Articles by Month: October 2002

An Introduction to XML for Knowledge Managers

Well, I am pleased to announce that Standards Australia has released my new supplement:

An Introduction to XML for Knowledge Managers

I've written this supplement to help implementers to get a handle on how XML can assist in their knowledge management projects. It also provides a strategic overview of how the different XML technologies relate to each other.

The supplement is non-technical, provides a step-by-step introduction to key XML concepts, and will appeal to a wide audience.

Posted by jamesr at 04:43 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management, XML

NSW thesaurus

I've just discovered Keyword AAA, a product of the State Records New South Wales. To quote:

In 1995, the Archives Authority (now State Records) released Keyword AAA, a keyword thesaurus of general terms based on the keyword classification method. It covers terminology common to most organisations. This includes terms derived from common functions and activities. such as PERSONNEL and FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT, and common terms used in an organisation's unique or core functions.

This is an excellent idea, and it looks like they make an effort to keep the thesaurus up to date with new and changing terms. An organisation-wide license can be purchased, in a range of useful formats.

[Thanks to Larry Langman.]

Posted by jamesr at 07:59 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

User-centred design for web designers

Peter-Paul Koch discusses user centered design, in the language of a web developer. This article provides a simple, no-jargon, introduction to the importance and benefits of "client-centred design". To quote:

Unfortunately there is no general rule for the task of keeping a client's expectations within reasonable limits. Some clients are easily convinced by someone who knows what he's talking about, while others will rigidly maintain their point of view, aided by their nephews who've gone through a Front Page book and therefore know everything there is to know about Web sites.

Posted by jamesr at 11:40 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Tales of CMS woe

Kelly Lakas writes about the challenges of obtaining support for commercial content management systems. This tale of woe covers not one, but two vendors, and highlights the issues facing many projects. To quote:

While Support can be a difficult issue with all applications and vendors, it becomes a staggering weight when dealing with content management tools. I attribute this to the fact that most content management applications are not really "out of the box." Most are "buy it, then build on it, hack into it, wrench it and code it" to fit your needs. (And remember that any change you make with your own development team is not going to be supported by the vendor – but you still have to pay full maintenance.)

[Thanks to Content Thing.]

Posted by jamesr at 11:22 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Justifying knowledge management ROI in law firms

The benefits of KM can be directed at reducing internal costs and/or enhancing profit. Looking first at internal expense, it is well understood that maintaining document collections is a significant expense for organizations. In fact, many recent studies have shown that the introduction of technology has yet to reduce the expense of filing systems. Forrester Research, for example, estimates that more than 80 percent of a corporation's business-critical information is locked in unstructured formats. A study commissioned by Lucent Technologies found that the volume of unstructured information in large organizations doubles every two months. More important, other studies have illustrated the inefficiencies of existing electronic document storage and retrieval systems.

This is a well-considered article, and serves as a model for other industries.

Posted by jamesr at 05:30 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

NewsML 1.1 released

Robin Cover has summarised the release of NewsML 1.1. From the functional specification:

NewsML provides a framework for the interchange and management of news: NewsML is primarily intended as a format for the interchange of news. However, it may also be used as a format for news storage and as a support for the creation, editing, management and publication of news in a networked computing environment.

NewsML is based on XML: A NewsML document is an XML document, which must be valid with respect to the NewsML Document Type Definition (DTD) that appears in Appendix 1 of the specification. Like all XML documents, NewsML documents are logical rather than physical objects. They may be built up of the contents of multiple physical files through the use of entity references as described in the XML specification, or by the use of pointers within the NewsML document.

NewsML is media-neutral: NewsML makes no assumption about the media type, format or encoding of news objects. NewsML documents can contain text, video, audio, graphics, photos, or other media and combinations of media yet to be invented.

To be completely frank, I'm not sure how NewsML fits compares to RSS, and whether the two are competing or complementary. I'll have to look into this.

Posted by jamesr at 10:56 AM | Permalink
Categories: XML

Ensuring valid RSS

Invalid XML in RSS feeds cause a lot of problems (this is something that I've written about before). Mark Pilgrim and Sam Ruby have now done the world a huge service by releasing a free RSS validator.

This is a thing of beauty, and I can only hope that everyone will take the time to check their feeds with this. You can read the original announcement here.

