A welcome present from Unbound Spiral

RSS Feed Full Posts.

A couple of reminders recently to provide readers with what they really want.  RSS Feeds that contain the full post.  It’s now done – isn’t choice wonderful?  You can choose.  If you desire a full post rather than the excerpt, please change your subscription to:

Full Posts (XML) http://www.henshall.com/blog/index2.rdf 

Why is it that MT’s default setting is excerpts?

Makes me think about my own newreader.  I wish I could toggle between full and excerpts.  Even better scan quickly on excepts and then toggle to full posts.  Early on I tried AmphetaDesk and currently just use the Radio one.  Except I get posts that blow its formating from time to time.  Is there a newreader that can improve my experience?  Is there one I can install on my server? That is also easy to do?How does a group go collective newsreading?  A my, yours, ours subscription file? Are there tools mapping subscriptions in this format? 

[Unbound Spiral]

Of course, I updated my subscription list right away. I’ve been tracking Stuart’s excellent observations on the world of knowledge work for a while now. With full feeds it will be that much easier.

Stuart does raise some important points about some needed evolution in RSS feed readers. One tool that I have added to the mix that helps in my “Radio” environment is Mikel Maron’s MyRadio tool. It lets me do some of the things Stuart asks for.

RSS from the user’s side

really simple shit. I love “RSS”. I love my aggregator. I want the two to work in harmony for a long, long time. If I understand correctly, several blogtool vendors are making up their own versions of rss as they go along. Most of these new formats won’t work with my aggregator unless adaptations are made. This doesn’t make any sense to me, if you want your blogtools to become popular, wouldn’t you want the established base be able to read them? Reminds me of railway history, where newcomers developed incompatible ‘broad-gauge‘ trains and tracks. Go ahead and learn from this history, the outcome is as predictable. [Adam Curry: Adam Curry’s Weblog]

Like Adam, I consider myself a technology user, albeit one that is willing to pop the hood and poke at things myself rather than wait for the mechanic to arrive.  I too love RSS and my aggregator. They are the ‘secret sauce’ that gives me immense control over my information environment.

For example, I just checked, and I am currently subscribed to 236 news sources in “Radio”‘s aggregator. I rarely surf to these sites and don’t particularly care what stories look like in context. I get annoyed with sites that don’t provide a full RSS feed and insist on offering snippets or headlines only. Sites that provide no RSS feed essentially don’t exist for me. Selfish? Certainly. Shortsighted and apt to miss something of importance to me? Possibly, although I expect I’ll hear about it from one of my sources that does provide an RSS feed.

95% of my online information comes to me by way of my aggregator. For much of what I am interested in — business uses of information technology and knowledge management related topics — important stories hit my aggregator two to three weeks before they show up in conventional online sources.

I have been following the recent debates over variations in RSS formats in a bemused sort of way. Engineers are always convinced that they can do a better job than the next person. Have you ever browsed the parts bins in a hardware store? I suppose that when engineers were debating the merits of philips head, flat head, and torx screws it certainly mattered to them who did what when. I just want things to more or less work together.

I’m enough of a weekend tinkerer and early adopter that I will tolerate a certain amount of breakage from time to time. If I don’t have the right screwdriver I’m likely to just pound on things with a bigger hammer. But I do get annoyed when people try to invent new screws to sell their brand of screwdriver instead of trying to solve a real problem of connecting things.

One of the risks of choosing to be an early adopter is that I’ll end up picking tools that fail to pass the test of time. In that sense, standards do matter to me as protection against bad choices. The data that makes up what I’ve posted here since October of 2001 is in a format that protects me from the worst of those risks. And that does matter.

Scoble draws faulty analogies between Starbucks and Microsoft

Alex Hoffman writes his own answer to Eric Kidd: “he needs to change his focus away from technology, platforms and the development community, to real world end-users and their requirements.”

One last thought. My family just went out to dinner. On the way back we passed by our favorite coffee place. Named Victor’s. Hey, wait a minute. This is Redmond. Not far from Starbucks’ headquarters. In Eric’s world, Victor would never be allowed to sell coffee.

Every day Victor reminds me that someone can beat “the dominant corporation” and deliver a better product.

Think that Victor doesn’t have a chance? 25 years ago you probably were the one saying “no fast-food franchise has a chance against McDonalds.” But, look at the per-store sales of In-N-Out vs. McDonalds and you’ll see that In-N-Out is another example of a dominant player getting their lunch eaten.

