Welcome to TiddlyWiki created by Jeremy Ruston, Copyright © 2007 UnaMesa Association
*''Wikis'' provide a new way of ''collaboration'' and ''knowledge sharing''.
*''Wikis'' are software that allows users to work collectively on a web-based knowledge base.
*''Wikis'' are characterised by a sense of anarchism, collaboration, connectivity, organic development and self-healing, and they rely on trust.
We list several concerns about applying wikis in professional organisation.
After these concerns are met, wikis can provide a progessive, new knowledge sharing and collaboration tool.
Although we often suffer from a surfeit of data, we still face situations where the problem is insufficient or poorly-specified knowledge.
Knowledge Acquisition sets the challenge of getting hold of the information that is around, and turning it into knowledge by making it usable.
Key issues include how to make [[tacit|tacit knowledge]] knowledge [[explicit|explicit knowledge]]; how to identify gaps in knowledge already held; how to acquire and integrate knowledge from multiple sources (e.g. different people, or distributed sources on the WWW); how to acquire knowledge from different media (e.g. diagrammatic knowledge, or knowledge from unstructured text).
“Go the distance alone” - competitiveness is one of the biggest challenges to a Knowledge sharing culture. Unless you’ve been raised by Marxists, chances are competing with your classmates and colleagues has become a full time job for you. Schools and colleges stress individuality and competition, not collaboration and sharing, and so does the corporate world.
Knowledge Management is based on the foundation of selflessly sharing information. Now as naive as that sounds, it does work. There are certain challenges that need to be overcome however, that goes without saying. The biggest of these, as you probably guessed, is getting employees to part with their knowledge and share it with their peers.
The question i’m always asked when i propose this is ” Why should i share what makes me unique and valuable to the organization?”. A very serious concern that needs to be addressed. Unless the senior management changes their outlook on what makes an employee valuable, the culture of knowledge hoarding will continue to thrive.
So what makes an employee valuable, really valuable, to an organization? Well, if he manages to teach his colleagues to replicate this methods for success. Unlike most other initiatives Knowledge Management isn’t something that can be driven using a carrot and stick approach. Threatening or forcing KM down your employees throats would be the most counter productive move you could ever make. This will virtually guarantee that any future KM endeavors are regarded with scorn and dread.
While rewards are a direct means of getting a KM initiative off the ground, recognition and benefit are the actual factors that sustain KM in the long run.
What can you as managers and leaders do to facilitate a knowledge sharing culture in your organizations? Simple though it sounds, the best way is to recognize knowledge sharing and reward it.
From the [[characteristics|Characteristics]], we can tell that wikis have several advantages over other collaboration tools.
*Wikis allow users to work on the same document, or the same part of the document, at the same time. And users can at any time consult the latest version of the document, without the editors having to send out copies of the new version.
*Another important advantages is that it takes away the role of editor, or rather: it makes everyone an editor.
*It is quicker and easier to do then any other publish method, and hence it expands quicker and is more up to date.
*And its [[self-healing]] capabilities function well enough to remove or correct the ‘junk’ that gets uploaded.
*Each user can, within certain limitations, select his/her own role. This means that users get ''more satisfaction'' out of their work and can be more ''motivated''.
*Also, giving users certain freedom stimulates the creative process, which can result in unexpected new findings.
Hypothetically, this creative process can even transcend organisational boundaries, so that people from different departments can work on documents or concepts that turn out to be relevant to both departments.
Some [[successful examples|Successful examples]].
All successful examples of wiki implementations mentioned in [[Successful examples]] are freely available on the Internet, and its user community consists completely of volunteers. Wikis are now gaining attention in professional organisation, and companies like [[Socialtext|http://www.socialtext.com/]] and [[JotSpot|http://www.JotSpot.com/]] now provide wiki services to companies.
The application of wikis in business might provide a new way of knowledge sharing and might connect people with similar interest that are organisationally dispersed. However, before implementing the software straight away in a business environment, we see a few points of attention.
We will discuss them in four groups:
#[[motivational considerations]];
#[[authoritan considerations]];
#[[strategic considerations]];
#[[effectivity considerations]].
[[Overview of wikis in an professional environment]]
There is a broad range of thought on Knowledge Management with no unanimous definition. The approaches vary by author and school. Knowledge Management may be viewed from each of the following perspectives:
*''Techno-centric'': A focus on technology, ideally those that enhance knowledge sharing/growth.
*''Organisational'': How does the organisation need to be designed to facilitate knowledge processes? Which organizations work best with what processes?
*''Ecological'': Seeing the interaction of people, identity, knowledge and environmental factors as a complex adaptive system.
![[Dimensions of knowledge]]
*Setting up a Knowledge Base based on the concept of "Wikipedia" to be able to support the "Business Analyst Pool"-idea, optimize quality of business analysis and improve ~Time-to-Market.
*Motivate the Business Analyst to store his or her knowledge so that it is available for the whole Business Analyst community.
*The goal is to share knowledge and to establish a consistent, efficient and proactive way of working as well as supporting the continuity of the process- and business knowledge.
The Objective for the BDO is to have a full operational Knowledge Base:
*Manageable
*Controleable
*Supportive
*Fun to work with
The Objective for the Business Analyst is to have a full operational Knowledge Base:
*Accessable
*Transparant
*Functional
*Dynamic
*Fun to work with
We can distinguish six prominent characteristics of wikis.
Wikis are by nature
#<<slider anarchistic anarchistic anarchistic>>
#<<slider collaborative collaborative collaborative>>
#<<slider connected connected connected>>
#<<slider organic organic organic>>
#<<slider self-healing self-healing self-healing>>
#<<slider basedontrust [[based on trust]] [[based on trust]]>>
The [[Advantages]] of [[Wikis]].