(I'm a bit embarassed to say that my feed doesn't fully validate. While it is valid XML, it a couple of fields don't match the RSS specification. Needless to say, I'm going to get this fixed...)

Posted by jamesr at 10:48 AM | Permalink
Categories: Weblogs, XML

Certificate IV

Once I'm back in the office tomorrow, I'll endeavour to catch up on my backlog of interesting articles and news.

Posted by jamesr at 07:22 PM | Permalink
Categories:

ACT KM Forum Conference 2002

I spent yesterday up in Canberra attending the third annual ACT KM Forum conference. I enjoyed last year's so much, this is one of the very few seminars that I've paid to attend this year.

It didn't disappoint. Overall, it was a very ecclectic collection of knowledge management (KM) talks, covering a huge range of topics, including:

• Karl Popper and KM
• Knowledge warfare and the next generation of Defence tactics
• Cultural aspects of KM
• KM and the law
• Space and architectural design to complement KM

(To name just a few.) What was notable was the absence of "this is what KM really is" talks, which was a relief. Instead, there was a very open and inclusive attitude regarding knowledge management.

There was plenty of socialising, and as one of the committee members of the NSW KM Forum I got a chance to have an extended conversation with our counterparts in Canberra. Until 11:30 at night, which made it hard to catch a 7:30am flight back to Sydney today.

I then went straight into the last two days of my Certificate IV in Assessment and Workplace Training. If I'm very lucky, I'll be qualified by the end of tomorrow.

Posted by jamesr at 07:07 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Knowledge management

Upcoming intranets book

It's looking like I will be one of the authors of an upcoming book on intranets. The details haven't been finalised yet, so I can't say much. On the basis of the discussions so far, I will be writing chapters on content management systems, and marketing the intranet. All good fun.

I'll report more when I can...

Posted by jamesr at 06:49 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Moving from quality to quantity

I spent yesterday up in Canberra, talking with a government department about their intranet. Like many organisations, they have taken their intranet so far, but are unsure about where to go next.

It's surprising how many very different situations there are. In this case, poor quality was not a problem, for a change. Quite the opposite.

They have fully taken on the Information Mapping(R) methology, which produces beautifully structured and highly meaningful documentation. With this as the basis of the intranet, quality was universally high. They had also done extensive information architecture and usability work, and the intranet appearance is both elegant and workable.

Their current challenges are two-fold:

• Increase intranet usage (currently low), by better meeting staff needs.
• Improve and streamline the publishing process.

To tackle the first challenge, I facilitated the identification of a new set of intranet goals. The important step was to get them to move beyond thinking of the intranet as just a "publishing platform" for information, and instead view it as a way of meeting broader intranet goals. In less than two hours we developed an excellent list of possible goals, and everyone left with much food for thought.

The rest of the day focused on the publishing process. At present, content is authored in a Word template, and hand-converted (!) to HTML on a page-by-page basis. Needless to say, the central intranet team has already fallen behind on this...

With little (or no) budget, the challenge is to find ways of incrementally developing (or obtaining) technology to improve this process. The good news is that they have developers in-house, they just need an easy platform to use.

Finally, we talked about the varying requirement for quality. Without a doubt, sections such as corporate governance need to be of the highest quality. This is not true, however, for other areas of the intranet (such as project status reports, working notes, etc).

Recognising this, it becomes possible to establish several different publishing mechanisms. The simpler, more automated, authoring tool can then be used for the bulk of "ordinary" content. The more structured, less automated, authoring environment is then left for the "critical" content. (This is something that I've discussed before.)

Anyway, the day went well, and hopefully I'll be working with them further in the near future. They will also be attending the Intranet Peers in Government forum, which will help them to further benchmark their processes, and come up with new ideas.

Posted by jamesr at 05:24 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

XML 1.1 on the way

A report on ZDNet discusses the news that World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) has released XML 1.1 as a candidate recommendation. This focuses on revising the support for Unicode, and this has generated a lot of ire in the past. To quote:

The revision of XML comes with a trio of changes to the specification's treatment of Unicode, an increasingly global standard for representing characters in computerised text.

Among the Unicode revisions is a change that will specifically benefit users of IBM's mainframe systems -- and that has inspired complaints that IBM is exercising more than its fair share of influence on the XML working group.

I fully expect this new version to be ignored for a long time to come. After all, full support for XML 1.0 is still far from universal...

