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Moving Blog


Please all be advised that I have MOVED MY BLOG to WWW.ZYLSTRA.ORG/BLOG!


In the coming days I will still be posting my messages in both this and the new blog. Please adjust the rss-feed you subscribe to for my blog in your news aggregators.
You can find my new RSS-feed here: .


I would appreciate meeting you all on my new URL to continue the discussion, as I have greatly valued all your input in the last 6 months. Thanks!




permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 5/05/2003 08:36:00 AM)

 

Tipping Point Questions


In my last post I talked about the Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. The point of view it offers is certainly intriguing, but at the same time I formulated several reservations. I'll try and list my questions here.

Law of the Few
Three specific type of people, Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen, are the ones to target for creating your own epidemic. These types of people are proposed to be scarce, yet "everybody knows one" in their own circle. I'm not bothered with the classification, and I do know several people who would fit the profiles, but what about all the other people. The poor saps that aren't one of those three, what's left for them? The role of sheep following the lead of their herdsman?

It's not so much that I believe everybody should have a 'special' role, but it's the sheer absence of a place in it all for ordinary people and the total passivity that that seems to imply that I find odd. It reminds me of the mindless consumer mass marketing wants to target. In the end it is all the John and Jane Does that make your little epidemic a success, isn't it?

As to finding out who the Mavens, Connectors, and Salesmen are that you need to target, could Social Network Analysis help you find them?

The Connectors would be the easiest to spot with SNA I think. They're the community straddlers, the ones linking different circles. Mavens might be found by asking specific questions when collecting data for your SNA. Questions like "Who in your community would you go to with questions about......." And the same goes for salesmen, I think, if you ask who you think has authority on certain issues in your community.

But SNA probably would only work within a small and well defined setting, such as a SME, or a neigbourhood community. It's not the route to spot all connectors that could matter to you within the EU. How to find them then? Mavens probably could be found through forums, mailinglists etc. Salesmen? Connectors? I don't know.

Stickiness
This is an interesting part. Stickiness in the book is an elusive concept. The cases it describes summon a picture of rigorous testing until you find the right packaging of your message that sticks with your target audience (again, leaving out looking at the message itself).

But that is precisely what you cannot afford to do if you're the one without extensive means that wants to create big change with little to go on, the one that this book says to provide hope for.

Testing your message until it sticks brings to mind testing panels, going into communities and groups and see what doesn't work. And then going back again after each adjustment to do it all again until it works.

I am very curious what Lilia Efimova comes up with regarding the stickiness of blogs. (And would she also be able to say something of who blogs? Mavens, connectors and salesmen alike, or in different proportions?)

All in all I think in order to say something more about stickiness, the cases in the book provide too little substance. But I bet in communication sciences and even marketing as well as pihlosophical aspects of language clues can be found as to what might be sticky and what not.

Power of Context
Two aspects are mentioned in the book. One, the effect our living space can have on us and our emotions. Two, the size of our social network we are able to handle. These are both factors Malcolm Gladwell says can be used. Other contextualities, such as broader cultural traits, and individual history are not mentioned. Because they can't be influenced, at least not by the small changes sought for? Nevertheless they will probably influence acceptance of the idea you want to spread.

The sizes of network we can handle, with the magic number of 150 as a limit, based on our channel capacity is interesting if you compare it with what amongst others Ross Mayfield has been blogging about types of blogs and their audiences. Maybe I did not read the text closely enough but Malcolm Gladwell seems to say this 150 is a definite maximum. I think it is more like not being able to handle more than that in a given situation, but very possible to handle multiple networks of that size, just not at the same time. Otherwise Connectors would be in dire straits wouldn't they?

The challenge: starting an epidemic
What I really would like to see, and I wrote that yesterday as well, is a predictive application of these epidemical concepts. Can we, a group of let's say twenty bloggers, think up a message or idea we want to spread, and then purposefully start or own little epidemic? I would love to experiment with that. Maybe Blogtalk in Vienna is a great place to get together and discuss this more vigorously. In the mean time we could start by proposing what message to spread and whom to spread it to. Any takers?

permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 5/05/2003 08:29:00 AM)

 

The Tipping Point


How little things can make a big difference is what Malcolm Gladwell sets out to show in his book The Tipping Point. He does this by outlining how epidemics can be characterized. This book certainly was an interesting read, as it offers a way of looking at change from a different perspective. Because how is it that a brilliant idea might not become a huge success, and other lesser ideas turn into the biggest current thing?


Malcolm Gladwell, author of The Tipping Point
(interview with the author)



The standard reaction, stemming from a century of command and control mass production, of managers would probably be that there must be some big and crucial factors at play in such a situation. Malcolm says it’s more likely to be trivialities that determine the outcome. Trivialities that turn your idea into an epidemic. Or do not. The tipping point is the moment in which something suddenly spreads in exponential fashion, and becomes epidemic.


There are of course technological examples of how trivialities determine outcome. We now all have electrical refrigerators humming in our kitchens in stead of the more efficient and totally silent gas operated ones, because one of the original players in the market in the 1920’s and 1930’s, GE, also had a stake in energy production, and added $0.50 worth of revenue for electricity consumption per annum for every refrigerator sold. Now this is a trivial fact, but clearly not a trivial business decision. Here evidently the better idea lost out.


The problem with technology assessment as with predicting the future in general is what inputs to adhere weight to and not. Usually this is easily done with 20/20 hindsight, and that is also the bit that bugs me reading the Tipping Point. The big question that remains after reading this book is, how to apply this, how to combine this very interesting epidemic perspective with my own decisions and e.g. attempts to implement KM ideas in organisations? And also very important, how to apply this without it becoming pure manipulation? In short I would like to see planned for epidemics documented which took this book’s construct as a basis for action, in stead of cases that in hindsight fit the description.




But let’s have a look at a summary of the book to familiarize yourself with its terminology. (or read a summary by Robert Paterson)



Central to the book are three theories regarding epidemics:


The Law of the Few

This ‘law’ says it takes only a few, but crucial, people to turn something into an epidemic. Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen. The mavens are knowledgeable about a certain topic, the Connectors know a lot of people and can spread ideas from one circle to another, the Salesmen ‘sell’ the idea within their own circle. It takes one or more of these chains of maven connector and salesman to make an idea reach a broader audience and become a success.


The Stickiness Factor

Now an idea can be great and it’s spreading can be huge thanks to the types of people above, but if a message is not sticky it will only be a temporary blimp on anyone’s radar, and then die. No buzz, in short. Stickiness is the packaging of a message you have to choose in order to make it irresistible. Stickiness in this book remains somewhat elusive, except that stickiness might be greatly enhanced by knowing a lot about the people you want to reach with the message and design the packaging accordingly, and that simple changes to the packaging if it’s not catching on are often much more effective than total repackaging. But in the end, there is a simple way to package information, which under the right circumstances can make it irresistible. You just have to find it In Dutch we would call such a statement kicking in an already open door.


The Power of Context

Context is also important in reaching the Tipping Point. Malcolm Gladwell names two contextual factors, environmental aspects, and our social networks.


The first factor, environmental aspects, is based on the notion that our emotions and actions can be shaped by the space we live in. If a street is full of graffity and broken windows, the resulting atmosphere attracts crime like street robbery etc. However if it’s neat and clean, with flowers from every window that chance is much smaller. Likewise if next to a waste bin at a bus stop there is already one piece of litter on the ground, chances are people will add to that. If there’s nothing on the ground, people tend to throw their litter in the bin as well. Change these environmental factors and you can change behaviour. It is on this notion that the New York City Police based its zero tolerance policy.


The second factor is the number of people around us. We have a limited capacity in dealing with keeping track of the relationships between us and the individuals of the group we live in, and those between other individuals in our group. This channel capacity is seems to lie around the number of 150, with a much smaller group of about 12 to whom we feel the strongest ties. Go beyond the 150 and alienation between individuals will occur. Nomadic tribes seem to adhere to these numbers, as do military units.


For an idea to become epidemic you will have to keep this threshold of 150 in mind. It will not do to convince a whole stadium with 15.000 of something; the mass will go home not remembering you. But reach a 100 of those groups of 150 and you’re rocking. Now the book seems to imply that each of us functions in a context of about 150 people.
That does not sound right to my ears, especially if I look at the examples given. For instance a company is mentioned that is organised in independent business units of 150 people. But each of those 150 employees will have a life outside of the company as well, so even if those workers indeed know 150 people, they won’t be all colleagues. Is Malcolm Gladwell implying we can only keep track of a group of 150 people at any one time, but can easily switch groups, because that is what seems to fit my own experience more? Or is it that I’m more the connector type that I think that threshold of around 150 people doesn’t hold up?


