***** The Gurteen Knowledge-Letter (Issue 61, 18 July 2005) *****
Well this month's knowledge letter is a little late - my apologies.
But then I do have a good excuse - I was in New York City last week
for the inaugural launch of my knowledge cafe with Jo Singel.
Sixteen of us met up at Deloitte's (our host - thanks to Robert
Avila) at the World Financial Center where I explained the concept
of k-cafe and plans for the future. We then ran a short k-cafe around
how we would like to see the meetings develop.
It was great to meet everyone and I was delighted to have some
enthusiastic energetic people there. It was a great evening.
As things develop I will be talking more and more about the k-cafes.
Watch this space :-)
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/kcafes
*************************** CONTENTS ***************************
1 - Steve Jobs at Stanford
2 - KM Asia 2005
3 - KnowledgeBoard Update
4 - Google Goodies
5 - The New Shape of Knowledge
6 - Global Knowledge Review
7 - Chris Collison & Geoff Parcell
8 - Does College Matter?
9 - Polls
10 - Yahoo Social Search Engine
11 - Social Tagging
12 - Gurteen Event Calendar
13 - What's New?
******************** STEVE JOBS AT STANFORD ********************
Thanks to the Tom Peters website for pointing me to this speech of
Steve Jobs. Here is a taste:
"Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only
way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work,
and the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you
haven't found it yet, keep looking, and don't settle. As with all
matters of the heart, you'll know when you find it, and like any
great relationship it just gets better and better as the years roll
on. So keep looking. Don't settle."
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L001731/
I think every young person starting out in life read this - the
message is spot on!
Tom Peters:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/tom-peters
************************* KM ASIA 2005 *************************
KM Asia is coming up 25-26 October 2005.
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/km-asia
Three great keynote speakers are lined up so far: John Seely Brown,
Larry Prusak and Dave Snowden
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/john-seely-brown
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/larry-prusak
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/dave-snowden
********************* KNOWLEDGEBOARD UPDATE *********************
July opens with an exploration of knowledge sharing in consulting
firms (do they really do it themselves?), Geographical Information
Systems, a KM toolkit, Personal Knowledge Management and a request to
you to tell us what toolkits to research and build ourselves? What KM
modules can we build for you?
http://www.knowledgeboard.com/survey
************************ GOOGLE GOODIES ************************
Google's creativity and productivity never ceases to amaze me. Take a
look at these new developments
Google Earth:
This is the most awesome application I have come across in a while.
If you load and play with it - fly in to a US city that you know well
- I chose Seattle - to really appreciate this application. (Still
tring to figure out why this and Google Maps are two separate
systems.)
http://earth.google.com/
http://maps.google.com/
Google Wallet:
I mentioned Google Video last month ...
http://video.google.com/video_about.html
but what is interesting is the speculation of "Google Wallet" - a
micro-payment system that would provide the payment system for Google
Video and more besides:
http://www.kottke.org/05/06/google-wallet
Google Print:
If you have not discovered Google Print yet then see here to learn
more about it:
http://print.google.com/googleprint/about.html
or here to give it a whirl:
http://print.google.com/
If you are interested in 'quality' - try searching for books
containing 'Deming' as I did ... :-)
Google Toolbar for Firefox:
If like me you have switched to Firefox and have missed the Google
Toolbar then see:
http://toolbar.google.com/firefox/
****************** THE NEW SHAPE OF KNOWLEDGE ******************
Andrew Mitchell has pointed me to this keynote speech by David
Weinberger at the National Educational Computing Conference recently
in Philadelphia.
http://www.hyperorg.com/blogger/mtarchive/004153.html
David is one of my favorite thinkers on knowledge and one of the
authors of the Cluetrain Manifesto.
Here are a couple of quotes from his keynote:
And we've treated documents as if they were containers. That's
because we've thought of our minds as containers. But the Web is made
of links -- pages pointing outside of themselves to other pages --
each a little act of generosity. But why believe what anything on
the Web says? Yes, why believe even Doc Searls? Because we are now
capable of multi-subjectivity: many voices in conversation. K
nowledge is becoming conversation.
and
So, how do we teach our kids? Do we cram their heads full of content
and then test them on it? As individuals? Do we imply ambiguity is a
failure? Do we insist on being right? Or do we say that knowledge is
an unending conversation? Do we teach children to seek ambiguity and
love difference?