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In this ''Wiki'', we took a look at a new, original, and increasinly popular piece of collaboration software: wikis. They have a six prominent characteristics, namely [[anarchistic]], [[collaborative]], [[connected]], [[organic]], [[self-healing]], and [[based on trust]]. Wikis provide new ways of working and can turn out to be beneficial to professional organisations. Several commercial services that have a wiki flavour already exist.
However, for wikis to become succesful in professional organisations and to provide an added value in the organisation’s knowledge management, several modifications concerning the software and its surrounding policy have to be considered. We have elaborated upon [[motivational|motivational considerations]], [[authoritan|authoritan considerations]], [[strategic|strategic considerations]], and [[effectivity|effectivity considerations]] concerns. For a wiki to be succesfull in professional organisations, these concerns have to be met by changes in the software or by attention and action of the management.
In current situation, knowledge is often only in the heads op people instead of stored and maintained centrally. This knowledge is not easily accessible or consistent. "Reinventing the wheel" is the way we work, instead of proactive innovation and consulting in reaction on business demand.
*The "Business Analyst Pool"-idea is based on business analysts who are able to work in different Business area's because of business analysis skills that are not limited by available knowledge of the Business area involved.
**Detailed Business knowledge is available in the Business where it belongs.
**The Business Analyst must understand the Business and for that the Business Analyst must be equiped with skill and tools. <br>One of the tools is a Knowledge Base that can be consulted by the Business Analyst in order to understand the Business and the situation the Business analyst is facing. This Knowledge Base can also function as a shared place to look for resemblances in other Assignments.
*Having access to up to date business processes, acknowledged by the business owners facilitates concrete assignments, problem analysis, requirement management, process impact, benefit analysis and innovation.
*Knowlegde management facilitates new business analysts to gather knowledge more quickly and embeds knowledge centrally in the BDO CO & GS business analysts organisation.
*For te BDO it is importent to guarantee the continuity, and the quality of the knowledge as a reason of its existance.
*Business is demanding a shorter Time to Market.
*Caused by the dynamic in the Airline Business overall and the Strategic change within the KL/AF environment, an increasing demand for Change and therefore Business Analysts is emerging.
There's a continuum that people to travel down. In this case, it's about Wikipedia, the herald of the "Wiki Everywhere" mentality:
#Shock & horror: "An encyclopedia everyone can edit? How dumb! Why would I want to use that?"
#Interest: "There's some interesting information here."
#First steps at gardening: "This page doesn't spell Waylon Jennings' name right. I ought to fix that."
#Structural enhancement: "This ought to link to the Willie Nelson page."
#Major modifications: "This doesn't include anything about Waylon's health problems before he died. I'll add a paragraph on that."
#Creating new content: "How can they not have a page about Waylon's son Shooter? I'll write that up real quick."
Modify for any given problem domain, but the continuum is still there. It's a learning process. What they learn is not about how to use the wiki, but how to trust themselves. People should know that they have value in what they say, in what they know, and that by taking advantage of those small increments of knowledge, we can make something greater than any one of us can.
[[Grassroots knowledge sharing]]
[[Wiki in the News]]
A key distinction made by the majority of knowledge management practitioners is Nonaka's reformulation of Polanyi's distinction between [[tacit|tacit knowledge]] and [[explicit|explicit knowledge]] knowledge. The former is often subconscious, internalized, and the individual may or may not be aware of what he or she knows and how he or she accomplishes particular results. At the opposite end of the spectrum is conscious or explicit knowledge -- knowledge that the individual holds explicitly and consciously in mental focus, and may communicate to others. In the popular form of the distinction tacit knowledge is what is in our heads, and explicit knowledge is what we have codified.
@@''During the last decades, the sharing of information and knowledge has gone through an unheard rapidisation.''@@
Both the amount of information shared, as well as the speed in which this happens, has taken a huge flight.
In many fields of progress, professional organisations were more advanced then //‘amateur knowledge sharers’//.
Remarkably, in some fields this has changed over the years.
>On the Internet, many succesful grassroots initiatives have popped up, that still didn’t make it to the somewhat static and controlled environment of professional business organisations. <br>Think of free-software projects, but also of free-information projects, as wikis (like [[Wikipedia|http://www.wikipedia.org]]), weblogs, and open news sites like [[Wikinews|http://www.wikinews.org]].
In this ''Wiki'', we will examine on of the most popular and upcoming knowledge sharing enablers on the Internet: [[Wikis]].
!Implementation
To proof the concept, a Wiki, [[“BDOpedia”|http://klm010441/BDOpedia/index.php/Main_Page]], has been set up that is used to develop a structure to manage and secure the Wiki-concept. For this we have adapted the “Assignment” as a vehicle for knowledge, based on the subject of the Assignment as well as on the Assignment itself.
In this we use the lifecycle of the Assignment as process to capture (Request - Quick scan – Assignment) and store (Archive) knowledge.
Besides this, more or less “forced” way of storing knowledge, which is essentially different from the real Wiki-concept, users will be encouraged to write articles in the [[“BDOpedia”|http://klm010441/BDOpedia/index.php/Main_Page]] about their specialism and interest in relation the our Business.
All knowledge can be retrieved on words in the articles and will be categorized using the Information Manager’s Business Areas.
In close collaboration (part of the Wiki-concept) with Business Analysts we are developing the concept to suit and serve the Business Analysts community.
!Import Tiddlers
<<importTiddlers inline>>
A practice concerned with increasing awareness, fostering learning, speeding collaboration & innovation and exchanging insights. There is a delicate balance to be maintained between explicit and tacit, between personal and community, between collecting assets and enabling flows, between looking inward and externally, between mining and capturing insights and building on shared experiences.
