Uncommon Knowledge.

RSS Feed Homepage

Articles: 1, 2, 3, 4

Work: an increasingly fractured narrative?
2007-07-24 22:19:00
On the way home from visiting some friends at a cottage on the weekend, I had the opportunity to listen to Richard Senett (here’s another interesting profile of him) discussing work, life and sociology in general on the CBC’s Ideas radio program. One of the recurring themes in the discussion was the fractured nature of work ...
More About: Work

Hope you like the new theme!
2007-07-18 01:24:00
Once again, I’ve decided to recalibrate things here a little bit at the site. The site had had the same look for a few months now, and I wasn’t quite as happy with it as when I first changed themes. I’ve come up with what I think is a cleaner, less obtrusive theme (which I think ...
More About: Hope , Theme , Like

?Knowledgeitis?, fast food and other metaphors.
2007-07-05 19:38:00
I have to admit, I’m a sucker for a good metaphor. A good metaphor just has a way of wrapping things up neatly — and is a great way to start a discussion. I came across a few interesting ones today that I want to share. First of all, there’s chronic organizational knowledgeitis. You have to ...
More About: Food , Fast Food , Fast , Metaphors

Another way to find: KMSearch.
2007-06-29 02:11:00
Anyone who’s been reading here for a while will know that I like intelligent information reuse. It just makes so much sense to use information you find in one place in a new and innovative way. Dave Briggs dropped me a line the other day to let me know that he’s put together KMSearch, a site ...
More About: Find

Personalized indexing: could it find what you want?
2007-06-25 20:33:00
Well, my other somewhat-experimental site, Knowledge Cog, has now reached 734 posts. A few of these belong to me, but the majority of them are the works that other people have created — and I’ve used Knowledge Cog as a public medium in order for other people to see the stuff that I like to ...
More About: Find , Index , Persona , Sona , Xing

The message behind the mundane.
2007-06-04 22:52:00
 Sorry if things have been a bit quiet around here, but I just returned from Costa Rica yesterday (and was very determined to not touch a keyboard while I was there). Costa Rica’s a beautiful country (as is Nicaragua, which I was in only briefly) — full of friendly people and great food. It was a ...
More About: Message , Behind , Sage , Mund , The Message

This blog will self-destruct in?
2007-05-15 19:19:00
There are many different reasons people blog — reflecting more and learning are good examples of common reasons to blog. A few weeks ago, I was listening to a (pre-recorded) session where Debbie Weil, author of The Corporate Blog ging Book, was talking about time-limited blogs. While the session was about a year old, I was still ...
More About: Will

Social network map? Try an organizational chart.
2007-05-02 01:24:00
I was speaking to a good friend of mine a few days ago, who was busy trying to juggle demands from a few people who wanted an organizational chart completed of their entire organization. We’re not talking about a small company — it’s a mid- to large-sized multinational company. Taken to the next level, there are ...
More About: Social , Network , Social Network , Chart , Char

Knowledge Cog: knowledge management feeds.
2007-04-24 22:58:00
While I’ve owned knowledgecog.com for a few months, and I’ve had a few ideas of what I wanted to do with it, it wasn’t until recently that I actually put my ideas into practice. I wanted to create a site that acted as a portal for all the great knowledge management blogs out there, and would automatically ...
More About: Management , Knowledge , Feed , Know , Edge

How knowledge management relates to innovation.
2007-04-23 23:12:00
I’ve often heard the argument that one of the best reasons to implement a knowledge management program is to harness innovation — yet the relationship between knowledge management and innovation is certainly a complex one. While it seems intuitive that more knowledge sharing equals more innovation, since it enables us to think and act collaboratively, knowledge sharing ...
More About: Management , Innovation , Knowledge , Know , Edge

Where?s the return on knowledge management?
2007-04-17 19:30:00
In February, I talked about the ROI of blogs – and how it’s often difficult to measure the time or effort that you put into them. While reading an article in the Special Libraries Association monthly publication, Information Outlook, I was reminded of the fact that’s it not only blogs that are tough measure a ...
More About: Management , Knowledge , Know , Here , Return

44 essential knowledge management sites and blogs.
2007-04-10 17:00:00
A few weeks ago, I published a list of 26 essential knowledge management sites — which has gotten a few thousand visits since then. So I wanted to update my list with some more sites that were suggested to me by visitors (as well as some new sites I’ve visited since then). Check out the updated ...
More About: Management , Men , Blogs , Blog , Site

