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

ITtoolbox IT Community Choice Awards – elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog Nominated as Best New Blog in 2006! W00t!

Tags: ITtoolbox, elsua, Knowledge Management, KM, Collaboration, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Awards, IT Community Choice, Explicit Knowledge, Tacit Knowledge, Voting, 2006

If you would remember, a bit over a year ago, I created a weblog post where I was actually mentioning how I had started my second Internet weblog, that time around over at ITtoolbox: elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog and dealing with the same topics that I have been sharing over here as well. From there onwards I mentioned over here as well how during the course of last year there were a number of months where that particular weblog was a super star weblog and how nowadays it is one of the popular weblogs currently available.

I must say that overall it has been an incredible experience all along as it has given me the opportunity to be part of one of the finest professional networks of knowledge workers available out there: ITtoolbox. Over time I have been able to grow over there a healthy social network of webloggers and contributors to the overall community who we have shared the same passion all along for Knowledge Management. In short, an incredible experience overall!

So imagine the shock I went through when in the last few days I have found out how elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog has now been nominated by the ITtoolbox folks as one of the candidates for the Best New Blog for 2006 award as part of the overall ITtoolbox’s IT Community Choice Awards! W00t, indeed ! There are four other candidates, whose weblogs are providing some incredibly good quality to the overall network of professionals and right from the start I know it is going to be a very tough call. It is not going to be easy, but that is actually something that I am feeling quite comfortable with.

I know that I may not win the award, the quality is just outstanding, for sure, but I think that, to me, the real price is actually in the nomination itself. Why? Well, more than anything else because when I first created the weblog over at ITtoolbox I had the sole intention of sharing my knowledge and experiences about Knowledge Management with the intention of showing people how KM is a whole lot more than just tools and processes. Yes, indeed, you know where I am going. I have been incredibly excited all along during the course of the last few days because that weblog has been given some recognition with that nomination for the award showing how KM is all about the people. Yes, once again, the people.

During all this time I have been trying to share some further insights to help demonstrate how KM is a whole lot more complex than just focusing on tools, processes, explicit knowledge, etc. etc. It is actually a combination of everything, i.e. get the best of tacit and explicit knowledge and put it all down to the service of the ones who know how to manage it: i.e. the people!

And that is exactly what I have been trying to show all along. So you can imagine what my shock has been when I found out about the nomination. WOW! More than anything else it is certainly an incredible boost for my motivation to keep things going and share with everyone what my own thoughts on KM are all about. And along the process have some incredibly refreshing and helpful conversations that would help enrich most of the already existing discussions.

So, in my case, the best thing of last year’s awards is actually not winning the Best New Blog for 2006, since I know that is going to be tough, but to actually encourage you all to take a couple of minutes and cast your votes. Let the best one win! There are some other nomination categories with an impressive line up of ITtoolbox webloggers as well who are worth while subscribing to. So you may want to have a look into those as well. And from here I just wanted to thank every single one of you who have been participating and engaging in the different weblog entries that I have shared all along over there and for sticking out with me through thick and thin throughout all this time. It is greatly appreciated and really means a lot to me. It tells me that there folks out there who enjoy what I publish and I guess it cannot get better than that, right?

Here is to another year of successful and engaging weblogging! And all of that, thanks to you! So thanks for that!

Wikipatterns – Getting the Most out of Your Own Wiki Experience by Learning from Others

(Previously, on elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog at ITtoolbox)

Tags: Wikipatterns, Atlassian, Confluence, Wikis, IBM, ShortCuts, Podcasts, Social Computing, Social Networking, Social Software, Web2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Collaboration, Remote Collaboration, Knowledge Management, KM, Communities, Patterns, Best Practices

Over the last few days I have actually been reading off my RSS feeds on a new offering put together by the folks over at Atlassian, the same guys behind the fine Confluence wiki engine, that I wish it would have been made available some time ago. Yes, that is right. I am talking about Wikipatterns that Stewart Mader has put together with his team and which he announced over at Introducing Wikipatterns.com a couple of days ago. What fantastic resource, indeed !

Reason why I mentioned above that I wish Wikipatterns would have been made available some time ago is because it would have been a really nice and handy resource that I would have been able to reuse for the several podcasting episodes I have been doing lately with my colleagues from ibm.com over at IBM Shortcuts around the subject of wikis and getting the most out of them.

Yes, that is right. I have mentioned this in the past, although over at my other Internet weblog. For the last couple of months I have been participating in the IBM ShortCuts podcast sharing a number of different tips on making the most out of social computing tools, and lately, have been talking a bit about wikis and how different teams and communities can make the most out of the whole experience.