Knowledge Management ('KM') comprises a range of practices used by organisations to ''identify'', ''create'', ''represent'', and ''distribute'' knowledge for ''reuse'', ''awareness'' and ''learning''. It has been an established discipline since 1995 with a body of university courses and both professional and academic journals dedicated to it. Most large companies have resources dedicated to Knowledge Management, often as a part of 'Information Technology' or 'Human Resource Management' departments, and sometimes reporting directly to the head of the organisation. As effectively managing information is a must in any business.
Knowledge Management programs are typically tied to organisational objectives and are intended to achieve specific outcomes, such as shared intelligence, improved performance, competitive advantage, or higher levels of innovation.
One aspect of Knowledge Management, knowledge transfer has always existed in one form or another. Examples include on-the-job peer discussions, formal apprenticeship, corporate libraries, professional training and mentoring programs. However, with computers becoming more widespread in the second half of the 20th century, specific adaptations of technology such as knowledge bases, expert systems, and knowledge repositories have been introduced to further simplify the process.
Knowledge Management programs attempt to manage the process of ''creation'' (or identification), ''accumulation'' and ''application'' of knowledge across an organisation. Knowledge Management, therefore, attempts to bring under one set of practices various strands of thought and practice relating to:
*intellectual capital and the knowledge worker in the knowledge economy
*the idea of the learning organisation
*various enabling organisational practices, such as Communities of Practice and corporate Yellow Page directories for accessing key personnel and expertise
*various enabling technologies such as knowledge bases and expert systems, help desks, corporate intranets and extranets, Content Management, wikis and Document Management
While Knowledge Management programs are closely related to Organizational Learning initiatives, Knowledge Management may be distinguished from Organisational Learning by a greater focus on specific knowledge assets and the development and cultivation of the channels through which knowledge flows.
The emergence of Knowledge Management has also generated new roles and responsibilities in organisations, an early example of which was the Chief Knowledge Officer. In recent years, Personal knowledge management (PKM) practice has arisen in which individuals apply KM practice to themselves, their roles and their career development.
[[Knowledge Management - ''a statement'']]
![[Approaches to Knowledge Management]]
If you ask any KM expert about whether there is a standard method of implementing KM chances are he/she would probably say there isn’t one. It entirely depends on what your goals are and how these processes are received by your audience. At the end of the day, that is what really matters. The greatest KM Framework would still flounder if there isn’t buy-in from the grass roots level.
It has always been stated that Knowledge Management is not about technology. However, in most companies technology seems to be the backbone of the KM initiative. Unless you have a platform that allows people to extract the information they want and allow them to contribute to the system, chances are your KM strategy will not work.
This is because the average employee in the organization is so focused on his job that anything above and beyond is considered an effort. Though, dont expect people to come running just because you have built a system. There has to be a benefit to the employee, this can either be in the form of making his job easier to do, or providing an incentive for him to contribute to the system.
There are exceptions however, the whole open source community is built on a knowledge management model. The initiatives here aren’t driven by incentives - and while there were skeptics, at the end of the day these have showed us that knowledge management can sustain itself in the long run.
The bottom line is, regardless of what technology you use, at the end of the day you need to get your people the right information at the right time, with as little effort as possible.
In accordance with the need to understand the process of knowledge use, the programme of Knowledge Management is based around six challenges to ease fundamental bottlenecks in the engineering and management of knowledge. Each of these bottlenecks occurs at a vital stage in the evolution of knowledge:
* [[Acquiring Knowledge]]
* [[Modelling Knowledge]]
* [[Reusing Knowledge]]
* [[Retrieving Knowledge]]
* [[Publishing Knowledge]]
* [[Maintaining Knowledge]]
Users spend over a hundred hours every month on collaborative sites like Wikipedia. While it seems cruel to call this Knowledge “Management”, it does describe the very foundation of KM.
''Get people to share their knowledge.''
More importantly, this cultural phenomenon has shown long term sustainability of such initiatives without traditional drivers like [[Rewards and Recognition|Rewards OR Recognition?]].
Which addresses the basic question this post raises : Why is Knowledge Sharing so different in the corporate world? The answer might seem obvious, but with the trend of KM adoption in corporates rising there is a serious need to understand what can be done about this.
There are many instances where KM seems to flourish outside the corporate sphere. Now the question is, why does this happen? In most cases these are the same people doing the sharing. What makes it so different within an organization?
There are certain pre-concieved notions about corporates. The biggest of which is that you always seem to have someone looking over your shoulder. Add to that the fact that you need to be extremely careful about the things you say or do and you have a system designed to cut off free information sharing at its knees.
Wikipedia is a prime example of Knowledge Sharing, here thousands of strangers help put together an amazing collection of information without any percievable reward. You might say the reward here is recognition. However, if you take a closer look, a large portion of these contributors are annonymous.
So why do they do it? What drives this need to share knowledge , when everything we’ve learnt so far tells us that we shouldn’t. Would you spend that much time contributing?
The answer lies in the fundemental issue of competitiveness. It exists in the corporate world, it does not outside it. When you remove an individual from those restrains you get to see the true “sharing” potential of a person.
For any initiative to succeed and be accepted across an organization it requires some serious leadership buy-in. This is more so in the case of Knowledge Management. There are certain things that leaders can do to promote the sharing of knowledge in the organization.
Tie your initiatives to your vision: Create and publish an integrated mission, vision, and values statement that endorses and sustains learning and transfer. It’s very important to showcase success stories at each executive meeting. Unless there is a clear indication of progress the executive backing for an initiative like this will quickly die out.
There has to be an emphasis on re-enforcing management commitment to identifying new ideas and removing barriers to progress. This has to be built on top of a robust rewards and recognition program, and most importantly, make sure you have the right people working on this.
The management as a rule is always looked up to for direction, and its the same with knowledge management, lead by example and show commitment to learning through action. Tell employee groups that the most important thing is to share and use best practices.
Once this has been accomplished start rolling out these initiatives across the rest of the organization.