Collection and connection: does this relate to blogs?
2007-04-02 18:38:00
One of the endless information science/knowledge management debates is on the value of connection versus collection. For anyone unfamiliar with this debate, it’s basically this: is collecting information all in one place better than providing connectors among the people who share that information (or knowledge, if you like that word better). Or vice versa? Obviously, there’s ...
More About: Connection , Blogs , Blog , This , Connect

Today?s featured site: North x East.
2007-03-29 17:43:00
First off, I want to welcome everyone who’s coming to this site for the first time. Traffic doubled last week, and by this week, it has quadrupled. So if this is your first time here, welcome. You can take a look through some old posts as well as the front page features by using the category ...
More About: Site , Feature , Today , East , North

Business, Technology and Knowledge 0.7.
2007-03-27 18:16:00
It’s been a while since I’ve featured all of the contribution I get to Business , Tech no logy and Knowledge . I’m absolutely astounded by the number of submissions received. There are really some quality posts in here this issue — take a few minutes to browse through some of these. You’ll be glad you did. Barbra Sundquist presents Incorporate ...

Mesodata and the true Technorati traffic test.
2007-03-26 19:36:00
On every post I write, I use Ultimate Tag Warrior to insert some Tech no rati tags, which show up at the bottom of the post. I’ve been thinking lots about metadata lately — and started wondering how useful those tags actually are (and how much traffic they actually generate). Wikipedia describes metadata as “‘data about data.’ It ...
More About: Traffic , Data , Technorati

Today?s featured site: The Paper Bull.
2007-03-24 17:20:00
The Paper Bull was kind enough to provide me with a very honest, unpaid review a few days ago — so I thought I would return the favour, and point out some of the great content on the site. As I said in my last review of the JibberJobber blog, this provides some exposure to ...
More About: Site , Feature , Today , The Paper

Today?s featured site: the JibberJobber blog.
2007-03-20 21:22:00
I’ve decided to start featuring a few of the sites that I’ve included in my sidebar links as featured sites of the day. It provides the sites with some exposure, but more importantly, it gives you, the readership of this site, my reasons for thinking the site might be of interest to you — and ...
More About: Blog , Site , Feature , Today , Featured

I?m not a comic book artist.
2007-03-20 17:15:00
While looking over NorthxEast’s excellent guide to guerilla marketing, I was reminded of something that happened months ago when I was setting up this site. But first let me tell you something about myself . Most people don’t actually call me Lucas (my youngest sister being one of a few exceptions). While I like the name, people I ...
More About: Comic , Artist , Book , Comic Book , Artis

26 essential knowledge management sites.
2007-03-19 15:17:00
I was asked a few days ago if I could put together a listing of some interesting knowledge management blogs and sites for someone who was interested in learning a bit more about what knowledge management is and how it can be applied. So I’ve put together 26 great resources that can help you learn ...
More About: Management , Men , Site , Sites , Knowledge

1542 spam: time for a challenge question.
2007-03-17 19:48:00
After clearing out my comment spam filter on this site this morning, I decided it was time to attempt to curb the amount of spam this site is getting. In the first few months of this blog being around, I got around 1000 spam. As of today, the site’s up to about 100 comment spam ...
More About: Spam , Question , Time , Challenge , Quest

How to easily combine and email RSS feeds.
2007-03-16 17:11:00
Did you know that you can combine multiple RSS feeds together into one feed and have them sent by email to you or anyone who signs up for that combined feed? But first, let me answer the question you’re asking yourself as you’re reading this: why would I want to do that? One reason might be ...
More About: Mail , Email , How To , Feed , Comb

Why doesn?t collaborative blog ranking exist?
2007-03-15 18:29:00
At the end of a particularly insightful post on ClappingTrees, J.K. asks why the huge backlog of submitted sites can’t be opened up to everyone, Digg-style, in order to get sites approved (she’s referring to the DMOZ and Technorati backlogs here). She also points out some flaws with the Alexa ranking system (as I pointed ...
More About: Borat , Rank , Blog , Labor , King

