What I'm Reading: Late for Work

I am suspicious of awards books. You know what I mean: the National Poetry Series, the Agnes Starrett award, the Lamont, the Yale Younger Poets Series, etc. It's not that there aren't good books in these series. It's just that they tend to look better than they are (and I don't mean just visually, although that too).

You leaf through them at the bookstore and hit a poem that strikes you as interesting. Unique. Evocative. So you buy the book and take it home only to discover either that you read the one good poem in the bunch or it is all surface: the poems are all interesting/unique/evocative in the same, formulaic way. Again, I don't want to paint all award winners with the same brush, but as a consumer I have been burnt enough times to be wary.

So when I came across David Tucker's Late for Work at the Concord Bookshop (one of the nicest independent bookstores in the country, by the way), I was intrigued but not necessarily optimistic. The working poet. Poems about working life. I could see the hook and had serious doubts. But it looked interesting enough to overcome my reservations from its being a Bread Loaf/Bakeless Prize winner and picked it up.

And I am glad I did. Tucker is a working poet. Not because he writes self-referential poems about holding down a job (although he does that too), but because his poems are the product of a poet working at his craft just as he works at his primary occupation. The jacket tells us Tucker is a journalist. And plenty of the poems refer to this profession. But the work in Late for Work is the backdrop, the milieu of the poems, not the subject.

Tucker is not a great poet -- you can't expect the revelatory experiences of reading Whitman or Berryman or Neruda. These are not poems using language in a new way or extraordinary visions of the inner self. They are not flashy or arty poems. No, Tucker is a not great but he is definitely a good, steady poet and his poems reflect language used well to examine a life and the society it is lived in.

Which is surprisingly uncommon nowadays and what makes this book worthwhile. Here is a poet taking his time and looking closely:

Through most of January my two brothers and I
drove back and forth to the hospital where our old man was dying.
We did eight-hour shifts, just watching him go
from the final disintegrations of liver cancer, swabbing his lips,
talking into his coma, with sidelong looks at death.

--"Enough of It"

The careful articulation lets you see into the narrator's predicament, experience loss with a clarity that is not possible when the tragedy is your own. And with that clarity comes insight:

I've seen all the x-rays I ever want to see, checked all
the IV bags I ever want to check, heard enough of the morphine counter
and its little metal tongue.

And just as his poetry is slow and studied, his endings do not allow for the easy out either:

      -- and praying
and having faith that you'll get over it and move on and let go,
and the long view you take after losing one loved so much --
I've had enough of that too.

Even in his more flippant moments, Tucker poems are controlled (such as in the poem "Voice Mail", which personifies the one technology that is perhaps the most dehumanizing, beginning "this is what's-his-face's voice mail.") But where Tucker shines is where he examines the everyday, the common events we all share but must experience separately: life, death, work, etc. Poems such as "Enough of It", "The Men Decide", and "Putting Everything Off" make Late for Work a book well worth reading.

If there are flaws in Tucker's books (and one would imagine there must be in a first full-length book) I can see only two. Every once in awhile, Tucker draws out his images so carefully, so long and so far that he goes beyond poetry and stumbles into -- well -- prose. For example, this from the poem "That Day":

The mother sings some song we can't quite hear anymore
as she carries a sack of groceries on one arm
while the boy wades around her, kicking the dry leaves.

As for the second possible flaw, Tucker is a solid poet and his poems are not repetitive. But there is a certain structure that you see repeated in several of his poems. It is the slow beginning, the steady deepening of the images, followed by a turning as the poem progresses, finished off with a final twist in the last two lines. This is not a pattern unique to Tucker. Many poets do it. It comes from a desire for closure, a clean finish. The danger is that you fall for an easy out, a neat but artificial closing image. I recognize it because I recognize it from my own work and the work of others. It is a familiar trap.

Tucker doesn't fall for the easy or the quick close, the surprise ending. But he does favor that final poetic image and uses them frequently. He may want to consider occasionally letting the poem come to a halt, without that closing final exclamation, and let the poem rely on its own merits. A little ambiguity never did any harm.

But this is just nitpicking, quibbling over details. Late for Work is a surprising book because it isn't surprising. Its just good strong poetry in the American vernacular.

