Comments on: Confronting Your Favorite Canadian

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 22:31:11 +0000

Thanks for the tip, Daniel. I've heard that ThoughtFarmer is doing some
really good work.

- Mary

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Sat, 11 Jul 2009 18:31:11 +0000

Thanks for the tip, Daniel. I've heard that ThoughtFarmer is doing some
really good work.

- Mary

By: Daniel J. Pritchett

Daniel J. Pritchett — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 18:05:30 +0000

For what it's worth ThoughtFarmer claims to do the bidirectional email
integration thing I'm pushing. I haven't yet figured out how to make it
really hum in Sharepoint but I'm still looking.

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:57:55 +0000

You're absolutely right, Daniel. Unless you can compel participation in the collaboration system (which by definition seems so wrong!), you're going to have to find ways to entice people into it. Since they live in e-mail, we have to open an easy channel between e-mail and the collaboration system. Once they've tried the collaboration system, it will have to rise or fall on its own merits. But why preordain failure by setting up unnecessary barriers to entry?

- Mary

By: Daniel J. Pritchett

Daniel J. Pritchett — Fri, 10 Jul 2009 15:44:17 +0000

I still figure that email-based input and output are required to make a collaboration system really take off. As long as your on-the-go employees (middle management, consultants) are away from the desk most of the day they won't be participating in a system that doesn't play nice with email.

Submit by email. Read new submissions via email. Convert RSS feeds to email when the user prefers it. Email email email. It's not that emails themselves are bad for us, it's just the "private by default" nature of the traditional inbox that creates a black hole of knowledge.

Oh, I wrote a post of my own about integrating email with your collaboration workflow here: http://www.sharingatwork.com/2008/10/easier-to-... My blog is down at the moment but I'm working to get it back up ASAP.

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:14:33 +0000

Seth -

Thanks so much for keeping the conversation going.

Until we have a good smartphone/PDA channel for knowledge management, we aren't going to be able to extend the benefits of KM to all our internal clients who need it when they are away from the office. Even if we aren't all road warriors we still need mobile KM access unless we want to force our colleagues to find a computer in order to have KM support. I'd rather not be the one delivering that message to our users.

- Mary

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:09:28 +0000

That's great, Chris. I wish every vendor did this.

- Mary

By: VMaryAbraham

VMaryAbraham — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 23:08:56 +0000

That's a step in the right direction, Wendy. I know Blackberries are critical to business, I just haven't seen many examples of Blackberries facilitating KM.

- Mary

By: Seth Cargiuolo

Seth Cargiuolo — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 15:32:30 +0000

Our firm actually uses iPhones rather than Blackberries (with a few throwback Treo users mixed in), but the theme of your post definitely still applies. I definitely believe that KM systems/functions need to extend to the smartphone/PDA realm.

We're not lawyers, we're consultants, and a lot of us are road-warriors (and we don't spend a lot of time in offices). For the guys and gals on the road, there's not always a starbucks or panera or Kinko's available to use a login point, so it's essential for out people to be able to access the resources they need over a 3G network.

We're not totally there (hell, we're not even close) but my CTO and I (as CKO) spend a lot of time trying to find ways to enable our people to use their smartphone to get them into our core, critical systems.

While law firms may not face the same challenges we face, as far as the NEED for mobile access, I strongly believe that if you build the capability and implement it properly, your users will love you for it.

Just my 2¢. Another great post, thanks for starting the discussion!

By: Chris Yeh

Chris Yeh — Thu, 02 Jul 2009 14:39:43 +0000

Don't forget, PBworks Mobile Edition (available for free to paying customers) lets you access anything on your PBworks workspaces via your Blackberry, including files and documents!