[[Knowledge Management|Knowledge Management - ''the concept'']]
[[Knowledge Objectives]]
[[What is Wiki?|Wiki video]]
[[Wikis]][[Memo for MT]]
[[Used sources]]
Finally, having got the knowledge acquired, and having managed to retrieve and disseminate it appropriately, the last challenge is to keep the knowledge repository useful by maintaining it as it sits there.
This may involve the regular updating of content as content changes. But it may also involve a deeper analysis of the knowledge content.
Some content has a considerable longevity, while other knowledge dates very quickly. If a repository of knowledge is to remain active over a period of time, it is essential to know which parts of the knowledge base must be discarded and when.
Other problems involved in maintenance include verifying and validating the content, and certifying its safety.
!What
<<slider whatIsKnowledge [[What is knowledge?]] [[What is knowledge?]]>>
<<slider whatIsKM [[What is KM?]] [[What is KM?]]>>
!Why
<<slider whyKM [[The place to explore and learn KM]] [[Why Knowledge Management? Why Now?]]>>
<<slider abstract Abstract [[Why Wiki?]]>>
!How
<<slider HowToArchive [[How to archive]] [[How to archive]]>>
!Assignment
The Asisgnment for the Knowledge Management is based on:
*[[Context and Background of the Assignment]]
*[[Business Objectives]]
*[[Scope]]
According the Assignment, the first deliverable will be a [[Plan of Approach]]
Knowledge modelling technologies occupy a key role; they provide a bridge between the acquisition of knowledge and its use.
Knowledge model structures must be able both to act as straightforward placeholders for the acquired knowledge coming in, and to represent the knowledge so that it can be used for problem-solving.
These are very different requirements, and can pull in different directions. One important knowledge modelling area is that of ontologies, which are specifications of the generic concepts, attributes, relations and axioms of a domain.
Ontologies can act as placeholders and organising structures for acquired knowledge, while also providing a format for understanding how knowledge will be used.
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Wikis are getting more and more noticed by the professional world, as we can tell from the appearance of management articles about wikis.
Several companies offer commercial services that, to some extend, resemble wikis. [[SocialText|http://www.socialtext.com/]] offers a software package which provides a simple wiki interface. Users can post notes, in a log style, and integrate this with their e-mail. It is aimed at unstructured, ad hoc collaboration, and can therefore be positioned somewhere between wikis and collaborative weblogs. In general, wikis are more stuctured and persistend then [[SocialText|http://www.socialtext.com/]]. A competing company called [[JotSpot|http://www.jotspot.com/]] provides an easy interface, with WYSIWYG editor, to access a relational database that keeps contact information of clients and maintains a calendar. Other database applications can be created. [[JotSpot|http://www.jotspot.com/]] focusses more on storing data, than on creating documents. Bothh commercial products have some flavour of wikis, but are not exactly it.
On the open-source side of wiki developments, a wiki engine called [[TWiki|http://twiki.org/]] is geared more towards a professional application then other wiki engines. For instance, it allows the creation of forms so that users can easily enter data that will be grouped on wiki pages. Also, the best known wiki engine, [[MediaWiki|http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/MediaWiki]], is used by several companies, like Gartner and Novell.
[[Conclusion]]
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The Plan of Approach for the Knowledge Management project contains:
*[[Description]]
**[[Plan Coverage]]
**[[Planned Approach]]
*[[Quality Plan]]
**[[Quality Control Methodes to be used]]
**[[Quality Test or Check Resources]]
*[[Plan Pre-Requisites]]
*[[External Dependencies]]
*[[Tolerances]]
**[[Time]]
**[[Budget]]
*[[Plan Monitoring and Control]]
*[[Reporting]]
*[[Planning Assumptions]]
*[[Graphical Plan]]
**[[Resources, Activities, Dates]]
**[[Product Breakdown Structure]]
**[[Product Flow Diagram]]
**[[Activity Network]]
**[[Risk Assessment]]
*[[Product Description]]
Assuming large repositories of well-structured, well-indexed knowledge can be built we then face the problem of how best to publish or disseminate this content.
Knowledge as many recognise is only effective if it is delivered in the right form, at the right place, to the right person at the right time.
Different users may want to see knowledge presented and visualised in quite different ways. Getting presentation right will involve understanding the different perspectives of people with different agendas, while an understanding of knowledge content will help to ensure that important pieces of knowledge get published at the appropriate time.
There is no established evidence as to the reasons behind failure and success of Knowledge Management initiatives in organizations. Some argue that a failure to sustain investment is one factor, but it can equally be argued that if knowledge management delivered on its promises investment would continue.
As with many management initiatives, particularly those which a heavy IT basis (as is the case in Knowledge Management) frequent questions are raised as to the level of consultation before a program is started and these are linked to issues of cultural change and willingness to share and collaborate with colleagues. However there is no evidence that Knowledge Management, in all these respects is any different from other management initiatives.
Some argue that the growing use of Web 2.0 tools will allow knowledge management systems to evolve, rather than be designed.
In any large repository retrieval of knowledge is an issue.
How do we recover a subset of content relevant to a problem or task?
Human knowledge is indexed by additional knowledge structures to limit and direct our search for relevant content.
In some cases the process is not one of retrieval but dynamic extraction - configuring knowledge out of resources for a particular problem.
Automated methods to support retrieval and extraction are vital as are architectures to integrate such capabilities.
One of the most serious impediments to cost-effective knowledge intensive system construction is that usually they are built afresh.
It is unusual for problem-solving experience or domain content to be acquired and then reused, partly because knowledge tends to require different representations depending on the problem-solving that is intended to do.
Understanding how to find patterns in knowledge, to allow for its storage in a library so that it can be reused when circumstances permit would save a good deal of managerial effort in reacquiring and restructuring the knowledge that had already been used in a different context.
One of the biggest challenges in Knowledge Management these days is getting people involved in the process. Unlike other initiatives which use a mix of the carrot and stick approach, KM can only be promoted using the carrot.
