People who know me for some time now would probably tell you how keen I have always been on trying out new technologies, specially those that provide a new and refreshing way of getting people to connect in order to facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration. Yes, you could say that I am an early adopter of KM Tools and proud of it. Yesterday I created a weblog post on a new social networking offering called Ziki that I feel brings some interesting points regarding the very much ignored area of expertise location within KM and while playing around with it I just realised how much disconnected I feel most of us, KM webloggers, are in the area of Knowledge Management. Let me explain.
While I was playing with the tool I was doing an initial set up where I was filling in my profile and consolidating some of the resources I get exposed to on a daily basis. One of the features that I liked the most was the fact that at the same time that I could have my own profile out there I could also search for groups that could match my interests. So, I thought, “Great! Let’s see if I can find a KM group I could join“. No, there wasn’t any. Pity. So I thought: “Ok, there isn’t any so let’s go ahead and create one. Why not, right?” So I went ahead and tried to create a new group based on KM, so that folks who would be trying the tool could also venture into joining that group and perhaps mark the beginning of the creation of a community of KM webloggers. And this is where I bumped into the first problem.
The sign up page for new groups requires that you enter a group URL so that people could relate to it, and while thinking about it, I just couldn’t think of a representative enough URL in the KM world that I would go ahead and use. I thought about entering Wikipedia’s KM entry, along with a whole bunch of the resources I shared over at the KM Awareness weblog post I created some time ago, but none of them felt right, if you know what I mean. And that is when it got me. There are plenty of really good KM bloggers, and KM thinkers, out there but we (If I may say so) all seem to be scattered around all over the place without a clear connection. A connection where we could all meet up and discuss some of the really good ideas we have been bouncing back and forth trying to help enrich them a whole lot more.
I mean, how many times have you found a really interesting KM related article and decided to weblog about it and after having shared your thoughts you find that quite a few other folks have been sharing their views already and could have contributed to the conversations big time? I know, me, too. Lots of us have been there. Even as I get to write this weblog post I just couldn’t help remembering Denham‘s superb post on Talking Up KM, where he states very clearly where we are in the KM world … A long way to go.
Thus with all that said, here is the main thought from this particular weblog post: there are plenty of KM webloggers out there sharing some really great insights about KM and their experiences with KM thus why don’t we go ahead and create a community for us? A place where we could hang out, share our thoughts, views and ideas on KM related topics that we feel others may be interested in. A place where everyone would be welcome to join and participate and share what they know about their experiences in KM. I realise there are plenty of mailing lists out there for KMers, but unless I got it wrong, I have yet to find the first one for KM webloggers. Thus why not go for one now ? What do you think ? I would love to hear your thoughts on this, specially if you think it could well work out or not.
Do you feel we are ready to boost our own KM weblogging connections? Share your thoughts appending a comment over here or just contacting me offline. Let’s see how far we can go with this.
Technorati Tags: Knowledge Management, KM, Metablogging, KM Blogging Community
Hi – Just wanted to mention that the current version of Ziki Group is not complete. We’ll soon release more features, and we’ll actually make it optional to have a group url. We’ve just launched, so we’re progressively adding new functionalities:-) Ziki Groups will actually benefit from the same features as Ziki People (eg. you’ll be able to aggregate the content of a group).We’ll certainly keep you updated when we release new features. Thanks for the post and see you on ziki š And btw, you’ve got a very interesting blog!
Hello Severine and welcome to elsua! Thanks very much for the feedback comments and further input! Excellent stuff! I shall certainly be looking forward to those different features as I am sure we would be able to benefit from them. Actually, we are in the process of creating and facilitating a group of KM bloggers thus we may be able to leverage with this at some point and get exposed to all those great features. Stay tuned for more to come ! But I really appreciate you dropping by and sharing with us what will be coming up shortly in Ziki. Very nice!
Thanks again for the kind comments and have a good one!
Hi Luis, Thanks for your mentions of my articles in your blog. You’ve got a very ambitious site going here! Congratulations! One suggestion I’d make related to this article is that I have found ActKM’s discussion group to be a fantastic online KM community. You’ll recognize the names of many of the posters there, interesting and pithy issues are raised, and although it’s not a community of bloggers per se, I would bet that 80% of the members do have blogs that reference KM in some way. I submit that some serious “discussing” among leaders in the field is going on there! One thing that appeals to me is that it is essentially an Australian group, although people from all over the world are members. It makes for some interesting perspectives. (http://www.actkm.org) Keep up the good work! Best wishes.
Hello Kaye and welcome to elsua! Thanks very much for your kind feedback comments and for the information details. Greatly appreciated. Yes, indeed, I do know about actKM, in fact, I have been a member of that KM community for a good number of months and I certainly thoroughly enjoyed the different conversations taking place. In fact, I do know personally a few of the people in the group as having worked with them or met them face-to-face. I have also been weblogging about some of their activities already elsewhere over here. I agree with you that perhaps quite a few of those folks do actually have their own KM weblogs and so forth, but the main primary focus of actKM as far as tooling is concerned is through the mailing lists, which is terrific, for the folks who prefer to use that method of communication. However, I felt that it would be a good thing as well to have set up a KM webloggers community where through the usage of our weblogs as a starting point we could certainly help bring into the table a whole lot more conversations around the topic of Knowledge Management and beyond.
I do not see KMBloggers as a substitute of what actKM has been doing all along, in fact, I think it would be a terrific complement for this already existing KM resource as it would help people build up further on their blogrolls and connections to continue sharing their ideas / thoughts about KM related topics. Thus as far as I can see it is a win-win situation where we would be trying to accommodate the needs from those folks who prefer weblogs and whatever other social software to get together and then the traditional tools already in place, like the ones actKM has been using all along, like the mailing lists.
Thanks again for the feedback and look forward to hearing back from you.