Conclusion

What seems to be unsettling to me in this book is that, even if it places human interaction, and especially face to face conversations, at the heart of epidemics of ideas, it also seems to provide a mechanistic, command and control like approach to stuffing you ideas through someone’s throat. Find the right people, find the right package and you’re in business. Or did I miss the part where he says that if the message stinks, or is some bogus marketing line, an epidemic will not happen even if you got the right people and message?


Nonetheless the book is intriguing, and well worth reading, because it promises the possibility of success, of reaching the tipping point without having access to vast resources. In the next post I’ll try and go into questions and consequences.


one match can set everything alight: how small things can change the world

permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 5/05/2003 08:28:00 AM)

 

Broadband for Rural Communities


My brother in law works with 1st Broadband, a company that sets up wireless broadband internet infrastructures in rural communities where the big telco's are unlikely to provide wired infrastructure any time soon. They've just kicked off their first project in Penwith in Cornwall, UK. I think these are great initiatives.




First of all they only start a project if a community is explicitly asking for it. So there is a lot of community effort behind these projects, and it is always amazing of what community initiatives can achieve with next to nothing to work with in terms of funding and material. The generation of that kind of energy is a benefit in itself, and something many companies might learn from. Second connecting villages to the internet positions them closer to the outside world. Not geographically of course, but as David Weinberger said in his book, nearness on the net is determined by interest.

This works in two ways. It reduces the villagers distance to outside sources of information, enlargening their scope of what the world is they live in. And also it reduces the distance of us to the village as well, possibly making these villages more attractive for us city dwellers to locate a business or do business.
The former, enlargening scope, based on research, is an important in improving independence and self sustainability of people and communities. The latter might help in turning around the trend of a slowly depopulating countryside because jobs are found elsewhere, leaving less and less people behind, until there are not enough people to sustain primary services like local schools, foodstores etc., which in the end kills the community entirely.
Now three villages in Cornwall have indicated they want to do this too.


making a village even more attractive with full connectivity


And after all, if broadband is available in the countryside, it might even be possible someday to start living 'outside' and still enjoy all the connectivity I'm used to here in the city. ;)


permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 5/04/2003 07:24:00 AM)

 

Planning to Move


After writing this blog at Blogspot for 6 months now, I have found that it increasingly bothers me not to have personal control over content and comments and being dependent on third party services, that sometimes proof unreliable. Not really surprising since these are all free services. Since I think the experimental phase of my blog is now over, in the sense that blogging has become part of my regular activities, I have decided it is time to take things into my own hand.

For that I am now configuring Moveable Type on my home based server, and have bought two domain names. I could not choose between the two, so I took both.
The first is www.zylstra.org, which I took because it is nice to have a domain featuring my own name. (it's a .org because all others are taken, also my name is spelled with ij in stead of y, but that has proven to be too difficult for non-Dutch.) The other is www.interdependent.biz since I think Interdependent Thoughts is a good name for a blog, and sort has become a brand in that respect. However Interdependentthoughts is probably not so attractive, thus I decided for interdependent.biz. The .biz again because all others had been taken. What do you think about these domain names?

In the coming days I will move everything from this blog to the new server, and then stop using Blogger. I will not take Blogger of line in order not to let all the references rot. Maybe I'll rewrite the Archive pages to point to the new site, but that is not on my list of priorities now.


permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 5/04/2003 06:57:00 AM)

 

Koninginnedag


Or in English "Queens Day", is a national holiday in the Netherlands, celebrating the Queens birthday, even if April 30th isn't her birthday, but her mothers. It's just that her own birthday on January 31st isn't exactly the ideal time of year to turn the country into one big open air festival.

Koninginnedag is the day the country turns brightly orange, after the name of the Royal Family which is the House of Orange. It's the day everybody turns out to what must be the biggest jumblesale and open air festival and party in one. I am on the local committee in my home town organising all the events, and for me it is sort of the busiest and funniest day of the year. Had a great time!

permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 5/01/2003 04:10:00 AM)

 

Blogtalk Papers


Jose Luis Orihuela (blog: eCuaderno) has posted his paper for the Blogtalk Conference, titled 'Blogging and the eCommunication Paradigms'.
Lilia Efimova has posted some of the collected data for her paper online as well, and struggles to keep to her schedule.


permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 5/01/2003 03:21:00 AM)

 

Small Pieces Loosely Reviewed


Recently I read Small Pieces Loosely Joined, a unified theory of the web, by David Weinberger. This by way of preparation for the Blogtalk conference in Vienna, May 23rd-24th, where David Weinberger will be a key-note speaker.

It is a well written, easy to read book, and that is where I at first got off on the wrong foot. The conversational tone of Davids book is not what I traditionally expect of serious reading, which Small Pieces is. But that, in the end says more about me, and about the environment I was taught in (what's difficult is serious, what's fun can't be worth much), than about the content of Davids book. In fact it's one of the points David wants to make, I think. (see the paragraph on knowledge further down)

Small Pieces Loosely Joined sets out to chart the Web as a New World, which brings with it the need to rethink our concepts of Space, Time, Perfection, Togetherness, Knowledge, Matter and Hope, to see how these concepts might work out different between the Web and the physical world of our everyday surroundings. No technology in this book? No, of course wires, chips, condensators, coils, are the infrastructure the web is build on, but that's not what takes place within it. The Web is a world we've made for one another. It can be understood only within a web of ideas that includes our culture's foundational thoughts, with human spirit lingering at every joining point. That's philosophy, not technology, and rightly so.

Central observations in this book are:

We experience the web as a world, a space, we can travel around in. That's because we've come to confuse Measured Space (the 3d grid we have laid upon the universe to specify locations) and Lived Space, the places we live in with the things that surround us with the emotions, associations and memories that are attached to them. On the Web there is no space at all, but it's full of places, which makes us experience it as a space. Nearness on the Web is created by interest; if something is interesting it will be linked to.

Time we generally perceive as a string of beads, when a moment has passed it is gone forever. On the Web past moments (messages etc.) turn into places, and become part of the Web-world. Also different timelines, different stories, we can leave and come back to when we wish. All these timelines intertwined become part of the one timeline that is my life.

Perfection is not something for the Web, except in places like on-line stores where we expect the information to be accurate and the functionality to be flawless. The Web celebrates our imperfection, which is a basic trait of humanity.(p.94)

Togetherness. The web is a new social and public place. We form groups there based on our interests that aren't unique. In the physical world however, when groups swell to masses we become faceless, our individuality becomes invisible within the mass. Not so on the web, there we retain our individual recognizability within the multitude. (p.120)

Knowledge has become too boney says David. Defining knowledge the traditional way as true statements we are justified believing, is like explaining sex without saying it feels good. (p.142) Boney knowledge is context-free and universal, whereas the Web adds context and locality again, putting meat and fat on the bones. It's a plea for knowledge as storytelling basically, and as a knowledge manager I recognize the value in that. However by denouncing 'boney' knowledge as reductionist David in my opinion goes of the track a bit. He uses a whole expose on thought experiments concerning artificial intelligence to show how 'boney' knowledge wants us to perceive our brain as a mere algorithm, and contrasting it with the full range of experiences we have. I don't know if David read Darwin's Dangerous Idea by Daniel C. Dennett, but maybe it would help him appreciate the fact that reductionism in itself helps greatly in understanding how we came about. It's 'greedy reductionism' (the phrase is Dennett's) that is to be denounced. But reductionism in itself does not take away from the wonder of our full range of experiences, of feeling alive. It merely aims to provide a non-miracular explanation of how that came about. Greedy reductionism tries to do away with enjoying the wonder of the results as well.

Matter
We have become used to favouring the physical over the mental. We understand our mental processes somehow as representations of the outside world in our brain. Thus we say things like what we call 'fear' is really just the release of powerful chemicals in our bloodstream. How about saying the release of powerful chemicals into our bloodstream is really just 'fear'? (p. 154) The former is a picture of us locked into our heads, but we actually live in the midst of friends and family. Our passions and feelings are part of us discovering the world and assigning meaning to it. In the same way knowledge is made boney, the emphasis on matter versus mental takes our human contextuality out of the equation. The Web puts that back. The Web is all things considered unreal, bits don't exist yet they convey information. It's the connections, the links, that make the web what it is. Thus with our lives: it's the people we live with, what we share, that makes live 'real' to us.

