Sunday tag surfing

Before I get down to serious work, here’s a look at the most interesting things caught in the morning’s browsing. WordPress’ tag surfing does add a bit of spice.

The wisdom of clouds: John Millner doing a panegyric of social-tagging folksonomies. Not bad for a sales pitch. And he’s right (Socialtext’s shared tagging got me to find his post, for instance). An interesting blog on learning, too.

The 3 stages of CMS: Boris Mann of Raincity Studios made a presentation on mid-February that just got posted on DigitalAssetManagementOrgUK (lots of nice educational links there, and some tools), and it does set out very clearly some principles and ideas, aimed at independent web developers, that are not just right but (for me) becoming articles of faith. It’s about the evolution of web sites into complex interconnected bits, and how best to make them. Sage, too.

Knowledge energies: Luke Naismith trying to get some sense out of a recent Act-KM mailing list discussion about complexity and chaos. It was way beyond my depth. Luke’s perspective is more understandable and original (he says “eccentric”). Also nice, the couple of links reflected here remembering the link between any technology and some business model.

Explaining KM: Michelle Laurie (first featured here for her on-the-job pictures of African life while doing soft-edged asessments of KM programmes for a big institution) ploughs on as an independent KM consultant up on the mountains. She keeps using simple terms instead of the usual fodder, or so it seems. Inspirational :-).

Make and sell: OK, so it’s not a blog, but after reading about it in Wired I came across it again today… and it’s worth having a look at the operating model. Ponoko builds things to specification (which is innovative), but has also harnessed crowdsourcing to get itself more orders: it acts as a hub for product designs and specifications, so people can either hire or share bits of each other’s designs… and then get them built.

On hiring and attrition. Paul Ritchie’s ongoing series of comments gets especially practical here, IMHO. As I’m right now in the process of renewing (nor just reinforcing) the collaborator team of Macuarium, which is hard to juggle as we need to find, recruit, train and slowly incorporate into the mix a lot of new personalities while balancing a growing work load; and also part of the building of a new business unit at my employer, which is proceeding in fits and starts, I can agree with both his comment: don’t delay, and don’t hope for magical tool solutions. You may not agree on everything but the blog’s a mine for project managers (and most likely a very effective management tool): the most recent favourite on getting bad news out of the way.

A relevant workshop: Luca Servo’s work with a recent “strategic” workshop with rural radio workers from old Congo looks (and reads) just like the good old ones we used to pull for G2E customers. His work for the knowledge management arm of FAO looks impressive (not least because he seems to be actually applying his masters’ dissertation), but - going practical - the blog’s chronicle of the workshop is relevant in itself as a portrait of methodology. Don’t miss previous episodes.

A perspective of KM: Lee Gaddis is getting to grips with KM in his marketing firm. What I like about his view is that he clearly separates the means (technologies) and the skills (education and training) from the will (mindset and motivation). You can put any tools in place, you can design processes and write them down and train people… but unless it makes sense to them (it’s practical, efficient and worth their while), you will get nothing lasting or practical out of the effort. IMHO, while it’s a very superficial view yet, he’s got that part right. Which is more than most do: so many KM efforst prefer to navigate around incentives and recognition and then fail to reap real change.

Action learning and water management: S. McIntosh, N. Leotaud and D. Macqueen published on the KM4Dev journal a piece on an “action learning” project to examine the ways water is used and managed in several Caribbean islands: through hands-on reasearch and the participation of the stakeholders at every level. The piece is interesting. The link with knowledge management, tenuous but still there. Seeing instances where sharing experience is literally vital helps clear the fog. Found it through the WASH Lessons Learned blog.

The book “We think”: Penny Edward’s recounts the experience of listening to the author of a book on the web’s effect on mass creativity, innovation and collaboration. Which is huge, and growing. Her site is more than interesting (mixing wikis, KM and project management). And since her takeaways are ideas I’m curious about (having close experience with them, I want to analyze them better) it seems I might have a new book on the shopping list.

On participation: Brad Hinton’s got a nice piece on the role of mass participation in business decision making. Based on a specific example, he goes on to elaborate how the involvement of workers will not just be requested, but actually inevitable. Not to be a spoilsport, but I think the kind of involvement people enjoy is not the kind that allows for long-term, thoughtful and differentiating management decisions… but it does form a very fertile ground for managers to make them.

The Facebook business model: as explained by themselves in their site (came in looking for something different; I don’t actually like the place). That is what they really, actually offer. A bit of food for thought, if not many news, in there.

Qué es una Comunidad de Práctica: Carlos Merino at the Departament de Justicia of the Generalitat posted this presentation for a meeting in December 2007, in Spanish. The nature and the keys of success. I find a sore lack of involvement and motivation aspects, but the rest of it is worth reading. Jordi Graells posted another interesting presentation (about collective intelligence and “wiki-administration” in government), in Catalan. The rest of the blog is also full of links to more news and presentations from one of the most active “knowledge administrations” I’m aware of (there’s hope for the rest).

