Knowledge Connections

Is Yahoo! shutting down Del.icio.us?

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 16:55:00 +0000

We use Del.icio.us for social bookmarking and have been fans for some time - but the rumours have been rife about whether Yahoo! will be shutting it down.

This excellent post from Alexia Tsotsis has an update from the Delicious blog, saying:

“No, we are not shutting down Delicious. While we have determined that there is not a strategic fit at Yahoo!, we believe there is a ideal home for Delicious outside of the company where it can be resourced to the level where it can be competitive.”

Good news.

Enterprise Search – panacea or pain?

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 15:10:00 +0000

Search can be seen by many as the answer to all of our information retrieval problems, but I have always thought that it depends how it is applied – one of my favourite phrases is: “rubbish in, rubbish out”. Search is only any good if it is pointing at good content, and it intelligently utilises what is known about both the documents and the searcher.
An excellent post by Venkatesh Rao this week focused my mind on this issue once again.

There has been much discussion on search over the years, some good points can even be found in the posts advertising search software. Such as this; “The Business Value of Enterprise Search 2009 A review of cost effective solutions for managers” advocating Oracle, which has the line: “A common flaw in the use of information search technologies is overconfidence in the results”.

I have always been enticed by semantic searching, and again there is a lot on this topic out there. Pandia Search Central is a an interesting one to follow, and they review their chosen top 5 semantic search.

An interesting concept that turns traditional search on its head is that of document comparison - computational forensic linguistics. If document comparison was used to search a quality data set, the results are far more accurate and relevant than traditional search technologies.

CFL Software Ltd is one company exploiting this in many different contexts. One great application has been in a music site, Slicethepie. The latest innovation is “SoundOut Search” which enables users to search a music catalogue using what ever snippet of information they have.

Top KM books and guidance

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 15:21:00 +0000

Reading around a topic is something that I always find helpful when getting to grips with that subject, and KM has no shortage of good books and articles to stimulate those thoughts and plans.
A recent discussion on LinkedIn asked for peoples thoughts on “must have” KM books, with some interesting results.

There are many blogs and websites with good recommendations, such as David Skyrme’s site and the Knoco site with many books, articles and white papers. David Gurteen also lists his top ten KM books and I am sure that there are many others.

The comments on that LinkedIn discussion brought some recommendations that I have not found so far, such as Nick Milton’s suggestion:

Nancy Dixon's "Common Knowledge"
Melissie Rumizen, "The Complete Idiot's guide to KM"

Together with a lot of the well thumbed texts that I have enjoyed so far, such as:

Learning to Fly by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell 2004, and Working Knowledge by Thomas H Davenport and Larry Prusak, 2000.

The only problem is making the time to read them all!

Complinet to be bought

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 08:46:00 +0000

Another online publisher is going to become part of Thomson Reuters; Complinet mainly provides compliance data for financial institutions and the acquisition will add to the Thomson Reuters compliance offering.

Complinet was one of the few choices other than Thomson’s or Reed Elsevier as a possible resource to help with the inceasing need of compliance checks.

The Thomson Reuter press release describes the move as something that will “further Thomson Reuters vision to provide end-to-end financial service compliance solutions”.

Less choice in the market?

Digital copyright rumbles on

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Fri, 28 May 2010 07:27:00 +0000

At a time when News International are trying to extract as much commercial value as possible from their newspapers by removing them from aggregators, James Murdoch has criticised the British Library over the BL’s plans to digitise the national newspaper collection.

Murdoch’s argument is that public bodies should not decide how copyrighted material is exploited for commercial gain – his concern is presumably loss of revenue for News International, rather than access to information for the general public.

The British Library has announced that it is digitising a large chunk of the national newspaper collection archive. The partnership between the British Library and a company called “Brightsolid” will enable the digitisation of 4 million pages of newspapers over the first two years in a ten year agreement.

It is hoped that “in-copyright” content can be scanned in the future after negotiation with rightsholders. This archive would only be available online as a fee paying service, but it will be available online for the first time, increasing access to the material and helping to safeguard the content of this collection for the future.

Times and Sunday Times still available to Law Firms via LexisNexis

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Thu, 27 May 2010 07:51:00 +0000

Bob De Laney, Director, News & Business at LexisNexis has confirmed that LexisNexis have successfully negotiated continued access for law firms to News International content via their services:

“Further to our previous communication, I’m writing to let you know that we have finalised a contract with News International to maintain content from The Times, The Sunday Times, The Sun and The News of the World on our services. Not only will this new agreement ensure your continued access to these key UK newspapers, but it will also deliver two improvements to your service:

• Content will start to be delivered earlier in the day, enabling you to pick up coverage at 9:00am rather than noon

• As News International begins to add more “website-only” content to its online offer, this content will also become available to Nexis customers, later in 2010."

