KM Blog

I'd like to propose that blogs are a great tool for generating information content, but the problems of sorting and organizing--and distilling knowledge--remain challenges.

I've had a wonderful--and revolutionary experience--during SXSW. I was able to go to the Daypop web site, search for sxsw, and read notes on the panels I wasn't able to attend. It's been phenomenal--I feel like I've taken in the full conference (including the panels I missed).

What I'm seeing here is that through blogs, we're able to generate the information and conversations, but management and organization remains a problem. Fortunately, in this specific case, Daypop served as a crude but sufficient tool.

Open discussion forums have been searchable via the web for a while. Blogs have allowed more search results to show up, but it is in addition to other formats out there. I find I have to journey through a bunch of "noise" and seldom find a blog worth reading or that was search relevant. My main gripe is that commenting in this format is like posting to some ambiguous entity, but not a real person. Is this response to the second post, or the first? If I say you...who does that refer to? It is a two-way street but one side is paved and the other is gravel. Chris' experience with Zote was a neat one nonetheless.

Chip: taking it one step further -

Generating, sorting, and organizing (and even distilling) information is all well and good...

But for ME, the real interesting bit is what we DO with all this data once we have it. Can we build systems that urge us to manage and act on our personal inforation workflow?

Sounds like David wants a way to MANAGE all the KNOWLEDGE that blogs contain. Maybe there could be a class at UT that looked into that...

Different idioms for information handling, each begging for research and development:

"Manage"

Or: Use? Activate? Optimize? Synthesize?

Or: Contextualize?

Or: Share? Syndicate? Collaborate?

In other words, for most of us, except maybe librarians, our lives are not about managing and organizing information/knowledge. Rather, most of us use that information to do "real" & "tangible" work & play... Unfortunately, when we get bogged down with bad tools that cannot urge us into action, then we feel the burden of information overload.

View information as a means to a material end.

I think this fundemental, yet simple shift in thinking can exponentially increase human productivity.

What's missing is a toolset that helps us convert raw data into activity. The ideal tool will create a state of flow in our minds that allows us to systematically address every bit of information that enters our lives (i.e. trusted, comprehensive, no leaks) with minimal thought (i.e. filter out noise & suggest the next steps, building connections and surfacing details only when needed).

David, I think Prof. Turnbull's slightly smart-alec remark was meant to suggest that the problems you raise are the issues that we're addressing in LIS385Tkms. You bring up some interesting points. I can think of some other professions that center around "managing and organizing information/knowledge" like journalism and project management, although these take place in different contexts and with different goals.

:-b got it.. Thanks for the journalist & project manager examples... I need to think about how those fit in my rant...

In all honesty, I'm just testing out some evangelical rhetoric for some software that I just so happen to be CURRENTLY finishing. I'm nothing if not the hypster ;-)