Jenny Zaino at SemanticWeb.com asked a group of us to provide predictions for 2010. An interesting mix and worth a close look, particularly for those seeking input from the front lines of Web innovation.

A few months ago we decided to produce a series of papers in story telling format to better communicate the value of our Kyield system for decision makers in large organizations, rather than the normal highly technical use cases written and consumed primarily within the scientific community: ‘Semantic Scenarios for the Intelligent Enterprise’.

I just posted a new use case in the series:  Maya in the global parcel delivery business.

While these cases are hypothetical in nature, they are based on countless conversations to include formal audits in my consulting firm that pre-date the commercialization of the Internet, and even productivity software, but involve highly sophisticated state-of-the-art technology– we are finally resolving these complex issues even if the world has yet to deploy them. In this case I have attempted to demonstrate several very important issues impacting all of us, using the stage of a fast growing emerging market and mobile workforce to illustrate the challenges and potential. A few of the issues I attempt to demonstrate include:

1. The structural problems with intellectual property today, particularly in a wired world lacking security.
2. Importance of innovation in the workplace, or more often lack thereof, and why.
3. How to align interests between the individual, organization, and investors; critical as we’ve seen in the past 2 years.
4. The consequences of not providing meritocracy and transparency in a hyper-competitive global economy.
5. The benefits of attracting gifted team members in almost any industry, regardless of formal education.
6. A lesson in how not being too greedy can indeed be the most profitable strategy, even in the mid-term.

I hope you enjoy the format and content. Feel free to email me with your thoughts in private: markm@kyield.com

Happy holidays to you and your family– MM

For those who choose to not follow the Twitter Firehose that is @rlavigne42, I bring you:

The @RLavigne42 Tweet Round-Up

There are over 7,000 Enterprise 2.0, Social Media, Social CRM and related Knowledge Worker Tweets in my archive, so bare with me as I aggregate and package this valuable content for you.

The content comes from over 1000 well cultivated connections, I have made in emergent Internet and Management, Research & Innovation.

As I aggregate the Tweets, I am also adding the tagged reference sites to my Social Bookmarks.

If you find any broken Tweets or Links, please report them in the comment section.

If you like what you see, may I recommend you start following me on Twitter to enjoy the benefits of real-time content as it materializes.

If you choose to follow @rlavigne42, please leave me a comment.  I will make sure to check out your Tweets in return.

If you see a Tweet you appreciate, please Pay it Forward by ReTweeting it.

If you find an blogger you like, please Join Me in following Them.

My Thoughts Enclosed…Rb

Posted via web from kforden.com

About one year ago, I had a major life crisis.

I have – to quote – a jewel job, that most people would kill for, in a great compay. I have a partner, a few good friends and money to spare. This would put me in the 7% fortunate people on this planet. But there’s more to life than this.

The perspective of doing this and being here for the rest of my life was terrifying me.

I won’t bore you with my searches at that time. What’s enough to say is that I came up with a concept and an idea that would help me – and you, if you’ve gone through a quarterlife crisis. If not, prepare, it might hit you soon.

So we live our lives, most of us, from 9 till 5. We have a pretty good career, and we’re ambitious. Therefore, we work harder. We put our entire focus on growing, developing, contributing. We have – if we’re lucky enough! – a family to care for. Someone to love. We spend what’s left of our energy there.

Notice what’s the idea that appears most often there?

Yes – it’s spending. Giving. Contributing. Mostly with your mind. After all, we white collar workers are, according to Peter Drucker, knowledge workers.

But what about learning, receiving, reenergizing?

Where do you get that from?

And do you do it consciously?

So that’s where I thought – what if we could have a place where you could unwind. Not by resting and getting into the “vegetable” state, watching TV all day long. By doing some actual work. With your hands, not your mind.
The first thing that came to my mind was working the earth. To me, this is immensely relieving. If you have a house in the countryside, or visited your grandparents recently, you know what I mean. It puts your mind in a completely different perspective.
Cooking is another thing that detaches you.
Painting.
Dancing.

All activities that remove your mind from the urban clutter and get you closer to the “authentic” living.

This is what I call “Integrated Learning“. Being able to de-focus from the daily abstract work – and here I include everything abstract. Yes, even that Time Management course that promises to help you re-organize everything in your life.

And if you want to experience a first bit of the “Integrated Learning” idea, do something with your hands. No, not on the keyboard. Any activity that involves some kind of discovery will be fine. Go hiking. Gather leaves from the park. Use your senses. Look at the sky.
Aren’t these all things that you didn’t do for a while?
No wonder we’re feeling lost in our little cubical. We forgot how to be in touch with the real world.

