Jeff Hester

Extra-Enterprise Knowledge Management

// March 9th, 2010 // 1 Comment » // Business, Knowledge Management

Knowledge management is commonly understood as an enterprise initiative, usually with the objectives of collecting, capturing and reusing knowledge and expertise within the enterprise. The rise of cloud computing, social media and free collaboration tools has made it possible for communities of like-minded people to form outside the context of the enterprise — a form of ad-hoc knowledge sharing and collaboration.

Examples of such communities abound, including (in the KM realm) KMers.org, KMwaves.org and SIKM. But you don’t need to look further than Google to find a wealth of thriving community eco-systems, many with processes for identifying experts and collecting knowledge. Easy access to collaboration tools like Twitter, Skype, blogs, wikis and Google Wave provide the underlying technology that makes such collaboration possible among participants who might otherwise never meet.

It’s reasonable to suggest that real knowledge management occurs in many of these external communities, even if it isn’t really considered KM by its participants.

In this environment, each enterprise (theoretically) has its own knowledge management methodology and systems. In addition, each external community (i.e. KMers.org) also has their own methodology and systems… and community. A professional at Partner C can collaborate and share knowledge within their own enterprise, and/or within any number of external communities. But they remain separate systems. When internal knowledge and expertise comes up short, he must repeat the process (if he’s motivated) in whatever external communities he is involved in.

Extra-Enterprise KM

What I am interested in exploring is what I’ve termed extra-enterprise knowledge management. This involves tightly coupled KM shared within a known group of enterprises, and ideally with integration to traditional intra-enterprise KM systems.

In this environment, there remain internal KM processes and tools, but with strong connections to other valued enterprises — clients, partners, suppliers and in some cases even competitors may fit the bill. The professional in Company A can begin their search for knowledge or expertise within their enterprise, but can also extend that to include the community that “lives” at the intersection of the participating enterprises. It’s KM beyond the firewall.

This happens today in small groups, and generally through personal networking (who you know). I’d like to extend this to the broader enterprise.

There are numerous obstacles and questions that must be resolved to make this a reality. There are legal and regulatory problems, technical issues, and culture clashes, each of which I will explore in the future. But extra-enterprise KM holds tremendous promise for extending and leveraging knowledge sharing and collaboration. Whatever it is called, it’s the next wave of KM.

Interested in continuing the discussion? I am moderating a Twitter chat event titled KM Beyond the Firewall at KMers.org on March 9, 2010 at noon EST.

What the F**K is Social Media?

// August 3rd, 2009 // No Comments » // Business, Social Media

Social media has transformed our world. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, wikis, YouTube — all emphasize the power of participation. Today the web is all about community; people gathering, sharing and collaborating with others who share their interests.

If your business, web site or service is not leveraging social media, you are missing out on a huge opportunity to extend your reach. But what exactly is social media, and what can it do for you from a business perspective? The following slide show provides a clear, well-defined explanation.

Is your company using social media? How? Or why not?

Building Your Brand

// May 8th, 2009 // No Comments » // Business, Personal

There are two parts to your personal brand. First, you need to build your reputation. This takes time and energy, and there are no shortcuts. The second part is no less important, and that’s making sure the right people can find you. 

Google is making it easier for people to find you — if you are using Google Profiles. As reported on the official Google blog, once you setup your Google Profile, your profile may show up at the bottom of search results. I say “may” because if you have a fairly common name, you’re stuck with competition.

In my case, a search for Jeff Hester brings up the astronomer (not me), the business owner in Oklahoma (also not me), but also this blog (most definitely me, and #2 on page one). At the bottom of the search results page, you’ll see this:

Hint: I’m the guy on the left. You’ll note that Google also puts links to search for me on several popular social networks, including MySpace, Facebook, Classmates and LinkedIn. 

Simon Mackie at Web Worker Daily shared these step-by-step instructions for setting up your own Google Profile:

1. Go to the Google Profiles site.
2. Sign in with your Google account. 
3. Fill out the form. Add a photo and links to your sites. 

Remember that information you share will be available for others to see. You can share as much or as little as you like, but Google will rank a well-filled profile higher than a skimpy one. 

Have you setup your Google Profile? 

Dropcard takes business cards digital

// September 26th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Business, Good things

Earlier this month at the Office 2.0 conference, I ran out of business cards. Maybe it’s happened to you. You fumble around in your pocket and come up empty-handed. Somehow I was caught off guard. I put in a new order online (our company has at least automated all of that), but still hadn’t received the shipment before I left for the Knowledge Leadership Forum two weeks later. 

Dropcard aims to solve that problem, and could even eliminate the need for business cards altogether–a very green idea. I read about Dropcard on WebWorkerDaily and immediately saw how I could’ve used this.