Hope
The Web has been heralded as a revolution several times over. But after the dot com bust we could also say that nothing has changed much with the advent of the web. However the Web is not about revolution, but about evolution (and that's why I think David should not have done away with reductionism so easily). The idea of it will have its deepest effect, not it's current state or form. The Web is set to change and challenge some of the basic cultural default believes we hold, and will do so gradually, or better we will do it ourselves as the citizens of this new world the Web is. We will bind it to our physical world and existence in a myriad of ways, and will try to translate the things we think useful or special on the Web into parts of the physical worlds, and vice versa. It will take time, this journey to make our Web what we want it to be, and the journey will reshape us; the paradox of life itself. This blog is merely one little face in the mass adding to it.

I'd say read it, this conversational book of philosophy!
And the universal theory of the web? Oops, haven't mentioned it, now did I? Must be because it's not there, that one place that expresses our knowledge for all time and perfectly states what ultimately matters to all of us together. If you pick up the book hoping for the One Final Answer, that will be hope in vain. But on the other hand, the book will explain exactly why that is: the Web's about humanity. So pick it up anyway.


permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/28/2003 08:16:00 AM)

 

The Techie Viewpoint


Last Friday I attended the presentation of a fraternity friend of mine who presented his masters thesis, as the last step in finishing his study in informatics at our Alma Mater.

He had made a theoretical model for, and built a prototype of, a webportal for a defense contractor here in the Netherlands. From his presentation I concluded I have moved away significantly from the technological viewpoint and also the more industrial organisational model. In his presentation much emphasis was given to security issues, in fact the whole model was focussing on it. Not very strange for a defense contractor, but in all his story the people meant to use the system were never once mentioned.....
Pondering how it was that apart from the users, his presentation also left out almost all aspects I would deem important in these kinds of projects (e.g. sharing to name but one), I came to the conclusion I could have held the same presentation 8 years ago, and believe every word of it. It's just that I, while still understanding the technological aspects, have moved away from the techie viewpoint. It's in building bridges between people and technology that I have found joy in my work, and I now seem to have built my dwellings on that bridge in good old medieval style.

Making my home on the bridge (picture: Ponte Vecchio, Firenze, Italy)




permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/27/2003 12:21:00 PM)

 

Merging Your Blog Seamlessly


One of the things that can become a pain in the proverbial you know what is having to do things twice. That's why I bought a PDA, and want to synchronize my PDA with both my Outlook and my CRM calendars, in stead of keeping more than one diary/calendar at a time. Via Terry Frazier here's the story of how to add items from your calendar to your Blog seamlessly.


permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/27/2003 11:05:00 AM)

 

Template Changes


As a result of Stuarts posting on the possible relationship between blog design and conversational effects, I decided to implement some changes to my own template.
It is a further adaptation of a default template by Blogger. I moved away from the blue color scheme that seems to be prolific in the blogs I read.

If you're wondering about the picture in the header: it's an adaptation of a picture I took in the fall of 2001 in my sisters garden in Reading near Boston Massachussets.

fall foliage 2001, Reading MA






permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/27/2003 09:43:00 AM)

 

Conversational Blogging, or Lack Thereof


Stuart Henshall adds to the discussion of blogs as facilitators of dialogue. He is the first I've seen who takes the design of the blog as a possible cause of little interaction through comment-boxes etc. Personally I still feel that the dialogue blogs foster takes places in large parts in other media, with the blog as startingpoint, so that the dialogue is largely hidden from view for the casual blog-reader. But Stuart certainly makes a point worth contemplating.

permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/22/2003 01:39:00 AM)

 

Are You Addicted to Blogging


As a lot of us are preparing for a visit to the Blogtalk conference, some spending a lot of energy and time on academically sound research into the use of blogs, this simple test might be fun as well:

Are you a blogaholic? [found via Cyberwriter]


My score was 56 out of 100, which means You are a dedicated weblogger. You post frequently because you enjoy weblogging a lot, yet you still manage to have a social life. You're the best kind of weblogger. Way to go!. What better endorsement of my activities!

I was a little worried though when I realised that I have indeed dreamt about blogging something that happened in that dream, and that the answer in the questionnaire to this question would have to be a yes. :)
One point of critique ; who says blogging takes away from social life as the explanation of my score seems to imply? My social life has been growing through blogging by enabling me to meet new people. It's not as if it's replacement for face to face meetings, it's more like a catalyst for it.


permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/16/2003 04:11:00 AM)

 

Let's meet at Blogtalk


For those of you who, like me, plan to go to Blogtalk, in Vienna next month, a forum has been opened to meet those who plan to come, and perhaps set up some meetings in advance. This will help make you the most of your time in Vienna.

Lets meet in Vienna!


permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/15/2003 02:15:00 AM)

 

The Importance of Showing Appreciation


I have thought a bit if I wanted to blog this, but here goes anyway.

This afternoon we, being me and a couple of colleagues, organised a session on cooperation between organisations involved in youth care, and the role of ICT as an enabler for cooperation. There were three presentations and a forum discussion afterwards. The presentations were by two people from outside the company, and by myself.
At the end, as usual the presenters were thanked by the host, my CEO, and some gifts were exchanged. A bottle of wine, a bunch of flowers, and a gift certificate for a small amount. To all presenters,........except me.

Just before the session started I had already noticed that there were only two bunches of flowers standing ready in the pantry, so I wasn't really surprised. But I was a bit confused. Why did this happen? Who had decided this, and why? Over drinks the guests asked me why it was that they got something and I didn't, other attending people asked the same. I had no real answer. One of the other presenters had other engagements later on, and could not take the flowers and the wine with him: he gave them to me, and thanked me for a pleasant discussion-filled afternoon.

Thing is, I felt pretty unappreciated for my efforts. On top of that it has been a strange view for all the other people present, to see me being skipped. I talked to my colleague who had arranged for the flowers etc., and asked how this came about. Turns out she merely assumed that gifts were only for the external presenters, as I was also on the organising committee, and gifts in general were only given to external contacts. Last time we did a meeting of this kind, she hadn't been the one arranging the flowers, I had done it myself.

Lessons to take away from this:
  • In the evaluation of this meeting make sure that the organizing script explicitly mentions thank you gifts for all presenters, both external and internal, for future events.
  • Not everybody sees giving these little gifts as an expression of thanks and appreciation, but as a little show that is part of the routine in handling external contacts.
  • Not everybody intuitively feels that it's important to take time for thanking people.
  • I feel unappreciated, not to say somewhat insulted, if an explicit thank you is withheld that I had 'counted' on based on earlier experiences.
  • These kinds of things have to be used sparingly if meant as incentives in other parts of the workplace: one can come to expect them, and start feeling it is due.
  • It is important to be appreciative to others because for everybody the next line holds true:
  • I really like to be shown appreciation ;D

    Oh, and yes: it was a very worthwhile afternoon, with good presentations, good discussion, and interesting conversations afterwards.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/10/2003 11:53:00 AM)

    •  

    Blogging: Why would you, why do you?


    In preparation for her paper to be presented at the Blogtalk Conference in Vienna on May 23rd and 24th, Lilia Efimova published two on line questionnaires:

    One for bloggers: http://blog.mathemagenic.com/blogtalk/blogger.htm
    One for would-be bloggers: http://blog.mathemagenic.com/blogtalk/wouldbe.htm

    The goal of this study is to understand factors that support or inhibit adoption of blogging by comparing bloggers and "would be bloggers". I would appreciate it if you can spend some of your time answering my questions. I estimate that it should take between 10 and 25 minutes (I took me 15 minutes).[Mathemagenic]

    It took me around 10 minutes, but then I had been thinking and writing about the answers recently.

    It would be great if you would be willing to take the time and fill out the questionnaire that applies to you. In that way we will be sure of one extra interesting story to listen to in Vienna!


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/10/2003 10:18:00 AM)

     

    Scope and Social Capital of Blogging


    While I was referring to posts by Ross Mayfield on audience sizes and blogs, he himself brings them together in Social Capital of Blogspace.

    Also interesting: John Udell on Scopes of Audiences. (via both Ross Mayfield and Lilia Efimova)

    I would like to argue that overlap in scope is not only a matter of addressing other numbers of public (3, 300, 3k, 3M etc) but I believe that overlap in scope is also hugely interesting in terms of multidisciplinarity. It is very often that I pick up ideas from other disciplines that offer a view, or approach that enriches what I do in my own field. Now of course KM is multidisciplinarity turned flesh as it were. So is KM the art of finding scoping tools, and learning to be 'human routers' (Lilia) / 'community straddlers' (Ross)? (edited comment I posted in response to Lilia Efimova)



    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/09/2003 04:45:00 AM)

     

    The Role of Blogs, continued.......