Posted by jamesr at 12:52 PM | Permalink
Categories: XML

HR self-service on intranets

Martin White has posted an entry in his blog about HR self-service on intranets. Brief, and to the point. To quote:

Even some of the most basic applications can show immediate returns. One client of mine provided a service on the intranet that enabled staff to check how many vacation days they had left, using an Access database. This reduced quite substantiallythe number of telephone calls and emails to the HR department, enabling HR staff to work on more complex issues without being constantly disturbed.

Posted by jamesr at 11:42 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Flamenco Search Interface Project

I have stumbled across the Flamenco Search Interface Project, which is an effort to research the design of faceted navigation systems. They provide several prototype interfaces, and have a strong usability focus.

Posted by jamesr at 11:24 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Search tools

Review: The Knowledge Management Fieldbook

I have finally finished reading The Knowledge Management Fieldbook by Wendi R. Bukowitz and Ruth L. Williams. Yes, this book has been out for quite a while now (published 2000), but I have had other things on my reading list.

This book provides an introduction to the many different knowledge management issues and challenges facing organisations. Stepping through each of these in turn, it offers background details, and talks about possible directions.

The most valuable aspect of the book are the large number of case studies which follow almost every section. These range widely, although some of the organisations appear a few too many times.

Beyond these case studies, though, this book fails to deliver on the "Fieldbook" in its title. There are no practical methods or techniques presented, and it is left to the reader to work out how to convert the very general descriptions into tangible action.

Other readers of the book may jump in and ask: what about the "Think about it!" sections?. Certainly, these encourage the reader to tackle the problems, but in reality, the "fill-in-the-blank" approach is somewhat naieve, and gives little value.

What frustrated me most were the half-page tables that allow the reader to calculate the importance of a particular issue ("Need x Ability"). These are duplicated at the end of each section, and by my quick count consume about 25 pages of the book in total. This could easily have been explained once, and then left to the reader to follow through themselves.

Overall, this book provides a good introduction to the various knowledge management challenges facing organisations. If, however, you are already familiar with KM, and are looking for practical techniques and approaches, this book is not for you.

Posted by jamesr at 11:08 AM | Permalink
Categories: Book & product reviews, Knowledge management

A taxonomy primer

Amy J. Warner has written a simple primer for taxonomies on her site. This walks through what they are, and how they can be applied in practice to real websites. To quote:

Taxonomies...thesauri...classification systems...synonym rings. We've heard all of these terms in the context of the Web. As Web sites expand, the task of organizing them has become increasingly problematic and complex.

All of the terms mentioned above are controlled vocabularies. That means that they are organized lists of words and phrases, or notation systems, that are used to initially tag content, and then to find it through navigation or search.

[Thanks to ia/.]

Posted by jamesr at 10:29 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Managing the knowledge worker

Mock Turtle writes about the challenges of managing the knowledge worker. To quote:

Whilst many organisations are slowly recognising the value that knowledge and insight can add to their business, many are still struggling with the management of the knowledge work force. We all know that the monster manager is likely to destroy any potential that employees, and subsequently the organisation as a whole, may have. But when you move up the food chain to the knowledge worker the problems become more complex.

Not a lot of substance in this short article, but it does at least highlight the challenges facing many organisations.

Posted by jamesr at 10:49 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

New category: Design & usability guidelines

I've been stumbling across a number of excellent design & usability guidelines, both in the form of documents, and whole sites. I've now decided to group these together in their own category.

This is by no means an exhaustive collection, just the ones I've come across so far, and I'll expand it as I go. Can anyone recommend some particularly good collections of guidelines?

Posted by jamesr at 06:36 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Knowledge Management - how seriously should we take this concept?

Bob McDowall writes on his views on knowledge management, focusing on the state of the market, and the relevance to business managers. To quote:

Clearly the market sector will dictate the approach to developing knowledge management. Factors such as size of enterprise, geographic coverage, the business culture of the market in which it operates and the growth and organisational stage of the enterprise all determine the approach. In particular the stage of development does dictate the specific approach, whether it involves the introduction of the concept, integrating different components which already support elements of knowledge management or review and reassessment of the approach to the subject.

Nothing essentially new in this article, although it is always worth restating these central issues, in case the language used strikes a chord with the reader.