How it works

The concept is simple. You register on Dropcard and can create two profiles: business and personal. You control how much or little information you want to share. When you want to send your “business card” to someone, you do so either via text message to 41411. When I meet Bill G., I can ask for his email, then send him my Dropcard by texting drop billg@windows.com to 41411. 

If you’re using an iPhone, you can thank your lucky starts and skip the text message, opting instead to use the clean, web interface you see to the right. Either way, it’s quick and easy. 

What happens next?

Once you send an instruction to send someone your contact info, they get a nicely formated email with all your details and a vCard attachment for quick import to Outlook. 

Dropcard allows you to enter multiple phones, addresses, chat networks, websites and personal profile addresses. 

There are no advertisements. Dropcard is supported by paid subscriptions. With a free account, you can send up to 15 Dropcards per month. $4.99 a month gives you as many as 20 profiles, and the ability to send up to 100 Dropcards per month. $9.99 a month gives you unlimited Dropcards. 

Oh yeah, my old skool carbon-based business cards did finally arrive this week. I’m not ready to ditch them, but Dropcard will be a handy backup in the future. 

Check out Dropcard.

Google Chrome: After One Week

// September 8th, 2008 // 2 Comments » // Business, Good things

Last week, Google launched their own web browser: Google Chrome. It’s lean and very fast, and it’s now my default browser at home. When I first heard about Chrome, I was curious, but not expecting much. A browser is a browser, right?

After using it for a week now, I can say I’m sold. It’s got some great features for users of all types. Best of all, it’s simple, clean and uncluttered. It mostly stays out the way and lets you make the most of your browsing experience.

I won’t go into the details, since you can get a great overview from Google’s Chrome site, but I was surprised to see Chrome take off at BigBlueBall, where today’s stats show that over 4% of the visitors to the site used Chrome. Pretty amazing for a browser that’s still in beta and barely a week old.

Currently Chrome is only available for Windows XP and Vista, but word is that every day Sergey asks the Chrome team when the OS X version will be ready.

Google Chrome website

What is Office 2.0?

// September 1st, 2008 // 3 Comments » // Business, Good things, Knowledge Management, Social Media, Web 2.0

This week, I’ll be attending the Office 2.0 conference in San Francisco. Most of my colleagues and friends gave me quizzical looks when I told them about the conference, wondering why on earth I’d want to go to a conference about Microsoft Office. Office 2.0 may be about a lot of things, but it’s most certainly not about a certain well-known suite of programs from a company in Redmond.

So what is Office 2.0?

For starters, it’s the name of the conference described on the web site as “…a collective experiment organized every year in San Francisco, CA and aimed at discovering the future of online productivity & collaboration. It is a unique gathering of visionaries, thought leaders, and customers using innovative online services for getting things done at the office, at home, and on the go.”

Wikipedia describes Office 2.0 as “…a marketing neologism representing the concepts of office productivity applications as published applications rather than stand-alone programs. The term leverages the Web 2.0 concept to conjure imagery of collaborative, community based and centralised effort rather than the more traditional application running on a platform locally.”

So just as Web 2.0 embraces the community and user-generated content, Office 2.0 explores new ways of working in a primarily online, collaborative environment.

I’ve seen firsthand success with collaborative online communities, particularly with the online, community-centric approach Fluor has taken with knowledge management. Distributed ownership, administration and accountability, coupled with a culture that encourages every voice to be heard has proven to be not only extremely effective, but essential to success.

In the spirit of “eating your own dogfood” the conference is paperless. Instead, each participant is given an HP 2133 Mini-Note running Linux, with wireless access to all of the tools necessary during the conference: Google Apps for email and calendaring; ClearSpace for discussions, blogging and publishing; Zoho for presentations and so on. On Wednesday, we will split into teams and respond to a simulated enterprise crisis in which we’ll put all these tools to work to solve the problem.

I’m looking forward to meeting others who are applying these concepts to support their business strategy, and learning innovative ways to stimulate similar success throughout the enterprise.

The Challenge

Probably the largest challenge to Office 2.0 is breaking down the barriers put up by IT Czars and establishing trusted, reliable ways to work outside the firewall and in the cloud. Most enterprises are leery, and rightly so, of putting their eggs in someone else’s basket. It will be interesting to see how other companies are tackling this issue.

Check back here and via Twitter, and I will keep you posted throughout the week from Office 2.0.

How Microsoft FolderShare Totally Screwed Me Over

// June 28th, 2008 // 6 Comments » // Business, FUBAR, Personal

Regular readers know that I test a lot of products. I don’t let let a measly little “beta” label scare me away. But once in a while, you get screwed. And when that once in a while comes along, be sure I’ll let you know so you can avoid a similar fate.