KM reference material

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Tue, 25 May 2010 16:51:00 +0000

Some great guidance and introduction to KM techniques and tools have now been brought together within a KM reference section on the Knoco website, free of charge.

With helpful introductions to KM processes, KM roles and structures, KM technologies and KM governance, these are excellent guides created by Nick Milton and Knoco.

The Knoco website already provides some great Knoco white papers, guidance documents, newsletters and details of workshops. http://www.knoco.com/

Enterprise Search

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Mon, 24 May 2010 13:46:00 +0000

The recent Enterprise Search Summit 2010 in New York has spurred several reports from different commentators and I do believe that Enterprise Search can enable an organisation to tap into it’s combined knowledge so much more effectively.

With so many vendors vying to sell their own enterprise search solutions, there is even the idea of using Google for your search engine.There are many guides, sales pitches and definitions around;

Accenture believes that being able to easily access all available information, then use it to meet business challenges, explore opportunities and exceed the competition, is essential for achieving a higher level of performance. And that goal is increasingly within reach because Enterprise Search technologies are advancing rapidly.

IBM states that a certain size of organization often produce and accumulate textual data from a wide range of sources and in a variety of formats, and effective tools for searching over that data are central to the organizations' success.

Finally Freepint did a nice introduction to Enterprise search in 2005 that still makes interesting reading for this topic, listing 10 critical success factors worth bearing in mind.

Cost and ROI are an issue - as always.

How to write clearly

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Mon, 10 May 2010 11:29:00 +0000

Whether you are a lawyer or not, we can all write more clearly.

This guide from the European Commission is intended for all writers of English at the European Commission – but I think it is useful where ever you are.

The document is full of hints – not rules – that will help you to write clearly and make sure your message ends up: “in your readers’ brains, not in their bins”.

It is very easy to read and quite interesting!

Another useful resource provided by the EU Translation team is a page of online glossaries for each language of the EU, very helpful for technical terms.

OU Library available online

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Wed, 05 May 2010 08:43:00 +0000

Described as “the most advanced digital university library in the world” The Open University library website is an excellent resource. The OU have spent time developing a gateway to a wide range of online information resources, much of it available free, including the ability to search across a range of journals, books and websites.

It also provides information about the services and resources at the Open University Library building in Milton Keynes. Users have access to 400 online databases, 30,000 e-journals and hundreds of thousands of e-books.

The free search for “visitors and guests” is excellent, with an impressive range of materials searched quickly and easily. There are two options, to search "journals, books and websites" or to search "reference shelf".

Other valuable assets include the recommended links for other free resources on the web; well worth visiting.
I particularly like the “online collections and databases” links, but there are lists of everything from images and sounds, to libraries near you.

A gem of a resource.

Document sharing on Facebook

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 09:40:00 +0000

Facebook and Microsoft have teamed up on an online document-sharing service, which is apparently similar to Google Docs.

The site allows Facebook users to log in using Facebook Connect and create, edit, and share Microsoft Office documents with their Facebook friends.

New documents will show up in a user's news feed, just like status updates or pictures.

Can social networks replace expensive in house systems?

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 15:48:00 +0000

With professional social networks such as LinkedIn growing in popularity, is there a need for an expensive in-house CRM system? Do you need to build alumni sites or could you just utilise social networking to reach your alumni?

Although the use of systems such as LinkedIn has grown, not just as a way of contacting people but with the discussion groups that really seem to work, they are still not comprehensive.

Internal systems are carefully constructed with quality and accuracy in mind, on social networks the contacts create and maintain their own data, which can mean incomplete and missing information. Plus the fact that many people will not even be on the system.

Jason Plant has started a discussion on whether LinkedIn can replace InterAction, with some interesting comments.

With relation to Alumni systems, social media can play quite a helpful part in providing benefits to alumni, but again it does not allow the organisation to add information, only the individual.

Social networks may have valuable contributions to play, but internal systems still appear to be needed; to formalise the data and gain full business benefit.

Legal research tools – more relevant results when searching the web

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Tue, 20 Apr 2010 10:12:00 +0000

Searching the web for specific material can be frustrating purely because there is so much content on there and too many results are returned.

The Zonebee beta site is trying to help the effectiveness of a Google search, by aiding users to create a better search strategy.

It appears to work by using a tool bar that sits over the top of Google, a search term can be typed in, and Zonebee would generate a tag cloud or “buzz”of the most popular terms associated with the search term.

The user can then simply click to select which terms are the correct concepts, and what should not be included. Only once the relevant terms have been “explored” is a Google search run, hopefully bringing back more relevant material.
However, this is still in Beta form, so how effective it is remains to be seen.

