Expectations and wishes for 2005...

Dear all,

This is a quick note only to tell you all, collabloggers, that I wish you a very, very nice beginning in 2005!!!!!!!!!

I don't really know what to expect for the next year. I know it's going to be a year of change, for me for sure and, I think also for the world. Really don't know where this planet is going... I am very much sad about the latest happenings in Asia, with this big earthquake and tsunami... and I'm not sure if it has stopped there. Don't know why I am having sort of a apocalyptical feeling about 2005... Hope this is only a wrong presage, motivated by the latest news.

But since I am an incurable optimistic, I still expect lots of good things to happen in the next year. I trully hope we can all share great moments with our friends and family, and I wish lots of success in everyone's personal and professional lives. To sum up, have lots of joy, great fun and huge amounts of collablogation in 2005!!!

Cheers,
Renata

The problem of disbelieving...

I’ve read today a nice blog post entitled “The Barrier of Disbelief”, which I definitely recommend. It reminds us that we should not disregard any idea before we give ourselves some time to analyse it and find justifications to accept it or not.

In fact, we (Knowledge Managers) should be worried about avoiding unjustified disbelief. Otherwise, we run the risk of dismissing some opportunities and practices without evaluating (and letting others involve evaluate) their pros and cons. This kind of mistake is so very common! Think about it: who from us hasn’t taken part in a brainstorming session in which people start to discuss the first or second suggestion written in the blackboard? And everyone knows (at least in theory) that brainstorming means spelling out all possible suggestions before start criticizing or committing to one.

And there are those that do not want to hear anything that is a bit distant from the ideas they so passionately defend. That, my friends, is everything but KM! Yes… because KM is about collaboration, knowledge sharing, and openness to change. Because ideas are dynamic, practices should change to accommodate cultural changes, and no knowledge is static and immutable.
A static and immutable piece of information is useless… and is not knowledge. Do you agree? Disagree? I am definitely opened to your comments… ; )

Is information technology a solution or a new problem?

Dear all,

Reading the IEEE Spectrum report entitled “The view from the top” allows a quick assessment of how much a breakthrough is the Internet. This report presents the result of a survey made with 40 technology experts (among business top executive, academic institution’s managers and researchers, and others) regarding technological advances of the past, present and future. When questioned about the most important technology of the last 40 years, 9 interviewers directly mentioned the Internet, and 4 others made indirect reference to it, providing answers such as “information technology” and “global communication networks”. Moreover, these experts predict even more impact coming from telecommunication and information technology in the near future, since these are considered by 16 of the interviewers as the most important technology for the coming decade.

Assessing the results of these technological impacts makes it difficult to ignore the ‘gains vs. losses’ dichotomy that emerged from the latest advances. On the one hand, technology has presented society with new and more efficient ways to address important problems in people’s daily life. But on the other hand, it has also brought about some serious challenges. Most of these challenges have to do with coping with an incredible amount of information that people are expected to process in their work and life in general. For example, one may say that electronic mail technology has changed the way people communicate for the best. Email is often considered as a very effective way to communicate, since it is fast (i.e. the message arrives at its destiny very soon after being sent), asynchronous (i.e. the contacted person does not need to be there at the time the message comes, such as in a phone call) and relatively reliable (i.e. messages rarely get lost, and quick replies are generally issued if there is a problem with the receiver’s address). However, email has also caused some time and effort overhead on one’s routine, since one is expected to read his/her email box at least once everyday, and replies are generally expected to be soon (at most one or two days after the message arrived). If one of the above does not happen, the message receiver might become socially known as inconsiderate, lazy and/or unreliable. So the big question is: has the emergence of email resulted in a solution or in a problem? And the attempted answer here is: it has resulted in a little bit of both.

In human history, while trying to solve a problem, human kind has always caused others as collateral effects. This is the case with industrialization leading to deforestation and pollution, with long use of antibiotics for acute skin infections causing stomach pain, and why not, with technology making peoples’ living more comfortable in one side, and more tiring and difficult on the other. It seems that this is inevitable simply because humans are not able to predict all problems a solution might bring, and it seems people usually learn more by making mistakes than by doing the right thing at the first try. Thus, the best approach is to build over existing technology, generally improving the support. Still taking email as an example, the systems of today are much more flexible than those of 10 years ago, enabling people to provide automatic answers if they are not available, ranking messages by importance while filtering spam, and even attempting to provide answers to incoming messages.

In any way, this is a reminder that we shouldn't take for granted that technology is always good... collateral effects may be dangerous in various situations.

Kind regards,
Renata

Knowledge is precious!

Hey all!

I missed collablogging! I was in the University of Geneva for the past 5 days so I could not write... I loved the city and I had the best time there with my PhD supervisor (Dimitri), his wife (Murielle) and my friend Kate! I mainly went there to talk to Dimitri and to do a seminar, but what I really enjoy (I must confess) was wandering around the beautiful streets of the city (all decorated for X-mas) and eating a delicious cheese fondue followed by a buffet of desserts, all in great company. Uau!!!

Anyway, I am actually here tonight to report an almost disastrous experience... Today, I understood a bit how organization managers must feel when they loose an important piece of knowledge (because an expert employee no longer works there, or due to a malfunction in a knowledge repository). I was coming back from my trip and when I got home, I thought I had forgotten all my annotated papers (only copies!) and my handmade PhD plan in the train... panic!!! Fortunatelly, this feeling did not last for long because I finally found my documents in the bottom of my computer bag... relief...

So, this was just a quick note to remind (even myself in future occasions): always have electronic versions of your plans (possibly with backups), make sure you copy your annotations also in your computer summaries and, of course, when you leave a plane or a train, "please remember to take all your personal belongings." : )

Cheers and good night!

Renata