More Spanish knowledge blogging at Comunisfera by Daniel Martí. No, there’s no recent pick to show (mostly links to outside resources: Morgan Stanley’s report on Internet trends, PDF here; Universal McCann’s report on social media use and impact here, PDF here; Cristobal Cobo’s presentation about the Knowledge Economy on Issuu, parts in Spanish, look out for the Issuu machinery also; and I think the link to Planeta 2.0 came from here also), but I’ve been enjoying the perusal. Very relevant selection of themes.

Tangentially, there is Foro de Internet 2008, acongress aimed at internet content entrepreneurs next week (on the 10th) in Madrid. I might attend, since there may be useful ideas about traffic monetization floating around. With the hope of a new member of the family, comes the responsibility of feeding it ;-). And even further away is Barcelona’s UrbanLabs, which sounds interesting.

Reasons to participate in social media. At Groundswell, and also commented at Furilo, there’s a nice useful list. Useful why? Useful because the ends pursued by people when participating in sharing environments are quite more complex (and sometimes much more banal) that some think. If you want participation, look into these. If you’re designing for it, you’d better be creative.

And now, to do some (paying) work.

Talking Open Source with John Powell, Alfresco CEO

A word of warning: “talking Open Source” here means talking about the business model, the pros, the cons, the competitors, the parters and the developers, and even some parts of the roadmap, but not the code or the Alfresco application itself. At this week’s Alfresco Community Conference in Barcelona there was a lot of other interesting people, not least Alfresco’s John Newton, Ian Howells, Kevin Cochrane, David Caruana and Nancy Garrity… and I had to go and interview John Powell about the business side of things.

And I’m very happy I did. And very thankful for the answers. So here goes the transcript.

Miguel Cornejo. You’ve been three years now with an Open Source business model, running a company radically different from what you were used to. What would be your takeaway?

John Powell. By and large, the Open Source business model makes all aspects of a software company’s easier because, without having to hide your intellectual property, you can get the great ideas from anyone who has an opinion on that, across the globe, to help you in the development, the QA [Quality Assurance]… and the propagation of your product. So from that aspect, it makes everything really really easy.

The challenge of the Open Source model, for a commercial Open Source company, is to keep the balance right between the community and the subscribing customer. Because really, the subcribing customer will only subscribe if he sees value, and there will always be people in the community who will never subscribe. And we have to get the balance right because without the subscribing customers there would be no company and the community would then lose the major engine for the development of Alfresco.

MC. The role of that engine is one of the most interesting parts I’d like to talk with you about. So you see… John Newton said yesterday that about 10% of current Alfresco code comes from the community.

JP. Yes.

MC. But what part of… you also mentioned that the leading edge is where innovation comes from. So what part of the value, the added value beyond the document management core [of Alfresco] comes from the community?

JP. I think what they do is they give us insights into a lot of the practical applications. As anyone who uses software would know, when you get software delivered from a software vendor, you often have a “Why did they even think I would work that way?” moment, with the interface or the workflow or whatever… so I think what the community does for us is it gives us much better feedback than you can ever achieve with the closed source products. That is, they can get to grips with not only product but also code, and extend that and show you concrete examples.

MC. So you then do “as the community directs” [quote from his talk earlier in the day].

JP. Yes.

MC. This leads to another question about what is the motivation of these developers, because some of them are developing that excellent new user interface you are working on without ayone paying them, without budget let’s say.

JP. Yes.

MC. So how do you involve people up to that level?

JP. Any Open Source project relies predominantly on people with an interest, perhaps doing something in their part-time or down-time, as like a bit of research, on anything useful, that often gets taken up. So for example some of the stuff we saw today. Because those guys employed by partners of Alfresco, they’re doing some interesting things but they’re also improving their knowledge that they’re then able to demonstrate to their customers in their market, that they actually are experts, they have added value. So…

MC. It would be a sort of “proof of competence”?

JP. Yes. So I would say, it’s a bit like… you see, what’s the value of going to the gymnasium to your job? Well, probably if you’re more awake, if you’re sharper, if you’re fitter, it’s going to improve your aptitude at work. At the very least, these community developers may improve their skills, they make themselves more marketable, and a few of them come up with really great stuff than can then feed back into the whole community.

MC. What’s the role of such proprietary software vendors such as Quark or SAP next to Alfresco [both are differently involved in deals with the company]?

JP. From Alfresco-the-company’s perspective, there is an important role to work with those types of organization, because for many of large customers, they demonstrate that Alfresco is a long-term player and here to stay, and when they see other large companies, particularly from the proprietary world, commiting to Alfresco technology and getting into bed with Alfresco, it gives them a good reassurance. From Alfresco’s perspective, we want to work with those companies because we acknowledge that they have huge user bases and by working of them, if only a small proportion of their user base becomes interested in Alfresco, it’s obviously a good thing for Alfresco in the long term.

MC. Yes. About the new 3.0 release focused more in the user end… it seems to me you’re keeping stable the document management back end where you manage the heavy metal, and now you allow people to customize more the user end of things… I feel your real competitor, rather than Sharepoint, would be FileNet or Documentum.

