Certified Knowledge Management (CKM)

I just completed the certified knowledge management (CKM) program offered through Zavata (STI Knowledge). Going into the class, I wasn't sure what to expect, but after completing the course it was clear that this wasn't the KM certification for me. For someone developing a help desk knowledge base, this class and certification is great and did a good job of accomplishing it's objective. The class was well done, but did not match my definition of knowledge management or where I think KM is heading.

The focus of this program is around articles in a help desk support system (very structured content). To me this is only one part of a much larger KM puzzle. There was only limited mention of culture or collaboration. There was no mention of communities, blogs, wikis, etc.

There was also a significant number of terms that I had never heard of and assume they are only used in help desk KM. An example was the three types of knowledge (with my definitions provided):

• Shadow knowledge (information you need, but don't know where to find it)
• Passive knowledge (information people have, but don't know they need to share it)
• Compass knowledge (information that you need, and know where to find it)

Not to say there weren't a number of ideas I can use. The idea of applying help desk philosophy in our organization does have merit. I had put a number of ideas on the back burner that I may need to dredge up. The basic principles in building a knowledge base hold, however, the content in our knowledge base is much less structured.

One of my friends is enrolling in KM Pro's certification and I'll be interested in his feedback.

Blog recognition

I was asked the question, "what has been the benefit of your blog?" In the last few weeks, a number of things have surfaced. I've been asked to write chapters in two books, my organization is being used as case study by a local graduate student, and been asked to help an organization look at KM. I've also been corresponding with a number of other KM bloggers and have received some needed feedback.

Of course all these opportunities (along with my regular job) means I have less time to blog, so my posts have been sporadic. It's a good position to be in!

CMS - wellness check

I received an e-mail about a "health fair for employees" next week. It's appropriate since we have a Stellent consultant onsite today doing a CMS health check. Our systems has been live for about 6 months and have a number of minor bugs that we want to get to a resolution quickly. If we find bugs next week, than we'll really want quick resolution!

The great thing about have theconsultant onsite, is that he's able to work directly with support staff (who are his friends), checks everything out, and identify where the problem is. Items that are support issues have been tagged and it's really clear that it's their issue not ours. Having someone "on the ground" here adds credibility and urgency to our issues. We also have the additional support of Stellent project manager, since these issues now became his issues also.

While we have a resource on site, we're also starting our high level planning for Site Studio implementation and some minor customizations. It looks like Site Studio is going to be a little larger challenge since they don't support .net, which our web site is built on. The words major redesign and a lot of effort send shivers down my spine.

Hope the patient will survive (both this week and next week).

Reuse and content management

There were a number of interesting papers at the Content Management Strategies Conference 2006 on reusing content. In particular presentations by Jan Johnson-Tyler and Liz Augustine. The following are the some interesting comments from my notes:

Reuse

- Types of reuse 1) modularization (chunking, components), 2) Cloning (similar but not identical, derivatives) 3) Profiling

- Write once, use repeatedly.

- You need to manage components, especially items that may be used in multiple documents (examples include copyright statements, titles, slide background, logos). If you change them in one document you need to change them in all.

- Use need a consistent organizational reuse strategy. Content should be organized by subject, not deliverables. Reorganize content around reuse goals. Books should be prepared using consistent logic, not a book-by-book basis (in otherwords, build the book in reusable chunks).

- Multiple formats are a challenge. Need to convert before reusing. This is a real challenge in legacy document.

Templates

- Templates should look exactly like the product you're producing, so authors can see the playing field that they're working with.

- Define format, font size, use of colors and size of papers.

- Use colors consistently so they can serve as visual cues, not just to look pretty.

Reuse and content management

There were a number of interesting papers at the Content Management Strategies Conference 2006 on reusing content. In particular presentations by Jan Johnson-Tyler and Liz Augustine. The following are the some interesting comments from my notes:

Reuse

- Types of reuse 1) modularization (chunking, components), 2) Cloning (similar but not identical, derivatives) 3) Profiling

- Write once, use repeatedly.

- You need to manage components, especially items that may be used in multiple documents (examples include copyright statements, titles, slide background, logos). If you change them in one document you need to change them in all.

- Use need a consistent organizational reuse strategy. Content should be organized by subject, not deliverables. Reorganize content around reuse goals. Books should be prepared using consistent logic, not a book-by-book basis (in otherwords, build the book in reusable chunks).

- Multiple formats are a challenge. Need to convert before reusing. This is a real challenge in legacy document.

Templates

- Templates should look exactly like the product you're producing, so authors can see the playing field that they're working with.

- Define format, font size, use of colors and size of papers.

- Use colors consistently so they can serve as visual cues, not just to look pretty.

Metadata - Words or relationships

After a fun filled flight that consisted of a number of delays I arrived in San Francisco to hear the last presentation of the day by Erik Hartman. He was speaking on classifying web content. Below are some points that I took home:

1. Metadata can be grouped as optional, required or automated. The optional files are the challenging ones to get filled out.

2. He described the KM challenge as: “You cannot manage knowledge, you can manage people that have knowledge.” He also presented an equation for KM that basically is:

Knowledge = Information x (characteristics, skills, and attitudes of people)

3. He spent a lot of time talking about the differences between taxonomy and ontology. What I heard as the difference is that taxonomy relies more on hierarchies and ontologies focus on relationships. He made comments like (I hope I captured these correctly):
- Relationships still need a language
- People want the relationships, more than the hierarchies.
- “People don’t want a drill, they want a hole in the wall.”
- We’re not after the semantic web, we want the pragmatic web.
- Ask two experts and you get a different taxonomy. So how do we expect any taxonomy to fit all users?
In pondering these last comments I started thinking about our current path. We’re focusing on the words now, but in the future the relationships between the words is where we will find the value