[The Scobleizer Weblog]

The fundamental problem with this analogy and the several others that Scoble offers is that none of these other industries are subject to the network effects that software platforms are. Scoble’s argument is that other big, dominant, competitors proved vulnerable to competition so Microsoft is vulnerable too.

What he conveniently overlooks is the critical differences in the markets we are talking about. In software platforms, unlike markets for expensive coffee, it matters what other customers are doing. Imagine, if you will, a coffee market that was similar to the operating systems market. In that market, if I bought coffee at Victor’s I wouldn’t be able to have a conversation with anyone who bought coffee at Starbucks without permission from Starbucks. Or imagine a world where you had to get permission from the zoning board and Starbucks to open a coffee shop. Then you’re getting closer to the world that platform vendors like Microsoft get to play in.

So, Scoble, here’s a question for you. When you’re evangelizing Longhorn in days to come, will you be just talking about some whizbang new feature or might you mention in passing the eleventy gazillion users in the installed base?

Learning from others mistakes – this is broken

This Is Broken: Bad Design from Good Experience.. Ever notice design errors in everyday things? Send them in for a post-mortem to mark at goodexperience dot com. He’s cataloging them at This Is Broken. Learning from mistakes. [a klog apart]

One of the powers of imagination is that we have the opportunity to learn not just from our own mistakes, but also from the mistakes of others.  Repeating others’ mistakes is a singular waste of time. You don’t make progress unless you’re making new and interesting kinds of mistakes.

I’m reminded of a comment I first came across reading the proceedings of the 1968 NATO conference on software engineering (one of those classics in the field which I unfortunately gave away years ago, glad to see it is available on the web). Paraphrasing Newton’s remark that he had seen farther by standing on the shoulders of giants, software engineering had mostly been characterized by “standing on each others’ feet”.   

Must ‘clueful politician’ be an oxymoron?

Lots of commentary and reactions to Orrin Hatch’s recent less than clueful remarks. Laughter and ridicule seem to be the most appropriate response so I appreciated this effort from Terry Frazier. Twitting the other recent nonsense about someone trying to lay claim to the term clue-by-four seems like a nice bonus.

I’m surprised that Hatch didn’t also endorse the “No Mental Theft Act“

Hatch to Endorse Snipers for Cubs ‘Rooftop Viewers’. AP News (www.aggravatedpress.com) is reporting this morning that Sen. Orrin “Hatchetman” Hatch, R-Utah, spoke at a DC-area Lions Club dinner Wednesday evening on the critical problem of copyright theft.

[…] Referring to the lawsuit filed by the Chicago Cubs baseball team to stop local building owners from watching games without paying a fee Hatch said “I’m all for peaceful settlements in cases like this, but there is no excuse for breaking copyright laws. These people have been warned. If the Cubs want to hire some snipers and pick these thieves off the rooftops I’m all for it. And they shouldn’t be held liable. A few dozen sniper shootings and people will think twice about watching baseball games without a ticket.” Hatch — best known as a deeply religious folk music artist, a technophobe, and a fan of long underwear — also serves in the US Senate when he’s not out advocating corporate attacks on private American citizens. […] Hatch, whose patriotic folk hit, America United includes the line “Those who would divide us could not realize, that from the smoke and ashes America would rise…United…United” received a standing ovation from the Lions Club crowd. “Copyright terrorists are evil-doers, striking at the heart of this country. They have no idea how far we’ll go to stand against them. These baseball thieves are just the beginning. Soon we’ll be destroying computers, cleaning up the Internet, and saving our children and future generations by any means necessary!” As the crowd filed out of the crumbling auditorium to the parking lot they were met by throngs of teenagers — all waiting to drive their aging grandparents home. Dozens of cliques had formed around users with Apple iPods and they were eagerly trading their favorite re-mixes and singles, as the beats of pirated tunes boomed from car stereo speakers. “Look at these fine young Americans,” said a clueless Hatch. “All waiting here to help their elders. These are the young people we care about, the ones we need to protect from the evil-doers. Yes sir. These young people are the future of our country.” […] [AP News]

Author’s note: The above story is satire. In keeping with the spirit and antics of our political leaders it is puerile, mean-spirited, even borderline moronic. But I feel better. Copyright laws in this country are no joke. Artists and creators deserve protection, but the paying public has rights as well. Congress has forgotten this and has allowed a tiny handful of mega-corporations to lock away our culture and our heritage. We deserve better. Now go out and convince the good people of Utah to hit Senator Hatch with an electoral clue-by-four™. [b.cognosco]

Mapping our way to knowledge management

Part of successful knowledge management in organizations will revolve around how good a job we do at drawing “maps” that help explain and represent this new territory. Dane Carlson offers pointers to some resources we can adapt to that task.