New site features.
2007-03-14 17:14:00
Thanks to the (much-appreciated) feedback of J.K. from ClappingTrees, I’ve instituted some new features that should make searching for posts and browsing past posts much easier. The first feature is a new refinement in search, called simply ‘Uncommon Knowledge’ (it can be found at the top of the search results page, beside the other search refinements, which ...
More About: Features , Site , Feature , New Site , Feat

Legacy technology and the pace of change.
2007-03-13 20:25:00
According to my site statistics, there are several dozen people reading this site with Internet Explorer 6. With Internet Explorer 7 being only a few months old, this is certainly to be expected (my stats also tell me that almost no one — which means around 2% — of people visiting this site are using ...
More About: Technology , Techno , Change , Tech , Pace

What?s your problem?
2007-03-12 19:10:00
Problems are like debts — everyone has them, but no one really wants to talk about them. But being specific about the problem you’re trying to solve can be a great way to get solutions to that problem. So before trying to list solutions, ask yourself: what problem am I trying to solve? Creating a problem ...
More About: What , Hat , Your , Problem

What?s the purpose of simple knowledge?
2007-03-10 04:13:03
While some say that Wikipedia is actually against promoting real knowledge, it would seem that Wikipedia also promotoes simple knowledge. This may be old news to some — but I was actually quite surprised to come across simple.wikipedia.org. The idea behind Simp le English Wikipedia is to provide a way for people who read little English to get the same knowledge that more proficient English readers would get from the regular Wikipedia (this is just as useful to kids, who may not understand all of the definitions on regular Wikipedia). If you look something up on Wikipedia (say for example, the word ‘encyclopedia’), you’ll get a definition that (including sources) is 3472 words long. That’s lots of information and detail to tell you what an encyclopedia is. Contrast that with Simple English Wikipedia’s 272 word definition of what knowledge is: if you just want to understand what an encyclopedia is, the shorter version is much more efficient. Contrast...
More About: What , Hat , Knowledge

Uncommon Knowledge: the story so far.
2007-03-09 16:12:02
I was discussing this site with a few people yesterday and for the first time, stopped to realize how much I have learned while creating and promoting this site. I talked about defining and differentiating your site the other day, but I wanted to take a moment to both stop and reflect on the past of this site, as well as its future. So as of the writing of this article, we’re up to around 85 feed subscribers. To everyone reading this through the feed, thanks for subscribing! If you haven’t subscribed to the site yet in a feed reader, it’s free and easy to do. Below this paragraph is a live icon telling you how many subscribers we have so far. So what’s next for Uncommon Know ledge ? If you’ve been reading for a while, you probably know that the site has went through many, many redesigns (I like to play with designs, even if I’m not that good at it — but I’m trying to brush up on my XHTML and PHP). I’ve been quite happy with the cu...
More About: Story , Common , Stor

6 ways to improve on knowledge management.
2007-03-08 04:10:01
What does the phrase ‘knowledge management’ mean to you? Unless you’re someone who works specifically in information or knowledge services, probably not very much. The concepts behind knowledge management however, can make a big difference to you and your business — and best of all, they don’t cost you any money. Here’s a few ideas on how to make knowledge management not only matter, but also to integrate it into the way you do business. 1. Stop calling it knowledge management. It’s a bit of a misnomer. While fields like records management and information management are really about managing the things they describe, ‘knowledge management’ is much more about knowledge sharing than any kind of management — and sharing makes people feel that they can and should contribute to the process. 2. Think about people, then technology. Instead of focusing on what cool technologies can do for your business, think about the basics of ho...
More About: Management , Men , Knowledge , Know , Improve

11 ways to define your brand, blog or site.
2007-03-06 16:08:02
Over the course of writing this blog for the past few months, I feel I’ve learned a thing or two along the way about what it takes to make your blog, site or brand stand out from others. I thought I’d share those ideas. Here’s 11 ways to make sure your blog, site or brand gets noticed (especially when you’re a small fish in a big pond). 1. Imagine where you want to be. Without a plan, you’ll be lost before you know it. But before creating a plan, you need to think about why you’re doing what you’re doing — and imagine where you want to be a month from now, two months from now, and a year from now. 2. Identify your target audience. Know who you want to speak to. If you don’t have a clear understanding of your audience, you won’t know what messages will resonate with that audience. Clearly spell out who will be listening to you — think of every piece you write as if you were standing up before that audience to read it &...
More About: Blog , Site , Your , Brand , Ne Yo