And this is exactly why I would have loved Wikipatterns would have become available sooner so that I could leverage with some of the great stuff that has been shared over there. But what exactly is Wikipatterns you may be wondering, right? Well, it is, of course, a wiki page where a number of different patterns have been put together that detail how you can get the most out of wikis with the least effort possible. That is, with this particular offering you can read all about the dos and don’ts of participating in a wiki. What is good for the team or the community and, much more interesting, what is not that good for your team or your community when making use of a wiki.

However, what I really like about this particular Web site is the fact that for the first time there are a number of different roles identified from different wiki users. So by observing pretty close how the rest of your team is collaborating in such a shared space as a wiki you have got the opportunity to identify those "people patterns" or "people anti-patterns" and be able act upon them if you may need to. Not only from the perspective of helping find the most active and participative wiki collaborators, but also those other folks you would need to watch out and perhaps act upon them at some point in time.

Impressive, eh? You bet! I think that Wikipatterns is going to be one of those services that will prove incredibly useful for all of those businesses that are still struggling with the adoption of social computing within the enterprise as it would allow them to get the most out of the already existing collective knowledge and experiences put together by other knowledge workers who have been making use of wikis for quite some time already.

So Wikipatterns is the perfect Web site to point people to, who may be a bit skeptic about the whole thing of sharing knowledge and collaborating in an open environment where everyone is at the same level and encouraged to add content on top of each other’s content. Like I said, I wish this offering would have been made available several months ago because I would have been able to make use of it to convinced a few on why they may need a wiki, or not, instead of having to do it the hard way. Either way I am hoping that Wikipatterns continues to grow further showing, and demonstrating successfully, to people how wikis could become one of the most powerful collaborative and knowledge sharing environments to date.

And all of that, not to worry, without you having to worry about anything. Just leveraging on the already existing experiences from different knowledge workers. Way cool, eh? I now just wish I can find some time to help out and add some further content to it, because there more there is to it, the much better it would be for everyone else to learn how you can improve your own wiki experience. I already signed up (Only takes a couple of minutes!) and I am surely looking forward to find some spare time to add further up into it… How about you? Are you ready to share your best, or not so best, wiki experiences?

Let’s do it!

And Now It Will Be when We Are All Going to Explode!

Tags: Explode!, Explode, MyBlogLog, AutoRoll, Metablogging, Techcrunch, Marshal Kirkpatrick, Steve O’Hear, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Web 2.0, Tagging, Profiles

As if we didn’t have enough already with both MyBlogLog and AutoRoll, a couple of social networking offerings for webloggers that I have talked about in the past here and over here, respectively, here we go with a third one that, of course, I had to give it a try and see how it would work. This time around this particular new tool is coming from the same group of folks who have put together the fine service of Elgg and it is called Explode!. There have been already a good bunch of folks already talking about it, but here you have a couple of reviews by Techcrunch (By Marshall Kirkpatrick), Steve O’Hear or the very same folks at Explode in case you would want to do some further reading.

Pretty much like you would do with MyBlogLog and AutoRoll, Explode! works in such a way that it would allow you to build up a social network with the readers of your weblog since you can add this offering as a widget to your weblog template and see how it builds up your own network of friends. You can basically search for folks who you think are already part of the application and you can add them to your own network. Or, alternatively, you can also browse through the directory to see if you recognise some of the different names and establish a connection with them.

However, one of my favourite features from the entire service and something that is essentially different from any other service is that you can search for contacts you would want to add not just searching for them or the networks they belong to, but based on the different tags they may have used for themselves. That is right, Explode! actually allows people to tag themselves when they actually create a profile. You get to add a one liner about who you are, and then you can add a number of different tags based on whatever you would want to share and how you would want people to find you. Then you can also add the link to your weblog so that folks know where you are coming from and you are ready to go.

As I said earlier on, you can add a widget to your weblog template and it actually takes about one minute to set up. One other nice thing, which I am sure is going to address the issues that have lately put MyBlogLog under some trouble, i.e. spam, is the fact that you can actually moderate your friendships with a number of different options, so you can say that you are always in control of what is actually happening. Nice one!

Finally, there are a couple of other handy features that would be worth while exploring further. First one is that you can get some really nice and handy stats about who visits your profile so that you can build up from there and also you have got a section for comments where people can drop a comment or two and work through your social network. These features are pretty similar to what MyBlogLog does as well, actually, but it is good to see that they would also add some value to this particular offering.

So that was it, folks. Just a quick introduction on some of the nice features put together thus far. Of course, and like I have mentioned above, so far I like what I have seen, thus I have decided that I will be giving it a try and going to test it out for a couple of weeks, like I am doing with AutoRoll at the moment. At that time I will then decide if I am going to stick around with it or not, but I must say that from what I have seen so far it looks like I may like it, after all. We shall see.

Again, if you would want to see how it works here is my profile. Here are my friends (Yes, I know, pretty empty at the moment, but hoping to build it up from there) and if you are reading this weblog entry from the RSS feed head over to elsua.net and you will be able to see Explode! running as another widget in the left column of this weblog template.