Screen casting for L&D

I’m starting to experiment with screen casting to pilot some demonstrations under the L&D (learning & development) banner.

Not familiar with screen casting? Here’s a helpful article by Beth Kanter, “An Introduction to Screencasting”

I’m going to be testing the following free packages:

AviScreen

CamStudio

Wink

VirtualDub

Taksi

Windows Media Encoder

oRipa

We’ll see how the effort goes. Might have to go commercial.

MediaWiki vs Twiki

MediaWiki

I installed MediaWiki recently. It was pretty easy to install and get up and running. I started using it with a small group of staff members.

No User Permissions

All was going well until I realized there were no permissions on the pages. There was no way to give ownership rights. I thought this would be important to (a) stop people accidentally delelting posts; (b) prevent too much re-authoring of pages. This might seem to go against the very ethos of the wiki movement but I had been asked several times what’s to stop people monkeying around with pages and entries. Like any professional organisation, people are territorial and protective of their work. I had assured everybody that there were mechanisms to protect pages which authors/owners could set. I had to remember, that (a) we’re taking baby steps here, and (b) codification is more important at this stage than openness. The permissions I had touted turned out not to be possible with MediaWiki out of the box:

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Other restrictions

You may want to have pages editable only by their creator, or ban viewing of history, or any of a number of other things. Neither of these features are available in an unhacked version of MediaWiki. If you need more fine-grained permissions, see the #See also section for links to other wiki packages that are designed for this, as well as hacks that attempt to contort MediaWiki into something it’s not designed to be but may work anyway.http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Manual:Preventing_access#Other_restrictions

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I decided to take a look at a couple of other packages: DekiWiki and Twiki.

Twiki

Twiki is pitched as an enterprise level wiki. It is way more than we need getting started but it does fulfilll a number of criteria: it has fine grained permissions and it looks like a traditional wiki. That was enough for me to get started.

Installation

Twiki has a number of install options: source code, installer bundle, VMWare platform. I took the middle option and downloaded most of what I needed: Twiki Release 4.2.0: zip. I downloaded and installed Perl from ActiveState. There are copious notes and instructions on Twiki so I won’t regurgitate here.

Perl error

The one thing that tripped me up for a few hours, that I want to mention, was configuring Perl. I got the following error when configuring Twiki. I kept getting: Permission denied at ../tools/rewriteshbang.pl line 71. At first I thought it was permissions on the files within, but it turned out the problem was my folders were “Read Only” (Windows XP). Simple to fix but cost me a couple of hours. Here’s a screen shot of the code – check out item #15.

That’s as far as I’ve got so far. More progress reports when I have them.

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DekiWiki

I checked out DekiWIki as well. It looked and behaved really well. However, I felt that users might get mixed up between it and our intranet. It looks more like a website than a wiki. This seems to be a trend in wikis… world’s colliding – wikis, websites, groupsites, self-authoring sites, mysites, personal homepages… All good stuff but I want something more traditionally “wiki” for this instance.

I’ve seen the future of KM…

…and it’s called SharePoint (at least from a technical perspective).

I know, I know, I know… SharePoint, SchmarePoint! Everything is about SharePoint these days! Well, here’s the reaction of a deep sceptic (namely, me). I never thought I’d be saying these words…

SharePoint

SharePoint

Scepticism
I was at a demo today at Version 1 in Dublin for SharePoint. I wasn’t really that jazzed about going because I wasn’t really interested in hearing about another software tool that claims to do KM. Even though I love the tech gadgets, a large part of me believes that KM is more than the tools. For years now snake-oil salemen have been hawking their kluged together, re-packaged software and calling it “Knowledge Management”. And for years it’s been disappointing and failing and taking down the reputation of KM. It’s not that I don’t like software, on the contrary, I really do. I just abhor the half-truths and mediocrity. I also don’t have any truck with the “IT=KM” notion. There’s a lot more to it than sticking in an install disc. As Patrick Lambe summed up perfectly in his post (which I love!):

“Oh Well, Time to Change Trade”

The Knowledge Management Toolkit

Anyway… I went along to the demo…

Sold!
Within 10 minutes I was sold! I couldn’t believe it. Everything after that was gravy. Without going through two hours-worth of detail, let me just sum up and say, from a KM perspective SharePoint offers me this:

Self-Service
For a start, it allows users “self-service”. They can update their own profile (YellowPages). They can build their own personal homepages (blogs, FaceBook, etc.) called ‘MySites”. They can build sub-sites and project pages in a snap, wiki-style. They don’t have to ask IT to help them with anything. It’s very Web 2.0.