In this case, the culprit was the Microsoft FolderShare beta. The concept of FolderShare is this: using your Windows Live account, you can install the FolderShare software on multiple PCs and even Macs. I had installed it on a laptop running Vista, a desktop running XP and a MacBook Pro running OS X.

Once installed, you can create a “share” between the computers and FolderShare will sync files across them. You have the choice between automatic or on-demand synchronization. In my case, I chose on demand. You also chose the corresponding container folder on each PC (they can be different on each).

Here is where my tale of woe begins…

I had just purchased and downloaded Big Blue Ball from Peter Gabriel’s Real World Records via iTunes on the Vista laptop. I simply wanted to copy the songs over to my desktop (all legal — it’s one of the devices attached to my iTunes account). I could’ve done this any number of ways, but I thought it would be a good opportunity to give FolderShare a real-world test.

After installing the software on the three computers, I created a Personal Library called “Music.” I added the iTunes folder from my laptop, and it added the files to that library (somewhere on a FolderShare server).

Next, I setup the desktop (where I wanted the files). Unfortunately, as soon as I connected to the new personal library, it started adding all the music I had on my desktop to the library as well. Not what I wanted at all.

Looking back on the laptop, I noticed that FolderShare had automatically created a long list of folders that matched how my music was stored on the desktop. Inside each folder was a special “shortcut” that if you clicked it, would fetch the requested file from my desktop and transfer it to my laptop. Likewise on my desktop, I saw new folders that mirrored the folders on my laptop, also with the little shortcuts for each file.

Well, that’s neat, I suppose. I tried to transfer a few of the files over from my laptop, and the were “downloaded” properly. So that part worked, but what to do with the massive, empty folder structure that was created on my laptop. Remember I didn’t want to copy my music from my desktop to the laptop.

At this point, I suspect someone will point out that FolderShare is in fact designed for folder synchronization. This is true, although I suspected by selected the “on demand” option as I did, I could control what got synchronized, when it got synchronized, and where it got synchronized. I was wrong. And I’m not the only person to have been bitten by FolderShare.

So moving back to the laptop, I decided I would never want to transfer all those files from my desktop to my laptop, so I selected all the folders that were created with their little FolderShare shortcuts and deleted them.

Holy shit…. what a mistake!

Yes, the folders were deleted from my laptop, but (as I realized later) the actual MP3s on my desktop were also being deleted — victims of a synchronized deletion. To add insult to injury, they weren’t even moved to the recycle bin. They were just… gone.

As soon as I discovered what was happening, I exited FolderShare and deleted the library. I don’t know if that was a mistake, too, but now I’m left with a massive music folder structure that is completely empty — no more music.

Some of this music was downloaded, but most of it I’ve got on CD. I can burn it again, but it’s going to take time.

The moral of the story: steer clear of FolderShare. It has promise, but the fact that it deleted files on another computer without warning or confirmation is entirely unacceptable.

Schopenhauer and the Lifecycle of a New Idea

// June 25th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Business, Quotes

Every once in a while a new idea comes along — a shift in thinking that challenges the status quo. These innovations require us to either resist the change or adapt (most of us tend to resist).

German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer did a good job of summarizing the lifecycle of the new idea, when he said (describing the revelation of “new” truth):

“All truth passes through three stages: First, it is ridiculed; Second, it is violently opposed; and Third, it is accepted as self-evident.”

Ideas come in all sizes and shapes. The talented ones among us are quick to spot the truth, embrace it and adapt to take advantage of it.

Has Guy Ritchie captured the essence of football?

// June 22nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Business, Good things, Humor

Nike Soccer hired Guy Ritchie to produce the following 2-minute film that does a terrific job of capturing the dream of millions of young footballers (soccer players, for my US friends) — becoming a pro football player. The film is shot from the first-person perspective, and condensed to show the ups and downs and progression of “your” football career.

Nike Soccer has made a couple of shorter commercials from this, currently airing during the Euro Championship. Brilliant, and worth sharing.

Now — what would a first-person film of your life look like?

Entrepreneurship and Juvenile Delinquency

// June 19th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // Business, Quotes

I ran across a great quote from Yvon Chouinard, founder of outdoor outfitter Patagonia and noted environmental philanthropist. He says:

“…to understand an entrepreneur, you should study a juvenile delinquent. They’re both saying: ‘This sucks and I’m going to do it another way.’ You have to want to break the rules and prove that your way works.”

Cheers to the delinquents and entrepreneurs of the world! Cheers to Yvon Choinard.