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Things My Father Knew
KM types have long warned of the loss of basic know-how we'll see with the retirement of the baby boom generation. The
first of this generation turned 60 in 2006, and by 2010, 25% of the US population will be at or near retirement age. Companies are facing a huge loss of institutional knowledge, and according to AARP,
60% of them are setting up programs to bring retirees back into the workforce.
If you bring this down to a more personal level, you'll probably see that a lot of basic life skills are also being
lost in time. We've forgotten how to do things our parents did as a matter of routine, and the next generation will know even less. In a post at everything2.com, one blogger writes that 20-somethings are generally at the mercy of hired help. Where Dad had practical knowledge of carpentry, plumbing and electrical repair, the kids have knowledge of video games and ramen preparation.
It's said that you only know a thing when you need to know it, and unnecessary skills always fade away. When was the last time you met a Hatter? However, it might be worthwhile to acquire some of
that old hands-on knowledge. Build a bird feeder, hang some wallpaper or buy a Sawzall. It's one
thing to know how to find a plumber on line. It's something else to unclog a toilet.
What’s in a Name?
In the early, heady days of Knowledge Management, practitioners saw the emergence of the Chief Knowledge
Officer as a sign of real change. The fact that big companies were adding CKOs at the highest levels of management seemed to legitimize the work the rest of us were doing in the trenches. At one of the
first international KM conferences, there was a very interesting presentation on the shared personality traits of successful CKOs, and another aimed at helping people decide if they were up to the job.
With the growing interest in Web 2.0, the objective is shifting. It's moving away from managing knowledge (always a somewhat ephemeral concept) in favor of promoting collaboration. So it's no
surprise to see the emergence of Chief Collaboration Officers. Just 621 hits in Google, as of this writing, but there will be more every day. One of them is a piece from the Harvard Business Review, noting that CCOs are appointed to oversee partnering
efforts and focus on building a firm's overall collaborative capabilities. It suggests that learning the fine art of collaboration is the key to success for projects like the Boeing 787 Dreamliner.
However, it may not be practical to drive collaboration with a top-down approach -- "You will share
information, or else!" Appointing a CCO may be missing the point, but it's a sign of the 2.0 times.
Google’s Knol
Last month, Google rolled out an application called Knol,
a neologism that's intended to identify "a unit of Knowledge." Knol's goals are somewhat in line with the Wikipedia, in that Google would
like to build a repository of information on many topics. It's different in that knols are signed by their authors, and those authors are expedited to provide credentials. Users can add feedback,
comments and related information, and this commentary layer will theoretically help people evaluate the quality of the content. It's not a particularly new idea -- it's a lot like Squidoo. However, while Squidoo has a reward model that pays authors a share of its collective revenue (based on the popularity of their material),
Knol lets authors join Google's Ad Sense program. If people click the ads, the authors get a cut.
The fact that it's backed by Google is the most interesting thing about it, and some fear it's
another step in the Big G's world domination strategy. Google already dominates search. If it starts moving into content in a serious way, it will essentially be competing with its own customers. That's
a tad worrisome. There's no evidence that Google's engine is rating Knol pages more highly than any other content. However, if you search "buttermilk pancakes" in Google, this knol is the third result returned (ahead of cooks, joyofbaking, recipezazar, epicurious, marthastewart and many other well-established food sites). They all come in ahead of the knol in a Yahoo search, where the Google content doesn't show up until the third page. Coincidence?
It's hard to tell what long-term effect Knol will have on the larger knowledge-sharing landscape. But it's out there, and it won't be going away.
Another Wiki Heard From
The New York Times recently reported on another in the seemingly endless chain of purpose-built wikis. The Diplopedia is a wiki that's closed to the public but open to contributions from anyone who works for the US State Department. It includes biographies of political and business leaders, among other things, and is having some success in weaning diplomats away from paper reports and email briefing documents. Over 4,000 articles have been added since the Diplopedia was launched in September 2006, and there are more than 1,000 registered users. That's pretty good, but we're also talking about an agency that has over 1,000 public and private web sites and sends 1.5 billion email messages a year. You need to see it in context.
Since the Diplopedia doesn't allow anonymous posting, vandalism hasn't been an issue. Users like the fact that it's easy to create information, but the big advantage is the ease of finding it.
People like posting whatever they have in one place, instead of sharing it within the silos of their own departments. And that's probably a good sign.
If a wiki can succeed in a traditionally
reserved entity like the US State Department, where words and phrases are always chosen with great care, it should be worth a try almost anywhere.
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