JP. Yes. Well, I think what we’re seeing is that with version 3.0 what we’re actually doing is we’re adding a social computing application to Alfresco. So Alfresco’s platform framework will still be there, to build large-scale document repositories, to have large-scale web content management, or internet-scale www sites. [Version 3.0] doesn’t remove anything from that, what it does is add a social computing application into the heart of the environment, and that is I think one of the key differentiators that we have to Sharepoint. Because Sharepoint cannont go into the www world and they haven’t got the enterprise scalability to tackle the large scale document libraries.

So from our perspective, the version 3.0 is all about leveling the playing field and giving customers the potential to jump into Alfresco the same way they’re jumping into Sharepoint. But the benefit of Alfresco is, once they jump in, then they can go in any of those other directions, whereas with Sharepoint they will be very very limited and constrained, and obviously through lack of choice they will be tied into a Microsoft stack in the future.

MC. Indeed. I was going to ask you further about Sharepoint, which as you say is very much limited, but I’m afraid we have very little time [Here a kind bystander asked to be allowed to listen in to the discussion]. As I was saying, what would be your key differentiators, beyond the social layer that’s new, against the current document management application model, like FileNet and Documentum?

JP. I think the key differentiator here is that we’re coming from the Open Source world, in that there will be much more capability to extend and participate in the customization and support with Alfresco that with Documentum or FileNet. Now, those systems will still have an application, and there’s probably many many hundreds of man years of development in those, but for most customers… they’re not that interested in that legacy, what they’re looking for is a modern architecture that they can take forward.

MC. So that would be [with] the flexibility and the ability to take them the way they want? Which wouldn’t happen in a proprietary or “legacy” system?

JP. That’s right.

MC. Very good. Now then, jumping a bit to a different subject, you are Open Source but you are not following the, let’s call it “classical”, community model. It’s a company-led Open Source effort. This means… what?

There is evidently some kind of direction, some kind of leadership or vision, that you’ve been providing, not just coding in-house. Because even if the community does some part of the code, you do provide a lot of things to that effort. So you’re Open Source, but with a different model…

JP. Yes. Well, in fact I think we have the advantage that we got to learn from another great companies that pioneered another great communities, that pioneered the Open Source model. And I think that if you look at today, you’ll see people like SugarCRM, Alfresco, mySQL…

MC. … OpenBravo… [Based in Pamplona, sort of friends of the house]

JP. OpenBravo, yes, I know these guys. You’ll see that actually, there are some differences in our model, but you’ll see the model is tending to come out in a very similar direction. A company that employs probably 90% of the core developers, and really commits to the maintenance and support of that product through the future.

MC. So you see that as a viable long term model for the future?

JP. I think there still be some great true, hmm…

MC. … “community-driven”?

JP. … community driven projects, yes, but I think in some particular areas, particularly where the persistence of data is very very important to a company, then this marriage of a commercial company culture with Open Source, is the ideal solution.

MC. Absolutely [ ].

JP. You know, any company, at some point in time, they like another company to do business with, and it’s quite hard to satisfy that when it’s a difuse community of developers. Now, for some applications that may not be about the persistence of core company data… We’ve heard here presentations from customers who are looking to keep content for a thousand years. You know, a thousand years is way beyond the imagination of, I don’t care what anyone says, of any computer system today [ ]. But you know, I think a hybrid model in effect, where we’re trying to bring the best of both worlds, a commercial, contractual-based organization where customers can feel secure in that, with the support of a vibrant community to avoid the risk for the customer of the old vendor lock-in proposition. Alfresco cannot hijack its community.

MC. Perfect. Now, another jump in the subject… As you get into web 2.0 and collaboration for this community layer that you’re working in right now, I’ve seen you’ve been very interested in things like the Facebook integration but until today I saw no mention of a forum component, a bulletin board system…

JP. OK. We need to do more on that. But it’s always been an area where we’ve said, we don’t want to be inventing all of the ways of consuming and generating content, so we don’t write a wiki, we don’t write a blog… We want to integrate those capabilities. But what we’ve been building so far is really the plumbing to do that. And I think what we need to do now is get more examples of where we’ve actually surfaced those… If you look at the Alfresco website, the wiki that we use, which is MediaWiki, is embedded inside Alfresco, so the content is versioned and managed inside Alfresco.

MC. And the users and skins are too? That’s what I was looking forward to see on the bulletin board side. I still believe most of the unstructured information is not handled in documents, but in informal conversations… so if you can’t handle that, you can’t handle the company’s knowledge.

JP. Right.

MC. So you’re working on that, we can say?

JP. Yes.

MC. Then… that would be more or less all I wanted to ask.

JP. OK. Thank you.

MC. Thanks a lot.

Another cautionary note: as soon as Mr Powell’s had a chance to have a look at the transcript, it will be corrected of any mistakes he finds. So enjoy them while you can.