What is Knowledge Architecture (the Short Version)

In one of the industry mailing lists, a member asked if anyone else had the title of knowledge architect and, if so, what do they define it as. Since that is the title I go by, I thought it might be useful to explain how I define the role and what separates it from others.

(I was somewhat surprised to find that I hadn't answered this before -- in writing. I do it a lot in person. My opening posts define Information Architecture and Knowledge Management, but skipped the synergy between them that is where I live and work today...)

I tend to keep my definitions simple. So to me Knowledge Architecture is the application of information architecture to knowledge management. That is, using the skills for defining and designing information spaces to establish an environment conducive to managing knowledge.

Borrowing a metaphor from physics, you can think of the difference between information architecture and knowledge architecture in terms of energy. Information architecture tends to focus on designing spaces for existing or predefined information. What might be called kinetic information. For example, one branch of information architecture focuses on findability, with little or no concern about how the content itself comes into being.

Knowledge architecture, on the other hand, deals with potential information. So, rather than determining the best way to use existing content, the knowledge architect is designing "spaces" that encourage knowledge to be created, captured, and shared. In this respect, the actual content doesn't matter as much as the life cycle -- how and when it gets created and how best to get it to the right people quickly. For example, collaboration strategies may focus on the structure and set up of team spaces or discussion forums -- how they get created, how they operate, how people find them and vice versa. But the actual tasks and topics discussed in those spaces are up to the teams that use them and may not be determined to long after the strategy is completed and in place.

That is not to say that knowledge architects don't have plenty of traditional information architecture/content management responsibilities as well -- such as taxonomies, web site structures, search interfaces, etc. But what sets them apart from other information architects is their focus on the design of spaces and the processes that support knowledge being exchanged, rather than on the knowledge itself.

Please, Enough with the 2.0 Already

I am tired of 2.0.

It's not Web 2.0 that I object to, that's not the problem. Tim O'Reilly's moniker for the recent developments in web applications really caught the imagination of the populous because it does an excellent job distinguishing today's social computing from the previous iteration of the web as well as from the theory and as-yet unmet expectations of the semantic web.

No, I like Web 2.0. It is all the other two point oh's I object to. First there was Enterprise 2.0, which is an expression I try hard not to use. There is very little benefit calling something Enterprise 2.0 over web 2.0 in the enterprise or social software applied to business. It takes the identification of a truly revolutionary transformation in computing and turns it into a fuzzy catch phrase.

But it got worse. I started hearing about Knowledge 2.0 in the KM community, Training 2.0 among my friends in instructional design, and most recently Work 2.0.

Stop it! For one thing, if we are talking about work, we must be at version 10.2.2 at a minimum. (I'll explain my numbering scheme later, if anyone cares.) Web 2.0 is, at least in part, both responsible for and a manifestation of the latest transition of work in its constant cycle between waves of oppression, cooperation, and exploitation. But don't confuse the two.

So let's make a pact: no more 2.0. If you really think you have identified a revolutionary and transformative trend, come up with your own label that can accurately describe it and
represent that trend. Don't leech off the creativity of others and confuse the issue by attaching a clear name for something happening today to fuzzy, ill-defined initiatives or wishful thinking.

Is Corporate KM Obsolete? (The Threat of Social Software, Part 4)

(continued from Part 3)

Knowledge Management does not occur inside the firewall alone. It happens inside the firewall, outside the firewall, and throughout the expanding universe of the company's employees and their communities -- which regularly ignore corporate boundaries.

Some might say that what happens outside the firewall is more chaos than management, but there is a significant amount of self-regulating process and order applied to the knowledge shared in the public domain. Distribution lists, Yahoo groups, forums, societies, and professional organizations all apply varying degrees of structure to their conversations and content.

Even blogs -- the random diary entries of millions of users -- develop an organic structure through the network of topic tags , blogrolls, cross-references and trackbacks.

So if, as I argued, the knowledge environment outside the firewall is far larger, more active, and in most cases more effective than that inside the firewall, what is the point of having corporate KM? Are we fighting a losing battle trying to keep knowledge inside the intranet?