Now the challenge is, what motivates the average users to contribute towards the system? Is it the rewards or the recognition? Its a balance between both.
However, for the long term sustainability of any KM initative there has to a be focused move from a rewards based system to one of recognition. For one, its cheaper , second and more importantly, studies done in corporates have shown that the single largest motivator amongst employees is recognition by their peers and superiors.
Knowledge Management is that perfect platform that enables even the youngest of employees’ to show case their ideas and talents on a corporate platform. It ensures that if you are good at what you do, your voice isn’t lost in the crowd. This is the biggest selling point of KM to the average employee.
The driving force behind KM implementation for an organization is a little different. Numbers speak volumes, and unless corporates see a monetary benefit towards implementing a KM initiative, chances are they’d rather invest the money somewhere else.
The method with which to decide to promote Knowledge Management depends entirely on people. Rewards will only get you so far.
!In Scope:
*Development & Implementation of the Tool and advice on management;
*Development & Implementation of procedures to ensure the success of the Tool;
*Development & Implementation Guidelines and Training.
Initialy only the BA community will be involved. Implementation must be open for participation from Information Management, Functional Application Management and BDO's outside the CO & GS area.
!Outside scope:
*Human Resource aspects of business analyst within its Business Domain;
*Resource Planning of Business analysts within its Business Domain.
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On the Internet, there exist several successful wikis. The most well-known and undoubtly most successful example is [[Wikipedia|http://www.wikipedia.org]], a descendant of the [[Nupedia project|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nupedia]]. Wikipedia is an effort to create an open encyclopedia in several languages by means of wiki software, started by Jimmy Wales. The content of the encyclopedia is available to users under the GNU Free Documentation License. The English language Wikipedia – with over 440.000 articles – is larger than the [[Encyclopædia Brittanica|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Brittanica]] – with 120.000 articles in the on-line version, the biggest edition.
Wikipedia uses the [[MediaWiki|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mediawiki]] software. There are several Wikipedia-related projects that also use this wiki engine, such as [[Wiktionary|http://www.wiktionary.org/]] (dictionary), [[WikiBooks|http://www.wikibooks.org/]] (textbooks and manuals), [[WikiQuote|http://www.wikiquote.org/]], [[WikiSource|http://www.wikisource.org/]] (previously published documents) and [[Wikinews|http://www.wikinews.org/]].
Other well-known wikis include are the [[LinuxWiki|http://linuxwiki.org]], [[WikiTravel|http://wikitravel.org]] (a travel guide), and the [[SwitchWiki|http://switchwiki.org]], which aims to be a list of all available wikis around the globe.
[[American Airlines Wiki|http://flyerguide.com/wiki/index.php/Category:American_Airlines]]
[[Executive Travel Magazine|http://www.executivetravelmagazine.com/page/Airline+Wiki?t=anon]]
[[Airline Wiki|http://airline-wiki.com/]]
[[Applying wikis in organisations]]
The term “Knowledge Management” can be misleading at times.
True KM is more environment management than actual managing of knowledge.
What is environment management? Simply put, it’s creating an enviroment that fosters knowledge sharing.
Attempting to actually manage knowledge is a hopeless task. This is because the very nature of KM frowns upon the use of strict guidelines and processes that most other functions require.
The one principle that has ensured the success of KM is the fact that its been driven by a change in the cultural and perception of its employees.
Another common mistake that a surprisingly large number of corporates make is “re-defining” their existing information management processes by calling them Knowledge Management processes. While content management and information management do constitute part of the KM initiative they do not define it. This only serves to further confuse end users to the meaning of knowledge management.
The situation has gotten so bad in some instances that employees associate KM with the process of uploading a couple of documents every year to fulfill their “KM” contribution quota. It is practices like these that give Knowledge Management a bad name.
Tying all of this together is a framework that includes a rewards and recognition program, branding and a very robust communication strategy. Communication is a large part of knowledge management.
Does the term Knowledge Management acurately convey what you actually accomplish?
!Why Knowledge Management? Why Now?
Organizational success depends less on products and more on the appropriate use and deployment of distinctive capabilities. The true core competence of any firm is the ability to create new knowledge, learn continuously, identify and solve changing problems. Interest in knowledge is being driven by:
* Greater and faster connectivity and information flow due to the internet - ideas at the speed of light!
* Increasing knowledge content 'intelligence?' in products and services
* Decreasing life-cycles and time to market for industrial products
* Hyper competition and innovation pressures on a global scale
* Strong business focus on innovation driven growth after cyles of down-sizing and lean production.
* Critical need to be flexible, nimble and 'in-tune' with your market.
"on the Fly" is a ''personal'' note catcher based on Tiddlywiki.
TiddlyWiki is a wiki-modeled client-side single page application written by Jeremy Ruston that is designed to be used as a personal notebook. It is a single self-contained HTML file that includes CSS and ~JavaScript code.
TiddlyWiki can save the entered information by overwriting itself at the user's request.
Following TiddlyWiki conventions, users can make a new entry, called a Tiddler, in their local copy of the TiddlyWiki file and save it for future reference.
Existing Tiddlers can also be modified or deleted in the same way.
Tiddlers from other TiddlyWiki's can easely be imported.
To create tiddlers use the option "new tiddler" in the sidebar. The Tiddler manual available in the top menu explains the formating features.
For extensive help on TiddlyWiki click [[here|http://tiddlyspot.com/twhelp/index.html]].
To use this "on the Fly", copy the ~KLMemptyTW.html, rename it and start using.
>Note: using: File, Save As; does not allow to edit the copy.
----
TiddlyWiki is published by Osmosoft under a BSD open source license, which makes it freely available. Developer Jeremy Ruston describes it as experimental, and in that spirit many people have used the original HTML file to create TiddlyWiki Adaptations.
