Penny Edwards at Headshift characterizes the 2008 AmLaw Tech Survey as a "disappointing read from a social software/organizational change perspective." Alan Cohen, who reported on the survey in Law.com's Legal Technology section, admits that while there's lots of talk within law firms about social media tools, relatively few of those firms have deployed many of... Continue Reading →
7 Principles of Law Firm KM
Dave Snowden's 3 Rules of knowledge management have expanded to 7 Principles, now that he is focusing on law firm knowledge management. (Perhaps there is just something about lawyers that invites the creation of more rules). Here are the 7 Principles: 1. Knowledge can only be volunteered, it cannot be conscripted. 2. We only know... Continue Reading →
War Between Social Media and KM?
Connie Crosby pointed me to Ralph Poole's post, Social Media vs. Knowledge Management. In it he discusses Venkatesh Rao's assertion in the Enterprise 2.0 blog that there exists a generational war between the proponents of knowledge management and the proponents of social media. In Ralph's experience, this rings true:I have seen it in the way... Continue Reading →
Microblogging: Private Conversations at a Live Mike
In ReadWriteWeb's report on microblogging at BestBuy, Laura Fitton (of Pistachio Consulting) writes about her conversation with Gary Koelling and Steve Bendt regarding their implementation of Mix. Mix (built on HeadMix) is described as an "enterprise microsharing application," which is intended to faciliate networking, problem solving and idea sharing among Best Buy's 160,000 employees. According... Continue Reading →
When is a Wiki Worth the Effort?
Mark Gould has an interesting post on Enlightened Tradition entitled, Social software in law firms. In it he cites the rule of thumb regarding participation inequality in social networks: - 90% read, but do not contribute (i.e., "lurkers") - 9% contribute occasionally (i.e., "dabblers") - 1% contribute regularly (i.e., "true believers")Unfortunately, it does get worse:-... Continue Reading →
Collaboration — All or Nothing?
In my prior post on Culture and Technology, I talked about the need to match carefully the social media tools you are offering in your law firm knowledge management program with the organizational culture of your firm. Now we need to go a little deeper. Many discussions on this topic treat collaboration in a binary... Continue Reading →
Culture and Technology
Knowledge management without cultural awareness rarely is successful. You can be on the verge of deploying the best technology tools in the world, but if those tools aren't in synch with your organizational culture, you might as well distribute quill pens and parchment. Carl Frappaolo (VP Market Intelligence a AIIM International) and Dan Keldsen (Director,... Continue Reading →
The Art of Creating Possibilities
The whole point of KM is Innovation. We aren't putting people in conversation with each other, soliciting their stories or helping them exchange their learning just because it makes for a nicer workplace. We're also doing this because it's precisely that cross-pollination of ideas and experience that helps birth new ideas and new ways of... Continue Reading →
How Wikis Mess With Your Mind
This seems to be my week for web 2.0 experiments: first Twitter and now Wikis. You can read about my first forays into Twitter elsewhere, but here I'd like to talk about one of the most interesting things I'm learning about wikis: namely, how they work with (or mess with) your mind.Until now, most Wiki... Continue Reading →
Getting Serious About Collaboration
A large number of professionals in knowledge management appear to have drunk the kool-aid regarding the value of collaboration. And now, collaboration is the latest buzzword tripping off the tongues of academics, activists, reformers, consultants and web 2.0 vendors. That many people can't be wrong, can they?Perhaps it's time each collaboration advocate put their money... Continue Reading →
Above and Beyond KM 