Well, those are two separate questions with two separate answers. To the first question -- is corporate KM obsolete in the age of web 2.0 -- the answer is not quite. KM (and IT) as currently practiced in many companies around the world, is running against the tide and going to come under increasing criticism as more and more of the MySpace generation enter the workforce.

The answer to the second question -- are we fighting a losing battle to keep knowledge inside the firewall -- is a resounding yes. Corporate KM is not obsolete. But KM as currently practiced in many companies is certainly headed in that direction. The issue is being able to distinguish between what is most effectively (or securely) managed within the castle walls and finding the appropriate synergy with the knowledge flourishing outside.

Breaking Down the Walls

Corporate KM has traditionally been practiced as a self-contained system. Much of this has to do with preserving the privacy and secrecy of corporate activities. Clearly, you do not want employees discussing unannounced products out in the open. Also, many of the processes within a corporation could be considered intellectual property that needs protecting.

Another reason for the insularity is that organizations want a very high level of performance from their internal communities. In the past it has been hard to find a critical mass of similarly trained and like-minded professionals. Professional organizations, such as ACM, and annual conferences on various topics provide some amount of interaction between professionals from different companies. But the connections are limited and take time to establish and maintain.

With the introduction of web 1.0 and web 2.0, anyone can quickly find both information (search) and people (blogs, forums, and social networking) in similar fields and with similar interests and technical ability. Because of the seemingly limitless scope of detailed technical and business information available on the web, you do not even have to know the individual to learn from their experience.

More importantly, there is no "entrance fee". A new virtual community is created each time you perform a search or scan feeds from selected blogs. The low (no) cost of entry, plus the unparalleled volume of content, plus ready access essentially makes any professional a self-contained "consultant" in their own field of expertise. Employees are no longer dependent on their employer or their employment for their technical expertise and their career development.

Resistance to Change

As beneficial as this newfound independence within the workforce is to the company (in terms of self-directed career development and finding answers to problems which might never have been uncovered within the company itself), it is also a threat. Independent employees are threatening to the corporation for two reasons: loss of control and fear of poaching.

Corporations have traditionally taken responsibility for "developing" their employees both in terms of teaching work processes and encouraging specific job skills. They also tend to claim ownership over all the information the employee garners during their employment -- and they are very possessive of that knowledge. Some have new employees sign agreements not to work for competitors for a set period of time after they leave. Others sue when they fear confidential information will be given to a new employer, as in the case of Google and Microsoft fighting over Dr. Kai-Fu Lee.

More recently, there are companies that have gone so far as to attempt to ban employees from blogging or commenting on blogs because they are a "conflict of interest" or endangering the company's reputation or intellectual property.

These all-or-nothing approaches to IP protection are in conflict with reality and -- more importantly -- in conflict with the employees' perception of knowledge ownership. They blur the distinction between what is the intellectual property of the company and what is the professional experience and expertise of the employee.

Intellectual Capital vs. Intellectual Property

As an example, I personally know a fair amount about Microsoft SharePoint. We were a field test site back when it was known as Tahoe. I was involved in the original structural design of the SharePoint infrastructure for my company, and I continue to support SharePoint as a content architect. Having lived through three versions of the product, I have a fairly broad working knowledge of the technology and its uses.

That knowledge was garnered as a direct consequence of my employment as a knowledge architect. Some of that knowledge is intimately linked to my knowledge of the company itself: the specifics of how the sites are structured to support the internal organization, what applications use what data, even the names of the specific servers and services within the corporate firewall. That information could fairly be considered the intellectual property of the corporation since it is specific to the company and revealing it outside could potentially damage its business prospects (by exposing internal plans or structures).

However, knowledge about how SharePoint works and how it can be applied to different business situations is not specific to my current company. It is part of my professional expertise. This can be considered part of the company's intellectual capital -- the resources it has available to it to produce products or offer services.

One way of thinking* of the distinction between intellectual property and intellectual capital is to look at the consequence of an employee's leaving. If I were to quit my company, their SharePoint infrastructure would not change; the structure, server names, applications etc would stay the same. They retain their intellectual property. However, my professional expertise in SharePoint would no longer be available to them to modify or maintain the system or its content. They would lose whatever intellectual capital I personally provide.