* [[KM primer|http://www.realisation.com.au/site1/Articles/Knowledge management primer.htm]]
* [[KM frameworks|http://editthis.info/km_frameworks/Main_Page]]
* [[KM an overview| http://www.knowledgeboard.com/library/km_an_overview.pdf]]
* [[Pierce EUC Km for beginers|http://www.knowledgeboard.com/cgi-bin/item.cgi?id=1138]]
* [[KM intro from KMRC (good)|http://www.kmresource.com/exp_intro.htm]]
* [[KM fable|http://delarue.net/ivory.pdf]]
* [[Why KM?|http://www.ariadne.ac.uk/issue18/knowledge-mgt/]]
* [[Why Knowledge Management Systems Fail|http://www.brint.org/kms.pdf]]
!Knowledge Management
There is no easy and accepted answer here. The problems around defining KM are also part of its strength and allure. KM is emergent, it takes on different forms, shapes and strategies in different firms and may not even look the same across groups within the same firm. It pays to take time and to have conversations to surface assumptions & beliefs, build alignment and share understandings around what knowledge means to your firm. There are a number of positions you can take to mix and match these for yourself. Most have ties to how you think about knowledge and what you believe knowledge really is! Consider your choices with care:
* ''Approach'': Personalization vs. codification
* ''View'': knowledge as an object vs. knowledge as flow or dynamic
* ''Emphasis'': tacit vs. explicit
* ''Strategy'': internal vs. all stakeholders
* ''Nature'': existing vs. emergent / constructed
* ''Focus'': reuse vs. creation / innovation
* ''Culture'': eastern vs.western
* ''Attenion'': external (business intelligence) vs. internal (learning)
!Knowledge
Philosophical debates in general start with Plato's formulation of knowledge as "justified true belief". There is however no single agreed definition of knowledge presently, nor any prospect of one, and there remain numerous competing theories. For this purpose I would like to propose the following:
>“Knowledge is the meaningful organization of information, expressing an evolving understanding of a subject and establishing a basis for judgment and the potential for action.”
In fact, this definition, upon closer examination, turns out to not be that controversial and perhaps not even very novel. But in working through its derivative consequences, we will find a number of specific advantages.
[[BusinessWeek|http://www.businessweek.com/technology/content/mar2007/tc20070312_740461.htm]]
!Interne Wikipedia bevordert uitwisseling van kennis
Uitgeefgroep Gezondheidszorg van Reed Business Information heeft gekozen voor het `open source` instrument [[MediaWiki|http://www.mediawiki.org]] om grote hoeveelheden informatie te ontsluiten. Maar in tegenstelling tot de grote broer Wikipedia, is de [[MediaWiki|http://www.mediawiki.org]] alleen bedoeld voor intern gebruik. Siebrand Mazeland, extern adviseur ICT en gedetacheerd bij Reed Business Information vertelt hierover: `Elke medewerker kan informatie toevoegen of wijzigen. Dat kan variëren van adresgegevens en foto`s van operatietechnieken tot ziektebeelden en uitleg over het menselijk lichaam. En net als bij de internetencyclopedie kun je met een simpele zoekopdracht alle bijbehorende informatie boven water halen.` Volgens Mazeland is het belangrijk om goed te kaderen. `Je moet niet de hele wereld in de interne encyclopedie willen zetten, dan schiet je het doel voorbij. Maar als mensen het instrument op de juiste manier gebruiken, behoort het absoluut tot de kern van je intranet.` Van Mazeland ziet nog een voordeel van de [[MediaWiki|http://www.mediawiki.org]]: `Zeker bij grotere organisaties als Reed Business Information waar eilandvorming als gevolg van de specialisatie van de uitgeefgroepen op de loer ligt, kan het drempelverlagend werken en uitwisseling van kennis bevorderen.`
bronnen:
Vakblad, nr. 103, p. 16; 2 p. (september/oktober 2006)
//by Toby Ward on Mon 08 May 2006 07:54 AM//
Has anyone not heard of a wiki? No, not the exotic New Zealand bird...
A wiki is a server program that allows users to collaboratively contribute content to a website. Editing is done in your web browser using a user-friendly editing tool not too dissimilar to a stripped-down version of MS-Word. But a wiki is more collaborative than your average page authored by one person. A wiki may contain the writing, edits and additions of many, many users. Any user can edit any other users’ contributions.
Additional tools available to wik-heads include author tracking, and locking and even version control and rollback
The most famous wiki is Wikipedia.com which is an online encyclopedia authored by whomever wants to author. Yes, you can make your own edits and additions. Wikipedia now features over 600,000 files with thousands of contributors though they do disclose that “Nonsense and vandalism are usually removed quickly.”
The biggest wiki profile story just hit the pages of mainstream media when the LA Times experimented with a ‘wikitorial’ that allowed readers to rewrite an editorial on the paper’s website. However, the experiment was sabotaged by morons who sabotaged the effort by posting pornographic images.
Not to be outdone, Wikis are beginning to hit corporate intranets too.
<<<
*1UP.com’s corporate wiki has helped save $1 million per 50 person project team – and dramatically reduced email.
*Michael Reiter, managing editor for IBM’s global intranet, tells me the IBM intranet now has several wikis including one for company jargon and acronyms. IBM also encourages employees to blog. With thousands of employee blogs the IBM team set-up a wiki to establish corporate blogging guidelines that were completed in 30 days.
<<<
Unlike blogs, wikis are most appropriate for improving upon or adding to an existing ‘document(s)’ by multiple authors. Whereas a blog would have multiple entries on a given subject a wiki might have a single entry that has been edited multiple times. As an example, some corporations are using wikis as a place to gather ‘tips’ on a given subject. Microsoft uses wikis to store and reuse customer input and ideas.
More than a couple of vendors are now selling wikis just for the intranet space including TWiki and Socialtext.