How do you unwind? How do you get back in touch with your physical self?

Peter Drucker is the Father Of New Administration or a Management Guru. You better listen to him…

Drucker’s core idea on the subject of knowledge work was that the world used to run on manual work, and that this work was made much more productive due to the work of Frederick Winslow Taylor in the early 1900’s. Now, knowledge workers make up the majority of the workers in developed economies. Manual work is visible, specialized, and stable, whereas knowledge work is invisible, holistic, and ever changing. Unlike manual workers, knowledge workers use their situational knowledge to get things done in a dynamic environment. They are almost always formally educated and are called upon to run and change their functions and organizations simultaneously.
Knowledge workers acquire knowledge—through a combination of education, experience, and personal interaction—and then use that knowledge to holistically achieve organizational goals in changing environments. This work is generally much more project oriented than manual work, and enterprise productivity improves faster when one area of knowledge can be rapidly transferred to another….think about social media? Knowledge is more and more valuable in today’s new economy and it creates a huge opportunity …So… if you are into creating and publishing information products. huge aha! Think again!

5.11.2009 at Otaniemi Forum organized by VTT, TKK, Otaniemi.fi, and AmCham.

The debate has just begun on Finland’s Solution for Economic Turnaround. The theme goes like this: Technology, Business, Design…and I would like to add the PEOPLE as knowledge worker. Without that the notion of creating competitive edge is a dream!!

The program was divided into two sections : Finnish and English presentations. The speakers during Finnish part were Jaakko Pellosniemi of Mobidiag, Ismo Rantala of Finnish Mobile Association and Mikko Kalhama of Design Forum Finland. Jaakko had a view of Government not doing enough and he used the literature to analyze Finland’s situation. Michale Porter’s Competitive Advantage of Nations argues that Government to become facilitator not the controller. Marching of public sector and private sector is not in harmony… He thinks that Mobidiag’s innovation will be a grand success!!

On the other hand Ismo Rantala revisted Slush Helsinki 2009 an event just unfolded. This event has just introduced Finland to the world as innovation hub. The locus of innovation is shifting from Silicon Valley to the northern hemisphere–stay tuned!!

Mikko Kalhama wants to see design as a core competence for Finland and Design as innovation enabler from the artistic heroes. The movement has just begun!! In Finnish he says–’koolla ei ole väliä’. You can use google translate to see what does it mean!!

Well the english part started after a debate session of Finnish part where experts from various sectors e.g. Aalto University, VTT and alike were asking tough questions and commenting on the presentations.

The Fun part began with new entrants (English speaking group)!! The presenters during this session were Ludovic Gaudé, Zokem; Rob Kommeren, Philips Innohub; Marco Steinberg, Sitra. The session had a theme of FINLAND’S UPTURN!!

Gaudé shared the idea if international entrepreneur’s path to Finland–why he chose Finland as a top destination for innovation!! Having worked with Nokia and Google and in different locations across the continent, he found Finnishness as a way of innovation. He thinks Zokem can be a huge success but he just does agile planning and of course with Fun. He has a passionate team of diversified people which can make things happen easily…

Kommeren talked about moving from Singapore to Finalnd and why Philips chose Finland as its next innovation Hub. Steinberg took the audience in mesmerizing surprises by showing how Design can be applied in strategic decision making. Mind it –it is not Process!! Steinberg is an active participant in numerous national innovation programs to promote industry competitiveness through design research.

The program was hosted by very competent Kristiina Helenius, AmCham Finland’s Director. At the end I would like to thank the organizers for the best event so far in Otaniemi Marketing’s history…My call is to gather impact analysis of such events…Please send your comments how you benefited from such coverage and events!! For me this event turned out to be a turning point!!

Found at http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/internet/using-technology-to-improve-workforce-collaboration

To be continued at http://whatmatters.mckinseydigital.com/internet/using-technology-to-improve-workforce-collaboration

Related articles by Zemanta

• Knowledge Worker Collaboration Surveys–Check out the Results (blogs.adobe.com)
• European workers not satisfied w/ traditional collab methods (blogs.adobe.com)
• McKinsey – How Web 2.0 Usage Is Changing Over Time (fastforwardblog.com)

I heard somewhere that the average knowledge worker is interrupted every 11 minutes, but takes 25 minutes to fully regain focus.

Everybody makes lists. It’s how we organize things. In fact, lately, I’ve had so many balls in the air that I’ve been making lists of lists. I guess its multi-tasking at its best.

What if we could create a list of lists visually, and put them online?