    In the last few weeks we already saw several contributions by Lilia, Denham and others, like myself, discussing whether blogs can actually serve as a place for knowledge sharing, dialogue (or deep dialogue, although I don't really know what that is supposed to mean).

    Lilia points to, writes and comments on some new entries into the debate:
    Blogs, dialogue and identity building
    Blogs, dialogue and identity building (2)
    I wonder why it's hard to believe that weblogs are good
    Blogs, dialogue and identity building (3)

    Denham and Lilia also provide a place to keep track of the conversation as a whole: Is Weblog a Hype?

    I really like that Denham Grey has stirred up this conversation, but I don't yet really know what his concrete objections and reservations are. I get the feeling, and I hope Denham will tell me if this is not correct, that the basic point of critique is that weblogs don't serve just the one purpose of deep dialogue and that dialogue is not contained within that single space, and second that the medium is not automatically a place for dialogue, but has to be used as such first. In other words that the medium in itself is not a real catalyst for dialogue.

    Both objections I can agree with. But so what? Do blogs need to be?
    When I wrote about listening, and knowledgesharing as storytelling and listening, one of the comments I got was that blogs are, since they're published on the internet, per definition broadcasting media.

    My reaction to that is, that, yes, some blogs are more the broadcasting type, but some are not, mine certainly isn't. The fact that I'm sitting down with friends in front of my fav pub on the market square for a beer, and have a conversation everyone could potentially listen in to, or take part in, does not make me the town crier. On the internet it's the same difference.

    The number of potential audience is irrelevant, it's about the actual returning audience, in this blogs case around 20 people, not counting the passers by. (Ross Mayfield has written interestingly about audience size and blogs: Blogging Bubbles, Repealing the Power-Law, and especially Distribution of Choice).

    It is with that core audience that dialogue ensues, or debate. When the audience increases to several hundred 'regulars' one tends to see the author taking a less active stance in taking part in discussing postings, except with the core-group bloggers that have been around for a longer time. That is the transition towards broadcasting. So, no blogs are not automatically fostering dialogue: people have to make an effort, as always. You have to have a group of people around you, not too large, not too small, to have a dialogue. Or different groups for different topics.

    Blogging functions both as a place to start building those needed trusting relations, and a place to have the dialogue, and write down the different inputs in to it. That does not take place automatically, you have to be committed, just as in any other setting for dialogue to ensue. The art of dialogue is therefore probably just as widespread here, as in other areas of life, with one advantage: it is easier to spot the willig amongst bloggers, than picking them from a crowd. I see no reason therefore to denounce blogs as unfit for dialogue.

    The other assumption, that blogging does not have dialogue as its single purpose, nor that it is the single space in which dialogue takes place, I think isn't of real importance either in my opinion. The point is that I have dialogues with people. One on one mostly, and sometimes it's a multilogue, when there are more people involved. People. Now in my contacts with people I employ whatever means of communication is the most fitting at a given time. Can be face-to-face in different settings, can be e-mail, can be phone, and of course can be blogging. My blog often serves as a starting point, where I write something that has triggered my interests, follow ups by others in their blogs or in my comments-section then come into view. And from that it's a mix of the things I mentioned. I already know that I will probably be talking about dialogue with Lilia and Sebastien when I meet them in Vienna next month, or that I might have a conversation with my girlfriend about it tonight, and insert the results here. It's the conversational cloud I referred to in an earlier posting.

    Dialogues in my view will never be confined to one single space, or medium. Even if you put a group in a room for a day to have a dialogue on a certain issue, it will continue and evolve beyond those walls, first during breaks, and then afterwards. To me it seems that the wish to have it all in one place reflects a deeplying command and control issue. Thing is, I'm utterly fine with chaos, as long as I am in command and control of just one thing: me.

    And of course blogs do not have being a platform for dialogue as a single purpose. It is about maintaining a thought-record, it is about annotated bookmarks, it is about having a low threshold place to take down notes from wherever I am, and it's about added bonusses of doing that publicly: new social contacts and the resulting trusting relationships from them, some vanity when people say you posted great things, and dialogue. It's the basics that started me going in blogging, it's the bonusses that keep me doing it for you to see. If not for the bonusses I would have returned to the stacks of legal pads that served me well for almost 15 yrs.







    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/09/2003 03:48:00 AM)

     

    Debate, dialogue and humour


    Yesterday I was at the `Night of Philosophy` in Felix Meritis in Amsterdam. From that evening I took two observations home.

    First Peter van der Geer, made a remark on the relation between debate and dialogue. Earlier on I wrote on debate and dialogue as opposites. He said that debate is a precursor, not an opposite, for dialogue. You have to switch to dialogue as soon as the debate has come upon questions that cannot be answered by debating them. Then the debaters have to engage in dialogue together to be able to move forward.

    Simon Critchley


    Second, I listened to an interview with British philosopher Simon Critchley (see profile at Essex University talking about his 2002 book on humour. (see
    On Humour (Thinking in Action)    , at Amazon)

    There are historically three theories of humour:
  • The superiority-theory, as in where someone slips on a banana peel and surrounding bystanders laugh at the unhappy soul. This is I think an act of creating a sensis communis by excluding others. Defining a group by saying who is not part of it.
  • The relief-theory, where humour is used to relief emotions or tension, like making a light joke during stressful moments, e.g. when hiding in a Baghdad air raid shelter.
  • The incongruity-theory. In this last instance humour is used to put things upside down, to brake through patterns. It remembers me of Wittgensteins language-games where words take on different meanings in different contextualities.

    Now according to Simon Critchley using the last form of humour is at its root a philosophical act. This because it involves reflection upon the self, the other and the world. He cited self-ridicule as an example of this. I would say, self ridicule could also be a form of self-directed superiority humour. Which, as Critchley added, can also be a means of establishing your authority: I am so powerfull that I can make jokes about myself.
    In the incongruity variety self ridicule shows that you feel comfortable enough to show weaknesses or be more vulnerable. But these are of course two sides of the same coin, as they mainly differ in nuance and intention.

    After the interview we talked a few minutes about humour and knowledge management. Having fun and laughing is said to be useful for enhancing creativity, and facilitating the correct atmosphere for dialogue, by KM pros. Would humour in this case be a facilitator, a catalyst, or also a method in itself? First off, humour helps bring forward the informal structures in more formal settings. Self ridicule as said above can help bringing down authority and hierarchical structures. Also the relief kind can help solve tense situations in discussions and debates (as a step up to dialogue?).
    But the incongruity type of humour is also an expression of creativity itself. It takes creativity after all to put a situation in a different light. And that is what the desired effect of creativity is: looking at situations from another angle, in another context, in order to discover new and alternative roads forward. It’s the need to jump ahead, when evolutionary progress is exhausted. Irrationality as a means to help rationality forward. It’s the classic boundary that scientific progress encounters and has to overcome time and again.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/06/2003 04:07:00 AM)

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    Building trusting relationships from blogging


    In the past few months I've wrote several postings on trust and how blogging is part of the way I build my social networks.
    Today I found a quote on David Weinbergers blog, that is a nice illustration of what I mean:

    Paolo and I know each other through our weblogs and decided to meet in person. (We got a little encouragement from Marc Canter. Thanks, Marc!) We had a great time.
    We talked about weblogs as building webs of trust. I met Paolo already knowing him through his weblog. I trusted him before I met him, and I had good reason to trust him. We were able to start talking as if we had been friends for months, which in a sense we had been. The Web is rewiring the real world. Just not fast enough.

    It really is quite exciting how blogging takes effect on first meetings with people you've blogged with. That to me is what made my visit to KM in Europe in London last year so worthwhile. It is also the reason why I am still hesitating whether to visit the blogtalk conference in Vienna next month or not.

    On the one hand I think it will be a great gathering of interesting people, people I've interacted with through blogs, and would very much like to meet in person. On the other hand, I don't know if I am willing to cough up the money to go to Vienna, as it will be a private trip and the week after the conference I will already be travelling to Liechtenstein on my own expenses already. Maybe I just need some more convincing of you guys! :D

    UPDATE (April 3rd 2003): No convincing needed anymore, I've decided to go. So May 23rd and 24th, I'll be at Blogtalk in Vienna


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 4/01/2003 10:22:00 AM)

     

    Feedster


    Rick Klau writes about a new service to search RSS-feeds called Feedster. Had a look at it a few days ago. Haven't yet figured it out really, but looks useful. Will check it out later on.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/26/2003 04:19:00 AM)

     

    Microblogosphere and Bloglet


    On the left hand side I have added a few things in the last days. First I have created a set of links called 'My microblogosphere'. It contains links to technorati, blogdex etc. by which it is easy for you to find out who the blogs are in my conversational cloud. Of course the blogroll does this too, but it gives no clues as to what the interaction, if any, between those blogs and me is. As not all of these services catalogue the same blogs and their linking, I've added a few.