David Weinberger:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/david-weinberger
Cluetrain Manifesto:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/cluetrain
******************** GLOBAL KNOWLEDGE REVIEW ********************
For the last two months we have made the Global Knowledge Review
freely available to anyway who cares to download it. Well we are
doing it again this month - but I assure you this is the last month :-)
You will find the May, June and July issues available for download
from the Download Center on my website:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/downloads
Please forward it on to as many of your friends and colleagues whom
you think will enjoy it!
For more information on the GKR, including past articles and bios of
contributors and to subscribe see :
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/gkr
You will also receive a 30% discount off the standard price :-)
**************** CHRIS COLLISON & GEOFF PARCELL ****************
You will probably know of Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell through
their book "Learning to Fly" and how highly I respect them and rate
their book as being one of the best KM books available.
What you might not know is that they have both recently slipped the
chains of corporate slavery and set up as independent consultants.
Take a look at what they are up to:
Chris Collison:
http://www.chriscollison.com/
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/chris-collison
Geoff Parcell:
http://www.practicalkm.com/
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/geoff-parcell
Learning to Fly:
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/L001093/
********************* DOES COLLEGE MATTER? *********************
For some years now, I have become more and more concerned about the
'education system' and in particular the wisdom of taking a
university degree. It just seems to me that formal education is no
longer about learning but about passing exams - the measure has
replaced the objective!
Many a time I have come close to writing on the subject but then this
morning I came across a fantastic weblog and a great blog posted by
Kathy Sierra that said all and more of what I wished to make explicit:
http://headrush.typepad.com/creating_passionate_users/
Its well worth the time taken to read the post in full. But here is a
taster in a clip from Roger Schank quoted in the blog:
"Whenever I teach a class, I ask students why there are in college.
They tell me things like, "It's a four-year vacation," "The parties
are good,", "It will get me a good job later," "It's what everyone
does, so I never thought about an alternative," and so on. The issue
of learning never comes up. No student has ever mentioned it in
class, although I ask the question quite often. Why is that? As I
said earlier, school isn't really about learning at all. It's about
certification. College students today attend school to get a degree
that they hope will get them something they want..."
Note the passage about Kathy's daughter - Skyler and 'passion
matters'. But also take the time to read the comments to "Does
College Matter" if you want to hear some diverse opinions and
personal experiences on the subject.
And a note of thanks to Steve Richard's blog for pointing me to this:
http://steves.blogharbor.com/blog
If you would like to see the blogs I regularly read:
http://www.bloglines.com/blog/DavidGurteen
***************************** POLLS *****************************
I not only provide all the content for the Gurteen Knowledge website
but all the development and code is down to me too. So I always have
a long 'todo' list of things I would love to add.
Often the mood will take me and I will sit down for a whole day and
well into the night to add a new feature. Well the 'mood took me' a
few weeks back and I know I have the ability to conduct 'polls' via
my site.
Take a look - I have two polls running at the moment and plan to add
a new 'monthly poll' each month.
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/polls
****************** YAHOO SOCIAL SEARCH ENGINE ******************
Some months back I mentioned Del.ico.us - a socal search engine and
how I was starting to use it - see here for my bookmarks:
http://del.icio.us/dgurteen
but now Yahoo has released My Web 2.0 BETA. I have yet to really
explore it but it seems hugely more sophisticated and powerful than
del.icio.us - this is what Yahoo have to say about the service:
"My Web 2.0 enables you to tap into the knowledge of the people you
know, and leverage this knowledge to find better answers that are
more relevant to you. Friends, colleagues, and other contacts in your
community are invaluable sources of information and advice in the
offline world. These are the people that share your interests, work
in your industry, live in your neighborhood, and have potentially
searched for many of the same topics as you - along with topics that
you never thought of in relation to the people you know. By fusing
the power of algorithmic search with the ability to tap into your
community, My Web 2.0 enables you to find better, more relevant
answers for you."
http://myweb2.search.yahoo.com/myresults/faq#whatis
************************ SOCIAL TAGGING ************************
One of the interesting benefits of social tagging' pages on the web
is that it makes it very easy for me as a website developer to vastly
improve the linking from my site to other pages of interest.
Most of the pages on the Gurteen website are categorized into
'topics' - (aka themes, categories or TAGS). Take a look at one of my
category pages - here for example is the one on "education":
http://www.gurteen.com/gurteen/gurteen.nsf/id/education
but then take a look at the Technorati, My Web, del.icio.us and
Flickr links that take you through to pages tagged with the
'education' tag! Found something of interest? More than likely :-)
The great thing about this from my perspective is that I do not have
to individually code these links for each of my 100 category pages -
all I need to do is write two or three lines of code that dynamically
generates the link for each page as it is displayed. Love it!
