judith meskill - soc.media.rocks

Susan Pinker of The Globe and Mail has a "Dear Susan" column. Yesterday's title for Susan's column was "Satisfaction is a moving target". And while this is not exceedingly germane to my typical 'knowledge notes' topics, it did make me chuckle to compare choosing peanut butter to choosing a career in KM.
A reader, 'Just Me' asks (after a detailed explanation of her hiatus from working due to a number of reasons):
 
Should I take more college courses in knowledge management? I don't seem to have a passion or can't define one. Where should I go from here? Is it even viable for me to start over?
--Just Me and My Cats
 
To which Susan Pinker replies:
 
Dear Just Me,
 
Your predicament reminds me of shopping for peanut butter in a big supermarket. Should you buy the one you liked as a child? The one without fat, sugar or salt, but perhaps without taste? What about the organic one; it's better for you but you read somewhere that it contains a weird toxic mould. Smooth? Crunchy? The one with the peanut on top or the oil slick on top?
...While I'm not suggesting that choosing a career is as trivial as buying peanut butter, there is a limit to how much your happiness hinges on making the perfect choice.
 
...To extrapolate to your situation, now that you're healthy and your parents are settled, I don't think it's critical whether you work part-time, full-time, in business, library science, knowledge management or a combination of the above. What is critical is that you get back into the labour market and away from your cats, at least for a few hours a day.

Dina Mehta takes a break from her break to pass on this comic originally posted by Jan Karlsbjerg:

Hmmm, a great prelude to the next stage of the Corporate Weblogging Pitch Contest by the Judging Panelists?

Need a kick start to get this summer pitching fun going. Or, should I postpone to the fall?

Once upon a time, in a land far, far away…
 
Actually on 11 May 2004, Matt Mower 'IM'ed me that he and PaoloValdemarin (both of evectors and k-collector fame) had been talking about arranging a "SocialNetworking for Enterprises" event in London.
 
They were inspired by the fact that both Stowe Boyd and I are going to be in Nice, France to present at the iDate conference on 15-16 July 2004. Stoweand I had both, separately, expressed our individual interests in getting together with our EU cohort for some type ofevent.
 
Subsequently, on 18 May 2004, there was an IRC chat with a number of folksincluding Matt Mower, Marc Canter, MartinRoell, Ross Mayfield (host of the Social Tools forEnterprises Symposium Socialtext space), Paolo Valdemarin, Lilia Efimova, Lee Bryant, Suw Charman, a number ofothers, and myself. Since that daymany emails and IM chats laterthis event has really begun to take shape. Largelythanks to the un-flagging efforts of Matt Mower. Go Matt!
 
In London, on 12 July 2004, there will be an "event aimed to be a practical get go for CxO's in Enterprises as to howsocial tools & methods can help them with problems like insufficient collaboration, low innovation and unmanagedrisk" according to some early thoughts from Matt Mower'sweblog…
 
Stowe posts a link to the venue information for this London Symposium, scheduled to take place at the Bloomsbury Square Training Centre and which is nowbeing organized by KM Cluster.
 
More as the date continues to draw nearer… (-:=

Fujitsu Extends TRIOLE Strategy for IT Optimization to Global Market
...TRIOLE, which Fujitsu first introduced and has been developing in Japan, is based on real-life customer experiences and three core technological areas in which it has leading-edge expertise: integration, virtualization and automation. Virtualization separates applications and data from dedicated systems; automation refers to the autonomic self-healing and adaptation of IT infrastructure to meet changing business needs; and integration is the fast, low-cost and low-risk implementation of those technologies across the full IT infrastructure spectrum, including server, storage, network and middleware elements. Fujitsu has applied these core concepts to develop pre-verified templates, called Platform-integration Templates (or Pi Templates) that serve as functional building blocks to speed the construction of highly reliable open-system installations...
 
..."A major advantage of the TRIOLE strategy is that Fujitsu bears the cost of Quality Assurance (QA)," said Vernon Turner, group vice president for IDC. "Removing QA costs and complexity off the customer floor significantly reduces risk for customers and allows them to implement stable and reliable systems via a shared knowledge base."...

Mobile Social Networking is moving right along…

Hey SocialSoftwareWeblog - Just a heads up that dodgeball.com - "friendster for mobile phones" - just launced in 5 new cities: Austin, Chicago, Portland, Seattle, and Washington DC. http://www.dodgeball.com Thanks.

