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Managing Your Most Important Asset: Knowledge

My alma matter, Dartmouth (albeit Tuck ... my MBA is from elsewhere) has an excellent podcast, Information as a Strategic Asset. Just this weekend I presented at Minnebar 2008; my topic was social search within the enterprise. What are you doing to leverage that knowledge?  Can you imagine querying external Google, but securely receiving both internal and external results? I can!

Remember, information and knowledge comes from people. Some additional research on the Dartmouth web site brought me to this white paper, Web 2.0 and the Corporation (pdf). The information and comments are from an executive roundtable co-hosted by IBM and Tuck last year (CIOs and other senior execs from 3M, BT Group, JPMorgan Chase, Cisco, DISA, Eastman Chemical, IBM, ING, Ogilvy, and Time Warner Cable). Some companies get it ... some don't.  Which camp are you in?

Finally, here is a photo of me presenting at Minnebar 2008. I was doing a lighting demo on the Engineering Learning Wiki. My thanks to Luke Frankl and his camera! He also caught this nerd in the front row of seats at the very end of Minnebar 2008... using his Nokia N800 tablet! You may wish to read my other Minnebar 2008 post.

Minnebar 2008: Geeks 1 Minnesota Fishing Opener 0

Today is a national holiday in Minnesota, Fishing Opener. When one survives another bitter Winter here in the Land of 10,000 Lakes (actually 15,000+, but we're modest), the need for some outdoor fun is HUGE. Yet, this geek / fisherman is attending, along with 400 other nerds on a Saturday, Minnebar 2008.

If you've never attended an "unconference" (Wikipedia link), you need to get with it! Earlier today I personally presented on Social Search in the Corporate Environment. Later I attended a session on using mashups in the enterprise ... and this afternoon I am looking forward to the "lightning rod demos".  Anyone may demo, but with an extreme time limit (3 minutes??). If you want to learn about tens of new ideas quickly, this is a great deal.

Finally I just attended the State of the State: Technology in Minnesota. We may not be Silicon Valley (who cares?), but we have our own start-up success stories. This panel responded to questions about what is takes to create a vibrant development community here in Minnesota.

While most of you will not care about the answer to this question (Minnesota development community), the key takeaway from a barcamp is the phenomenal interaction among attendees. Attend a barcamp in your local area.

In fact ... information can just flow in to a person. While creating this post Adam Des Autels stopped by to chat. He had attended my session this morning, and knew of my love of intelligent RSS. His recommendation was to check out a new RSS aggregator that uses fuzzy logic to improve you results ... sounds very neat.  I've taken an initial look at PARTicls, and it deserves a thorough review. Time to attend another session!

1 if by Land, 2 if by Sea, 3 if by MinneBar

Okay ... I've been pushing the unconference. You don't even have to come to Minnesota. However ... if you were in the Twin Cities this weekend, you could attend with me. My thanks to Brian Kopp for saying my presentation sounded worth attending.

If you have no idea what an "unconference" is, link to this earlier post ... learn ... and attend one in your region. They are held all over the world.

Banned in Boston ... or on your local network!

The Connectbeam Blog has an interesting post today, it's title: Should Facebook Be Banned from Work? Gardner’s Nikos Drakos versus Ray Valdes. Given the fine reputation of the Gardner Group, I recommend you link over to Connectbeam and read up on this issue. The problem of access to web 2.0 / social networks is one facing many corporations. While there is obviously content on YouTube and Facebook which is detrimental to polite society and not work focused (or worse), many companies now use YouTube for marketing. I actually found a great professor, Jake Blanchard, via one of his YouTube video / tutorials. He now teaches MatLab courses for my company.

 

Engineering Learning Wiki - Manuals Update

I just completed a major upgrade of the Engineering Learning Wiki Manuals Section. You will find virtual manuals ranging from Control Systems to JAVA Programming. Thus, be you hardware or software oriented, please take a look.  A major share of the upgrade was integration of content from Wikibooks.

I hope you also appreciate the fact that none of my sites have advertisements (this blog, the Engineering Learning Wiki, my Google Co-Op Search Engines, and my Feedburner RSS Feed). For both the wiki and search engines, the default is to display ads. With Google Co-Op I had to work my way through an involved process to turn the advertisements, and with Wikispaces I actually had to spend my own money to make the site ad free. Thus, if you like what you find, give me feedback, or better yet ... content suggestions for this blog or wiki! You may contact me at richardhoeg{at}gmail{dot}com.

Finally, in its short virtual lifespan, it has been gratifying to see the Engineering Learning Wiki grow to over 100 unique users per day ... and the trend is upwards. Please help continue this growth by adding a post on your blog about my engineering learning efforts. Thank you.