Pending actions

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Mon, 19 Apr 2010 15:42:00 +0000

Lawtel have released some new functionality, available as part of your Lawtel subscription – “Pending Actions" tracks all documents submitted to the High Court before a hearing date is fixed.

The idea is that you can follow proceedings from start to finish, and make decisions based on actions submitted to the court. For example, you can flag up important cases at the earliest stage, or, see if an action has been settled out of court.

Google search tips

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 14:13:00 +0000

Which ever search engine you prefer, you will probably use Google at some point – even if you do not get as far as Google Chrome.

With everything from defining specific words, to calculations and rates of exchange, many of us are only tapping into a fraction of the functionality of Google.

There are many tips and guides on the web, this one from Hubspot contains some quick advanced search techniques, others include the less known Google commands, some like the Bodelian Library produce a nice cheat sheet for ease of use.

What is a “knowledge worker”?

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Thu, 08 Apr 2010 17:15:00 +0000

This term can cover a multitude of sins, but does it really include every person that is working effectively within an organisation?

Jack Vinson blogged this week about the topic, saying that: “ Just about everyone within an organization has valuable knowledge about the ins and outs of the business and could contribute - assuming the organization is willing and interested in hearing the contribution.”

So all employees could be knowledge workers, but those that actually proactively facilitate the sharing of that knowledge are the ones that are more easily recognised.

The Havard Business Review looks at the “collaboration curve” and the concept that more value is added the more collaboration is undertaken – or the more nodes in a network are connected.

It uses the analogy of a fax machine. The First person to have a fax machine got little value from it, until more people had fax machines and it enabled the full value of transmitting images to be exploited.

So if we are all knowledge workers and we all collaborate, what effective organisations we would have!

When does new legislation come into force?

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Wed, 07 Apr 2010 17:15:00 +0000

BIS have just published the Forward Regulatory Programme which is trying to make it easier for businesses to prepare for when regulations change.

For example two common commencement dates have been introduced; 6th April and 1st October when the majority of regulatory changes will come into effect. The Government aims to provide clear and straightforward guidance explaining any changes at least 12 weeks in advance, and businesses can keep up to date with new requirements and changes through http://www.businesslink.gov.uk/.

Be warned however that the dates could all change after the general election - especially if there is a change in government.

Email – Love it, hate it, store it – find it?

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Thu, 01 Apr 2010 07:46:00 +0000

Email is such a contradiction – I for one am so reliant on it; I get updates, alerts, information, collaboration, communication and so much more from it. I also have an inbox that seems to fill up every time I am away from my desk, and I question how much of the time that I spend on emails is actually of business benefit?

The other problem is organisation – I get a lovely snippet of useful information by email, what do I do with that so that I can usefully find it again? Many of us drop the email into our email folders (some better organised than others), I might add it to our blog or reference it in our knowledge system. Those of us with a DMS that allows email filing have an advantage, can drop it into a folder that can be collaborative, contextual, inclusive of documents and material from elsewhere, flagged if it is already filed by someone else, and full text searchable – so reducing duplication.

A decent search engine and we are not limited to browsing a good – or a poor organisational structure to find it again.

However, in many organisations emails are filed by one person in their personal email folders, at the same time as many others in that organisation are storing that email in their own email folders; taking up space unnecessarily and often, being lost for future use.
The information may not be shared – for the fear that others may already have it, or that others might not value it, so some people will not have even seen that nugget of relevant information before it is filed away and lost.

A recent post from Jason Plant made me smile – “Email, hate the stuff” - I have to sympathise!

However, the death of the email has been talked of for some years, this post from 2008 talks of the last days of email and suggests alternatives – RSS feeds for information updates, speaking to colleagues face to face or picking up the phone, using collaborative calendars. Although these are all good tools – and I do believe that RSS has huge potential in the work place, even though it is not always exploited enough in innovative ways to fit in with people’s workflow – email still fills that gap.

What should have happened? Continuous learning

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 06:48:00 +0000

After Action Reviews (AARs) are excellent tools – they may be painful to do, (someone who can fulfil the role of a facilitator is always well worthwhile), awkward to suggest, time consuming to pull out the most valuable lessons, and even more time consuming to change processes within the organisation in the light of that learning – but they are such good value!

If you are not familiar with After Action Review it is basically a case of getting together all of those involved in that particular project, and reviewing how it went. It could be a project or a transaction, and the aim is to find out:

What was supposed to happen?

What actually happened?

What is the difference between the two questions above?

What can we learn from this?

What would we do differently next time?

The benefit can be enormous; it can stop the wheel being reinvented in future work, it can improve the quality of the work carried out next time, it can save time and once a routine of carrying out AAR’s is established, the lessons learnt can be used right at the beginning of the project, adding in a “what do we already know” stage, before the project is undertaken.

