New blog…

Hi folks,

I’ve decided to retire this blog and set up an new one at trovekm.com.

Hosting my own blog.

I finally decided to try hosting my own blog.

Seminar

I attended a seminar during the week at the Irish Computer Society on blogging (actually, the title was “Web 2.0 – The Emerging Opportunities in Mass Collaboration”). The second of two presentations was given by Damian Mulley. I found Damian’s talk very useful from a strategic blogging perspective, i.e. if you’ve got a blog, how to get more out of it.

Damian recommended hosting your own blog instead of free siting. I’d been thinking of doing this for a while but mostly out of laziness I didn’t. Plus, I thought using WordPress would give me more powerful (aggregated?) exposure. I’m not sure if that turned out to be true.

GoDaddy

Since I host with GoDaddy (whom I find pretty good, despite all the bad press out there) I used their automated installation option and set up WordPress on my own site: www.kmassets.com. It was pretty hassel free insofar as they set up the database and everything in one or two clicks. I also set up a subdomain instead of using folders. I’ve always liked sites that organise in this manner.

Subdomain

One thing that tripped me up for a few hours was I think you need to set up the subdomain before you install WordPress. My first attempt didn’t take but then I did it the other way round (set up subdomain, then installed blog). That could have just been me monkeying around though.

Widgets/add-ons

I discovered you have to select and upload any widgets/add-ons you want as the install comes bare bones. Not a big deal for me. I also discovered that there are many more templates for own-hosting than free-siting. Of course, I stuck with the same “simpla theme”. I’ll get experimental over the weekend…

Driving traffic

The main reason I switched over was, per one of Damien’s recommendations, it helps drive traffic to one’s website. The example he gave was IceCreamIreland which is a relatively small scale blog/webiste operation run by Kieran Murphy in Cork. Kieran has a huge Google presence even though he does it all himself. It’s due to his regular blog postings, another key point, according to Damien.

Exploration

Anyway, for me, most of this was a technical exploration. Since I don’t have anything on my website yet the benefits will be minimal. I’ll be curious over time to see if it increases my Google rankings. Sure, it’s all good fun!

Opps! Nearly forgot… here’s the link where I’ll be posting from now on… blog.kmassets.com.

KM consulting – project beginning

This is how I feel the weighting of work and emphasis goes in the early stages of a KM program:

I think that as time goes on the weighting will shift away from the “PR” activities towards the pure “KM” activities.

I think this might be helpful for people to see, in graphical terms, where the weight of their efforts might go at the start of a typical KM project.

(I put PR in “” to denote selling/marketing activities and KM in “” to denote what people might consider strictly KM activities. In reality, everything on this chart is part of a KM initiative.)

“Five Hot Business Careers, No MBA Needed” – Yahoo! Careers

Feels analogous to KM, which is an emergent profession too:

5. Search Engine Optimization

You’ve no doubt heard the terms “search engine optimization,” or SEO. Professionals in this field help increase traffic to Web sites. There are currently more jobs than skilled marketers available to fill them. Salary starts at $40,000, but a proven marketer can earn in the six figures.

When it comes to search engine optimization — a very new field — degrees are secondary to proven experience,” says Amanda Vega, owner of Amanda Vega Consulting, which provides Web site development, marketing, advertising, and public relations services. Vega holds an MBA from Columbia University but says education was a personal goal, not merely a means of making more money. “You gain advancement both in title and salary through hard work and experience.”

http://hotjobs.yahoo.com/career-articles-five_hot_business_careers_no_mba_needed-276

3rd European KM Thought Leaders Forum, London on 19- 20 September, 2007

The 3rd European KM Thought Leaders Forum was held in London on 19- 20 September, 2007

The main things I took away from the event were:

1. We are on the right track
   I was waiting (hoping?) for a “eureka moment” where everything would make sense and be explained to me. This didn’t happen. Rather, everything I heard was known to me and we are either doing it, decided against it or plan to do it in the future.
2. I am not “alone”
   It was good to see and meet other people in this new field.
3. The KM programs have been going a long time (5-10 years)
   This has implications for how much I can reasonably expect achieve in the next year.

The case studies ranged from knowledge management, to information management, to the artistic, to the spiritual. None of them were an exact copy of my organisation’s experience. For my money, Cheryl Cooper’s talk (former KM Director) for the British Council  had the most relevance and was the most experienced and best speaker there.

Like me, everyone seemed to have more questions than answers. I found the quality and relevance of some of the talks lacking. Some were a bit “new age-y” and while it worked for me and got the point across, it probably would not be appropriate for the more corporate-y organisation I work for (though, then again, you never know…)

I would have liked to have seen more instructional emphasis and less narrative. I would have like to have heard from speakers in allied disciplines such as organizational design, communications, change management, business administrators (MBA’s). These are some of the skillsets needed to implement a KM program. The technology side of the equation is well documented and was well represented. More workshop, less talking-shop.