    Also a Bloglet service is added. For those of you who don't use news-aggregators, or prefer e-mail it is now possible to subscribe to my blog, and receive new posts via e-mail. Just fill in your e-mail address in the provided form, and you're on the mailinglist.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/25/2003 01:54:00 AM)

     

    The 7 habits of highly effective bloggers


    Mike Sanders in his blog Keep Trying, translates Covey's book on the 7 habits of highly effective people to blogging. While always somewhat sceptic of lists like "the 7 best ways to" and the "top 10 critical success factors of" and the "just do this and you'll be happy and famous too" sort of message they convey, I think Mike says a lot of good stuff in comparing Covey's seven habits with what he has experienced and sees in the blogosphere. A lot of what he says obviously goes a long way to improving dialogues and knowledge sharing as well.

    Here's the line up:
  • Habit 1, Be Pro-active
  • Habit 2, Keep the end in mind
  • Habit 3, First things first
  • The first three habits: Going beyond fun, From personal to public
  • Habit 4, Think win/win
  • Habit 5, Seek to understand first, then to be understood
  • Habit 6, Synergize
  • Habit 7, Sharpen the Saw
  • Some more reflection: 7 habits: a field trip and A look at habits


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/20/2003 06:16:00 AM)

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    Super Power


    This morning I woke up with the first footage of air raids on Iraqs capital city Baghdad coming to the tv-screen. Even though I want to be careful not to make this blog a political forum, it is dedicated to knowledge management and learning after all, I feel the need to make this post and clarify my position. War, once declared, is no thing to be neutral about.

    The last weeks, but also the last two years, I had an increasing uneasy feeling concerning the foreign policy style of the USA. That unease started with one little sentence G.W. Bush said whilst declaring war on terrorism: "You're either with us, or with the terrorists." Any leader that thinks in such black and white terms arouses my unease, especially so if that person is the President of the one remaining world power.

    So, yes, I too was devastated by the news of 9/11. Yes, I do think the USA have every right to react and defend themselves against such heinous acts. Yes, I too think Saddam Hussein is a dictator everybody would be glad to be rid of. No, I feel no antipathy whatsoever towards the USA nor its citizens. No, I don't begrudge the USA their tremendous economic and military power. In fact I think it is a good thing that there is a super power in this world, if its deeds and morals match that level of power.

    When you are in the possesion of tremendous power, you have to be a wise man in wielding it. For all their human flaws and differences of opinion, post war American Presidents have tried to do just that. And I also think that the current American President thinks he's doing that as well. But the break I have witnessed in American foreign policy in the last years seems to point in the opposite direction. And that is what makes me very worried.

    MSNBC explains this shift in foreign policy in eloquent detail.




    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/19/2003 11:26:00 PM)

     

    Dialogue is difficult


    Last week I wrote about listening as attaching strings to what someone says to you from what you already know and what you think to know. That last part of the statement brings a large caveat on the scene. What if I listen from assumptions that won't bear up under closer scrutiny and am not aware of it? Denham Grey said "it takes two to listen" rightly, even if I only partly agreed with the rest of his comment: you need the other for that closer scrutiny.

    In the last few days two examples of how unsupported assumptions can thwart dialogue crossed my mind.
    The first example comes from my own experience as an auditor for the QA-system in our company. When doing more in depth evaluations of projects we find that often time is lost when someone works from unsupported (you may notice that I don't use the words wrong or right, because it's not about that) assumptions. Colleague A asks you to participate on a project and briefly describes where you can contribute. And then you assume what it is that you will do and deliver to the project..........without checking back whether your assumptions are in line with colleague A's mental picture. When such an immediate feedback loop is absent, the next feedback moment will be when you show up with the assumed deliverables. Any changes to be made then means doing things all over again, with larger timespending and dito costs as a result. The delivered work in these cases is usually excellent, but not what was called for.

    The second example comes from Mamamusings, the weblog of Elizabeth Lane Lawly, where she explores the differences between how more introvert minded people and more extravert ones approach conversation. (For this posting I treat introverts and extraverts as two different species, which they are not of course) In short introverts speak when they're done thinking, and extraverts speak to order and form their thoughts. The intriguing part for me is when she describes how introverts tend to think that all others including extraverts only speak when done thinking, and the other way around extraverts treat the words of introverts as attempts at forming an thoughts, not as the finished product thereof. Now imagine a dialogue between an introvert and an extravert, and watch it go of the tracks. Again in this example the problem lies in unvoiced assumptions.

    The obvious solution to this of course is to voice your assumptions so that they may be evaluated, but that's no easy thing for a mere mortal like me.
    Dialogue should in essence be aimed at inquiry and learning, at creating shared meaning (even if only temporarily possible) and integrating multiple perspectives. And also uncovering and examining assumptions as demonstrated by the examples.
    The difficulty here is that all other aspects of dialogue are content focussed: they deal with what the dialogue is about. The uncovering of assumptions is more like meta-content: it looks at from what background, from what listeners contextuality, you bring the content to the dialogue. That requires assuming two different roles at the same time in a dialogue, one inside the system and one outside it.
    Taking up the meta layer of things can be very tiring at times, and also sometimes distracts from the topic at hand. I sometimes have that with blogging: in the last few days I have been blogging on blogging, but shouldn't I be blogging on knowledge management instead. Ok, I've paid tribute to KM by looking at blogging from a knowledge sharing view point, but is that a true connection, or maybe just a pretense? Metablogging looks like a great passtime of many a blogger.

    Might the solution of combining both layers of dialogue lie in subtly altering the way you listen in a dialogue? I've described listening as tieing what you hear to your own contextuality. Maybe listening has to include reviewing the responses you get from that contextuality, feelings, intuitive reactions and associations. Listening not as the one-way allocation of input but as interaction. That would make listening the meta-dialogue, the part outside the system, and speaking or storytelling the content part of a dialogue with the results of listening woven in, the part inside the system.

    This is something I'm not done with yet, I'll be on the lookout for pointers to source on this. Feel free to point out a few.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/15/2003 11:40:00 AM)

     

    The passion of sharing


    In an article on the passions that (should) drive blogging, Jim McGee eloquently answers the classical challenge 'people just don't want to share':

    Discussions about knowledge management in organizations always raise the issue of sharing with the argument that people will be reluctant to share out of fear that their efforts will be appropriated by others. This is rooted in a industrial product metaphor of knowledge. See knowledge work as craft, however, and the sharing issue dissolves. Craft workers exist to share the fruits of their creating. A true knowledge craft product embodies something of the soul and personality of its creator. You share it with others not so they can copy it but so that they can find inspiration in using it in their own craft.



    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/15/2003 03:31:00 AM)

     

    Blogs and Knowledge Sharing, III


    As Lilia picks up a comment by Denham Grey on blogs from KnowledgeBoard, Sebastian Fiedler adds his responses to those points of comment:

    Denham Grey:
    At times I think k-logs are hyped by a few evangelists (converted bloggers). If you look closely at the record, things are not all that rosy

  • reciprocity is very poor - bloggers tend to say this does not matter, it is more important to be heard, to 'voice' or 'push' and publish your view
  • 'community' happens from individual enclaves - bloggers retreat to their spaces to reply, the common 'space' is then fractal, distributed and walled - it lacks cohesion
  • the 'record' is fragmented even categories and RSS feeds do not produce a coherent easily readable discourse
  • empathy is low - most times it is about branding and spreading my memes

    Sebastian reacts:
    If you want to apply Weblogging and personal Webpublishing as a tool for "organizational change" you might want to choose "groups" or "communities" as your unit of analysis. Like Lilia I tend to focus on the (networked) individual, but then my background is psychology and education... so what else would you expect? ;-) Here are my initial comments on Denham's points of critique:

  • reciprocity... Actually, I don't think I fully understand what Denham is trying to say here. People do not only engage in personal Webpublishing and Weblogging to be heard. They also use it as a "listening" and "recording" device. One of the most interesting aspects of personal Webpublishing to me is the fact that I don't have to "push" at all. I can quietly begin publishing (talking) to myself and simply wait and see what happens. This of course requires patience and the believe that holding a conversation with yourself is fun and interesting regardless of an "emergent" audience. By taking this personal conversation in the open I open opportunities for chance "meetings" that can develop in more stable relationships with growing reciprocity.
  • 'community' happens from individual enclaves... And how is this different in other parts of life? "Commom spaces" in modern societies tend to be "fractal", "distributed", and occassionally "walled". Why should I even expect cohesion? I would say that cohesion needs to be constructed and imposed by the individual.
  • the 'record' is fragmented... So are all of my records. Do you hold "a coherent easily readable discourse" with anyone - including yourself - over time? If you go about any personal learning project do all the books, websites, conversations, etc. quickly add up to "a coherent easily readable discourse"?
  • ...most times it is about branding and spreading my memes. That is largely a matter of personal style, your interests, and intentions. On Seblogging I have chosen to explicitly focus on other people's voices. This project is certainly NOT only about spreading MY memes... Tell me about your purposes first and then let's talk about the pros and cons of personal Webpublishing.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/14/2003 04:33:00 AM)

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    Search Tool Added


    Through Lilia Efimova I found Micah Alpern's microblogosphere search tool (go see Micah's weblog).

