Is it on the Internet?

Opinion Mining Social Media Sites

2010-02-05T17:32:00.000-08:00

After posting on Twitter about getting a 58% negative statement for the iPad, using TwitFeel, @Krishnas replied to me that this is not surprising. In fact, he went on to say that these sites always give a 50 - 70 percent result due to extreme user comments and inaccurate measurement methods.

Following some more research, I have to agree. There seems to be a target set by the industry of reaching an 80% success rate.

Anyway, Marshall Sponder gives a great comparison of different sentiment analysis platforms on WebMetricsGuru.

Mind Maps

2010-02-05T12:35:00.000-08:00

Doing some research on mind maps at the moment. I was introduced to mind maps during my course and I've used them in assignments and for study. I've found them very useful.

I'm researching mind maps to see if there is any potential for doing a dissertation around the topic. But, I also want to use online mind maps for all my subjects and dissertation this semester.

After looking around at some possible applications, I've chosen Mind42.com.

The Easiest Knowledge Management Initiative

2010-02-04T08:43:00.000-08:00

The greatest barrier to organisational knowledge sharing is employee contribution to an initiative. There have been many theories on how to combat this issue. Some work, some don't. Success largely depends on the organisation's culture of knowledge sharing. Knowledge management is a difficult task to get right. There are no guarantees.

But there is an area of knowledge management that can work: Personal Knowledge Management.

Web 2.0 has generated a huge amount of social media tools that we are well aware of: Facebook, Delicious, Twitter, etc. Most of us are active contributers of one, if not many. In a way we are all sharing something with our friends, family, and colleagues.

So what am I proposing? I'm not proposing a new organisational wiki or social media. I'm proposing one simple task every organisation should do - get each and every employee onto one social media site, for example LinkedIn. Each employee is told to follow at least ten colleagues that day and to update their status. The next day, they need to do the same, except to find ten external people, related to their area. And so the process continues.

Each and every day employees will be told to update their status at least once a day. This update is not just what they are doing, but questions and answers to questions, links and ideas. For one week, time is given where each employee undertakes these tasks. After one week, the supervision is over. It's up to the employees to continue. And it is my opinion that many will. Particularly due to the familiarity of people with social media sites, the fact that there is no codification of knowledge. Contributions are simple statements, answers, directions to personal or external blogs and articles.

Codifying of tacit knowledge could be done through blogs, written by some expert employees. RSS feeds, via the social media site, can be displayed to every employee. Employees can be encouraged to set up blogs to record their experiences. Those that do can be highlighted for particular praise. These blogs can be maintained during personal hours.

Will it be successful? Of course it can and with a lot more certainty than other major knowledge management initiatives. The economic climate has employees worried about their job security. Knowledge hoarding could be more apparent. However, with using social media tools, little tips and hints can be given. Willing experts who contribute often will be highlighted. They will feel more secure in their jobs, knowing that they are valuable contributers.

And what does it cost the organisation? Nothing but an email sent to each employee explaining what they want.

Knowledge Management

2010-02-04T06:55:00.000-08:00

Knowledge Management is concerned with making knowledge visible, accessible, and actionable. Successful knowledge management needs to make the knowledge, whether explicit or tacit easily available so that it can be acted upon. For this to happen knowledge needs to be captured, retained and used. It needs to be kept up to date and relevant. This is complex and needs the support of knowledge workers.

The key to successful knowledge management is communication. In Nonaka's Spiral Model, this is the socialisation process. People communicating, face-to-face or through technology, is the key to this process. It is also one of the hardest processes to establish. Although communication is not a difficult task, the creation of a culture of communication can be difficult. Barriers in the culture of an organisation prevent a successful socialisation process. Workers fail to understand why knowledge management can be valuable to them and fear of job security along with many other reasons create barriers to sharing. However, if there is no culture of communication and sharing then knowledge management will fail. Knowledge management needs to be highly visible, valuable and reliable for the employees.

Technology can be used to complete the other processes; externalisation, combination, and internalisation. Yellow pages, repositories and social media are some examples of technology that can be used. There is no shortage of vendors of these technologies, many of which are similar.

However, the choice of technology for any initiative, while important, is secondary to establishing a culture of knowledge sharing and educating the employees on the value of knowledge sharing and how to access and make knowledge valuable.

Although measuring the success of a knowledge management initiative is difficult there are certain measurement techniques, such as benchmarking, that can be adopted. If employees are using knowledge management to improve processes, share knowledge and experience, to innovate, and make decisions, then the organisation is successfully utilising knowledge management.

Twitter and Personal Knowledge Management

2010-02-02T15:01:00.000-08:00

OK, so one area is really interesting me at the moment.

Twitter has been a tool that has interested me since it first emerged. I first heard about it via the Guardian.co.uk website. Their media section journalists have been raving about how important it is and how it will change journalism forever. I think it will change more than journalism.

For a while, I didn't really get the fuss. Sure it could serve some simple functions. But I thought it would be used by people informing the world that they are cooking steak for dinner. But I was wrong.

I recently signed up to twitter. I found some friends and started to follow them. I also downloaded a great, free app - TweetDeck (www.tweetdeck.com) that can be used to filter tweets according to areas of interest. At the moment my filters are: knowledge management, augmented reality, and NASA. The application searches tweets for these key words and displays them. I'm aware that there are now many similar apps that can make more customised filters, i.e. by most popular tweets or by people with many followers.

TweetDeck allows me to get a global view of a topic. At 160 characters, there is only so much of a point that can be put across to the reader. However, most tweets recommend an article or blog posting or simply make a comment on a topic. The tweet can make a short summary on the article or post.

The exciting aspect of Twitter, at least in knowledge management, is in the subarea of personal knowledge management. This is a new area that I've only discovered tonight. There is a good post by Eric Mack on Twitter and personal knowledge management http://tinyurl.com/y9bspbs (URL shortened using the great TinyURL feature that is a must for using Twitter).

For me, Twitter and TweetDeck are great tools for finding other people with valuable knowledge. Their tweets help me keep up with the latest opinions and trends in different areas. If I don't base my thesis on either Twitter or personal knowledge management, I will still definitely use these as research tools. In fact this blog and the Twitter feed on the top left of this blog are examples of my personal knowledge management.