I am working on a new post featuring Mobile Social Networkingif you would like me to include mention of your MobileSocial Networking Solution, and you think I don't know about your service, then drop me a comment on this post, or atip through the 'Participate' box in the right hand column of this weblog. (-:=

In a press release on Yahoo! today: LexisNexis(R) Technology at the U.S. Internal Revenue Service (IRS) Wins Knowledge Management Award.
DAYTON, Ohio, May 26 /PRNewswire/ -- LexisNexis U.S., a leading provider of legal, news, public records and business information services, is proud to announce that the LexisNexis database network technology solution provided to the IRS won the E-Gov Institute's 2004 Knowledge Management Award. The Award was presented at the E-Gov Institute's Knowledge Management Conference in Washington, D.C.
 
...The Internal Revenue Manual Knowledge Base, is a linkable, searchable electronic network of information and data repositories with the online Internal Revenue Manual at the core. Combined with tax and legal research services, this network provides a comprehensive suite of tax administration tools for all IRS frontline employees. LexisNexis provides tax solutions to over 35,000 IRS employees and started working with the IRS to refine this network in early 2000.

Something to watch out for...
 
While perusing my news feed this morning I came across an announcement from Penn State Live regarding Penn State University Leaves of Absence 2004-05.
Among the numerous leaves listed was one:
 
Richard R. Young, associate professor of business administration, to conduct research and develop further the concept of the application of knowledge management to the functioning of supply chains; to develop a manuscript for publication in an academic journal; and to compile research necessary for the publication of a book, Knowledge Management for Effective Supply Chains.
Best of luck Richard... (-:=

Thanks ever so much to Peter Caputa's, Monster Buys Tickle, who in turnattributes to Rafat Ali's PaidContent, for theheads up on this announcementas I was totally distracted by other events in my life today!
 
According to the Business Wire press release that was alsoin my newsreader:

Tickle has also proven to be a strong viral marketing engine, as more than 200,000 e-mails from Tickle members are sent each day encouraging others to join.

"The acquisition of Tickle brings a powerful new dimension to Monster, contributing proven consumer revenue-generating subscription offerings and unique interactive content that should enhance every site in our network of properties," said Andrew J. McKelvey, Chairman and CEO of Monster Worldwide. "Tickle's expertise in career assessment testing, networking and matching, combined with the viral nature of those businesses, dovetails perfectly with Monster's vast user base. With scientific research at its foundation, Tickle adds yet another layer to Monster's screening and hiring tools, providing recruiters a window into a candidate's personality and work preferences that goes beyond past achievements to who they are and their fit within the hiring organization. As part of our long-term strategy, we have been committed to diversifying our revenue streams and to expanding our consumer online services. Tickle is the ideal business to help us achieve these goals."

The addition of Tickle's services will enable job seekers on Monster to access a variety of career assessment tests ranging from "Right Job, Wrong Job" and " Career Personality" to "Career Interest Inventory" and "The Corporate Culture Test" to learn more about their aptitudes, job skills and career goals. Based on the test findings, job seekers will be able to better determine which job positions are the best fit based on their individual profiles.

On May 17, 2004 Gartner announced vendor placement in its 'Magic Quadrant for the Smart Enterprise Suite, 2004'. By browsing the press releases of a number of the proud 'Magic Quadrant' leaders, I was able to ascertain that IBM, Open Text, SAP, Vignette, Plumtree Software, and Hummingbird landed in the 'Leader' category this year. And Microsoft sits alone in the 'Challenger' category. Hmm...
 
Of Gartner's definition of the Smart Enterprise Suite, Judith Lamont, writes for KMWorld--The smart enterprise suite - Gateway to the KM vision:
"...The prospect of being able to bring all the technologies that have been labeled as knowledge management enablers into a unified environment is enticing to vendors and customers alike. The smart enterprise suite comes closer to fulfilling the KM vision than anything else to date..."

Here's a new one for the YASNSMeta List. Interested in double dating?

eTwine is going for multiple conceptsdating, event planning, socialnetworking, group dating, bloggingall in an effort to help you to tie up your social life. (-:=

An eMediaWire press release announces--Europe's semantic web projects start to mesh.
Galway, Ireland (PRWEB) May 23 2004 - An international audience of over 220 semantic web specialists and enthusiasts from Europe, USA, Australia and Japan attended the 1st European Semantic Web Symposium (ESWS 2004) on 10-12 May in Heraklion, Crete.
ESWS 2004, which featured academic research papers, industrial papers, tutorials, posters and demonstrations, also showcased three major EU-funded semantic web projects - SEKT (Semantic Knowledge Technologies), DIP (Data, Information and Process Integration), and KnowledgeWeb. These projects form part of a natural "cluster" collectively referred to as SDK.
 