    As a search tool to search my own blog, and the ones I read, was something I already had on my wishlist of improvements for my blog, I've imeddiately added it on the left hand side, directly below the blogroll.

    Great work Micah!


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/13/2003 06:33:00 AM)

     

    Blogs and Knowledge Sharing, II


    In yesterdays posting I left three issues open: relationships around blogs, the road of discovery through the blogosphere, and the blogging dialogue.

    I will start with both dialogue and the road of discovery. Not only do the stories in my blog describe my road of discovery through listening, but following the dialogue that often results from these stories is a journey of discovery as well, and appeals to the feeling of wonder I had as a 3 yr old when confronted with the world.

    Dialogue in the blogosphere is somewhat hidden from the casual observer, especially if this observer is used to e-mail or forums. Responses to my posts seldom come in the form of comments as added to the original posts. Comments usually deal with short messages (Great post!), or impromptu responses that the commenter does not deem appropiate to blog about himself.

    Because that is where I'll find the reactions to my posts: in other blogs. And I have to discover these responses for myself.
    A whole range of tools helps me do that, my visitor statistics keep track of which sites refer to me, likewise tools like Technorati, Blogdex and the like. That's how I find where I'm quoted. Also my newsaggregator keeps track of blogs I find of interest, and, as I will explain when talking about relationships in the blogosphere, the blogs I find of interest are often the ones that respond to my blog as well. But this is all invisible on my blog!

    Responses to my posts get dealt with in the blogs of others where it is incorporated in their stories about how they gave my story a place in their context. And, vice versa, in my blog these responses are only visible if I weave them into my story/blog in turn myself. In this fashion the red thread in any blog is always the evolutionary thinking path of the author, presented in lineair because chronological order, but as twisted curved and looping around as my brain. Dialogues are always a cross-section of a set of blogs at some point in time, thus nicely representing the limited validity of shared meaning I talked about with Denham.

    On the face of it, it takes a lot of effort to sustain a dialogue through blogs. But as that effort has the form of a tour of discovery it is also a source of fun and satisfaction to me. Of course extra tools might come in handy in my blog, such as Trackback, and search functionality, when hunting down the conversation. Another bonus is that hunting down references leads to finding new blogs along the way, especially referrer-logs. The blog-roll I have was largely constructed this way.

    Now add to this picture the fact that with many of the people I have blog-dialogues with, the discussion spills over into other media, like e-mail, or in the comment sections of KnowledgeBoard.com, and is also added to by other publications of others that pursue other parts of the same or a related discussion with other parties, and sometimes in face to face meetings as well. The effect is a sort of conversational cloud that resembles closely the way dialogues flow between me and my personal friends: we talk on the phone, meet in private, meet in public (bars, theaters, political rallies whatever), we e-mail, write the occasional letter. And even when we haven't met in months we pick up the conversation where we left it off the last time.

    Now this is the sort of dialogue, prolonged in time, over many different media, in a dozen different spots, that contributes largely to the evolution of my thoughts. You talk, let it rest for a while, get prodded by a few others, read something in a paper, hear something on the news, and you talk again. There is no way of reconstructing that on-line, let alone in one medium, and I don't want to either. My blog however gives clues to who and what makes up this cloud of conversation around me, and it's the better at it than other media to date.

    Like I said before knowledgesharing is a complex thing, chaotic, pseudo-random, a composite of many different 1-to-1 interactions. The blogosphere reflects that, it's a cloud, not a hierarchy or a necessity of consensus on content, like forums, or congresses. There is no centralized push, you experience only push as far as there are pulls within you to accept it. It's not ideal, but it feels comfortable like an well worn coat.

    The last point I want to talk about is relationships in the blogosphere. The most astonishing thing in my experience when I started blogging is that by the strength of my ideas and original postings alone, a new social network came into existence. Normally when you meet people, you do that within a general context (this is a colleague of mine, let me introduce you to my golf buddy, etc.) If such a meeting results in a more lasting contact you start exploring eachothers interests and come to the mutual ones. My blog draws attention from people purely on the basis of ideas, and a conversation results. Later on you start filling in the general details, which you would normally get to first. But now you already know you've found someone worthwile, where outside the blogosphere that proof is in the last bite of the pudding, not the first. After four months of blogging, people I've met through my blog I also have met face to face, and they have become part of my wider, general social network as more and more of their own conversational cloud became visible to me.

    Furthermore I refer a lot of people I meet face to face to my blog. The consistancy (hopefully) of my web presence in my blog makes a very 'intimate' c.v. and people get to know my professional interests very quickly. Some of them regard showing them my blog as an act of trust, even though my blog is public for all to come see. My blog has become part of the face to face discussions I have with people, and so has become a part of the conversational cloud that was already there. And that is a new effect to me: that both the conversations I have on-line and off-line now feel like taking place in the same contextual space. It was not like that before blogging.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/10/2003 12:19:00 PM)

     

    Blogs and Knowledge Sharing


    Already in January I promised Denham Grey to write something about blogs as a medium for knowledge sharing. Denham and I seem to have different views of the capacity of blogs in this regard (Read his comment on KnowledgeBoard regarding blogs). Promises are often easy, sometimes even lightly, made, and it is in extremely busy weeks as I have been having recently when others fill my agenda that it proves enormously difficult to keep them. However the time has come to start fulfilling some promises, in an attempt to regain some of my authenticity as John Moore would have it. (Yes John, my promise to you regarding links on trust will be as well).

    Blogs and knowledge sharing it is then. In recent weeks both Denham Grey as well as Lilia Efimova and Sebastien Paquet have put their thoughts on this in words.
    In the posting before this one, I have described my thoughts on listening as the road to obtaining new knowledge.
    Taking this stance on listening as a starting point knowledge sharing is what? Sharing knowledge is where a storyteller recounts a story that is particularly relevant to the listener at this time, otherwise it would fall on deaf ears, and no sharing would take place, only broadcasting. Knowledge sharing takes place in dialogues, wether in real time or not, where all parties take on the role of both story teller and listener. In practice this is not often a clear cut case: I acquire knowledge by listening to different storytellers, with knowledge sharing moments on parts of the eventually obtained knowledge. Knowledge sharing is sort of information bartering.

    From any piece of knowledge I cannot describe who shared it with me: it is the resulting amalgam of all information inputs on a certain subject, of listening to multiple storytellers. Sometimes I can name influential sources, sometimes I cannot. Learning is mostly a voyage of discovery, a journey of listening, where only in the end, not along the way, I might have something to say on what brought me to my goal. It is an evolutionary process, with no clear view of what will be the red thread and what will be dead-end sideroads at the start. What can help me along on my road of discovery is relationships, storytellers who can point to other storytellers. This is the bartering part I referred to in the last paragraph. This is certainly no clear lineair picture, but that's just what it is: pretty chaotic and semi-random.

    I myself quite like that chaotic aspect, it brings on the wonder and magical feeling of discovery I had when I was a 3 yr old, and the world to me seemed like an enormous place with no end of exciting treasures, hidden just so I could have the pleasure of finding them. I had lost that feeling by the time I was 8, and regained it in my mid twenties. So maybe I'm not the person to talk to about the demystification of learning through sharing. Let me just say that in knowledge sharing I think these factors matter: storytelling, listening, the right moment for listening (see former posting: contextual ripeness), dialogue, and relationships.