Sugerencias para el Gartner Symposium

Como sabréis, los analistas de Gartner organizan un simposio en Barcelona a finales de la primera quincena de Mayo. Unos amigos van a asistir y me preguntaban por las sesiones más interesantes… y les he dicho ésto, en resumen:

1 - Fundamentales, o casi (saber qué piensa la gente, y Gartner, vendrá mejor que bien):

• Soluciones para reducir el coste de IT, cosa que interesará en más de un caso.
• Soluciones de “personalidad portátil” para permitir el trabajo desde cualquier sitio, cosa sanísima.
• Arquitectura emergente: otro tipo de planes de sistemas ;-).
• Infraestructura y operaciones en la era de la virtualización, cloud computing y socialización -entre otros-.
• Business in the cloud: algo que cada vez interesa a más empresas.
• Más cloud computing, la visión de Gartner de hacia dónde va.
• Diane Morello sobre la “empresa hiperconectada” y el impacto en IT y negocio.
• El impacto de las tecnologías “de consumo” y sociales en las IT y negocio de las empresa.
• Domesticar al “rogue user”, o cómo controlar el impacto y los riesgos de las tecnologías sociales dentro de las empresas.
• Usuarios remotos, colaboración, hiperconexión: aspectos prácticos.
• e-Government, tendencias en la implicación de comunidades.
• La colaboración como herramienta competitiva, casos y ejemplos.
• Oficinas de gestión de proyectos, y gestión del conocimiento

2 - Muy interesantes (ya sea por curiosidad o por impacto en posibles propuestas concretas, en mi terreno o alrededores):

• Escenario de colaboración, entre trabajadores remotos.
• Ejemplo de colaboración con Danske Bank y ATT.
• Tecnologías disruptoras para el 2012)
• La virtualización, o cómo afecta a IT y al negocio el que casi todo se pueda prestar como un servicio.

Parece que yo no estaré (esos eventos cuestan) así que ya me contaréis :-).

 

Alfresco European Community Conference, day 2 (updated)

(Yes, you guessed it, I’ve been tinkering with he Pompeu Fabra’s wifi network for half an hour and now we’re about to begin the sessions, so this looks like being brief).

Yesterday was supposed to be a rather closed day for partners and developers, which I attended by kind invitation. A rather interesting event, in many senses. To name a few:

• The people, of course. Some interesting developers, with either interesting stories, or connections, or business possibilities.
• The story. I already know Alfresco, but not at the deep-developer level. Some of the things getting done with it (integrations, mostly) are worth seeing, especially when explained by the authors. And the upcoming Alfresco 3.0 Community edition, with its huge emphasis on interface (”presentation layer”) and configurability (”customization”) while keeping the fundamentals (document model, backend) in place… was interesing.
• The open source. As an industry-conference habitual, it’s quite interesting to see how the Alfresco people interact with their developers and partner ecosystem. Not just integrating the most notable coding aditions into the main product (something, say, FileNet would have to pay for, or deal with very differently as a paid add-on), but actually drafting developers to help with the upcoming redesign. Doing it live, too, in the room.

That said, yesterday’s venue wasn’t right (lots of noise). I really can’t find any other thing to complain of :-). Today’s sessions, open to all, are more standard-looking. John Powell is doing the intro, and I have to save batteries, so next comment may come tomorrow (seeing as the wifi network and I get along :-)).

Update: well, three hours into it, it looks like I’ll be able to have a short talk with Mr Powell later on, sort of an interview. Will come handy for the piece I’m writing on Alfresco 3.0’s declared roadmap and intentions. If you have any question suggestions, do comment them here, fast :-). I’ll be doing it old-style, handbook and all: didn’t plan for it.

Convocatorias del Observatorio de la Cibersociedad

Otro mensaje interesante, que incluye lo siguiente:

4. Convocatorias destacadas
=======================================

# Presentación del proyecto guifi.net
# Fecha: 3 de marzo de 2008
# Lugar: CitiLab-Cornellà, Barcelona
# Web: http://es.citilab.eu/agenda/

El próximo día 3 de marzo de 2008 a las 19 horas, coorganizada por el Observatorio para la CiberSociedad, tendrá lugar en CitiLab-Cornellà una presentación del proyecto guifi.net. En dicha presentación se explicarán los orígenes, expansión, filosofía y funcionamiento de este proyecto ciudadano que tiene un objetivo global, el de desarrollar herramientas que faciliten la creación y gestión de redes telemáticas por parte de la ciudadanía, y otro local, el usar estas herramientas para la creación de redes ciudadanas. En la actualidad cuenta con más de 3.700 nodos de conexión distribuidos por todo el territorio catalán, la mitad de ellos creados en el último año.

# II Jornadas de Sistemas de Información Geográfica Libre
# Fecha: Del 3 al 5 de marzo de 2008
# Lugar: Gerona
# Web: http://www.sigte.udg.es/jornadassiglibre/

Estas segundas jornadas tienen como principal objetivo pulsar el estado y grado de implantación del programario SIG Libre en España y países de habla hispana. Algunos de los nuevos temas que serán introducidos y debatidos durante estas II Jornadas, pivotan alrededor de la liberación de los datos geográficos, los formatos abiertos de datos espaciales, el rol que las PyMES y Administración Pública pueden jugar en la implantación de soluciones abiertas en el campo de los Sistemas de Información Geográfica, la Teledetección y las soluciones de programario libre.