You Are Here: Maps 101. How to create a good map. I’ll remember this for the next Talk Like a Pirate Day. via The Map Room: A weblog about maps, a good read itself…. [Dane Carlson’s Weblog]

In the wonderful serendipity that using a news aggregator offers, Frank Patrick’s Focused Performance weblog (a great resource on project management brings the following tidbit:

A Clarification on Maps and Plans. A Clarification on Maps and Plans — I recently quoted Alford Korzybski, using his often cited statement,

“A map is not the territory.”

Upon researching it, I didn’t go far enough. The complete statement from is actually…

“A map is not the territory it represents, but if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts for its usefulness.”

Puts a whole ‘nother spin on it, doesn’t it?

Project plans and schedules can be made to model a “similar structure” to the project itself, sufficiently reflecting reasonable expectations of the future as well as uncertainty to be useful. (I think someone — who was it? — once said that “all models are wrong, but some models are useful.” If that’s so, then I’m comfortable with the idea that some models are more useful than others.) [Frank Patrick’s Focused Performance Blog]

If those of us talking about knowledge management are exploring new territory, one of our responsibilities is to draw the maps that will encourage those who stayed behind to follow us and show them paths that are safe and interesting to travel.

Blogging for knowledge workers–think compound interest and start tomorrow

Why PhDs should start blogging.

Things New PhDs Should Start Doing [via José Luis Orihuela]

  1. Keep a Research Diary
  2. Maintain an Electronic Bibliography
  3. Know Your Search Engines
  4. An Archiving System for Useful Info
  5. Learn The Composition of your Research Community
  6. Document Useful Learning Experiences
  7. Keep a Professional Home Page
  8. Maintain an Updated CV
  9. Get Involved Early On
  10. Develop Research Meta-awareness

This article provide a good reference to justify why PhDs should start blogging 🙂

[Mathemagenic]

This is a much richer post than its title might suggest. What it really offers is a nicely thought out and articulated mini-case about what any aspiring knowledge worker ought to be doing to get more leverage out of their work.

While it’s never too late to start these kinds of strategies for yourself, the earlier you do, the sooner you’ll start building and refining your own private, custom-designed and organized knowledge base. Youe specifics may vary, but this provides a good road map to what you ought to be thinking about. And if you can’t generalize and abstract from the world of a Ph.D. student to your own world of knowledge work, then perhaps you ought to start looking for one of those nice 1950s assembly line jobs that don’t exist anymore.

It’s just like compound interest, the sooner you start the better.

If the only tool you have is a hammer…

A Day In My Life, By Bill Gates. (SOURCE:Scobleizer Radio Weblog)-PREDICTION: Within 10 years, the centre of most knowledge workers (including Bill Gates) will be a blog type application. NOT email. <quote> I’d say that of my time sitting in my office, that is, time outside of meetings, which is a couple of hours, two-thirds of that is sitting in E-mail. E-mail is really my primary application, because that’s where I’m getting notifications of new things, that’s where I’m stirring up trouble by sending mail out to lots of different groups. So it’s a fundamental application. And I think that’s probably true for most knowledge workers, that the E-mail is the one they sit in the most. Inside those E-mails they get spreadsheets, they get Word documents, they get PowerPoints, so they navigate out to those things, but the center is E-mail. </quote> [Roland Tanglao’s Weblog]

Roland catches the real point of this interview with Gates. The interview provides some interesting raw data on the day-to-day work practices of our economy’s quintessential knowledge worker. Email is the tool he has for communications so it is the tool that he uses. It is worth seeing how Gates thinks through how to get leverage from the tools that he has available. We all need to exercise that kind of thought about how to use our knowledge tools — blogs and aggregators included.