Ziff Davis, one of the largest publishers of technology magazines in the World, uses a wiki to speed-up software development producing huge savings. 1UP.com, the gaming division of Ziff Davis, uses a wiki product made by Socialtext. According to the customer testimonial on the Socialtext website, the development wiki has created a far more efficient environment for working together which has greatly reduced the reliance on email, as well as the associated lag time.
“This customer case study shows how use rapidly evolved from strategic planning to day-to-day coordination and communications, supported the brainstorming and launch of a new product and has led to promising experiments in group writing,” says the Socialtext website case study. “Workspace for group communications has reduced email volume dramatically to result in soft cost savings in excess of $1 million per year for a 50 person team. Project communication accelerated the project cycle of a four-month project by a month.”
The Ziff Davis example shows that wikis can in fact be that next killer enterprise collaboration platform that eases the burden shouldered (often inappropriately) by email and instant messaging.
//by Toby Ward on Thu 04 May 2006 03:27 PM PDT //
Nearly two years since InfoWorld proclaimed 2004 the “Year of the Enterprise Wiki,” wiki technology is still a nascent, but promising addition to most enterprise intranets.
Few organizations use wikis, though they are becoming more common place.
Helping the wiki increase in popularity is no doubt the resemblance to and the blurring of the line that separates this budding technology from the content management system (CMS).
“A wiki is a collaborative website where users can create and edit pages. Wikis fall conceptually under the broad concept of content management, and you could certainly use your existing CMS to create a wiki-like site,” writes consultant Mark Choate in What makes an enterprise wiki? “However, wikis bring unique characteristics that differentiate them from a run-of-the-mill content management systems.”
Wikis are certainly less complex and less rigid in term of workflow and structure. However, wiki technology is advancing. The explosive popularity of Wikipedia.com (now in the top 10 most visited websites on the planet with nearing 1 million articles and thousands of active contributors) underscores the power of wiki technology.
UC Davis has a student-run Wiki at www.DavisWiki.org. According to its own statistics DavisWiki.org has 2,502 registered users with 7,031 pages covering topics such as “on-campus bathrooms,” “self-defense” and “good ideas for dates” (the latter sometime relating to the former topics).
Wikis are certainly less complex and less rigid in term of workflow and structure. However, wiki technology is advancing.
!CREATING CONTENT AND DOCUMENTS IN TEAMS IS AN ONEROUS TASK
Information workers frequently co-author business documents and participate in rounds of editing on jointly authored material. Yet, today’s information worker tools — such as word processing tools, team collaboration software, and document management and Web content management (WCM) systems — lack easy-to-use features for ''seamless'', ''community-based'' development of content and documents.
To overcome these limitations, information workers routinely attach Microsoft Office files to email messages or post them to file shares, team sites, or FTP sites for downloading, and use change tracking and naming and versioning schemes to try to capture all participants’ inputs and keep everything organized.
The result? Frustration, wasted time spent reconciling versions, and edits that are hard to follow when multiple authors get involved.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY
Möller (2005, page VII, translated) defines wikis as //“open websites that can be edited by every visitor”//.
We will extend this definition in two ways:
#we explicitly state that modifying can also include deleting information, and
#we mention the fact that a wiki is in fact a knowledge base.
Hence, we come up with the following defition of a wiki:
>//a piece of software that allows users to add, modify, and/or delete information from a
knowledge base via the web//
The exact functionality of the wiki differs per software package – the so-called wiki engine – and the configuration of the engine.
For instance, some wikis allow every anonymous visitor to alter the information, where as others only allow registered users to do this. Some engines allow multimedia uploads (like images or sound files), where others have functionality to prevent ‘edit conflicts’.
[[Wiki Characteristics|Characteristics]]
Wikis are anarchistic in the sense that there is no power structure. In general, no user has more rights then any other user. On many wikis, anonymous users have the same rights as registered users. Sometimes some power structure is established. For instance, on [[Wikipedia|http://wikipedia.org]] there are sysops (system operators) that have additional functionality for the revertion of vandalism.
*Because of the anarchistic nature, nobody realy ownes the wiki. It is a community property.
*Because of the equality of rights, there is also no division of labour. There is no director that tells subordinates what to do. Each individual can select the role that best fits his or her preferences.
Organisations are generally build around a certain authoritan model, where certain people (usually managers) have responsibility for subparts of the organisation, or the organisation as a whole in the case of top management, and delegate tasks to subordinates. During the years the models of organisations have changed, going from hierarchical pyramids via networked organisation with high employee autonomy back to a sort of hierarchical diamond.
However, the concepts of resposibility and delegating tasks have always been in place.
Wikis are [[anarchistic]] by nature. In a pure wiki, there are no users with a higher authority as others, and each individual picks its own tasks. This might conflict with the labour divisions that already have been established within an organisation.
Managers are not likely to give up their possibilities of delegating tasks, and moreover, in discussions regard content people might use their position in the organisation as an argument, thereby overruling ‘real’ arguments.
Wikicommunities lean heavily on the trust between its users.
Since it is so easy to revert changes, conflicts can quickly result in ‘edit wars’ where multiple users keep on reverting each others changes because they don’t agree. And because of the anarchistic character, there is no arbitrator to make a final decision.
Of course the community can create a consensus, e.g., by voting, but there is no way to enforce the result of the consensus upon the users in conflict.
A wiki is for the most part a collaboration tool.
The users work together to create a certain end-product, whether that be a report, a reference guide, or an encyclopedia. Its strength is in its ability to facilitate users to cooperate without a division of labour has been made in advance.
With support for so-called ‘edit conflicts’ users can even work on the same page on the same time.
A wiki also supports communication between users in relation to a certain topic. Wikis contain discussion pages on which users can give comment on the subject.
The pages (articles) in a wiki generally are not ordered in a prescribed way, like in a book. Just like on the World Wide Web, wikipages are interlinked in a network structure.
