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Naughts' End
So here we are, sliding into the last few weeks of the last year of the first decade of the 21st century. That went fast, eh?
Ten years ago, we were worrying about the global economic collapse that might be caused by the Millennium Bug and now we're worrying about the global economic collapse that was caused by good
old-fashioned greed and stupidity. It's been quite a decade, and from our perspective in the US, it has a real Tale of Two Cities quality: the best of times, the worst of times. A decade of many
disasters, natural and man-made, as well as the iPod, social networking, Harry Potter movies and Barack Obama. You couldn't call it dull.
And here we are with our seventh holiday edition of Directions.
The December issue is a little shorter than the other months -- that's our way to share the gift of time. Less for us to write, and less for you to read. Thanks to our friends, families, colleagues and
customers for their support in 2009, with a special shout-out to Directions readers everywhere. Thanks for staying with us, and we wish you all the best of the holiday season.
Best of 2009
We've been running "Best of" lists in the December issue of Directions since 2004, and are continuing that tradition today. These are articles that we liked ourselves, as well as those that seemed to interest our audience, based on reader feedback or the number of hits on a given title. If you haven't read them, now you have another chance. If you have, maybe it's time to read them again!
Make a List, Check it Twice - A checklist is one of the simplest Knowledge Management tools, being a way to capture a sequence of tasks in a predetermined order. Some might argue it's so simple, it's not worth serious consideration. But according to the New England Journal of Medicine, hospitals which adopted a simple, pre-surgical checklist saw a dramatic decline in death rates and post-op complications.
The More Things Change - This article covers the commuter support site known as NuRide, which is essentially an updated version of a college ride board. It combines Web technology, social networking and an underlying "green" philosophy to put a new spin on an old activity. If you're looking for new ways of doing things, remember it's often the same things that need doing.
The Sixth Sense - A team of students at MIT has put together some off-the-shelf components, including a Web cam and a battery-powered projector, to create a wearable gizmo that can recognize objects in the physical world and associate them with information from the virtual world. You might think it's a little creepy, or find it incredibly cool, but either way it's worth watching the video from the TED Talks series.
Search Wars - July of this year saw the launch of Bing, Microsoft's latest weapon in its battle with Google. But they're not the only search engines in town, and this article points you to a number of specialized tools that put their own spin on the task of finding things on the Web. The concepts are interesting from a Knowledge Management perspective, and we bet at least some of them will be new to you.
The Virtual Panhandler - As the Web evolves, it's to be expected that more and more human activities will be reinvented as some kind of virtual counterpart. They won't always be good ones, either. In August, we noted the appearance of a new kind of Internet business model, working through Skype, that's managed to virtualize the experience of panhandling.
Overthinking Things - Some interesting studies have shown that contrary to intuition, the best decisions are often based on a kind of informed gut reaction, rather than extensive analysis. It's not a matter of giving in to raw impulse, but on letting yourself form opinions and act on them, even if you can't articulate your reasoning. Having too much information can be just as bad as having too little.
If there's another article you think should have made the list, please let us know. If we have any reader requests, we'll run them next month.
If You Act Now...
We've only rarely used Directions to make a direct sales pitch, and even then it's been a very soft sell. But we're going to be trying something new, dipping our toes in the waters of email marketing. We'd like to grow the business in 2010, and we think that's our best shot at finding new customers.
So far, most of Knowledge Street's business has been referral based. We expect that to be the case in the future, too, but we're doing a few things to make it easier to make that referral. You
can do it now, just by forwarding this newsletter to someone you think might make use of our services. It will serve as a general introduction, and this link will give people a chance at our special year-end discounts! Extra, extra, read all about it!
The Red Balloon
No, not the movie. This red balloon story is about the Pentagon experiment, conducted to see how people
might use social networking tools to locate ten balloons, tethered in plain sight somewhere in the US. The first team to find them would win $40,000.
The experiment was held on a single day,
December 5, and more than 4,000 teams participated. Most supported their effort with a Web site, but otherwise stayed with off-the-shelf
infrastructure. The winner was a team from MIT and it found all ten balloons in 8 hours and 56 minutes. Its success might be credited to a spread-the-wealth model. Each balloon was allocated a value of $4,000; the first person to spot an individual balloon got $2,000, and people who referred spotters to MIT were granted smaller amounts, depending on where they fell in the information chain. This gave people an incentive to share good information, and made them feel invested in the process. A good object lesson for Knowledge Managers everywhere! You can read more on the DARPA site.
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