QR codes
Finally getting through my stack of CIO magazine's. Although I monitor over 100 rss feeds in bloglines daily. There is still a place for paper in this world. I appreciate the fact CIO has moved to a smaller cheaper feelin paper. Hopefully that's not as harsh on the environment.
Anyway, happened across the
early adopters column on QR codes. I'm thrilled to say I was completely unaware of this and very impressed with this approach to combining technolgy. I'm wondering if we are already using it in our records management environment, and what kind of security hurdles we would have to cross in order to use some variation thereof.
Open source cms
I finally got around to listening to James Roberstson's excellent presentation
Open Source WEB CMS Selection as usual, I am very impressed by the pragmatic approach he takes. I'd have to say the most compelling thoughts I'm left with our his observation of the deterioration of pricing for CMS software in general. I appreciate the way he immediately emphasizes that original cost is rarely the best indicator of the full project cost. I can personally attest to this reality.
Also his recommendation on selecting a cms approach with a sunset date in mind. This makes great sense and could probably be expanded for other classes of software. I think the KM space is just now seeing the first generation of software live past their easily maintainable stage into the cranky, buggy inflexible stage. Roberstson is wise to point out that anticipating this atrophy should be part of the decision.
Giving
Kind of off the topic, but important. I've been doing my best to tell everyone I know about
Heifer International. We are approaching the holiday season, file this away as the perfect gift.
LinkedIn - Competitive Intelligence
Law.com
makes a good point regarding the thought process that should go into a lawyer's use of linked in. I'm sure there will be information leaks at major firms in the near future and a series of legal confrontations shortly thereafter.
I would offer up that the participation of linked in ought to be addressed in firm policy. Security and business development ought to be seriously considered.
Collaboration presentation
James Robertson was kind enough to post a recent presentation he did entitled
Ten tips for succeeding at collaboration. I really appreciate his emphasis on the necessity to define a clear purpose for a collaboration to succeed.
I often explain this as 'the loop', the phenomena one experiences where you see the results of your input returning greater than the effort required. For example, a user agrees to share his/her contacts with a centralized CRM system and as a result is able to see who else in the firm has a relationship with that person.
polling
Randomly I get a request for various functionality. It seems that the awareness of web 2.0 type functionality is sorely lacking behind the corporate veil.
A recent request was for a quick poll utility for an external facing web site. After a quick discussion of requirements and security I was happlily able to recommend a http://www.micropoll.com/ . This was a clear win and what I'm beginning to feel is going to be the future of information technology.
RSS reader in Outlook 2007
I'm sure I'm way late to the party on this one. But I just tried using the RSS feature in outlook 2007 and I have to say that I'm not impressed.
I exported my feeds from
bloglines into an opml xml file. Outlook imported the 189 feeds, but ignored the folder structure I had set up.
Next I noticed that outlook was treating the individual stories in the various feeds as mail messages. This may work for some, but I think the distinction between a public news story that I'm monitoring is fundamentally different from an email message addressed to me. This was enough for me to initiate removal of the feeds.
I also noticed that outlook was running extremely slowly at this point. Each of the feeds was being processed individually it seemed.
Final complaint, I couldn't highlight multiple feeds and delete them, I endeded up highligting each rss feed and deleting. Somewhat annoying.
This is the second time I tried using a client based news reader. Aside from the issues raised above, I think this is a case where the cloud is a better location for the functionality. More on this at a later date.
The Rosetta Stone ?
I'd love to hear if others have encountered/addressed the issue of unversal entity identification successfully:
;;;;;
We want to use external data sources in conjunction with our internal data in order to have a richer understanding of our customers
We have our own numbering scheme to identify our customers. Most external data sources have their own identifying elements.
1) We must analyze the identifiers of the external data source and find the correct match in our own internal system.
2) We must store this relationship in a way that will allow us to re-use it
3) We must periodically review the relationship to make sure that the identifier retains its meaning (e.g. the company presented by the external data source is still the same as the one we are identifying internally)
The Hypothesis
1) An extensible data structure could be developed to store the mapping between internal and external business entity identifiers in such a way that the maintenance of these relationships would be most efficient.