That’s pretty much what a Mind Map does, and the technology is taking off. I am by no means an expert, but I see the ability to visually organize our insights and our subject matter as powerful. If carefully constructed, important relationships are intuitive.

Here’s an example. If you’re like me, it’s getting harder to keep track of which topics and people are associated with the expanding universe of Twitter chats. So I used mind mapping to create a sample PDF; a thumbnail is shown here:

MindMap Sample - SM Innovation

My map shows two primary chat groups #SMCHAT and #INNOCHAT, which, collectively, focus on how we can tap social media to drive innovation. It all seems to center around collaboration, so that’s in the middle. My personal depth in this space is on the social media aspect, so I focused there. I thought through the various aspects of SM, and devised related branches. As moderator of #SMCHAT, I’ve watched topics “emerge” over the last 5 months, so those relationships became apparent fairly quickly. In the 2-page PDF (version 1.2b), I fleshed out the space a bit more, showing related chats and hashtags. I added references to group leads and TweepML stakeholder lists (there’s that word again!), then saved it as a PDF.

A mind map like this one can help you navigate subjects and, if cross-referenced with resources, perhaps even help you to identify subject matter experts (or “SME’s”).

To address some potential questions:

Why the blank lines coming out of #INNOCHAT? That chat is redrafting its charter; watch for updates. No details on some branches? Those are areas I know less about, or in the case of Enterprise 2.0, I’m showing them to create some context and to spark more discussion. Do you disagree with some of my lines? No problem. Let’s collaborate, and we’ll fix them.

See how easy?

On Wednesday, 10/28 at 1pET, #SMCHAT will be all about Mind Maps. We’ll use this time to discuss what you can do with these exciting new visualization tools. I’ve invited a couple of experts, including @chuckfrey, @litemind and our own @jkloren to share what they can.

If you’d like to experiment with an open source (free) tool, take a look at XMind.

And this just in: a great interview w/ Mind Map expert Chuck Frey, super insight for the mind map chat.

I’ve roughed out an agenda and will share it shortly. That is, if I can remember what list I wrote it on. Hope you can join us.

Chris (@SourcePOV)

I think we still have a lot to learn about being productive with what we do. Is the 40 hour work week out of date?

Semantic Scenarios for the Intelligent Enterprise
A Kyield Hypothetical Use Case
October, 2009

SCENARIO 3: Roger the electrician at the hydro dam 

A hypothetical yet plausible scenario is presented that demonstrates the value of a state-of-the-art knowledge system deployed in a highly tailored, mission-specific environment, resulting in a very high triple bottom line ROI.

Summary: An energy industry employee normally unassociated with the term ‘knowledge worker’ proves essential to his employer, community, and national security. On a routine task in the field, Roger notices something odd, which initiates a series of data transactions. A ‘near miss’ between personal mobile phones has potentially catastrophic consequences.  The data reaches the appropriate team member in the decision chain, who begins the investigation. Fortunately for downstream residents, the facility was included in a test of the DHS prototype; a highly defined mission-oriented system with precision semantic intelligence embedded in every file entered into the system. The fully automated DHS system embraces interoperable standards, allowing less costly integration with powerful programs, essential allies, and global partners.  A classic case of well connected dots along a data trail with short cuts made possible only by highly relevant semantic intelligence embedded within a logical, holistic design.

Go here to download the full use case.

Starting KM in your organization also means starting to learn a new KM language among your members. A simple tool towards this end is an FAQ on KM (FAQ=frequently asked questions) which can be circulated among members or placed in the KM webpage in your intranet.

Download CCLFI’s FAQ on KM by pressing “Ctrl” while clicking HERE. The FAQ will appear in a new browser tab.

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Thanks to Wordle for the above “word cloud” of the FAQ

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=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

I’m just rereading a piece about higher education dying just like the newspapers and I can’t help thinking that newspaper publishers need to just redefine themselves and their products and find new sources of revenue.

How do newspapers make money?  Ad Sales and Readers, right?  Who really cares what the medium or channel is.  Expand your market base as one side constricts.

With ad sales, I’m pretty sure that the news agencies invested in technology spends to run those online digital ad networks across their sites.  Start offering those services to a larger market with a better price point.  Offer to sell ads for the Pennysaver like coupon papers, small publications and other publishers living on the ad spends; expand your sales for your services not your content.

You have the experience with sales, ad creation and technology to run it all.  So use it for more than your own publication.

I mentioned getting revenue from services, so I’m sure lots of folks are shocked.  Don’t be, I think they should continue to sell their content to readers with subscriptions.  Subscriptions sold by paper, digital or mobile, sell them all just drop their price.

