While there are a number of ways to engage in knowledge sharing one of the most powerful ones are of course the Brown Bag Session.

Brown bag seminars are generally offered to update the researching community about ongoing research. Usually held by schools and universities and governmental institutions, they involve lectures, presentations, or talks by researchers, mostly professors about their ongoing research. Professors may visit from other universities to talk about their research.

Brown bag seminars normally run an hour or two. Originally they were scheduled around lunchtime and participants were encouraged to bring their own lunch in a bag, explaining how the practice got its name. - Wikipedia

Why do this?

While there is no doubt that formalized learning, like trainings,  contribute heavily towards professional growth within an organization, however, the single biggest learning tool at our disposal is on-the-job learning. This allows people to leverage existing processes to create a structure around the way they work, while enabling a level of flexibility and creativity. The benefits of this approach would lead to new ways of successfully capturing, storing and share of tacit knowledge. Eventually leading to changes being made to existing processes, introducing new ones and in some cases doing away with the old.

Face-to-Face sessions are always important when it comes to knowledge sharing, this is because there is only so much knowledge a document can impart. Creating a platform which allows people to engage with one another is a very powerful tool.

How would you do this?

At the start of every project team members should be encouraged to present thoughts and ideas based on there previous experience and allow other team members to ask questions.

Some benefits of this approach are:

1. Allows the project manager to get a better understanding of his team and figure out where best to user them
2. Allowing team members to get to know one another.
3. Creating a platform that enables team members to showcase their knowledge and expertise .
4. Ensuring that knowledge and Best Practices from previous projects are re-used.

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Reports are pouring in that Google has dived headlong into the war between content providers and ISP’s by offering measurement tools to help users determine why their web apps are slow.

Google creates  Measurement Lab, an open platform upon which researchers can deploy Internet measurement tools, in collaboration with the New America Foundation’s Open Technology Institute, the PlanetLab Consortium and academic researchers from across the globe in an effort to address this issue.

Google has provided researchers with 36 servers across 12 locations in the US and Europe in an attempt to combat this problem.

There is no doubt that this is a warning to the ISP’s that people are taking this very seriously, and with Google throwing their weight behind this initiative a lot of people are going to start sitting up and taking notice.

Google Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf, one of the Internet’s founding fathers, wrote in a post explaining M-Lab:

“When an Internet application doesn’t work as expected or your connection seems flaky, how can you tell whether there is a problem caused by your broadband ISP, the application, your PC, or something else? It can be difficult for experts, let alone average Internet users, to address this sort of question today.”

The tools currently available at M-Lab:

• Network Diagnostic Tool

  Test your connection speed and receive sophisticated diagnosis of problems limiting speed.

• Glasnost

  Test whether BitTorrent is being blocked or throttled.

• Network Path and Application Diagnosis

  Diagnose common problems that impact last-mile broadband networks.

• DiffProbe (coming soon)

  Determine whether an ISP is giving some traffic a lower priority than other traffic.

• NANO (coming soon)

  Determine whether an ISP is degrading the performance of a certain subset of users, applications, or destinations.

Read more at - Introducing Measurements Lab & Google Fans Net Neutrality Flames with Web Measurements Lab

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TUAW has just released a story that I’m sure will spread like wildfire. It seems thee U.S. Patent and Trademark Office has awarded Apple patent number 7,479,949 which in effect covers the key aspects of the iPhones multi-touch user interface.

The filing clearly mentions the operation of the touchscreen and how the hardware and software interpret finger touches. This patent will allow Apple to aggressively defend its turf with Palm. With the recent stories out over the supposed “copying” of technology there is no doubt that there might be a showdown between Apple and Palm.

Whats interesting to note is that the patent also covers features that aren’t present on the iPhone but that are critical to the operation of the Palm Pre.

Will be interesting to watch how this unfolds.

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Web 2.0 adoption in the corporate sector has been slow, of that there is no doubt. The reliance on traditional information management systems that are heavily process oriented is tremendous. There is very little incentive ( or so a lot of people think ) towards investing in “newer” applications and services.

However there is a slow shift in that line of thought, i read a rather interesting survey conducted by the Mckinsey group on how Web 2.0 is being adopted in large corporates. The indication being that recently there has been a noticeable increase in corporates willing to invest in these new technologies and more importantly the rewards attained as a result of this leap of faith.