2) This structure could be made available to the public so that customers of these data sources could pool resources to keep the COMMON mappings up to date. ‘Common’ refers to all data sources except the internal data identifiers.
Searching for advanced search
Advancing Advanced Search - Boxes and Arrows: The design behind the design Stephen Turbek offers a good summary of some of the problems with various design approaches. I would recommend this summary to anyone wrestling with the problems of precedence retrieval in the legal environment.
Of primary note is the fact that today's advanced search functionality is the realm of the fanatics - the obsessive and research librarians. I would concur that these are the constituents that drive our searching designs, and often paint the technology into the corner rather than hitting the sweet spot of wide usership.
What is 'Knowledge Management'?
When asked what I do for a living, I tell people my title is Director of Knowledge Management. Often the response is something like the scene in Mel Books' History of the World Part 1 where Mel tells the vnemployement office that he is an unemployed stand up philosopher... Ohh a bullshit artist! she replies with recognition.
It's not that bad, and people do start to catch on when I discuss some of the concrete things I do to help capture information and make it available for use. But I think the label 'Knowledge Management' has been severely damaged by overselling. CRM, Document Management, Search, XML all are very worthy classes of software - but the reality of implementing and realizing true value are difficult.
I'll be looking back on some earlier posts in the next few weeks/months and see what insight can be gained....
From
Worlds Best Movie Quotes"occupation?"
"gladiator."
"did you kill last week?"
"no."
"did you try to kill last week?"
"yes."
"now listen, this is your last week of unemployment insurance. either you kill someone next week, or we're gonna have to change your status."
"occupation?"
"stand-up philosopher."
"what?"
"stand-up philosopher! i coalesce the vapors of the human experience and change it into a viable form."
"oh... a bullshit artist! did you bullshit last week?"...
-history of the world part I
Humility:::Leadership::: coincidence?
Grechen over at the Happiness has a
great post on humility or 'how not to be a bore'. Excellent advise/guidance on how to really benefit from working with other people.
Just finished reading The Future of Management
by Gary Hamel
An interesting read. There are
a lot of good thoughts in here, particularly noteworthy to me are the stress on alternative reporting structures and decision making structures. The discussions of Gore, Google and Whole foods were enjoyable, but not particularly shocking. Overall, I'd have to say that the ideas put forth were very familiar.
Hamel points out that many of the innovative management
enhancements have come from 'non-traditional' managers. By this he means those of us who have not gone through the vetted business school manager factories. This fits my profile exactly (I have a degree in arts and letters). To me, the read was a exposure to a few new techniques, not a revelation of a new paradigm.
Congrats to Dave Winer
Scripting News has its ten year anniversary today. This has been my ideal of what a web log should be. Always relevant, usually interesting. Dave always had something additive to say. Thank you Dave!
asp.net user control for date range
To save someone a little time in the future, here's the asp.net user control code for a start date and end date control with validation:
<%@ Control Language="VB" AutoEventWireup="false" CodeFile="ucDateRange.ascx.vb" Inherits="ucDateRange" %>
Start Date:
End Date:
ID="valSummary" runat="server" />
Display="None" ErrorMessage="Start Date is required">
Display="None" ErrorMessage="End Date is required">
runat="server"
ControlToValidate="txtstartdate"
MaximumValue="1/1/2012"
MinimumValue="12/31/1988"
Type="Date"
Display="None"
ErrorMessage="The start date must be between 12/31/1988 and 1/1/2012">
runat="server"
ControlToValidate="txtEnddate"
MaximumValue="1/1/2012"
MinimumValue="12/31/1988"
Type="Date"
Display="None"
ErrorMessage="The end date must be between 12/31/1988 and 1/1/2012">
runat="server"
ControlToCompare="txtStartDate"
ControlToValidate="txtEndDate"
Display="None"
ErrorMessage="End Date must be after first date"
Operator="GreaterThan" Type="Date">
Labels: asp.net code
asp.net rss
via my kiwi friends... This looks like a promising
rss toolkit.
(Yes, it's been a while since I've posted here. But I've had a few other projects running which I'm sure would be visible to those who cared to nose around.)