...SEKT (SEmantic Knowledge Technologies), another of the EU-funded projects featured at ESWS, is coordinated by BT the UK telecoms operator and a leader in the information communication technology market. Dr. John Davies, the SEKT project director said: "The World Wide Web today is full of unstructured text. That's fine for people, but useless for computers. In this scenario, the computer isn't actually doing much computation - it is really a presentation device. The Semantic Web will make web-based information machine-processable - a key area of research in SEKT. SEKT envisions knowledge workplaces where the boundaries between heterogeneous data sources are broken down, and where knowledge management is fully integrated into day-to-day business tasks. Appropriate knowledge will be automatically delivered to the right people at the right time at the right granularity via a range of user devices."
 
Professor Rudi Studer from the University of Karlsruhe, SEKT's Technical Director, explained that the project will integrate 3 key Semantic Web technologies: "The synergy between human language technology, machine learning techniques as well as ontology management methods will be exploited in order to generate in a semi-automatic way the ontological structures and related metadata that are needed for realizing Next Generation Knowledge Management solutions". The end result will be to enable greater productivity for knowledge workers across a wide range of professional disciplines and industrial sectors.
 
KnowledgeWeb, the third project in the trio of semantic web projects, is also funded by the Information Society Technologies (IST) Priority for Research, Technology Development & Demonstration under the 6th Framework Programme of the European Commission. The mission of KnowledgeWeb is to strengthen European industry and service providers in one of the most important areas of current computer technology: semantic web enabled e-work and e-commerce. The KnowledgeWeb network of excellence will focus effort around the outreach of semantic web technology to industry, education and research in order to ensure critical mass, maximum impact and full support from industry...

Stacy Cowley, IDG News Service, writes of New Web Structure Promoted in PCWorld.com.
Stacy writes about the Semantic Web vision that Tim Berners-Lee's unfolded in a keynote speech at the 13th annual World Wide Web conference, along with an important milestone for Semantic Web--the development of two foundational standards, the Resource Description Framework (RDF) and the OWL Web Ontology Language (OWL).
 
...Projects involving Semantic Web technologies are already under way at several organizations. Boeing is exploring semantics-based applications for information and application integration and interoperability, and for knowledge management. Adobe Systems has built into its products Adobe Extensible Metadata Platform (XMP), an RDF-based metadata system that links contextual information with content files...
Berners-Lee urged the conference attendees to pitch in on the Semantic Web-enablement of online artifacts to help "bootstrap things in the short term".

I have been posting about the WWW2004, the Semantic Web, and new knowledgemanagement projects over on my knowledge notes weblog over the past few days. Whilst researching those posts I found anarticle Berners-Lee Keeps WWW2004 Focused on SemanticWebby Paul Ford on O'Reilly's XML.com.
 
Paul opens thusly:

A peculiar buzz is back in the halls of WWW2004 the mix of hubris and geek name dropping, cheap suits and over-eager handshakes that last prevailed in 2000. "I nearly invented the web," says a fellow with a large stack of promotional postcards advertising new social networking software. "People are downloading our new XML API almost before we upload it," said another, making introductions to anyone who wanders within distance.

Will YASNS be getting on the Semantic WebBus?

It's not very often that I find Social Computing in the news buttoday in the Globe and Mail there is anannouncement that Bell Canada has made a commitment to fund research that will focus primarily on wireless technologyand social computing:

VANCOUVER, May 20 Bell Canada has announced a $1.25-million commitment to the University of British Columbia to support technology research. The five-year commitment is the first in Western Canada for the Bell University Laboratories program.

Bell is exploring a number of potential projects with researchers at UBC and creating a governance process with equal UBC and Bell representation. Research projects will focus on wireless technology and social computing. The $1.25-million for UBC represents a five-year, annual commitment of $250,000.

Sion Barry, The Western Mail, writes about the University of Glamorgan's Welsh Institute for Competitive Advantage (WICA) and its aim to translate the latest research and development in strategic management into sound organisational principles in--ic Wales - University turning theory into workplace reality.
...Simon Brooks, senior lecturer at the university' s business school and head of the new unit, said, "We have surveyed over 130 businesses and assessed them on their use of strategic tools and techniques, strategic decision making, use of knowledge management, corporate social responsibility and organisational culture and leadership issues.
"We will be presenting an overview of what the key strategic issues facing businesses are and how they are dealing with them."
 
WICA, although based in Wales, will work with clients across the world on a collaborative basis.
 
Mr Brooks said, "We insist on engaging clients in the process, to ensure that they feel a greater sense of ownership of the findings and solutions and that the project remains within their requirements."...