Knowledge Management Systems Class Inspires Real-World Musings

9/3/06: first class readings were introductory pieces explaining the history of this relatively new field and to some extent, where it might be going.

I noticed that the “state of the notion” article about KMS was dated 1998, so I googled knowledge management and tons of stuff came up. I read a lot of it and it got me to thinking about projects I could do for this class:

A KMS for developing and sharing copyright expertise (or any other legal expertise) among attorneys in a firm, and facilitating delivery of better, faster answers to clients than one person acting alone can deliver.

I found a blog entry (Rajesh Jain, July 2, 2002) called Google + Blog = Personal Knowledge Management System at http://www.emergic.org/archives/2002/07/03/index.html. Very interesting idea. I should implement it for this class, maybe for all my classes and for work: From the blog:

I have realised that I now use the blog as an extension of my own memory: articles I
like, ideas that interest me, excerpts, comments are all being posted on my
blog. With Categories and Search, it now strengthens my memory. I can look up
things much faster, review recent ideas or thoughts in much more detail. I used
to make notes in my notebook when I read articles, but now I find myself doing
so on the blog. The attractive features are the ability to excerpt the part from
the article that interested me, the ability to comment and then later search.

What I would like is a private blog, which becomes a superset of the
public blog and a part which I only keep to myself. This way, I can post all my
notes, meeting summaries, etc. on this blog, knowing fully well that I can find
them again (and get the context). Searching paper notes can be quite hard --
they become like a black hole, difficult to get anything out of them. So, now, I
am using my notebook (the paper one) for doodling and thinking. When I am
somewhat ready, I post on my blog (like I am doing now).

I think there's a much bigger idea here...that of using the blog and
the other Digital Dashboard components (RSS Aggregator, outlines, directories
and filters) as a "personal knowledgement management system". This does away
with the weakness of the primary memory (our brain) -- aging. The blog becomes
our tertiary memory, since Google won't be able to index our private blog. So
now, I can note down all kinds of things on my private blog, knowing it will
never age or forget. (Well, sometimes, it may be better to forget some things,
so then we go hit the delete button!)

How do you even create a blog? Let’s see…

And here I am at the blogger site.

Well, enough about process. So, tomorrow is the first class meeting and we'll see how real world it can be (or will it need to be more theoretical to pass muster?)