Ed Taekema - Road Warrior Collaboration 22.1.2004

Murphy's Computer Laws

From Pervasive Computing News ... Murphy's Computer Laws:

[QUOTE]

1. No matter how many resources you have, it is never enough.

2. Any cool program always requires more memory than you have.

3. When you finally buy enough memory, you will not have enough disk space.

4. Disks are always full. It is futile to try to get more disk space. Data expands to fill any void.

5. If a program actually fits in memory and has enough disk space, it is guaranteed to crash.

6. If such a program has not crashed yet, it is waiting for a critical moment before it crashes.

7. No matter how good of a deal you get on computer components, the price will always drop immediately after the purchase.

8. All components become obsolete.

9. The speed with which components become obsolete is directly proportional to the price of the component.

10. Software bugs are impossible to detect by anybody except the end user.

[UNQUOTE]

Wikis: Hypertext on Steroids

Here is good overview of Wiki thinking and has a set of Wiki sites focused on education. My favourite quote:

Q: Are you saying that anyone can come in and change any page? 
A: You bet. 
Q: Are you insane? That means some villain could change or delete 
   anything. What's to stop a fiend from coming in and erasing 
   all my hard work, or playing devilish tricks with my reputation? 
A: If you don't calm down, I'll have to take this cattle prod 
   to your hide.

Agile Knowledge Management

Denham Gray over at Knowledge-at-work has this interesting post about extreme knowledge and its roots in extreme programming methods. One connection perhaps not mentioned is that XP is part of a general movement in software development away from large, lumbering and inflexible processes to more human focused, light processes. This has coallesced into a statement that values:

Individuals and interactions over processes and tools
Working software over comprehensive documentation
Customer collaboration over contract negotiation
Responding to change over following a plan

That was from the Manifesto for Agile Software Development. The theme of people first I think meshes quite well with some of the themes on Mr. Gray's blog. Perhaps we should start talking about Agile Knowledge Management?

More KM questions ... and Answers

Great set of initial answers to key KM questions. I especially like this quote:

What do you believe Knowledge Management (KM) really is?

Support the people, do not make technology the focus, look at ways to help communication, dialog, critique, networking. Perhaps the single most effective step, is putting people in contact with people and enabling facile notification, communication / annotation / feedback / commentary.

I think is is bang on. It is really about getting people to communicate as much and as effectively as possible. Technology can help overcome communication barriers like distance but it still needs to keep this primary goal in mind. KM is about people dialoging with people.