KM World and Intranets 2005: What do Blogs Bring to Business and KM?

KM World and Intranets 2005
Social Networking & Knowledge Transfer:
What do Blogs Bring to Business and KM?
Bill Ives, Co-Author, Business Blogs: a practical guide (with Amanda G. Watlington)
Tuesday, November 15, 2005

Bill Ives' blog: Portals and KM

Anyone can have a presence on the web. He is very non-technical: “If I can do it, anyone can do it”

Blogs have had a lot of press for:
- alternative journalism
- teenagers
- personal blogs

What are blogs?
- simple web pages designed for frequent updates
- entry barriers are being eliminated: require little or no coding, little or no cost
- each post has its own unique URL (on the Internet, or behind a firewall on an intranet)
- posts can contain links to other posts or sites
- can accommodate comments
- searchable archive that can have categories for browsing
– powerful personal knowledge management tool


Tom Davenport, Tuesday's keynote speaker, just started a blog a month ago.

Examples of business use:
- posting project status reports to a group blog allows everyone to see what everyone else is doing
- summaries of how problems were solved (becomes an archives)
- meeting minutes and notes and related discussion
o don’t tell people it is a blog, but tell them it is a “new tool” to support meetings
o if people missed a meeting, they can ask questions
o post links to articles or websites that were mentioned in the meetings
o available 24/7 to anyone
o not necessary to send around a lot of email messages

Plato: “meaning is better derived from the dialogue of viewpoints” (Phaedrus)

Recent report from The Economist
- knowledge management and competitive intelligence are top critical imperatives with business executives
- workers are swamped with information that has little context and meaning
– blogs are not the only solution, but they can help

Blogs are
- more lively and personal than normal publication
- more permanent and accessible than normal conversation
- hot
- important part of the next generation of the web – smart companies are the ones that make use of them

Interviewed business bloggers for their book. Some discoveries from the interviews:

- blogs act as a content publishing system that the individuals/group put out to the world
- however, transparent in a way that people can respond to it; establish connection with people and engage in dialogue
- reading others’ blogs allows you to get around initial discussion in getting to know someone
- allows for the building of communities
- allows for lots of discussions to take place
- collaboration: allows for finding of new business partners

Creation, collection and context
- e.g. hospital – blog diary of an intern that makes their work come alive every day
- internal blogs created inside organization soliciting charitable funding for NGO, have blogs telling the stories of people in the field in various countries

Connection (and exposure through transparency)
- Scobleizer – one of the most famous bloggers from Microsoft
- Ed Brill – IBM
- Buzzmodo – allows small organizations to have a very large presence on the web [see also: Buzznovation]

Conversation
- Conversations with Dina – Dina Mehta, wanting to connect with other people (photo work) – uses her photoblog as her resume when responding to RFPs
- Down the avenue
- RConversation – Rebecca MacKinnon – former journalist from CNN – trying to lead bloggers in countries around the world

Community and Collaboration
- Tim Draper – ran contest for people to send him their ideas
- Collaboration inside the organization:
o IBM uses blogs inside the organization to manage people as well
o When people come to your organization they can learn about you in advance

Some KM blogs – see list in handouts

Book available: Business Blogs: A Practical Guide by Bill Ives and Amanda G. Watlington