Organising knowledge in a network instead of a sequence appeares to be a natural way of knowledge representation.
Creating links in a wiki is generally very easy: applying the linking syntax to a certain term, usually putting it between brackets or writing it in //~CamelCase//, immediately creates a link to a wikipage which has that term as a title.
One concern of large organisation is division in departments and units. This division is needed to keep the organisation managable, but at the same time it creates barriers between people that might work in related areas, and the organisation would benefit from knowledge sharing between those people.
The trend of organisations adopting ‘people finder’ applications, that allow employees to search for other people based on their areas of expertise, reflect this need.
Wikis might also break down these barriers. When several people of different departments work on a specific set of pages related to their area of work, they will get to know each other and each other’s expertises. However, it is still a question whether a wiki can break down these barriers, or that the organisational boundaries will also create matching clusters of pages without much connections between the clusters.
Explicit knowledge is knowledge that has been or can be //articulated//, //codified//, and //stored// in certain media. It can be readily transmitted to others. The most common forms of explicit knowledge are ''manuals'', ''documents'' and ''procedures''. Knowledge also can be ''audio-visual''.
Works of art and product design can be seen as other forms of explicit knowledge where human skills, motives and knowledge are externalized.
The volunteers that fill the wikis on the Internet do not gain much by doing so. The users might add their knowledge because they expect to get other knowledge in return. The volunteers that edit and add knowledge, often also use the wiki for their own reference.
In a professional environment, these motivations are different. A career holds a high priority to people in most modern societies, and many professionals maintain a competitive attitude towards co-workers.
In a professional organisation, the knowledge to be shared is more focussed and therefore more inclined to go in-depth, resulting in a higher power-loss risk. Professional organisations that want their knowledge base (their wiki) filled with the knowledge that lives within the organisation have two main options.
#They can stimulate or reinforce their employees to add knowledge to the wiki. This can, for instance, be done by setting periodic quota that employees have to meet, or to reward qualitative or quantitative contributions made by employees. These measures tend to stimulate quantity over quality, so management should well think through the implications of the measures the enforce.
#Disolvement of the <<slider PrisDel [[prisoner’s dilemma]] [[prisoner’s dilemma]]>> as much as possible. This can, for instance, be done by ''clustering'' a large wiki, or by setting special fields of attention. In this way, the user becomes more aware of certain interesting areas in the wiki, by which useful contributions from co-workers become more visible. Also, this might improve the community-feeling in certainparts of the wiki.
Because of the lack of control and delegated division of labour, a wiki expands itself in an organic way.
Information on one subject can be very detailled, whereas other equally important subjects might get not elaborated upon.
The direction in which a wiki expands depends largely on its community, with all its – perhaps uncommon – interests, hypes and trends.
For instance, the [[Dutch Wikipedia|http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoofdpagina]] has an very active user living in Thailand. For this reason, the information on [[Thailand|http://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thailand]] in the Dutch Wikipedia is unproportianlly large, compared to, e.g., the African countries.
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Two suspects, A and B, are arrested by the police. The police have insufficient evidence for a conviction, and, having separated both prisoners, visit each of them to offer the same deal: if one testifies for the prosecution against the other and the other remains silent, the betrayer goes free and the silent accomplice receives the full 10-year sentence. If both stay silent, both prisoners are sentenced to only six months in jail for a minor charge. If each betrays the other, each receives a five-year sentence. Each prisoner must make the choice of whether to betray the other or to remain silent. However, neither prisoner knows for sure what choice the other prisoner will make. So this dilemma poses the question: How should the prisoners act?
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Wikis are sensitive to vandalism: malicious users deleting information or inserting incorrect information. Especially wikis that allow unregistred users to make changes encounter this problem.
However, a wiki, especially wikis with a large community, have a high potential of self-healing.
The famous citation by Raymond (2001, p. 30) on open-source software development,
>//“Given enough eyes, all bugs are shallow”//
applies to wikis too. As a lot of people read the pages, if the community is large enough amongst them might be experts in the fields, vandalism and incorrect information are likely to be corrected in a fair amount of time.
Generally in the large Wikipedias, reverting obvious vandalisms is a matter of seconds to minutes. The real problem however lies with incorrect information that looks plausible or is generally believed to be plausible. Wikis might be sensitive to hoaxes and urban myths. However, the [[English Wikipedia|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page]] shows to outperform the more established [[Encyclopædia Britannica|http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Britanica]], even concerning content quality.
Organisations usually like to have control of the direction in which they are developing. For this reason, it creates a mission statement, a strategy, and goals.
A wiki, on the contrary, develops in an organic way. Since there generally is no authority, developments cannot be affected in a top-down fashion. However, sometimes bottom-up developments can steer the information expansion, e.g., by organising a ‘theme week’ in which contributors are stimulated to focus their attention on a (yet undervalued) topic.
For wikis to become useful in organisations, more control over the knowledge expansion is needed.
By definition, ''tacit knowledge'' is knowledge that people carry in their ''minds'' and is, therefore, difficult to access. Often, people are not aware of the knowledge they possess or how it can be valuable to others. Tacit knowledge is considered more valuable because it provides ''context'' for ''people'', ''places'', ''ideas'', and ''experiences''.
Effective transfer of tacit knowledge generally requires extensive personal contact and trust.
Tacit knowledge is not easily shared. One of Polanyi's famous aphorisms is: "//We know more than we can tell.//"
Tacit knowledge consists often of ''habits'' and ''culture'' that we do not recognize in ourselves. In the field of knowledge management the concept of tacit knowledge refers to a knowledge which is only known by an individual and that is difficult to communicate to the rest of an organization. Knowledge that is easy to communicate is called [[explicit|explicit knowledge]] knowledge. The process of transforming tacit knowledge into explicit knowledge is known as codification or articulation.