Smart Centralization
It ties together several applications in one package. Many organizations currently have an intranet that incorporates/offers multi-functionality such as Expert Finder, Forums, Image Libraries, wikis, document managment, etc. Sometimes the intranet product doesn’t have all the tools so links are made out to the WikiMedia install or the Gallery2 application, or whatever add-on you need. In my experience, this ad hoc approach doesn’t work all that well for anybody (KM officer, IT Dept, users). I mean, it does work, but it could be better. I didn’t get a chance to really stress-test any of the functionality but if it does what it says it does it’s enormously powerful. I’d like to have kicked the tires more on the the document management function.

(random screen shot)

Wikis
(I’m singling out wikis for special mention because they’re useful, they’re all the rage, and I’m currently setting one up for a client)
An interesting thing I found was, I asked if SharePoint has a wiki function or if that’s obviated by all the self-publishing ability? The vendors were of the opinion that by virtue of the way SharePoint works (it’s self-authoring nature), it is a wiki-esque tool. There is no actual “wiki” button though a sub-site could be set up to fulfill this function if desires. They said the publishing/authoring functionality is a lot more customer-friendly than most wikis.

Extensibility
All I’m going to say here is, if you can think it up, SharePoint seems to be able to support it. From pages, to project spaces, sub-sites to plug-ins. There is a lot going on under the hood of this product. It’s totally up to you.

IT
SharePoint would (appear to) eliminate a lot of software struggles that have cost me loads of time in the past. This would allow me focus more productive energy on the KM side of the equation: culture, buy-in, education, externalisation, mapping, auditing, etc. I know IT is part and parcel of KM, in fact, that’s what drew me to the practice, I just don’t want to fight and struggle with it. It’s not time well spent and it detracts from the quality of the KM program. It’d be like a carpenter having to wrestle with his tools every step of the way on a job.

Anyway, that’s the edited version. There are several other highly interesting functions, such as: business intelligence reporting, enterprise search, workflow, content management, surveys, to name a few things. Overall, I would say that SharePoint will go a long way to doing KM whether you call it KM or not.

To say I’m pleasantly surprised would be a big understatement. There’s talk of installing the 180-day free trial version so if that happens, I’ll be making further posts.

More information
If you’re looking for more info you could do worse than contact Piaras MacDonnell at Version1. His e-mail is: Piaras.MacDonnell@version1.com . He and his colleague, Niall Moran (Microsoft “expert”) really know their stuff. Thanks for a great demo, guys!

Here’s a few useful links:
What is Microsoft Office SharePoint Server?

SharePoint – Wikipedia

SharePoint blogs

The Six Pillars of MOSS

KM and The Generation Gap

The value of this short video, for me, is it highlights the generational technology divide (even between people who work with youngsters).

KM & Technology

I like to think that KM isn’t entirely about technology, but there’s no getting away from the fact that it’s largely technology based. Will older, non-techie people will be able to handle KM or even be included in a KM program? If people don’t even know what some of these tech tools are, e.g. blogs, wikis, realistically, what will be the chances they’ll ever use them…? Practically none, I’d say.

Litmus Test

Is it the case that aptitude and appetite for KM can be discovered by looking at a person’s aptitude and appetite for technology? Would that be a quick litmus test when kicking off a new KM program? I ask this question even though I’m a firm (hopeful?) believer that KM is more than technology.

Two Camps

As a KM practitioner, would it be reasonable to divide organizations into two camps: tech and non-tech? At the very least, perhaps it would spare one the frustration of trying to convert un-convertibles or shove square pegs into round holes. Could you save yourself the trouble from the outset of trying to ‘lead a horse to water’ and just tailor your KM initiatives to the two camps. You could have your “hard” KM, e.g. document management systems, and your “soft” KM, e.g. sharing and learning.

One immediate flaw I can see is that the “tech” KM people would blast away from the “non-tech” people. The exponential power of technology would mean that a person participating in wikis and blogs, etc. would make far more headway than the people holding monthly sharing events.

Indicators

It may well be the stinging fact that the aptitude for technology is the simple “in/out” test for KM. Even though KM isn’t all about technology, perhaps it’s a lead indicator of the type of people who are sharers, codifiers, thinkers, do-ers, experimenters, self-teachers, etc. It’s a bit rough, but could it be the case that a lack of interest in technology will lead to a person being a poor “knowledge worker”? If this is the case, then perhaps it isn’t an age thing, it’s more of a personality thing?

Question

Bottom line question: from a KM practitioner’s perspective, do you try to bring everyone along or do you cut bait and focus on those who are are “tech friendly”?

