Croeso

Social Network Analysis

Euan on The Obvious has an interesting post on SNA and it's downside

Well well

Has it really been 2 months plus since I last blogged? Hmm now lets see Portugal 2004, Holiday, Work on the house, Olympics, family, these activities have been taking my spare time and as I blog from home no spare time was left.

But Now we are back on track and after a gentle reminder yesterday from Lilia and Carla
I'm back to it. Finding time for this is hard with so many other things on my plate never mind work, but that is also instructive for our KM research into blogs.

I have been reading blogs in that time thought so I went into input only mode I guess.
I'll start tomorrow my promise to start debating with myself the KM work we have been busy with for the last 10 years and those volunteers will receive a pre and post questionnaire to see if we transfer anything, hmm I'm intrigued to see what will happen

The collective side of blogging

As pointed out by Jon Husband's comment here in Croeso, blogging is a dialogue process and the blogger learns from others as much as the listeners to the bloggers.

The ideas we are mulling around with is the fact to specially use a blog to learn from key experts (e.g prior to retirement etc), so to that end we need to be able to have some indicators as to whether the blog is useful or not, granted a questionnaire needs to be carefully drafted and maybe a test group set up who have not read the blog but know me, to show their insight on my KM views vs. the insiders of the blog.

But all this is surmountable and I'm not worried this stage about the concrete ness of the results, just indicative.

I guess if we take this idea forward to the next stage (real guinea pigs) we can ask the bloggers opinion of their blogging experience.

One interesting angle on this is we use this technique for real we'd have to do it in our intranet, die to the confidentiality of the subject mater. Question to ourselves is will this stop the blogs from flying (i.e little rss feeds interaction etc, or will it make them fly as we can limit the audience and keep the bloggers knowledge safe to a few?
I think the later will dominate proceedings but we'll see

Excited about Techology

With the break down of my current mobile phone I'm considering moving up to a new PDA/Phone combination, and explore remote blogging and remote CoP membership.

Gee these up and coming new devices are packed with useful features, usually I don't get too excited about IT technology with relationship to KM, but every now and then one catches my eye and there's no stopping me. I'm keen to give it a go as it's always been nigh on impossible to get people who are rarely infront of their PC to engage in Knowledge Sharing activities - let's see if this is an opening for these people, at least they cannot say 'I hardly ever get to log in'.

I always get excited about new wood working tools (antique ones as well actually) see my Croeso photo album, but when it comes to electonic gadgets I have too many of them gathering dust in a cupboard at home, all of which were flavours of the month, but all failed to capture my continued attention. Will the XPA II join them or survive. I guess it will survive (should it be purchase of course) as you always need your phone in your pocket right, and the thought of being able to instantly get on the web mid converstion in the climbing hall to check out a possible climbing holiday venue is very appealing, if bit flashy! Join a CoP whilst on the train to Enschede, and blog to my hearts content from anywhere (well at least as long as the batteries hold out)

Hmm.......

A blog with a purpose - a man with a mission

In support of our weblog research we are debating the following proposal:

One thing for me to find out is 'do we think Weblogs are useful' - therfore it would be interesting to actually test it.

So what I suggest we do is the following:

Research question - can we transfer tacit knowledge in a style of a digital apprentiship via a weblog
i.e this one

Method

I, as a secondary purpose to my blog, (the first being to blog for it's own ends) will try and explain my views and experinces of KM. I will not assume you all agree with them or assume this is how everyone should implement it, but I'll just describe them to you via the blog. ( I will mark these entries with a special category - Tacit transfer of KM experience)

Then once a quarter we get an outsider to write a questionaire that I and the other blog followers fill in about KM. in general.
I fill it in as me, but you also fill it in as you expect me to answer ,and as you would answer (That gives us an interesting look on the data as you know what I will say even though you disagree with me)

Thus testing how close you can mimic my experiences

We could use multiple choice answers and narrative replies and give a qualitative mark for accuracy of the narrative replies.

Thus we are testing if a blog can be used to transfer knowledge and experience

Good idea or a dead duck?

If anyone else out there is willing to join us (as well as the KM research consortium) post a comment here