Bottom line:

This event allowed me benchmark where I am and where my organisation is in its KM program.

Not sure I’d attend again though.

HSBC paradox print ads

The advertising campaign for HSBC where they show two contrasting pictures with titles, then switch them is brilliant.

For instance, they show a picture of a man in abusiness suit with the title “Leader”. Beside they show a picture of a man in jeans with the title “Follower”. The inference being hard worker vs. slacker. Then in the next pair they switch the title so now jeans-man is “Leader” and suit-man is “Follower”. So simple, so brilliant!

HSBC “Leader / Follower”

There are a whole slew of them in the tunnels of Heathrow airport. Maybe it’s just me, but if they were in a gallery I’d sit and contemplate them for hours. I love the way it shows the paradoxes (apparent contradictions) of life.

I’ve no idea what HSBC is like as a bank, but JWT did a nice job on the campaign.

Here are two more:

Art / Science

Order / Chaos

T. E. D. – the be all and end all!!!

This is the bomb!! This is the goal! This is what I aspire for!

Technology Entertainment Design conference:

http://www.ted.com

On the one hand I feel like they’re so massive why bother, but on the other hand, it shows there are legions of people out there on this same wavelength. It is both daunting and inspiring.

Maybe my nascent blog is dead…

Nah!! It’s just received a massive beacon of light!!

The Tail, The Dog… and Who’s Wagging Whom?

When it comes to trends in consumer technology products, who is in control?

The interconnectedness of computers, creativity, and commerce is the foundation for everything that we do in our daily lives. We don’t think about it very often, but every trip to the store, every txt message; every newspaper article/web page/tv show we consume has these three elements in them. It is our work. It is our play. It is our lives.

Corporation – Inventor – Consumer
Who’s in charge of all this? Who gets to say which phone I get; which messenger system? which cash register? which sit com? Do producers give us what they want to roll out? Do consumers dictate what gets made and what doesn’t? The answer to that question has profound implication for the way we live but also who reaps the financial rewards.

Marketplace Darwinism
The marketplace is an example of Darwinism at its best: “survival of the fittest”. But who’s definition of “fittest”. We all know the tales of “superior” products loosing out to “inferior” ones. For example, the Betamax vs. VHS product war of the early 80’s. VHS won out not because it was better in terms of video production but because it was cheaper leaving Betamax to became an industry-only, broadcast standard product. Cheaper decks, cheaper tapes – game over!

Fittest vs. Best Fit
In the rapidly changing world of consumer technology it is impossible to predict which product or service will make it. Some of the factors are:

Critical mass – being first to market with a workable solution, e.g. Amazon

Technology – what works best, e.g. Google vs. every other search engine prior to

Users – where the crowds goes, e.g. MySpace vs. Friendster

Cost – free vs. pay, e.g. Linux vs. Windows

Marketing, e.g. AOL carpet-bombing the country with free start-up discs

Novelty – e.g. YouTube where people are intrigued to watch video

Combination of all of the above – Skype

There are many and varied reasons why some products make it and some don’t. It might be safe to say, there is no such thing as the “fittest” product. “Fittest” may just be what ever you can get away with (producer) or you can get by with (consumer).

Predicting the Future – What Do You Have For Breakfast?
How many times have we all heard about a new product being the next “big thing”? The one that we’ll all have in our cars, our houses, sewn into the lining of our clothing? Then each December we read one of those “most ridiculous products of the year” articles and there we see the $2,000 video-shades that we flirted heavily with buying what seemed like a lifetime ago. The embarrassment!

So what’s the deal? Is there any way to forecast which products will last and which products will embarrass? Some of the world’s least-needed products can grab the public’s attention in ways that catch everybody out: analysts, retailers, manufacturers, etc. Other products are more predictable or at least their trajectory can be followed. It’s like my favorite breakfast, Cream of Wheat: there’s the instant or 30-second version, the 2-minute version, or the 5-minute version. These could be symbolized by products known to most of us: YouTube, Amazon, and Microsoft. Of course, there’s also steel-cut oatmeal. Let’s represent this with TV/movie studios. It tastes good/will make you money, but it’s going to take a while. A lot of the time the results are lumpy and unpredictable however.

Members vs. Marketplace
Over the coming months I will try to conduct semi-scientific/vox-pop, street/straw/informal polls.

I believe that after a while we should be able to tell if there are leading indicators that predict what consumer technology will take off.

If you’re on the web; if your participating in forums; if you’ve an interest in this stuff; then it is very likely you’re an “early adopter” and thereby a key, market-place decision maker.

In parallel I will try to devise a method of tracking global stock market indexes, sales and usage results. At regular intervals I will compare our forecasts with the market results: members vs. markets. We will find out then if we know what we’re talking about when it comes to who controls the trends and by extension, who runs our lives?