CoP community of practice software

http://www.blinklist.com/debaird/CoP/

http://www.icohere.com/webcommunities_practice.htm

http://billives.typepad.com/portals_and_km/2004/07/supporting_comm.html

http://www.mindtouch.com/landing/?adid=13&gclid=CLOtgpaej48CFQ5WMAod8jBeVw

http://www.efios.com/blog/2004/10/24.html

http://www.echochamberproject.com/node/264

http://eduspaces.net/ss4teaching/weblog/3503.html

http://eduspaces.net/holla/weblog/category/Community+of+Practice

http://www.workingfaster.com/uptodate_infooutlook2004.pdf

http://www.tomoye.com/index.html

http://www.plumtree.com/

Groove: http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/groove/FX100487641033.aspx

http://www.cognitive-edge.com/2006/10/communities_of_practice.php

http://www.communityofpractice.ch/

“What This Gadget Can Do Is Up to You. Hackers, welcome!” – NYTimes

Pretty amazing!

NYTimes – Novelties
“What This Gadget Can Do Is Up to You”
By ANNE EISENBERG
Published: January 6, 2008

“HACKERS, welcome! Here are detailed circuit diagrams of our products — modify them as you wish.”

Neuros OSD

Xnobi – e-mail mining tool?

This tool looks like it could be very powerful for knowledge mapping and mining purposes:

I’m not sure the developers are marketing this tool as as a knowledge mining tool, but it’s definitley one way I’d like to employ it.

If there was a version of this tool that could plug into the corporate mail server it would be extremely powerful. That would reveal some very interesting stats and insights!!

http://www.xobni.com

A Server to Make Your Files Accessible, Through a Network or Over the Internet

This could be cool though I don’t find I’m in need of as many files from home as I used to be. A cheap memory stick took care of a lot of that, as did this blog, as did my fancy new bookmark set-up.

A Server to Make Your Files Accessible, Through a Network or Over the Internet

By IVAN BERGER

LaCie’s Ethernet Disk Mini Home Edition media server offers 500 gigabytes of data storage for $199, less than the cost of most stand-alone hard drives of the same size.

Merging and hosting multiple bookmark folders

I have no less than four sets of bookmarks: work PC, work laptop, home laptop and college PC. Complicating things even more I use two different browsers: Internet Explorer in work and Firefox at home.

I’ve spent the last 6 months e-mailing URLs and links all over the place to try and keep up. I gave up on the work laptop and college PC, but even keeping the other two straight was next to impossible. So what to do?

I needed to merge two different browser bookmark types from four computers without suffering massive duplication or loosing anything. Here’s what I figured out…

#1) Magus Branding created this Bookmark Converter which converts/synchronizes/merges all types of bookmark folders. It’s free and easy to use. In fact, I think it’s brilliant!

#2) Most major portals now offer a bookmark hosting facility. Since I have both Yahoo! and Google accounts these are the two I checked out. My main personal e-mail is on Yahoo! (legacy issue) so I ended up using theirs. Also, I preferred the structure offering both folder and tag based filing.

Apparently, Yahoo!’s new offering is a disimprovement on the service they used to offer but you can read up on this for yourself on many forums. Since I never used it before I can’t comment. Seems pretty good to me.

Both providers say you have to install and use their toolbar. While the toolbar will make usage easier, it turns out it’s not absolutely necessary. Using a three or four step process you can still add and check your hosted bookmarks. Personally, I just bit the bullet and installed the Yahoo! toolbar turning off all the other buttons and gadgets.

By the way, if it isn’t obvious at this point, you’ll need either a Yahoo! or Google account to do what I did.

Here are the links to their bookmarking pages:

Yahoo! Bookmarks

Rather than just give you Google’s link here’s a great blog on their system: Google Bookmarks FAQs.

#3) Export your and save your bookmark files all on to one computer desktop (e-mail them, memory stick, etc.). It doesn’t matter which computer you use because Bookmark Converter will merge all the files and make one single, unified file. The Help files in Bookmark Converter will set you straight on the particulars of the actual importing and merging. The bookmark file will be called <bookmarks.htm> or something very like that.

#4) When you have your merged bookmark file you will then upload it to Yahoo! or Google. This took me about 30 seconds for 2,500 bookmarks (a 2MB file) approx.

That was it. Finito!

There are a myriad of other ways to achieve bookmark synchronization. Here’s a couple of articles describing other methods if you feel so inclined. They’ve all got their merits

Hack Attack: Back up and sync your Firefox bookmarks with your personal server

10 Ways to Manage and Synchronize Bookmarks

Seriously, if anyone has a better way, I’d love to hear about it.

KM focus – same tools different goals

IT can be used for many things: communication, entertainment, information, efficiency, exploration and so on. In fact, the same program can be used for different things, e.g. forums can be used to find friends and socialise but they can also be used to for learning and troubleshooting.

My use of “social networking” tools is with a view to capturing and disseminating knowledge for competitive advantage. If I set up a newsletter, it isn’t merely to inform or entertain. If I set up an online calendar, is isn’t merely to keep people up to speed. If I set up a forum is isn’t only to allow people connect their common interets. Although all these things happen and they are positive and beneficial, my purpose as a KM professional is to capture and codify events which can be searched and referenced in the future. The methods may be the same but the goal is sharply different.