Diving into the middle

Mark Bernstein: The core challenge of the weblog is simply that we’re always coming into the middle of the story. This is what I meant with my post Orientation. I’ll steal the David Mamet quote, from his book On Directing Film:

In film or on the street, people who describe themselves to you are lying. Here is the difference: In the bad film, the fellow says, hello, Jack, I’m coming over to your home this evening because I need to get the money you borrowed from me. In the good film, he says, where the hell were you yesterday?

[Tesugen.com]

I wish I had seen this quote 18 months ago when I first started blogging. I did manage to figure it out, but it would have been nice to have this little piece of advice.

It reminds me of the editor who worked with me on my first book, Managing Information Strategically. Jon used to start reading my draft chapters at the top of page three. When I asked him why, he said that was where he always found my real lead. I still struggle with diving into the point I want to make and resisting the urge to offer all the backstory.

Treading softly with blogs in organizations

Site Redesign.

Wherever I go, CIO’s and other business leaders tell me they are in the process of a “Web site redesign.” Site redesign is a good thing but it may obfuscate more important issues. The motivation behind site redesign is typically a desire to increase traffic, make things easier to find, provide better organization of information, or improve the visual attractiveness of the site. These are all good things to do but my experience has been that the reason the traffic is less than desired is not because of the design of the site. It is not the look and feel, nor is it the lack of sophisticated information retrieval. I believe that the most important drivers of traffic are the availability of on demand, integrated, useful transactions and, secondly, the availability of access to expertise. (read more)

[via John Patrick’s weblog]

Some interesting commentary from John Patrick about corporate websites, both public and intranets. He has some very on point observations about the opportunity that blogs present as part of knowledge sharing inside companies.

Blogging is revolutionizing how information gets published and shared. A good blogger loves to communicate and uses blogging tools to write a “column” full of links to experts and sources of information. The blogger may or may not be the expert in a particular area but if not she knows who the expert is and acts as an intermediary and translator, thereby leveraging the available knowledge and expertise. A good enterprise blogger knows everything going on in a particular domain — the key people, the key projects, the key resources, etc. Blogging is not an index of information or a database — it is a living breathing dynamic “diary” of the blogger’s conscious. A blog can include comments from readers, moderated discussion, or an open discussion forum but for enterprise purposes, the simpler the better. The idea is not to reproduce the “bulletin boards” and “news groups” of the past. Blogging is more of a way to get to the experts than to have a free-for-all discussion group.

[via John Patrick’s weblog]

As many have observed with Marketing driving external websites and HR driving most intranets you’re not likely to have people who grasp the impact of dynamic content and voice. You’re also not likely to find the sorts of people comfortable with giving up control to allow the company’s voice to emerge from the harmony of its individuals’ voices.

CXO Bloggers , such as those tracked by Jon Udell, will help legitimize blogging as a knowledge sharing tool. So too will the use of blogs in IT and Project Management settings as Frank Patrick, Phil Windley, and Jonathan Peterson have recently been discussing. Some of their key observations:

Sharing of learnings, surprises and mistakes, is what collaboration for successful project work requires — not just within a particular team, but across programs and portfolios that might benefit. The first is about exploiting immediate opportunities. The latter is about assuring the future does not have to depend on relearning the same lessons [Frank Patrick]

Ex-CIO Phil Windley offers lots of insight into the challenges and potential of blogs in IT management and clearly recognizes the organizational challenges of getting blogs to take root:

One of the things I’ve noticed is that blogging requires an abundance mentality. I’ve also noted that blogs encourage a culture of candor. How do you develop a culture that supports sharing? Are the cultural properties that support blogging the same ones that support building a first rate IT organization

Peterson also has a series of excellent observations about blogs in project management, well summarized by Frank Patrick. One tidbit that I find intriguing is that “the beauty of RSS is the potential for extensibility to a ‘good enough’ level which still leverages all the tools and code that has already been created.” [Jonathan Peterson]

Buried in this is the subtle promise of blogs and RSS aggregation as a tool for knowledge sharing in organizations. The simplicity of the tools allows them to be gently grafted on to existing processes and practices with minimal disruption. The challenge is to let this simplicity work its course. The tempation will be to over-design, over-engineer, and over-control. Resisting that temptation will depend on a strong sensitivity to the dynamics of organizations. We do live in interesting times for helping organizations and knowledge workers make better use of knowledge.