    What do blogs do for me in this sense?
    It's a place where I can tell stories. Stories that originate from me, are packaged in the context of me. However I do not broadcast these stories, since I don't think my blog a broadcasting medium although a blog could well be. Ross Mayfield has some interesting posts on different settings for blogs from broadcasting to private channel. (Blogging Bubbles, Repealing the Power-Law, and especially Distribution of Choice)

    My stories are stories I use to accomodate my listening, I recount, and thereby interpret and give a place to what I listened to in my own mental context. By telling these stories publicly I also put the information I can barter you as a listener for in the window. This is not something I can do in a forum, or on a bulletinboard, because there it is not only me that determines the context of my stories. In my blog I do, you can retrace my steps by scrolling down on this page, and see the amalgam of impressions that went into forming my opinion for yourself. I think that is important, more important than the actual outcome, to be able to see the road that led there, and which sideroads were passed. So that I, or someone else can decide that it is time to retrace my steps and turn into the sideroad. I hate minutes from meetings that only say what was decided. I can see that from your actions. I am much more interested in what made you decide: a blog works at making those processes visible. Wikis only make the (collective) product visible in comparison, even if that product is never quite finished (and thus fulfilling David Weinbergers 1998 prediction about the end of doneness).

    (For a telling example of how listening is determined by the listeners context see Gary's blog where he also refers to Ross Mayfield's blogs on powerlaws and blog networks, but then to illustrate his musings on emergent democracy and the role of trust. I use the same references in a different context. In both instances the listener determines the value of the story, while Ross's context that made him publish it is probably totally different.)

    Places where this story was picked up, and commented on:
    Seblogging
    Mathemagenic
    Synesthesia
    Making Connections
    RU Weblog
    Ming the Morpho Mechanic
    Ross Mayfield
    Stir

    This text is not finished yet: I need yet to address relationships through blogging, and what the road of discovery and dialogue look like in the blogosphere. Especially because not all of that takes place on the face of the blog.

    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/09/2003 11:11:00 AM)

     

    Listening as the Road to Acquiring Knowledge


    Huub Rutten, who is into linguistics, described "listening" to me when we met last November at KM in Europe as "fastening strings on things you already know and then attach them to parts of what someone is telling you.", while moving his fingers from his own forehead (him being the listener) to mine. Please try and visualize this for a sec, while I try to explain why I think this is a powerful picture.

    First of all it places the listener at the center of the action, or indeed the conversational universe, and not the storyteller. It is a picture where the storyteller is not pushing information at me, but where I as the listener deliberately pick up parts of the 'audio-stream' (no disrespect to the story teller meant here) based on how it relates to what I already know or think to know. The storyteller is 'merely' a part of my surroundings that is a source of information (again no disrespect meant). This turns around the classic picture of storytelling, where the public is gathered round the campfire hanging on the storyteller's lips, and which features the storyteller as broadcaster and the listeners as passive bystanders.

    Second, it demonstrates the contextuality of listening. My listening to you is based on my intellectual and emotional context at the time of listening. (In the same way the context of the storyteller determines the packaging of the story) If my context, my mind, is ripe, I will recognize a good idea if it comes along, and otherwise I will not grasp it (probably to my own loss, but nevertheless).

    Now listening to me is a basic part of every interaction with another individual, even if the interaction is not based on verbal language but e.g. body language. My eyes can listen as well as my ears, which probably turns my definition of listening into the interpretation of my surroundings.
    Listening, using the above definition even wider namely also in instances where "surroundings" does not entail any other individual or only mediated as when reading texts, is then my only road to acquiring new knowledge. The storyteller, or the environment in general, gives me information, and my listening turns it into personal knowledge, by the act of placing the information into the pre-existing context of my mind.

    Summarizing listening has at its core the concepts of action ( I decide the things I pick out of a story), contextuality (only within my personal context does what I listen to gain value) and knowledge acquisition (the value gained from listening).

    Now on to the next post where I intend to use this in demonstrating the role of blogs in knowledge sharing.

    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 3/09/2003 08:59:00 AM)

     

    Blogging in the Workplace


    Our company recently acquired CAB as a partner. We are currently teaming up people from both companies who work in the same areas of expertise, encouraging them to share info, and discuss clients and projects together.

    A colleague of mine, whom I introduced to blogging recently, has now suggested to give these intercompany-teams a blog to jot their references and thoughts down. Hopefully we'll see this idea through to implementation in the coming weeks.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 2/12/2003 12:21:00 PM)

     

    Thinking Tools


    Everybody I guess sometimes ponders questions like "what is it I want to do?", "where do I want to stand in five years?", "what exactly are my capabilities and will I be able to use them in the next project?". This is especially so in an environment where what you actually do is quite abstract, and the competences you bring into the project probably even more so. Anyway, as I see me employing myself some time these are the kind of questions to answer to decide what this self-employed me should bring to the market. Yesterday I met for lunch with my former employer, with whom I keep in regular contact, and it turned out that between us we know a lot more people that want to answer the same questions from their respective professional perspectives.

    This leads me to the idea to spent a few sessions with these people to play around with these questions using a handful of philosophical thinking schemes. I have tried this a few times before and it always yielded answers and new questions I hadn't thought of before. With thinking schemes like deconstruction, transcendentalism, phenomenology, dialectics and hermeneutics we might get a foot in the door of these questions. A book in Dutch on this was written by Paul Wouters, director of the International School of Philosophy in Leusden, ISVW.

    Thinking tools by Paul Wouters


    Later this month I will give our junior researchers a course in these thinking methods, to boost their competences in assessing the research questions put to us by customers.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 2/12/2003 12:08:00 PM)

     

    CEN/ISSS Good Practice Guide to KM


    Last Thursday I spent a great day in Brussels contributing to a project that will produce a good practice guide to KM for SME's. This takes place under the flag of CEN/ISSS.

    There are five items in the guide, that is due to appear in Octobre:
  • Terminology
  • Frameworks
  • Measurement
  • Implementation in SME's
  • Culture

    I have taken up interest in the items on measurement, implementation and culture. The breakout session on culture was a lot of fun, thanks Neill and Manon. The next meetings will be held in May and Octobre, which I will certainly attend.

    Why not join this project yourself? Especially if you work in a small to medium sized company, run or own one, this is your chance to help set the pace and direction of KM in 25 European countries. You're welcome to contribute.

    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 2/12/2003 11:53:00 AM)

    •  

    KnowledgeBoard turns even more polyglot


    Zones for other languages than english on KnowledgeBoard have been around for some time now. This week a Zone in german was added, called Wissensmanagement und Networking. The last word being as german as can be of course ;)
    This is of interest to me as I live near the German border and have several contacts in other german speaking countries like Austria, Switzerland and Liechtenstein as well. Hope it turns out as a source for meeting new people with great ideas. Go check it out, or better: Geh schnell hin und schau nach!


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 1/29/2003 12:01:00 PM)

     

    Quick links to follow up on later


    Lilia Efimova points me to a new blog by Andy Boyd with the explicit goal to try and find out how blogs might be useful in commercial surroundings:


    Here as part exploratory and as part of our KM research program I will be keeping a blog and asking my colleagues and others to come in and comment on it's use for commercial companies employees - our main purpose is to assess is this a tool by which we can share knowledge. 10 years ago I was skeptical about whether we could apply CoPs within industry and now after riding high on our success with them, this is yet another KM process to explore

    I promised Denham Grey to start a discussion here on the use of blogs as a knowledge sharing tool, as we seem to have opposing views on this. Will have to honor that promise soon!

    Lilia ends her reference to Andy with mentioning The Tipping Point and wonders if it will happen to blogs as well. Ross Mayfield links to the same thing: two references, a sign for me to go explore.




    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 1/29/2003 11:50:00 AM)

     

    The Science of KM


    Often KM as a subject in Academia and as a practice in organisations seem to lead completely different and also isolated lives. Both regularly tend to shy away from the multidisciplinary aspects that are at the core of KM. In my opinion KM should embrace its multidisciplinarity because that's excactly what KM should do: network-straddling. That's why I am suspicious of initiatives where KM is proposed as a scientific discipline in it's own right. It is a discipline all right, the discipline of translating cross-disciplinary insights into good practice for organisations. Management in short. That's not science, that's application, so we should look for the science elsewhere. And that is what this proposal by Angela Nobre, co-founder of the Quaerere SIG at KnowledgeBoard aims at.

    She says:

    The idea is to explore, to develop and to integrate perspectives on KM Research coming from the broad areas of human and social sciences - namely from Anthropology, History of Ideas, Philosophy of Science, Cultural Studies, Political Science and, finaly, Organisational Semiotics, my current research area. Using Knowledge Economics and Knowledge Management as an integrating matrix, the objective is to focus on learning and innovation issues at organisational level.