Did she just say “Drop Their Price”?  Yes, I did.  Expand your other market with content.  Sell it to and for every blog etc that wants to republish it.  Allow all teasers for free to entice and offer a soft baseline of information.  But sell the republish rights for each item for a penny.  One cent.

Will these ideas offer a big enough return to be considered by the Knight Ridders (The McClatchy Company) of the world?  Maybe not, but then again I never said I had the solution just a few random thoughts…..

What do you think?

A tendency when KM is introduced to an organization for the first time is that knowledge workers tend to look at KM as “extra work.” If this is how they view KM, regular work will win over any extra work, particularly if the periodic personnel evaluation system measures his/her performance only in regular work.

I use this simple slide to convey to individual knowledge workers a benefit KM can give them: they can finish their work faster. Most knowledge workers like this. This slide mentions five typical factors that affect speed of completion of work.
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I use the above figure to drive home some points to clarify the meaning of intellectual capital and its three recognized components: human capital, structural capital and stakeholder capital.

1. I include the third factor “support from boss and teammates” to show that effective action (the goal of KM) is affected not only by knowledge assets or cognitive factors, but also by motivational or affective factors. Therefore, these cannot be ignored in actual KM practice.
2. The third factor is actually internal relationship capital, in contrast to stakeholder capital which is external relationship capital. I use this example to show that stakeholder capital – the usual third component of intellectual capital – is externally looking and miss out on an important internal factor that also affects productivity and effective action. Why do you think companies spend money on team building workshops?
3. Notice, too, that the fourth factor “decision rules are clear” is both within the purview of quality management as well as knowledge management. I use this fourth factor to illustrate the fact that KM and QM overlap.
4. The first, second and fourth factors are examples of structural capital while the last factor is an example of human capital.

You can use the above chart and ideas; if you do, please acknowledge me as its source. Thanks!

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Note that there is an embedded link in this blog post. It shows up as colored text. While pressing “Ctrl” click on the link to create a new tab to reach the webpage pointed to.

=>Back to main page of Apin Talisayon’s Weblog
=>Jump to Clickable Master Index

Sometimes even the best researchers forget that the answer you get depends entirely on who you ask. A new Forrester survey of 2,000 information workers has revealed that despite the hype, it’s not Gen Y that’s getting business to adopt collaborative technology. Gen X, those who are 30-43, are the ones leading the charge for social computing.

Forrester’s analysis is that despite their different view of technology, Gen Y, Millennials, or whatever you want to call those 29 and under, don’t yet have the clout within organizations to make real change. The same Gen X employees who are the fastest growing demographic in Facebook are the ones getting management to accept new technology as more than a fad.

Just Ask Employees

A common method for researching about how people use technology is to ask industry experts and management about what they’ve provided to workers and how they think it’s being used. That’s how many market researchers go about their business.

http://www.readwriteweb.com/enterprise/2009/09/forget-gen-y-gen-x-is-making-r.php

Speculators Rush to Register Catchy Internet Domain Names.

Jun. 7 — Five years ago, Tucson resident Ehud Gavron posed a fairly casual question that turned out to be worth $1million.

Gavron’s friend and stockbroker Eric Wade kept switching Internet service providers. Each provider would assign Wade a new e-mail address, making it hard for Gavron to remember how to reach him.

He suggested that Wade get a permanent e-mail address that he could take along if he switched providers. In Internet jargon, he was suggesting that Wade register his own domain name, or dot com.

Neither of the two anticipated that a few years later there would be a dot com frenzy sweeping the Internet, with fortunes made and courts clogged by litigants. As many as 50,000 names are registered each week.

Speculators searched for and registered every catchy name they could think of. In some cases, they registered names already trademarked by other companies. Beanie Baby manufacturer Ty Inc., Mattel Inc., Pfizer Inc. and Porsche AG have filed suits in recent months over Web sites that the companies say come too close to their trademarks.

The Beanie Baby suit was filed in federal court in late April against Mesa resident Susan B. Joy over the site beaniecollectibles.com. The suit said that Joy sought to sell the domain name. The site beaniecollectibles.com has been taken down since the suit was filed, and Joy could not be reached for comment.

Sales of choice domain names have brought astronomical sums over the last year or so. The name altavista.com sold for $3.35million. A Dutch man received an offer of $5million for Linux.com, but sold the name for a lower undisclosed amount. Business.com brought in $150,000.

It costs an individual $70 to register a name for two years. Names are registered through Internic, www.networksolutions.com. The site provides a searchable database to determine whether a name already has been taken. Another site with information on unclaimed names, for a fee, is www.unclaimeddomains.com.