# INTED 2008: Conferencia Internacional sobre Tecnología, Educación y Desarrollo
# Fecha: Del 3 al 5 de marzo de 2008
# Lugar: Valencia
# Web: http://www.iated.org/inted2008/

El objetivo principal de esta conferencia es la promoción de colaboración internacional en el campo de la tecnología, la ingeniería y las ciencias de la educación, y está dirigida a investigadores, ingenieros, profesores, científicos educativos y especialistas en tecnología en las áreas de Educación, Ciencia y Tecnología. Entre otras áreas, hay convocadas presentaciones que versan sobre diseño curricular e innovación, educación superior en Europa, universidades virtuales, tecnologías emergentes, o gestión del conocimiento.

# Call for papers Prix Ars Electronica 2008
# Fecha: Hasta el 7 de marzo de 2008
# Lugar: Linz (Austria)
# Web: http://www.aec.at/en/prix/index.asp

Desde 1987, Prix Ars Electronica ha servido como una plataforma interdisciplinar para proyectos basados en computador como un medio universal para poner en práctica y diseñar sus proyectos creativos en el campo del arte, la tecnología y la sociedad. En esta edición premiará los mejores trabajos en las siete categorías siguientes: animación por ordenador, films, arte interactivo, música digital, arte híbrido, comunidades digitales, u19 (informática de estilo libre) e investigación y medios sobre arte.

# IV Conferencia Internacional de Barcelona sobre Educación Superior
# "Educación Superior: nuevos retos y roles emergentes para el desarrollo humano y social"
# Fecha: Del 31 de marzo al 2 de abril de 2008
# Lugar: Barcelona
# Web: http://www.guni-rmies.net/k2008

El Observatorio para la CiberSociedad colaboró en la edición anterior de esta convocatoria. En esta ocasión, la temática de la misma se centra en reflexionar y repensar el rol de la educación superior y de sus instituciones en el contexto cambiante de la globalización, teniendo en cuenta su vocación de bien público y su compromiso como actor fundamental de la sociedad. ¿Cómo deben evolucionar las universidades, en todas sus dimensiones de actividad, para contribuir significativamente a una idea amplia e integral de desarrollo? Dentro del programa de la conferencia, y de modo específicamente cercano a las temáticas cibersociales, destaca un taller sobre las "Tecnologías del conocimiento y la educación superior".

No conozco bien el OCS, pero algunas de las convocatorias parecen interesantes.

Moderation in virtual reality environments

For better or worse, I’ve never been a fan of virtual reality. As far as I can tell, they don’t have many of the traits I expect in an efficient information-sharing environment, and several drawbacks. As for the gaming value, I don’t care much, either.

The saving grace is their ability to engage the attention and provide a pleasant environment (for some). In other words, given the right circumstances, it works. I’m talking, evidently, about the use of Second Life as a management and community-building tool.

I just spotted this in the On-fac mailing list, from Sylvia Currie. It might be useful for those wanting to dabble hands-on with it:

Attention all SL enthusiasts! Please join us for this seminar
discussion at SCoPE: http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca

Key Competencies for Second Life Moderators: February 7 - 16, 2008

Facilitator: Gilly Salmon

Description:
Many educators are familiar with Salmon’s 5 stage model for
e-moderating. How should this model be revised for Second Life
moderators? Gilly invites you to join her in a 10-day discussion to
identify the key competencies required of moderators in a virtual world.

This work will inform the upcoming SL training for moderators as part
of the MOOSE project (MOdelling Of SecondLife Environments)

Here is a direct link to the seminar:
http://scope.lidc.sfu.ca/mod/forum/view.php?id=868

SCoPE activities are free and open to the public.

Ponencias para Mundo Internet 2008

Acabo de recibir un amable email de la organización de Mundo Internet solicitando ponencias (y anunciantes) para este año. Probablemente debido a que participé con una hace unos cuantos (largos) años.

Lo esencial:

El Congreso Internacional de Internet, Telecomunicaciones y Sociedad de la Información: Mundo Internet que se celebrará en Málaga del 1 al 3 de octubre de 2008.

El Comité Organizador ha seleccionado como temas principales: Seguridad, Internet Móvil, Propiedad Intelectual, Redes sociales, Gobierno de Internet y Video en la Red.

Ya esta abierto el plazo de presentación de ponencias (resúmenes) que conformarán los contenidos del Congreso, de ellas las más valoradas por el comité de programa serán expuestas durante el Congreso junto con los gurus internacionales en cada una de las materias. Sigue este enlace si deseas proponer una ponencia:
http://mundointernet.es/ponencias

Lo cierto es que hay varios tema que interesan y (con suerte) el white paper que tengo en el horno estará terminado mucho antes… así que seguramente probaré suerte. No para dar la ponencia (tímido que es uno mientras trabaje para esta empresa), sino para proponer una para el libro.

Sneak peek at John and Nancy’s CoP course

Who said blog stats are not useful?