    And I would like to add psychology to that, as well as make sure that the role of technology is covered by philosophy of science. From a more managerial perspective (and this is the more applied stuff) I would also like to add to the mix, and then there is life system dynamics and game theory. This is a daunting list, and therefore a bit more discussion on where to take this is warranted.

    I would not like to be looking for a Unified Theory for KM, for reasons stated above, but would like goals that aim for synergy and translation into practical stuff for Km-pros. Building the bridge between Academia (being part of it myself), and the Practicing Alchemists that meddle in the organisations (being one myself).

    I think it is necessary to think out the proposal a bit more in another direction as well, otherwise we might end up with too broad a scope and too less focus. I can imagine people being able to contribute to only one or two of the disciplines in the spectrum, as sort of a thematic nucleus in the group, while others are the community bridges in this, perceiving how to connect the one discipline to the other. Or in other words, we will have to tackle some KM-problems in the area of community-building and content-guidance (I specifically shun the words control and management here), in order to be able to get some work done.

    As always, you're thoughts are welcome.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 1/28/2003 02:45:00 AM)

     

    Contagious Blogging


    A while ago I commented on Rick Klau's experience with corporate blogging, and ended with the question if blogging would be something to use within my own company.

    The first thing I did was add the link to my weblog to my business e-mail signature. This to trigger curiousity, both amongst colleagues, as well as clients and others. In my experience seeing something is a more powerfull message than being told something without illustration. According to the serverlogs this indeed led to increased traffic to my blog.

    blogging on composing (picture, manuscript of 17th c. Bauyn


    One colleague was eager to discuss blogging with me as a result of this, he's also the QA-guy in our organisation. By way of experiment he has now started his own blog, called Jan's thoughts, written in Dutch. It's not related to our work, but deals with a passion of his: composing. He also has been advocating my blog with others. So I'm kinda curious what this will lead to. If my colleague hits it off with blogging, it might well be that we will together propose a blogging experiment for our company. An added bonus for me is that this colleague is no wizzkid or technical adept, which might go a long way yet in 'selling' the concept to the rest of the organisation.




    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 1/23/2003 11:28:00 AM)

     

    Creative Commons


    I've just added a Creative Commons License to my musings here. Not to say don't touch my stuff, but to advocate the fact that it's ok to use what I post here, to advocate I explicitly want to share (why else publish it on the web). With a few restrictions that is: correct source attribution, no commercial use, and no alterations to the original texts. In return, I'll make sure to do the same for anything I use here.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 1/23/2003 03:55:00 AM)

     

    Open Branding


    Last Friday I attended a roundtable of some 20 people in Amsterdam on "Open Branding". Now I don't know the first thing about branding, apart from being a consumer that is, but nonetheless it was a great day. The people behind the meeting call themselves Chief Brand Officers Association, or CBO, and envision honest brands (hence 'open branding') as the only way to go for organisations in the 21st century. The issues they address are things like trust, authenticity, leadership, value, transparancy, knowledge sharing, communication and the like. A familiar line up, for me, and I hope indeed for most KM-people. So their agenda closely resembled mine, and hopefully I could add to their discussions from my KM background usefully.

    Later this year, a co-authored book by the CBO-group is to appear at Kogan Page, aiming to place Open Branding on the agenda's of CxO's around the world. Part of the discussion focussed on who to reach with the book, and how to do that. As with KM, translating a vision to the workplace will only be succesful if you can list the concrete issues and needs it will help address. You can't convince someone to do KM, if there's no identified need to deal with. So the risk of developing an answer in search for a problem is something to watch out for, especially with such a bookproject.

    This inspiring get-together of branding experts will certainly be followed up with extensive e-mail discussions. Meanwhile webspaces to watch in relation to this are:
  • Chris Macrae at Valuetrue, and at the Emotional Intelligence SIG at KnowledgeBoard for his work on value indicators outside the traditional monetary and accounting ones.
  • John Caswell, for his contextual mapping methods, at GroupPartners.net
  • John Moore, on trust and authenticity, both at the Trust SIG on KnowledgeBoard and his own website of Ourhouse.






    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 1/20/2003 03:29:00 AM)

    •  

    Trust, Emotion, Ratio


    Continuing the explorations of what trust is, Julian Elvé, the author of Synesthesia, picks up on my discussion with Gary Lawrence Murphy and adds his own thoughts and questions on how to bring Gary's view and mine under one hat. I wrote a lengthy comment on his post which I won't bother to reword here, so I'll just quote it verbatim:

    Hi Julian,

    Thanks for giving this discussion (the first topic I blogged on!) a new jolt with your contribution. You've guessed rightly that I too make trust based decisions on gut feeling most of the time. The only time I always consciously look for patterns of consistent behaviour is when I have a feeling that there's something rotten in the state of Denmark. But there's more to it than that for me.

    As you suggest, I'm getting more and more convinced that Gary's position and mine are not at all mutually exclusive. It's more like the same thing but on different levels in ourselves.

    This being said, I have to add two remarks that will probably clarify my personal take on this some more.

    First off, my exploratory writing on trust started out from the question how my behaviour, and the structure of the organisation I work in, might influence the trust involved in our relations with others (clients, organisations etc.), and how to consciously address those effects. Hence my accent on pro-active and conscious actions.

    Second, from early childhood on I have been very empathic. I, though I did not realise it then, could sense other peoples emotions very well, although I could not understand those emotions because of my age. When talking about my interpretations of what I sensed, people told me not to repeat what others had 'said' to me , or what I 'overheard' and which I didn't understand. Apparently there was something 'wrong' with my senses, or at least in using them. That's when I started putting a lot of thought into rationalizing things. As an adult I had a hard time bringing these two things together again, learning to trust my own emotions and senses again, and at the same time keeping the considerable power of rationality at my disposal as well. Or in Gary's words I've been trying how to learn this:

    "The more correct response is, IMHO, that while our brain colours our perceptions, humans are so blazingly successful on this planet because we can (not that we do, just that we can) transcend our physiology (when it's appropriate!) to reach for higher conclusions"

    What is also at stake here (and then I'll stop writing for now) is what made me side step Gary at first: the fear of accepting that something so powerfull and purposefull as rational thinking, could be based on, originated from, or even be tied back to back with animalistic hunches, intuitions and gut feelings.

    I am currently reading Daniel C. Dennet's 'Darwins Dangerous Idea'that makes an enormously strong case to do away with that fear that this origin should in some way taint the wonder of conscious thought, and makes it possible to the ratio in me to still enjoy that wonder while also embracing the above.

    Kind regards,

    Ton

    On your question how to reflect emotions and trust etc in text on the net; apparently my solution is writing long texts trying to convey all the relevant points I wish to relate to you.


    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 1/09/2003 11:21:00 AM)

     

    European K-logs on the Rise


    When I started blogging myself last november I received a comment from someone in the US, saying that it was great that KM weblogs were being started in Europe as well. I don't know anymore who the comment came from, but this will be certainly good news to him or her (and I happen to agree):

    Helen Baxter, editor of KnowledgeBoard.com writes:

    Another exciting development coming soon is KnowledgeBoard blogs.
    If anyone is interested in running one then drop me a line. If you
    already run a Knowledge Blog or (K-log) and want to be added to
    the blog-roll I am currently collating then please send me your
    details and a link.


    The question 'to blog, or not to blog' is discussed widely now on KnowledgeBoard, especially since Sébastien Paquet posted his fine article on Personal Knowledge Publishing part I (and part II)

    Other discussions around blogging on KnowledgeBoard:
    Olaf Brugman experimenting with a blog for the NGO-world, and
    the discussion that started off my own blog.

    For anyone seeking advice or someone to discuss the practical aspects of starting a blog with, Ross Mayfield, together with the BloggerTribe at Ryze, has started a blog buddy system.

    permalink | (posted by Ton Zijlstra at 1/09/2003 10:32:00 AM)

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    Ton/Male/31-35. Lives in Netherlands/Overijssel/Enschede/Bothoven, speaks Dutch, English and German. Spends 80% of daytime online. Uses a Fast (128k-512k) connection. And likes knowledge management.
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    Netherlands, Overijssel, Enschede, Bothoven, Dutch, English and German, Ton, Male, 31-35, knowledge management.

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    Currently reading:
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    The Tipping Point

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    Knowledge Assets...

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    The Fifth Discipline

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    Philosophical Writing: An Introduction


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    Small Pieces Loosely Joined

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    Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the...

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    Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and...

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    Notes from a Small Island


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    Why show you these books?