effectively. [..]” Yes, indeed ! But let’s make sure we are talking about people portals as opposed to information portals.

Simulating Face-to-Face Interactions and Efficiencies: As time goes by and more and more knowledge workers start working remotely and distributed there is certainly a need to substitute that particular face-to-face contact that was there before. So having some sort of web presence at their reach is always going to be a good thing. We have seen this with Instant Messaging and VoIP but also with some other interesting offerings like Meetro and Plazes.

For sure quite an interesting article that Steven put together and with which I agree a great deal. You can see that he is up to something, even by just taking a look into his conclusion statement:

“Users want a collaboration system that they can create and customize themselves; one that provides the right data, content, and tools that will make them most effective in a virtual environment, but will simulate a face-to-face team setting; and one that pushes interesting and pertinent content to the user rather than having to be located by the user”

I am in ! Who else wants to sign up for it ? I bet I am not the only one, am I ?

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Knowledge Worker, WorkPlace, CollaborationLoop, Social Software, Intellectual Capital, Expertise Location, Content Management