On the whole i think it’s a wait and watch game, the one thing you need to understand is that implementing a Web 2.0 application is considered something of a risk as most “corporates” as most do not have the exposure or understanding to realize the benefit it could garner for them.

I’m currently involved in a large project within the company i work for to rollout a large application that encompasses most Web 2.0 features like Wikis, Blogs, Social networking and such. Something that i personally feel has become long overdue and i can already forsee the huge benefit to the employee within the organization.

A decade or so ago the office was a treasure trove of new technologies, today the world wide web gives you a better variety of tools. What organizations need to realize is that most of their employees depend on these tools and services on a daily basis and the flexibility it provides them only strengthens the argument that there are serious drawbacks to the services they have to use back at the office.

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If there was any doubt that the big players have started putting an emphasis on social networks this story just continue reading….

This new service called Kickstart that is meant to connect college students and alumni and various colleges, a closer looks reveals that it has more to do with the professional social networking structure that linkedin provides.

It’s a pretty simple process to sign up and there is an amount of basic information that you need to fill up first. Once that is done the network automatically connects you to people from the same college.

That the focus of this social network is to help improve your professional life there is no doubt. There is a tremendous focus on getting alumi signed up quick;y, so much so that they’ve offered a $25,000 prize to the college that signs up the most alumni by the end of the year. Definitely a site worth keeping an eye on.

With the amount of money that these social networks seem to be generating its a little wonder Yahoo has decided to capitalize on this growing market.

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Well the OS war for 2007 - 08 has officially started, and with the cost of a MAC almost on par with its equivalent in the PC price no longer is the deterrent it once was.

Leopard was recently launched with a lot of fanfare, boasting a slew of new features, visuals and upgrades to some existing features.

There is no doubt about the superior finish of the MAC, however i felt that you the readers might put a little more weight to a review conducted by our friends at PC world.

Read the complete review here.

A couple of additional articles on Leopard at Gridlock.

Install MAC on your PC in 3 easy steps

A guided tour of MAC OS X - Leopard

MAC OS X - Out!

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While there is no doubting that Sharepoint is far from an ideally KMS candidate there is no question that its share of the CMS market is increasing at a staggering rate. I recently read a post by an Analyst at CMS watch.

“MS SharePoint continues to grow at a pace - in a presentation to Financial Analysts earlier this week, Microsoft stated that in the past year they have seen year over year 35% growth and revenues of a staggering $800 Million US. They also claim that they have shipped 85 million seat licenses to 17,000 customers since the beginning of SharePoint time.”

This leaves no doubt in my mind the rate at which people are adopting SharePoint across the board. It’s single biggest attraction is the fact that its cheaper than what the competition has to offer and integrates brilliantly with existing Microsoft products ( no surprise there!).

What’s really surprising is that a large percentage of the licenses aren’t used, and most people don’t make full use of the features present in the application.

“Nobody can say with accuracy, but for sure a large percentage of the 85 million SharePoint seats sit idle, and an equally large percentage have been deployed without the knowledge or control of IT or corporate governance. In effect leaving firms with hundreds (and in a few cases thousands) of hidden content silos to manage and legally account for.”

Read the full article here….

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If you’ve taken part in any audit ( a relatively large one ) you know the pros and cons of having a Face to Face audit as well as an audit based on a questionnaire.

The questions you need to ask yourself before you start out with an audit are as follows :

1. What is the purpose of my audit?
2. Who is my target audience?
3. How large is this group?
4. Is it very diverse?
5. How much time do i have?
6. How complex do i want this to be?

I’m sure you might put together a whole host of other questions as well, but these 6 should cover the basics when deciding upon a method.

While there is no doubt that a Face to Face audit would generate a huge amount of information it also raises the question of how much time you have to spend. Setting up meetings with a large number of people, expecting them to adhere to the schedule and then filtering out the noise in a face to face meeting all take time. In most instances this is something an auditor doesn’t have the luxury of.

A Questionnaire would be a likely alternative to someone who does not have the time to spend with face to face audits.

So how do you decide between the two? Simply put, factor in what you want to achieve, and how much time you have, not to mention the size of your target group. If its simple information you want then a questionnaire is definitely the way to go, a face to face audit wouldn’t actually be very much more effective in a case like this.

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