Then you can move into “before, during and after” reviews, which is a very healthy state to be in.

I believe that some of the origins of this can be traced back to the US Army, but my favourite hand book is “Learning to Fly” by Chris Collison and Geoff Parcell.

There is a lot of good material on their website, but there are lots of helpful experiences, templates and implementation advice around elsewhere as well. Kim Plowright shares a template that she uses for projects, and it has some useful prompts. Some of the language used may need to be changed to be relevant to your own organisation, but it can be a useful exercise.

Merger mania

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Tue, 30 Mar 2010 07:39:00 +0000

The mergers and acquisitions market appears to be warming up, with recent high profile mergers like Orange and T-Mobile, Cadbury and Kraft, there are bound to be more to follow.

BNET have put up some tips on “how to survive a mega-merger”, dealing with some of the issues around consolidation that mergers always bring.

Charging for the The Times online

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 09:05:00 +0000

Karen Blakeman blogs about the latest move from News International.

The Financial Times did the same thing three years ago, making us all pay for additional licenses to be able to obtain FT data through the aggregators. The FT withdrew their content from Lexis, Westlaw and other aggregators, losing several customers in the process.

If The Times does the same thing, is the content unique enough to merit us taking out additional licences and extra cost? I doubt it.

What value does Knowledge Management add?

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Fri, 26 Mar 2010 08:30:00 +0000

Why "do" KM? Isn’t it just common sense? An intelligent way of working? The answer for me is yes it is indeed all of these, but KM facilitates and leverages all of those good ideas that might not come to anything otherwise, it supports innovation, enforces some of those good habits, more importantly it can reveal what measures would actually help an organisation to improve quality, save time and reduce risk.

A simple overview of the difference between conventional knowledge sharing and what is gained by using knowledge management is shown in a presentation from Óttar Erlingsson and Espen Grødem.

Sources disappearing?

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 10:06:00 +0000

Many of the online database aggregators that we rely on remove sources – sometimes without letting subscribers know. This could be because they have not been able to agree distribution rights and licence fees with the source owners, or even because that source could be seen as a competitor to one of the aggregators own products.

Some aggregators are great and tell you as soon as they know that it is going to disappear and why, but all too often we find out the hard way that a source is no longer included when we thought it was – a real quality issue.

Robin Neidorf from Freepint VIP has been carrying out a brief survey on sources: " What sources have you lost? What sources are you concerned you may lose? How have you adapted?"
Participants will receive a copy of the report, and a feature story on the results will also appear in an upcoming issue of VIP Magazine.

Hidden information

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 16:31:00 +0000

A lot of useful and current information is hidden away within Power Point presentations, and although an advanced search on a mainstream search engine may find the odd one, many will remain undiscovered.

There are several good tools to find this sort of material – I have previously used Slideshare but have recently discovered Slidefinder. Both of these – and probably several other dedicated sites out there, provide access to presentation materials that contain all sorts of corporate information, insights into lessons from other industries, statistics, concepts, background etc.

Slidefinder has the advantage of taking you directly to the slide that contains your search term, rather than you having to search through a presentation to find out whether the item is relevant to you.

Legal Document Management using SharePoint?

noreply@blogger.com (Kate Stanfield) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 08:42:00 +0000

Several organisations have been looking looking towards a Microsoft solution for a document management system (DMS) in recent years. The Orange Rag (Legal Technology Insider) has a nice overview - if you are a subscriber.

Some are pushed in that direction because their organisation already has SharePoint and want to leverage and integrate with other Microsoft applications, collaborative platforms and Word, others are looking that way because it could be a cheaper alternative to some of the bigger systems like Interwoven and Opentext. Finding a good SharePoint solution out of the box is certainly exercising a few minds; version control, security, individual document numbers, metadata retention, lack of email management and integration have all been issues.

There is of course lots of information from Microsoft, such as on the Microsoft TechNet site and Sharepoint 2010 appears to be the answer. However, these do not necessarily highlight some of the issues, so there are many blogs and many Microsoft partners happy to be paid to develop Sharepoint DMS solutions – but at a cost, plus development time. Such as Kraft Kennedy, and documents such as SharePoint briefing .

One recent announcement has come from Sword Group, who plan to launch a Legal Document Management Solution based on the Microsoft SharePoint platform. Sword Group have entered into a collaborative agreement with Lewis Silkin to acquire the IP for their “Legal centric Document Management application”, which uses SharePoint. Their objective is to develop a commercial package (Excalibur) for launch Q3 2010, targeted at law firms and in-house corporate legal counsels, so more of an out of the box product.
I am sure that there are many others in the race to a flexible Sharepoint DMS solution off the shelf.