Tracking back a logged visit to eme ká eme, guess what I just found: the Course on Virtual Communities at the Red Virtual de Tutores de Colombia. Starring Nancy White and John Smith, plus several local professors. They’re using Moodle, they’re halfway through the course… and you can sit in by logging as an anonymous Guest :-). Better still, it’s half in English and half in Spanish (or almost) so nobody will miss everything.

If the RVT plans to keep the resource open, it will be a good link to have.

[Updated: just found where the link came from. They seem to have used Macuarium as part of the discussion. Hmm, honoured, to be sure :-). Still comparing the social part of a CoP with the whole of a learning system is a bit... lopsided. To be meaningful they'd have to have a look at the technical part - the Foros Temáticos, which is where the "practice" is].

Mañana empieza Ciudadanos 2.0

Dentro del exceso 2.0 que nos invade (es peor que lo del iPhone, aquello duró menos) se promueven iniciativas que tienen buen aspecto. Por ejemplo, la que nos han comunicado vía la lista SIS, y que reproduzco por si interesa:

Expertos debatirán en Madrid en torno a la “Ciberciudadanía, Gobierno electrónico y nuevos derechos humanos”

La localidad madrileña de Rivas Vaciamadrid acogerá los próximos días 21 y 22 de noviembre la I Conferencia internacional sobre “Gobierno electrónico y nuevos derechos humanos: Ciudadanía 2.0″, con el objetivo de profundizar en el estudio y análisis de las relaciones entre derechos humanos, tecnología y democracia, y en particular, sobre la relación entre el uso de Internet, las políticas de inclusión digital y el desarrollo del gobierno electrónico.

La convocatoria buscará identificar los factores que suponen un cambio real en la definición de los límites de la democracia y el concepto de ciudadanía, por medio del debate acerca del derecho ciudadano a diseñar la tecnología, mercado global de la ciudadanía o la crisis de las utopías digitales, los cambios de la ciudadanía clásica a la ciudadanía digital o el anñaísis de los actores locales en la redes globales. Otros temas de debate serán las estrategias y políticas públicas para el desarrollo de la ciudadanía digital y experiencias concretas de Gobierno electrónico y políticas de inclusión digital en Europa, Asia y América Latina.

Participarán ponentes como Langdon Winner, Saskia Sassen, Emilio Suñé, Ramón Queraltó, Javier Bustamante, Andoni Alonso, Margarita Barañano, María José Fariñas, Eulalia Pérez Sedeño o David Cierco. La Conferencia concluirá con un Manifiesto a favor de la ‘Ciudadanía 2.0′.

Organiza el evento el foro de investigación y acción participativa ( fiap ) para el desarrollo de la sociedad del conocimiento, con la colaboración del Ayuntamiento de Rivas Vaciamadrid, la entidad pública empresarial Red.es (MITyC) y el Ministerio de Administraciones Públicas (MAP). También colaboran Indra, Cisco, T-Systems, La Caixa, Fundación Telefónica, Fundación Ciudadanía y ElPaís.com. La asistencia es libre y gratuita previa inscripción a través de la web de la Conferencia.

Sabido es que mi querido empleador es una empresa profundamente sensible a estos cambios en el uso de la tecnología y las expectativas ciudadanas, y que apuesta por fomentar la formación de sus empleados aprovechando estas ocasiones (que por cierto también lo son de venta…). En la medida que lo anterior es cierto, estaré allí.

Webinar sobre Enterprise Data Mashups de Denodo

Se trata de un webinar orientado a conseguir partners y revendedores (lo que sólo será interesante para algunos) pero buena parte del contenido gira alrededor de un concepto muy útil: la integración de datos dispersos por la empresa (y no normalizados), de modo que se les pueda hacer accesibles e integrarlos con otras fuentes de datos estructuradas y no estructuradas para construir herramientas útiles (”mashups”) con el mínimo coste posible, siguiendo la filosofía web 2.0.

Por supuesto, la idea de Denodo es vender su propia herramienta y metodología para hacerlo. Lo que no quiere decir que no pueda resultar útil. Puedes apuntarte aquí.

Esperemos que éstos no tengan problemas con sus servidores… :-).

Social media in the workplace: a SixApart webinar

Thanks to the LawyerKM blog, I just found a quite relevant webinar (indeed, an online recorded presentation hosted by WebEx) from Six Apart, the people who create MovableType (and several more interesting things such as OpenID). The piece is here and it takes a lot to load (it does seem to have a slight quarrel with Firefox, too) but it’s worth the wait thanks to the sound part of the presentation.

The original presentation was done with Forrester in October 30 and is called “Enterprise 2.0: Using Social Media in the Enterprise”. It’s mainly relevant because of the illustration of the use of blogs in the knowledge flows of a corporation (from page 20 onward) although its marketing-oriented start is not bad either.

I enjoyed it, hope you do so too :-).

Happy blogiversary too, Ton

Last week, Ton Zjilstra over in the Netherlands counted five years of his first blog. Some people have been at it longer, but Ton’s experience is significant for me because he got me thinking about blogs and communities of practice, a difficult but pervasive relationship, and provided a practical example. Then Lilia Efimova’s attempts to build a framework for analysis and Mathias Röll’s opinions did the rest, and I’ve been seeing blogs in a weird way ever since.