Posted by jamesr at 06:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Comparing weblog software

I have just come across a very handy weblog comparison site. It works like this: you pick up to five different packages to compare, and it builds you a table of features, showing which package does what. Very, very handy.

[Thanks to ia/]

Posted by jamesr at 05:56 PM | Permalink
Categories: Weblogs

Victorian website guidelines

The Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet has published the Whole of Victorian Government (WoVG) Web Site Guidelines, which provides resources for managing government sites. This covers the following major sections:

• Content
• Site architecture
• Presentation
• Interactivity
• Legal issues
• Management and maintenance

(You can't have too many website guideline documents, as they all have something of value to add.)

Posted by jamesr at 05:45 PM | Permalink
Categories: Design & usability guidelines, Usability & user-centered design

Victorian AGLS implementation

Multimedia Victoria has published a guide to implementing AGLS (Australia Government Locator Service). To quote:

Adding metadata to your web sites will benefit your clients by:

• Helping them find information and services quickly and accurately when they don't know what those resources are called or what Department has responsibility for particular information and services
• Letting them know online what offline and non-textual services you can provide and how to access them, eg. specialist over the counter services.
• Grouping your services with similar services from other agencies and across other tiers of government, putting your agencies services in context
• Providing them with access to your agency information from the government access point of their choice (portals)
• Increasing usability, customer satisfaction and fulfilment by refining the use of existing technologies.

(You will find links to the actual report right at the very end of the page.)

Posted by jamesr at 05:03 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Victorian government websites

As a result of talking with someone from the Department of the Premier and Cabinet, I have become aware of two very interesting websites:

• Multimedia Victoria: a whole of Victorian-government effort to coordinate electronic delivery of information, content management and knowledge management.
• eGovernment Resource Centre: a subsite of Multimedia Victoria, specifically devoted to e-Government issues.

I am currently trawling through these sites, and will post useful resources as I come across them.

Posted by jamesr at 04:56 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Victorian accessibility guide

Multimedia Victoria has published a Victorian Government Accessibility Toolkit, which pulls together a range of accessibility guidelines into the one location. Substantially the same as the W3C's WAI, it does use local examples.

(It's a pity the site itself uses such tiny, unreadable text.)

Posted by jamesr at 04:52 PM | Permalink
Categories: Design & usability guidelines, Usability & user-centered design

Death of keywords

Danny Sullivan from Search Engine Watch reports on the death of meta tags. To quote:

Now supported by only one major crawler-based search engine -- Inktomi -- the value of adding meta keywords tags to pages seems little worth the time. In my opinion, the meta keywords tag is dead, dead, dead. And like Andrew, good riddance, I say!

To me, this really highlights the challenges (futility?) of the so-called "semantic web", where everything describes itself, cross-linking happens automatically and accurately, and search engines only return useful results...

If we can't get even simple keywords tags to work in practice, what hope is there for RDF, and the rest?

[Thanks to IDblog.]

Posted by jamesr at 04:11 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Search tools, Web development

New blog: Content Thing

Adam Gaffin has started writing a weblog called Content Thing, which chronicles his experiences of implementing a new CMS on an existing site. I'll be keeping an eye on this blog, and linking to particularly useful entries when they come up.

(They are implementing Rythmyx, in case you are interested.)

[Thanks to Content Matter.]

Posted by jamesr at 03:38 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Evidence-based usability guidelines

A post on ia/ has drawn my attention to the truly excellent list of evidence-based usability guidelines provided by usability.gov. This is not just a public-sector approach, but a truly amazing set of resources for all web designers. The following categories are covered:

• Design process
• Design considerations
• Content/content organisation
• Titles/headings
• Page length
• Page layout
• Font/text size
• Reading and scanning
• Links
• Graphics
• Search
• Navigation
• Software/hardware
• Accessibility

Posted by jamesr at 06:41 PM | Permalink
Categories: Design & usability guidelines, Usability & user-centered design

A historical look at RSS

Mark Pilgrim has written a very informative blog entry on the history of RSS, and how such a messy format has become so popular. To quote:

The problem with that list of RSS deficiencies is that it is also a list of necessities—RSS has flourished in a way that no other syndication format has, not despite many of these qualities but because of them. The very weaknesses that make RSS so infuriating to serious practitioners also make it possible in the first place.

