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Keeps Blogging Guidance Simple
As more companies start blogging, more are also
making publicly available their guidelines on blogging,
primarily focused on what the ground rules they
have put in place are for employees who blog publicly
so everyone knows the boundaries.
Blog Feedback
Settings in Movable Type 3.2
I've recently been considering moving my last remaining
Movable Type blogs over to WordPress 1.5 - however
I think I might hold off a little and see what MT
3.2 turns out like.
The
RSS Orange Crush
Last week I met with Scott Gatz from Yahoo. He heads
up personalization at Yahoo. Scott said something
interesting: millions of My Yahoo users are subscribing
to RSS feeds, but they don't even realize it.
Knowledge Management : No Such Thing as a Knowledge Worker
For those who manage well, there is a bright and
prosperous future. For those who are managed, the
future-certainly the income prospects-are not so
bright.
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07.07.05
Turning Knowledge Into Power
By
Gerry McGovern
We are in an era of knowledge abundance.
Traditional management theory focuses on knowledge scarcity.
We need new management strategies to deal with so much communication
and so much knowledge.
They say knowledge is power but, if that were the case, academics
would rule the world. Knowledge in itself is not power; rather
the application of knowledge is where power lies. They say a
little learning is a dangerous thing. Well too much learning
can lead to paralysis and a lack of decisive, timely action.
These are wonderful times for people who like new challenges.
They are particularly wonderful times for content professionals.
Today, organizations are producing vast quantities of content
in the form of emails, presentations, reports, and webpages.
Better ways to manage this content are badly needed.
There are two basic theories of content management out there.
One is summarized by an old saying: "the more the merrier."
This theory believes that everything that is said and written
is of some value to someone-maybe not now, but at some time
in the future. What we need, this theory claims, is better software
"filters" that allow us to get to the content we need right
now.
Editors and publishers are bad people, according to this theory.
They're censors who, until the Web came along, kept back the
really valuable stuff, only showing us what they thought we
needed. How dare they! Nowadays, we don't need editors, once
we have a good search engine.
In this world, the future is about finding diamonds in the dirt.
I grew up on a small farm in Ireland and I've done a fair amount
of digging in my time. I never found any diamonds, and I've
never met anyone who has ever found a diamond while out digging
in their garden. Nor do I know of many diamond-mining companies
digging in the dirt for Irish diamonds. In fact, it looks like
the future of diamonds is synthetic and that they'll be grown
in labs-no more dirt.
I happen to be a big fan of editors and publishers, because
I believe in the second theory of content management-the "less
is more" approach. Editing is not the same as censoring, and
publishers do not take away our freedom to choose. All over
the world, organizations have become accidental publishers of
huge quantities of content. To professionally manage this content,
they need professional publishing processes.
The "less is more" approach does not mean less choice or less
knowledge. The key question here is: how do we use our knowledge
more effectively? If I give you a 2,000-word report when I could
have written you a clearer report in 200 words, that's not effective.
If you can't find what you're looking for on the intranet, it's
not effective. If you need to read so much and take in so much
knowledge that the opportunity passes you by, that's not effective.
Time is the diamond in the dirt of the knowledge society. We
are constantly trying to find time. Knowledge is only useful
if we act on what we know, so we need to balance the time we
spend knowing with the time we spend doing.
About the Author:
Gerry McGovern is a content management consultant, author and
speaker. http://www.gerrymcgovern.com
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