In other words, intellectual capital is the knowledge I can take with me and make use of in a new endeavor separate from my previous employer. Intellectual property is the information that stays with my employer and whose context is specific to their business and not dependent on my working there.

Striking a Balance

So what does this mean in terms of knowledge management? It means that corporations can benefit significantly by allowing and encouraging employees to share and expand their professional intellectual capital in the larger external world of forums, communities, wikis, blogs, etc. Their professional development, and their ability to apply it to their job, will increase much faster when they have access to the broader professional community.

At the same time, the corporation can benefit by focusing internal efforts on two key aspects of KM:

• Managing the intellectual property that drives the corporation -- optimizing internal processes and the sharing of company-specific information.
• Maximizing the synergy between intellectual property and intellectual capital -- helping employees find appropriate resources outside the firewall and making the connections between internal, company-specific processes, and the generalized, profession-specific knowledge available on the internet.
  

Finally, the company is still responsible for preserving the security of its intellectual property and trade secrets. The employees are responsible for holding up their end. However, the employees do not always know where to draw the line.

If the company takes the old Draconian view of all or nothing, for the employees to participate in the new web 2.0 information economy, they are left to choose for themselves what to share or not. The company and its employee become adversaries fighting over knowledge that in most cases no one benefits from restricting.

Rather than trying to block all external sharing (or going too far the other direction and sharing everything), companies can help both their employees and themselves by providing guidelines about what knowledge is professional expertise and what is legitimately intellectual property of the company. Names of employees, development projects, internal services, as well as descriptions of proprietary processes fall should all fairly fall under the rubric of trade secrets. Knowledge of a professional nature -- expertise in the use and application of tools, products, or methodologies -- are all part of the employee's professional identify and "toolkit" and do not warrant restrictions.

By helping the employees understand and employ this distinction, the company can help leverage the "wisdom of crowds" for both their own and the employee's benefit.

*I am using a broader concept of intellectual capital and intellectual property than the purely legal definitions. In particular, I believe the crux of the issue lies primarily in the definition of "trade secrets". Explicit Intellectual property, such as copyrights and patents, that can be isolated and articulated poses very little threat of misinterpretation. But the implicit IP of what what comprises a trade secret and suitable for protection will prove much trickier to define.

What I'm Playing: Daxter

Wah?! So, I bought a Sony PSP primarily to play a few games (LocoRoco, Exit, and the upcoming Patapon) that aren't available on other systems. Given the color options (white, silver, or the original black) I chose silver. The color choice was aided by the fact that silver comes bundled with a memory card (quick aside: how can you sell a game system without a memory card when the games require it to save your progress?) and the game Daxter, which had received quite good reviews.

I've been thoroughly enjoying Exit. (Aside #2: why is this game so cheap? Is it that PSP owners -- who are probably also PS2/Ps3 owners -- simply don't like puzzle games? Because this one is really quite good and stylish besides.) But I had an extra hour this week so I thought I'd try Daxter.

The opening sequences to the game are very impressive; lush graphics, cinematic camera angles, entertaining patter between the characters. It certainly stokes your expectations for the game. Then the game starts and... What? A collection game? Is that all there is to it?

After the 20 minutes or so of opening sequence and initial wandering around, I then spent 30-40 minutes collecting bugs. Or rather, weird egg-like things the bugs leave behind. Not exactly exciting. And not particularly stimulating. For all its free-roaming style, there is a clear linear path to follow and the usual jumping, hopping, and crawling to collect the items you need. And despite the lush graphics of the opening, once you get into the hotel, the plants and floor boards etc are noticeably 2D in a 3D world.

How on earth did this game get such good reviews? Yeah, okay. I'm only at the beginning and there is a chance that it may suddenly pick up after I finish this menial chore. But this is a game, for goodness sakes! You don't want to bore your audience to death before they get started.

And it is not that I have anything against collection games in general. Rayman, Banjo Kazooie, Mario 64 are all essentially platform/collection games and brilliant besides. But, unless someone can show me that the game improves dramatically, I don't think I'll be playing Daxter much more.

Is that fair? Is it fair to give up on a game before you've spent a minimum of, say, 2, 3, or more hours with it? perhaps not if you are a professional reviewer. But if you are a player -- if you goal is simply to enjoy the charm, the challenge, and the twists of a good game -- you better believe it is fair!