This is very interesting from a purely XML perspective, as it calls into question how XML standards are developed and used. (See Mark's comments on RDF, for example.)

Posted by jamesr at 06:15 PM | Permalink
Categories: Weblogs, XML

Information Architect's Cocktail hour (Canberra, Australia)

From Donna Maurer:

Announcing...the October Information Architect's Cocktail hour.

And the topic this month is "User-centred design techniques for taxonomy creation"

This month we are trying a midday meeting - 12.15pm (approx), Wednesday 16 October, in the library at King O'Malleys in Civic (right behind the main bar).

I'm not sure how good this location is for lunch time - they may be busy. So let's see how it goes and sort out something different next time if it doesn't work out.

As usual, I appreciate RSVPs (just so I know I'm not going to be sitting all by myself!).

More details:

http://www.iawiki.net/wiki.pl?CocktailHours/Canberra

Posted by jamesr at 11:08 AM | Permalink
Categories:

A report from Internet World Fall 2002

Lennart Regebro has written a report about his visit to Internet World Fall 2002, from a European perspective. He specifically looks at content management systems and the CMS vendors, and makes some interesting observations about the current state of the industry. To quote:

The round-table discussion about the future of content management did quite simply not come up with anything. It's clear that none of the people there had any strong hunches of the future path, or if they had a hunch, it wasn't something they wanted to share with prospective customers.

(It's a pity that I couldn't get this page to display properly in either Opera or Netscape. I guess I needed to use IE. Sigh.)

Posted by jamesr at 10:54 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Facet language released

The eXchangable Faceted Metadata Language (XFML) has just been released in final "1.0" form, and is ready to use. To quote:

Today the XFML Core (aka XFML version 1.0) spec is officially published at http://purl.oclc.org/NET/xfml/core/. XFML Core is an XML language for sharing hierarchical faceted metadata and indexing efforts. XFML Core is a stable and frozen spec, and is permanently licensed to the public. XFML won’t solve all your metadata problems – it is focused on sharing indexing efforts with faceted metadata.

For full information, visit xfml.org.

This is an interesting development, but the real test is where it goes from here. There is already support for the major weblogging systems, which is a good start, but it must grow a lot more than that to reach critical mass. I'll keep my fingers crossed.

Posted by jamesr at 10:29 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, XML

Not a fun day

Well, when I came in this morning, our main fileserver was totally dead. After taking it to a service centre, it was declared as having a failed motherboard. So, that was the end of that machine.

I've just spent the rest of the day migrating the hard drives onto a new machine, and have just finished. So much for doing anything useful today.

Hopefully tomorrow will go a little better ...

Posted by jamesr at 06:50 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Visiting CMS vendors

I've been spending a fair bit of the last fortnight visiting content management system (CMS) vendors, both local (Australia) companies, and the larger players. The goal is to grow my knowledge about available products and approaches, so as to better assist my clients.

I've still got a number of organisations to go, but some interesting trends have started to emerge:

• The Australian vendors have some good products. In fact, some are very good, certainly on par with the better-known global brands.
• The smaller players seem to have a better understanding of the broader "content management" issues, not just the technology, which I found very encouraging. I guess this is because they have worked more closely with their clients, doing complete projects, not just relying on integration companies.
• One of the large vendors was very up-front in admitting that they weren't strong in the "project management" and "change management" areas.
• The local vendors are a friendly bunch, and they seem to keep in touch with their competitors, which is good to see. Where they are weak, they recommend other vendor's solutions that are a better fit. If only we saw more of this at the bigger end of town...

That's all for now, and I will report more as my "networking" continues.

(Local readers: see our list of Australian CMS vendors.)

Posted by jamesr at 04:27 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

More questions from IAs

Lou Rosenfeld follows up on his previous post with another list of questions information architects ask. This time, the list comes from Sydney (my home town). Another very interesting snapshot of the current state of the profession.

Posted by jamesr at 11:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

A slow Asia-Pacific CMS market?

Vivienne Fisher has reported on the state of the Asia-pacific web content management market for ZDNet. To quote:

"I think Asia Pacific overall is fairly price conscious and price sensitive," Brand said. "But we actually think it becomes false economy--many customers we speak to who have deployed internally- developed solutions...have not reaped the same benefits as those that have deployed a much more strategic content management system."