And yes, finally I started to blog. That’s your fault too, Ton :-). So thank you and congratulations (belatedly) on your five years of discovery.

Alfresco España se presenta con un webinar

Parece que Alfresco (sistema de gestión de documental favorito de la casa) ha abierto oficina en España, aparentemente con un equipo dedicado. El site español tiene detalles mal traducidos, pero es una buena noticia. Y lo que es mejor, han empezado por ofrecer un webinar de presentación que tiene bastante buena pinta. Reproduzco su mensaje:

Qué: Webinar - Alfresco en una Hora
Cuándo: Lunes 19 de Noviembre 2007 12:00 - 13:00 CET
Dónde: Delante un ordenador y un teléfono fijo

Alfresco les presenta ‘Alfresco en un Hora’. Este webinar, en Castellano, está orientado a personas y a organizaciones que están empezando a mirar o evaluar Alfresco ECM. En una hora se aprende los conceptos principales del producto. El webinar está compuesto por una presentación, una demostración de producto y una sesión de preguntas.

Se ruega que las personas que quieren atender a este evento se dirijan al formulario de registro:
http://www.alfresco.com/about/events/2007/11/alfrescoinanhour

Un cordial saludo,

Alfresco España
www.alfresco.com/es

A ver si hay suerte y puedo verlo. Aún no he tenido ocasión de probar la nueva versión (la Community 2.0 y derivadas), y debe ser buena por las referencias que me cuentan. Porque lo que es la conferencia de París, seguro que me la pierdo.

Para desarrolladores y partners, los responsables para Europa (en UK) tienen aún un par de plazas en el bootcamp orientado a la gestión de contenidos que Kevin Cochrane, su vicepresidente de Desarrollo Web, dará a comienzos de Diciembre en Amsterdam. Aunque ésas no son precisamente gratis ;-).

The ActKM Conference papers are online (and I didn’t know)

Well, they’re online since the 25th, but as you know I’ve been out of orbit.

According to the attendants, this was the best conference organised by the Australian association yet. They sound impressed, and they’re a good reference.

And now they’ve posted the presentations and materials. Specifically, here. They had so much traffic that their site went down for a while, so you can see just how eager they were to get their hands on them :-). I’m downloading right now. Food for the mind over the long weeked (“World without end” is nice but just not the same).

Gestión del Conocimiento en España (VI)

Bueno, ya estamos de vuelta. Después de una semana y media en Sevilla, aprendiendo sobre una interesante empresa química, por fin tengo un rato para intentar ponerme un poco al día. La pena es que no haya sido antes, porque la semana pasada podía haber sido aún más interesante. Como muestra:

Jueves 25 de Octubre. Reunión de cierre (con comida posterior) del grupo de trabajo que ha adaptado la Guía Europea de Mejores Prácticas en Gestión del Conocimiento, produciendo una versión local con casos, teorías y formas de explicarlas bastante más digestibles. Como todo producto de un comité, hay cosas que cambiaría… pero la verdad es que estoy orgulloso de haber participado en el parto. Aunque me haya perdido la comida.

Lo siguiente, de acuerdo con el programa, será la publicación en el BOE por AENOR.

Jueves 25 de Octubre. Thursday Internet en Madrid, una reunión de esta comunidad empresarial “en colaboración con Red.es”. Sesión dedicada a las redes sociales que parece haber estado más que interesante, aunque sólo sea por la potente participación de la Administración (aquí el programa). Gracias a Elvira San Millán por compartirlo en la lista SIS; parece que hay más información en el blog de Antonio Fumero (que por otra parte merece una visita propia) y sería interesante encontrar más notas sobre el contenido del evento.

Jueves 25 de Octubre. No sé si tuvo lugar o no, pero es tradicional el encuentro de bloggers en la terraza del restaurante brasileño frente a la Plaza de los Cubos, el último jueves de mes. Desde que me lió Fernando Tellado (Ciberprensa) para acudir a una, me gusta tenerlo en la agenda… por si acaso alguna vez consigo volver.

6, 7 y 8 de Noviembre. También gracias a Elvira me entero de que hay un Foro de Contenidos Digitales en IFEMA durante esos días. Tiene buen aspecto y encima es gratuito. Como supongo que acabaré de nuevo en Sevilla, no digo nada más… ya verás como también perderé el encuentro con Adobe, como todos los años.

Y seguramente muchas más cosas de las que ni me he enterado. Ya se sabe: “El que fue a Sevilla…” :-D.

The KB on practical methods for knowledge sharing

Thanks to Ed Mitchell’s tip and blog post I was reminded of the latest free e-book produced by the Knowledgeboard. This year’s crop of practical stories and methods (Hands-on knowledge co-creation and sharing - Practical methods and techniques), highly reccomendable as a read and maybe even as a referece is already available for download here (for some reason it’s not hosted on the KB).

