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

What Is a Wiki?

Tags: Wiki, E-Mail, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web 2.0, Collaboration, Offline Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Jotspot, Joe Kraus, ZDNet

Yes, I know. I am fully aware of it. I realise that you may have heard about that particular term, Wiki, a few times already. Probably many more times that you would care to digest in a single day. I guess you probably have had enough of it already. However, you would agree with me how there is a good amount of folks out there who still keep coming up to you, or to me, asking us to give them the short version of what a wiki is and see if it would be something that their teams, or their communities, would be able to make effective use of. I bet I am not that far off, right? So after having had a couple of folks approaching me this week with that same question I thought I would create a weblog post over here and comment on one of the most compelling videos put together and which clearly relate what wikis are all about that I have bumped into in a long while!

Check out What is a wiki?, over at ZDNet‘s At the Whiteboard, where Joe Kraus, CEO? of Google Jotspot, gets to detail in under four minutes, what wikis are all about and why there is such a big roar about them at the moment. What is interesting about this particular video is how Joe gets to compare one of the most traditional, and perhaps restricted, methods for collaboration: e-mail, with wikis. And I must say that e-mail comes out as everything but the winner. And here is why.

Joe has put together a very compelling business scenario where it shows how much more you would be able to get from collaborating and sharing knowledge in a wiki than through traditional e-mail. Pretty impressive. Specially, because he gets to nail it down to a couple of factors such the success of wikis over e-mail as a much more powerful collaborative environment: visibility and keeping up to date with changes; tasks that you would agree with me e-mail has been very bad at all along.

However, Joe’s point of view is that wikis fix those issues and help you get all of the visibility you would want knowing that the information is always almost up to date. Yes, I am saying almost, because I realise that to have it all of the time up to date is going to prove impossible and not just with this tool but with all knowledge and collaboration tools out there. But it gets pretty close. You know what I mean.

So if you were thinking that e-mail is still one of the most powerful collaborative tools available out there nowadays I think you should also continue to look around elsewhere as well, because it is not the only one and, much more importantly, we actually have got plenty of different options available out there within the social computing realm and which are much more capable of hosting a much richer and meaningful collaborative environment. And wikis are just one of the many examples.

Yes, go and watch Joe Kraus’ video on What is a wiki? and find out in about 4 minutes why you would want to leave e-mail as just another communication tool and think that wikis may be one good answer to help improve your knowledge sharing and collaboration strategies. And if that didn’t help to convince you well enough about the business value from wikis, at least, we would always have the Wikipedia

Adding RSS Feeds per Category or Why I Really Like WordPress

Tags: WordPress, Metablogging, Blogging Engines, RSS, Feeds, Syndication, Category Syndication, Blogging Tips, WordPress Support

In the past, and in a couple of occasions, people have been asking me if I would be able to look into the request of placing RSS feeds per category in this particular weblog, so that folks would be able to filter even further the content they could grab themselves from elsua.net. The last one of those instances was actually coming from a fellow IBM colleague, Fabián Gradolph, in this particular weblog post, where he suggested I should look into it and see how easy it would be to implement, in order to help folks filter down those different weblog posts in Spanish. Well, while I am still thinking about that and how I am going to be sharing those Spanish speaking weblog posts over here I thought I would share with you why I really like WordPress.org.

Yes, indeed, I really like, and enjoy, WordPress.org. It totally rocks! And all that for multiple reasons, which I am sure I would have the opportunity to detail as we go along, but here is just another one as to why you would want to consider WordPress .org in order to host your own weblog and get the most out of it.

I was expecting that it would eventually become very difficult to actually syndicate the content per category using this particular weblogging engine, so I was ready to start digging all over the place, asking a few people about it, going through some trial and error scenarios and so forth in order to get it going, but wouldn’t you know it; a quick search through Google just brought me into this particular WordPress Support article: Separate RSS feeds for Different Categories.

In there you would be able to read how by just updating the call to wp_list_cats with this text:
wp_list_cats(‘sort_column=name&optioncount=1&feed=RSS’); you would be able to get WordPress to auto-generate an RSS feed for each of the different categories that you may have created. And voilá! Off it goes. elsua.net has now got the option to syndicate all your content per category and straight into your favourite feed reader client. Awesome!

Now? How long did that take me ? About 15 seconds? Including the upload to the FTP? Perhaps. And I am ready to go. Yes, they say that social computing is all about empowering end-users to share their knowledge, collaborate and dive into the conversations but you cannot deny that it also helps lower the technology barriers even further so that anyone can actually do it. Like I have just detailed above. That is, indeed, one of the reasons why I really like weblogging, and in particular WordPress.org. Incredibly powerful, to say the least.

I doubt it would ever get any easier than this, but I am certainly that it is actually that easy. You can now go over to the weblog’s homepage, check out the right column section where you would be able to find the categories and next to each of the category names, the number of weblog posts thus far you will now find the (RSS) option that you can just copy and paste into your default feed client of choice and start grabbing that content from there onwards. Fantastic!

So if you ever thought that weblogging was just for techies, examples like this one show us otherwise. Now, I was also going to tell you about a new category that I have created but then it would make this weblog post rather long, so I am leaving it here for an upcoming weblog post to indicate what it is all about. I am sure you would all like it. And I got a whole bunch of material already piled up for it. Thus stay tuned ! (And subscribe to it, if you wish, whenever it is ready!)

Informal Learning by Jay Cross

Tags: Learning, Informal Learning, Informl, Jay Cross, Learning 2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Communities, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software

Next to the usual topics that I get to talk about here in elsua.net, all of them related to Knowledge Management, there has been another topic that although not very much related to KM it has always been associated with it to some extent. Yes, indeed, I am talking about the subject of Learning. Many people have been indicating all along how Knowledge Management and Learning do actually walk hand in hand along the path of allowing people to share their knowledge with one another and collaborate much easier than with whatever else they may have tried in the past. I have always been part of that group that has felt very comfortable putting together Learning and Knowledge Sharing as perhaps one of the most interesting ways of allowing knowledge workers to become smarter at what they do and much more productive than using whatever other methods.

And along those lines, if all along I have been commenting on how Social Computing (i.e. Web 2.0 or Social Networking) is helping Knowledge Management come back with a splash, and big time!, then there is no denying that there is a movement out there, within Learning, that is actually helping it as well to be noticed a whole lot more as part of the usual day to day workflow. This particular emerging area has got a whole lot to do with what is called Informal Learning, of which the highest proponent of such interesting, and refreshing, new way of perceiving the way we learn things at work is Jay Cross. Indeed, Jay maintains a weblog about the topic of Informal Learning and if you would want to know some more about this particular subject browsing through the weblog would certainly help you get up to speed.

However, let me help you move faster along the learning curve for Informal Learning and point you to a recent weblog post Jay has put together where he has actually talked about the subject of Informal Learning. It is actually three different short videocasts (Two of 10 minutes and one of four) that he has shared over at YouTube and which make for an even stronger case about the crucial role this new way of learning is impacting the workplace. Perhaps at a later time, and in different follow up weblogs posts, I will get to share some further insights on something so fascinating and refreshing as Informl, but for the time being here we go with the embedded YouTube video clips:

Part 1, ten minutes

Part 2, ten minutes

Part 3: four minutes

Fantastic piece of work, Jay ! Very compelling, informative and enlightening!! Thanks for sharing !

PS. What an ending !