But he believes in about 18 months time we'll start to see a pick up in businesses looking at content management systems. "What's going to drive that is organisations that suffer some pain through poorly managed content," Brand argued. He said this included looking at issues like latency, in addition to accuracy and relevancy.

Posted by jamesr at 12:38 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Followup on NSW KM Forum evening (2nd October)

Last night's NSW KM Forum evening surprised us all with the best turnout yet. There was a real buzz, and a lot of chatting. So much so, that the last of us didn't get out of the cafe until 10pm!

Here is a very brief summary of our two speakers for the evening:

Duncan Robinson
Leighton Contractors

This talk outlined the steps that Leighton has gone through, as part of their knowledge management projects.

These have centred on the establishment and deployment of an electronic document management system (EDMS), which makes sense, considering the strong project management focus of the organisation.

One of their key goals: "Increase efficiency in an environment where complexity and risk are increasing".

What I found interesting was the comment that no money can be made during the actual building phase, but that the real profits come from improvements in the design activities.

The screenshots of the Leighton intranet were useful, and it will be interesting to see how they go over the next year.

Derek Jardine
Information Solutions

This talk was all about "taxonomies". Derek described the role of taxonomies in strictly business terms: as a way to capture and structure meaning in an organisation.

He also outlined many practical benefits of taxonomies, including: assisting users to find information; as a basis for navigation; as a way of enriching search results; and much more.

I was particularly interested in Derek's discussion of how a taxonomy must be aligned with overall business strategy, and he identified three overlapping sources of taxonomy requirements: users, content and business context.

The concept of "user-centred taxonomies" sat very well with me, and was more compelling that the usual academic approach to the topic.

Next evening

Well, that's all I have time to write, so I will see you all at the next evening on the 7th of November. (See the Standards Australia site for more details.)

Posted by jamesr at 06:23 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Listening to users

Donna Maurer continues her excellent weblog entries, following the mamoth intranet redesign project she is involved in. The latest entry relates to listening to users. To quote:

This is perhaps more important than all of the design techniques that I know. If I wasn't able to listen deeply (and many, many people can't), I might be able to make a usable site, but it wouldn't be one that addresses needs that the users don't even know they have.

Posted by jamesr at 06:08 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Martin White's review of the Polar Bear book

Martin White has written a brief review of the new edition of Information Architecture for the World Wide Web. To quote:

Recently I have recommended a number of intranet-related handbooks, but if I had to have just one book in my consulting briefcase it would be this one. The authors manage to turn a difficult, and yet very important, subject into a book of great clarity, enlivened with the occasional touches of rather dry humour. Whether you are just starting an intranet (or web site) or rebuilding one, you simply cannot do without this book.

Posted by jamesr at 05:59 PM | Permalink
Categories: Book & product reviews, Information architecture

Estimating productivity

Peter Edmonston writes about the challenges of estimating productivity when calculating ROI for IT projects. To quote:

A company needs to consider an array of factors, including the number of employees affected by a project, how much each is paid, and the amount of time each is expected to save. Often neglected in such calculations, however, is a key aspect of human nature: the primordial urge to waste time. In the real world, employees are likely to fritter away a sizable chunk of any newfound productivity by taking more breaks, leaving early or bidding on eBay.

(This is an interesting site that I need to set aside some time to browse.)

Posted by jamesr at 04:46 PM | Permalink
Categories: Metrics & ROI

Advanced KM seminar feedback

I spent this morning at an Advanced KM seminar, provided by Business Excellence Australia (part of Standards Australia). Tim Kannegieter, the presenter, kindly offered me a spot in the seminar, so I wasn't going to knock that back.

The half-day seminar covered the following main topics:

• Story methods
• Social capital
• Communities of practice
• Complexity theory
• Driving business excellence

To say that these four hours were thought-provoking would be an understatement. Tim guided us with confidence through these "advanced" KM topics, exploring some of the very abstract underlying concepts.

There was also plenty of facilitated discussions amongst the participants, which is always good.

Tim has worked hard to draw together the thoughts of KM luminaries such as Etienne Wenger, Steve Denning, David Snowdon and Laurance Prusak. The result is a unique blend that highlights the complementary aspects of the different approaches.

(For more information on this seminar, visit the Standards Australia site.)