Data Mining for Knowledge - Educypedia

Another title for this post could be ... why I blog, or why I wiki. Yesterday I was reviewing some data for a keynote presentation I am giving next week at Motorola's internal learning summit. My topics is using Web 2.0 tools for learning and knowledge collaboration. Thus, I took a trip to my blog's and wiki's Google stats to review the information in terms of presenting a concept on data mining. One huge advantage of being the "owner" of an active blog or wiki site is that my site visitors (i.e. you) leave a data trail. This data helps me understand how folks are conducting research, and if I am intrigued, I can re-run their queries and/or links. As my mind is wired in its own peculiar manner, this process allows me to learn from my visitors ... even those who never comment or contact me.

Yesterday I was intrigued with the query "domain engineering". I'll admit I often think about "knowledge domains", but I had never thought to run the query "domain engineering". Thus, Google I did ... and one of the first results was a page from Carnegie Mellon's software institute. After reviewing the concept of domain engineering on Carnegie's web site, I decided to click upon the first user name /profile link listed in my company's social search results (runs in tandem with Google). The end result was a tag and link to Educypedia.

I was very pleased with my journey. Educypedia is an excellent online encyclopedia which tends to focus on providing valuable links to other content on the web. The folks who have created this site have spent significant time on making their site easy to use.  The lists are categorized and organized very effectively.  Technologists will find a lot of good information via their site, particularly if you are starting out on a new knowledge discovery project. I am definitely adding Educypedia to the Manuals Section of the Engineering Learning Wiki.

Welcome to the UnEvent! Barcamp

One month from today is the UnEvent! BarCamp Minnesota will be held on May 10th. Why should you care? Have you been UNsuccessful in increasing your knowledge? Do you get outside your current box? Is your thinking UNrestricted? (hmmm ... I wonder how many more times I can use UN in a sentence).

Two years ago I attended Wikimania at Harvard. While strictly not an UNconference, it showed me I needed to get outside my comfort zone and work at learning. Most conferences tend to be an excuse for a thinly veiled vacation. BarCamps are held all over the world. The concept is quite simple; the attendees set the agenda ... and flexibility is key. I will report on BarCamp Minnesota via this blog.

If your job involves understanding the ways of the web, and technology trends, you owe it to yourself to learn more. Attend a BarCamp in your own local area (held globally). I've even signed up to give a presentation (not a big deal). These events are normally held on Saturdays, often with a Friday night mixer. If you want to attend minnebar ... the super secret wiki login password is ... c4mp

It's a Virtual World!

Last month, a pioneer of "true" science fiction died, Sir Arthur C. Clarke.  This gentleman had an incredible imagination, and ability to envision where science might be taking us ... read his short story, The Sentinel (concept idea for 2001, A Space Odyssey). Thus, Clarke would be pleased to know that just two days ago on April 1st (no April fools joke), the US House of Representatives held this hearing (Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet):

• Online Virtual Worlds:  Applications and Avatars in a User-Generated Medium
• April 1 at 9:30 a.m. in room 2123 Rayburn House Office Building
  • Webcast of Hearing ... 42 minutes in duration
  • Witness List

As a fyi, the panel included Philip Rosedale, President of Linden Labs (owner of Second Life), and Dr William Parris, a vice-president of IBM. (my thanks to some co-workers who keyed me in about the webcast and The Sentinel).

Engineering Congratulations from #4 to #1

John Hunter just posted that his Curious Cat Science and Engineering Blog is now the # 1 Google result when one queries <engineering> + <blog>.

Congrats from # 4 on the wiki side of the equation (i.e. me). My Engineering Learning Wiki is the # 4 Google result if one queries <engineering> + <wiki>. Wikipedia is my chief rival (results # 1 and # 2)

Hey, John ... Wikipedia doesn't have an engineering blog ... unfair competition!
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Engineering Forum.Org

Given I've administered some of my company's internal engineering forums which utilize VBulletin, I'm not certain how I ever missed the fact that VBulletin has an external forum, Engineering Forum.Org. Mea Culpa! This is a great resource ... here's why: (Wikipedia entry on VBulletin)

• Active Threads in Many Disciplines
• Easy User Interface
• No Cost
  (and)
• No Advertising!

Here is the Engineering Forum.Org's mission statement:

To bring engineers together from multiple disciplines , groups and organizations so that they can network among themselves, interact with other disciplines and groups, find valuable engineering resources (including each other), and as a result, add more value to their employers, clients or projects.

Although not a manual, this resource merits being added to the Manuals Page of the Engineering Learning Wiki.
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