Gavron said it’s flattering that people think he had the vision to grab a hot property.

“I wish everybody would think that I was a genius,” he said.

That’s not the way it happened. Because Wade was a stockbroker, he and Gavron searched for something that would be appropriate. Stockbroker.com was gone. So were several others. Then they hit the jackpot.

“Wallstreet.com wasn’t taken,” Gavron said. Wade used the name for his e-mail. The two had no idea the name would prove valuable down the road. In fact, he bristles at being included among the domain speculators.

“At that time, there was no such thing as domain speculation,” Gavron said.

The two men talked about developing a financial site at Wallstreet.com but only got as far as taking on a third partner and putting up a stock ticker.

Without any advertising or real content, the Web page started getting significant numbers of stray visits from Web surfers.

The group got an inkling that they might have something valuable. But they still weren’t prepared for what happened.

When they were contacted by a pornography dealer who offered them $250,000 for the name, they finally realized what they had.

“If you have a back yard full of junk and someone comes along and offers you $1,000 for an old lawn mower, it might make you wonder what they know,” Gavron said.

The partners decided to auction off the name and set a minimum bid of $300,000.

Bidders offered thousands of shares from the initial public offering of an Internet company. One offered a percentage of a small phone company.

The winning bid was $1.03million from Players Only, an offshore gambling company, which comes to roughly $343,000 each.

Gavron, who owns Aces Research, a Tucson Internet provider, said the windfall is great, but he hasn’t quit his day job.

“I got to tell a lot of credit card companies that I won’t be doing business with them,” he said.

An individual domain name is everything that follows the www in a web address, Amazon.com, for example. They are not to be confused with Internet domains, or top-level domains, which are the portion of a Web address after the final period. Com is the commercial domain. Gov is government. Org is for organizations. Mil is for military. Domain speculation focuses on the dot coms, the individual names within the com domain, because that’s where the money is.

“There’s a gold rush going on out there, and dot coms are the real estate,” said Scottsdale entrepreneur Kevin J. Berk, who owns 17 domain names. Berk said his wife was a little unhappy at first when he spent about $1,000 registering the names.

“As an investment, it’s fairly cheap,” he said.

As an investment, it’s also fairly speculative, he adds. Several new top-level domains may be added that overlap the dot com domain. That would dilute the value of dot com names.

“If they create .store or .company, that will severely impact the value of dot coms,” Berk said.

Berk’s holdings include TvToYourPC.com, DownloadProgram.com and NetPayPerView.com. None of the names were registered for speculation, he said. He has plans to develop each into viable sites. But selling off a name or two makes a nice Plan B if he doesn’t develop it, or if an attractive offer comes along.

“I have to believe that in business, everything is for sale if the price is right,” he said.

Kathleen Forden is the founder and CEO of Chandler-based Limits Unknown, an Internet design and consulting firm. She owns a package of domain names built around the word local, including LocalUS.com, LocalNeighborhood.com and local combined with the two-letter abbreviation for all 50 states, LocalAZ.com, for example.

A few months ago she shopped the package of local names around but didn’t get any offers that she seriously entertained.

“At one point, that was my intention,” she said. “I was undercapitalized to develop them myself.” Since then, she has come up with some backers and has taken the names off the market.

Forden is working with a client trying to find a domain name for an art-related site, but art names have been picked clean. Art.com, ArtGallery.com, ArtMart.com are all taken. Forden and the client approached a couple of the people with attractive names to see if they were interested in selling. The asking price on one in particular was astronomical.

“It was laughable,” she said. “It was in the high five figures.”

Visit Arizona Central, the online edition of The Arizona Republic, on America Online (keyword: Arizona Central) or on the World Wide Web at http://www.azcentral.com

APA

Sidener, Jonathan. “Speculators Rush to Register Catchy Internet Domain Names.” Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News. 1999. Retrieved September 11, 2009 from accessmylibrary: http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1G1-54816910/speculators-rush-register-catchy.html

Posted via web from kforden.com

(Thanks Gerd!)

“Re-Industrialize the Planet”. A quick summary:

* The web is creating a global infrastructure for collaboration (which leads to disruption and confusion)

* As a result, all of our institutions have come to the end of their life-cycle

* The current recession is a crucial punctuation point in human history – the point where we said that we need to reset, the point where the industrial economy has finally run out of gas

* This paradigm shift is creating a crisis of leadership

* The Digital Natives are inheriting this situation – and they think very differently

* Kids are now the authority on many issues

* We have 40 years to re-industrialize the planet

Posted via web from kforden.com