Posted by jamesr at 05:14 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Success factors for KM implementation

Charles H. Bixler has written about practical success factors for KM implementation, and his list consists of:

• Strong unified leadership
• Align KM with mission and business needs
• Cohesive and engaged team
• Understand current problems and issues
• Collaboration and communication
• Innovation
• Understanding and appropriate use of current technology
• IT infrastructure
• Workflow and change cycles
• Security
• Establish metrics
• Reliability and integrity
• Accessibility and portability
• Cost-effective
• Interoperability

Posted by jamesr at 04:46 PM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

XML for integration

Carolyn A. April and Heather Harreld have written about the growing field of information aggregation, which involves using XML to tie to together existing applications to form a seamless interface:

EII (enterprise information integration) technology is middleware that sits on top of applications and other systems. It provides transactional access to data from such disparate sources as packaged applications, e-mail, or content management servers, and delivers it in standard XML format to external targets.

(This use of XML is one of the areas highlighted in my upcoming Introduction to XML for Knowledge Managers, now due out in (hopefully) less than a fortnight.)

Posted by jamesr at 04:29 PM | Permalink
Categories: XML

Portals and intranets?

Martin White writes about a case study presented at Intracom 2002, which explored putting a portal on top of an existing intranet, and other information sources. To quote:

The main objective of a portal is usually to provide an employee with personalised access to information. However I wonder just how valuable this personalisation actually is compared to the levels of concentration needed to manage the desktop. Remember to that staff have to do real work, so will be using the desktop for access to Office applications, HR services and other content. Every time the main home page comes up something will have changed, but will it be noticeable?

Posted by jamesr at 04:18 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Making improvemnts in tough times

Ray Luoma has written an article on what to do if you can't afford a CMS. In this, he explores the many other non-technical activities that can be conducted in preparation for a CMS, focusing on people & processes. To quote:

So if you’re in charge of an online publishing group in one of these companies, what can you do while you’re waiting for the financial climate to improve? One school of thought says, “Keep your head down. Don’t give anyone a reason to look at your group for the next round of cuts.”

On the other hand, “The best defense is a strong offense” has a lot to recommend it in these challenging times. Now is a great time to stand out from the crowd, demonstrate to your executives your willingness to work within the new business realities, while still delivering improvements in your Web publishing processes and an ROI without major outlays. But how do you do all this?

This is an excellent article, and I commend it to everyone who manages an intranet or website.

Posted by jamesr at 06:27 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Keeping your intranet healthy and effective

A month goes by so quickly, and already it is time to publish the next article in my regular KM Column series:

Keeping your intranet healthy and effective
The real challenge is to maintain the quality, consistency and value of an intranet, well into the future. This article shows you how.

Related articles:

Sixteen steps to a renewed corporate intranet
Outlines a disciplined approach to re-invigorating a corporate intranet, making it deliver real business benefits.

How to revive a zombie content management system
Without care and attention, a CMS can slide into a state of living death. Such systems can be revived by implementing a number of practical (and non-technical) activities.

Don't forget that you can sign up to the papers announce list, to be the first to find out when new articles are released.

(You can also browse the full archive of KM Column papers.)

Posted by jamesr at 02:49 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, James' articles

A review of "Content Management Systems"

Paola DI MAIO has written a review of the recently-released title Content Management Systems. To quote:

Overall, the book tackles crucial technical issues that anyone involved in a CMS must face, but the pitch is accessible to most readers interested in the highly complex , and highly fascinating world of CMS.

I've currently got this on order, and will write a review of my own when I receive it in a week or two...

Posted by jamesr at 12:11 PM | Permalink
Categories: Book & product reviews, Content management

Why searches fail

I've come across a good article on why searches fail, which lists the following top five reasons:

1. Empty Searches
2. Wrong Scope
3. Vocabulary Mismatch
4. Spelling Mistakes
5. Query Requirements Not Met

Like in my article, the critical importance of creating and tracking search engine logs is highlighted.

Posted by jamesr at 11:58 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Search tools, Usability & user-centered design

Link checking tool

We've finally found time to hunt down a good link checking tool, both for our use, and for one of our clients. Working within the budget constraints of our client (they don't have a budget), we sourced a free tool.

Having had bit of a play with it, I can soundly recommend Xenu's Link Sleuth. It has a clean design, is efficient, and produces a very useful report. Well worth a look.

Posted by jamesr at 10:51 AM | Permalink
Categories: Web development