The book has two selling points: its content is useful and comes from practical experiences; and it’s not a “management book”: it’s not been edited to make it soundbite-friendly or easy to digest, but practically as a reference manual with clearly marked sections in every chapter, which makes for clear and straightforward reading and for better relevance of each of the chapters. I confess I’m still less than half-way through it (it’s enormous) and not every story fits my interests, but this is one that will go into my KM e-library (and yes I’m ashamed that a second book has gone out and still haven’t got around to proposing anything)

An insight into Boeing’s KM initiatives

Courtesy of Seth Kahan, as published at com-prac… and really worth a look as it gives a (not overly detailed) view of their KM vision and activities. It seems to be their in-house magazine:

Here is the cover story of Boeing Frontiers, about KM, available online:

http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/cover.pdf

Website is here:
http://www.boeing.com/news/frontiers/index.html

CoPs are mentioned. Not a lot of detail, but clearly part of an overall strategy.

Schumpeter y Arbonies en Pamplona

Y voy yo y me lo pierdo.

Leo en el Diario de este domingo que esta semana (fecha sin precisar) se celebró un desayuno patrocinado por el ESIC y el propio diario, con ponencia de Angel Arboníes sobre “Nuevos enfoques en la innovación de producto”. Me lo habría perdido de todos modos porque sólo estoy en la ciudad los fines de semana últimamente, pero por lo que puedo leer ha merecido la pena.

Entre otros muchos aspectos, parece que tocó dos que me gustan: la innovación empresarial como “creación destructiva” (un concepto clásico de Schumpeter que merece más atención) y la necesidad de aceptar la incertidumbre como parte del proceso de innovación (como dijo Arbonies, “cuando gestionas la certeza te quedas en planes de mejora”). También parece que incidió en que la innovación no es siempre “cosas nuevas”, sino la nueva aplicación (en productos y objetivos) de cosas viejas que no se habían usado así. Y parece que nos acusó a los economistas de ser “conservadores natos”, cosa que tardaré en perdonarle :-). ¿Qué otra cosa era Schumpeter, para empezar?

En resumen, una charla que debió ser inspiradora. Dada la amplia experiencia de Angel en innovación y gestión del conocimiento en PYMES y empresas industriales, hay poca gente más cualificada para hablar del tema.

El próximo día 10, si se queda a la comida de AENOR, ya le pediré que me la resuma :-D.

A relevant webinar on Tuesday

I just found out, and I hope to find also time to attend: Forum One’s Bill Johnston, Intuit’s George Jacquette and Shared Insight’s Aaron Strout are hosting a WebEx webinar about online community management topics on September 25th.

Go have a look at the topics covered, they may be interesting for you. They won’t be looking at CoPs, but many of those topics have a bearing on them. And it’s free.

Gestión del conocimiento en España (V)

Aprovechando que abrimos curso, vamos a ver lo que se mueve.

En primer lugar, los materiales de Nancy White y sus diapositivas (borrador) para la presentación dada en Bogotá el 18 de Agosto pasado sobre Comunidades de Práctica y del conocimiento. Lástima de grabación :-), pero la presentación está muy bien documentada y toca muchos temas importantes.

En segundo lugar, la lista de correo de Red Iris (en los viejos tiempos dependían del Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia) sobre gestión del conocimiento, GEST-CON. Acabo de registrarme, aunque una exploración del tráfico de este año no revela tráfico serio desde hace meses (podéis verla aquí, aunque hay que registrarse).

Este artículo antiguo de la ya mencionada (y poco pródiga en contenidos, una pena) Itziar Ortega, escrita en el sistema de wikis de eMagister.com, sirve para tres cosas: destacar algo de lo que se escribe, indicar una fuente de recursos bastante decente (el sistema de wikis y comunidades en el que se aloja)… y señalar con el dedo a eMagister, un sistema que hace mal uso de los contenidos externos (tutorials, cursos) de terceros, sin autorización. Y lo digo como titular de los derechos de varios textos a los que ese portal linka… previo registro de email del visitante (que se quedan ellos), y con su propia publicidad añadida. Indecente.

También cortesía del blog de Itziar, tenemos dos muestras del estado de los portales españoles relacionados con KM. Sappiens, un portal “del conocimiento” donde se acumulan artículos extremadamente variados, algunos incluso relevantes… que en una auténtica comunidad no pasarían de temas en un foro. O la sección de KM de AreaRH.com, donde a día de hoy todos los artículos dan error. Teniendo en cuenta que Gestiondelconocimiento.com está hibernando (uno o dos mensajes este año), ¿hay algún recurso genérico serio en este terreno? Pregunto.

Lo bueno que hay (el blog de los funcionarios de Administraciones en Red, por ejemplo) tampoco ha tenido tiempo de producir nada nuevo (en el área de KM) desde que me fui de vacaciones.

Finalmente y por cortesía de Vicente (compañero de trabajo) tenemos este link a una empresa española que se sale del molde… y que está trabajando en temas de “web semántica” con producto real. Por lo menos merecen una miradita: Isoco.

En los próximos días (vale, en Octubre) podremos celebrar la finalización de los trabajos del grupo de AENOR de mejores prácticas para la gestión del conocimiento. Lo vamos a celebrar con una comida y todo ;-). Pero me da que este mes, las mayores noticias las vamos a dar en MKM…