Wikipedia, Accuracy, and Ideology

There was yet another dust up over the accuracy and appropriateness of Wikipedia in one of the mailing lists I participate in. It happens on a fairly regular basis. About once a month someone impugns the accuracy of Wikipedia -- or the critical judgement of those who cite it -- and in turn others trot out the arguments in defense: the comparison to Encyclopedia Britannica, the similarity of Wikipedia's editorial process to the peer review process of scientific journals, etc.

I try not to get involved. Not because I don't have an opinion, but my opinion is no better or worse than anyone else's. Besides, the argument is not about truth but about perception, which makes it well nigh impossible to win.

My view of Wikipedia is very much in line with that expressed by Magnus Linklater in the Times of London. It is not really a matter of accuracy. (It is accurate enough.) It is not even a matter of perceived accuracy. (Those who believe in it will, those who don't won't. It is hard to change these perceptions.) It is a matter of how it is being used. Just as you can never trust everything you see in print, you can never trust everything you see online (in Wikipedia or elsewhere). It requires a critical eye and inquiring mind to use reference information effectively and it can rarely be used alone.

But it wasn't the tirades over accuracy that caught my attention, but the specific topics that initiated the tirades. In each case, for the last three flare ups I witnessed, the topic that brought on the argument was not a question of objective fact, but a question of definition.

The fact is that Wikipedia is adequate -- even capacious -- on most topics. This, plus its astounding volume of entries and rapid and active updating make it an extraordinary resource. Despite the highly publicized episodes of factual sabotage or outright fraud (which in most cases are corrected in short order), Wikipedia is now a complete, valuable, and popular font of information.

By "complete" I don't mean finished. A wiki is never done. But at this point, the coverage of topics is truly astonishing and includes almost anything you might expect of an encyclopedia -- and more.

And it is this completeness and Wikipedia's rising popularity that are causing a new problem. Facts are facts: names, dates, events, etc. Even supposition is fine-- rumor or speculative conjecture is allowed and usually tagged appropriately. But definitions are coming under increasing fire.

At first, when Wikipedia was still in its gestation, many different groups worked together to establish entries on topics of mutual interest. Even if they were not in agreement on the exact words, there was lots of talk about "let's get a Wikipedia entry set up up for X..." Presence in the emerging catalog of all knowledge was important.

However, now that Wikipedia is becoming an established source for information, those differences of opinion on topics of subjective truth are becoming battlegrounds for ideological debate. It was not the usual battlegrounds -- religion and politics -- that caught my eye. It was the definition of business terms: Knowledge management, Information architecture, Communities of Practice... These are the new fields of conflict.

The fact is that business terminology is often fuzzy at best. Well, I take that back. These terms are actually almost naively self-defining: knowledge management -- the management of what we know... Information architecture -- defining the structure of an information space... Communities of Practice -- groups of people organized around what they do...

Unfortunately, people quickly start to refine or replace these rudimentary definitions with descriptions of how they believe these goals should be achieved. So knowledge management is no longer managing knowledge, it is specific approaches to managing certain types of knowledge: facilitating communities, selecting and promoting best practices, using story telling to capture implicit knowledge... And quickly the war begins the proponents and detractors of various methodologies.

In the case of information architecture and communities of practice it is not so much how it is done as what it is. What makes a community a community of practice vs. some other type of community. (Aside: this conversation often revolves around metrics for identifying successful communities. But should success be part of a definition? Could there be dysfunctional communities that still qualify? I believe the answer is yes. In fact, I believe I am a member of several...)

This quibbling over definitions comes from ideological differences between the members of the community interested in them -- and sometimes between different communities. For example, information architecture is defined differently if your background is Library Science or Interaction Design (IxD). (Part of the argument is whether interaction design is a subset of information architecture or vice versa. And if information architecture circumscribes IxD and other xD's -- such as user experience design -- is it too large and amorphous to have any meaning?) The fact is that many of these areas -- like so many new practices within business -- are an amalgam of many different components and overlaps and turf wars are bound to arise.

Why should we care about this nitpicking? This haggling will be problematic for Wikipedia because it is only going to get worse as Wikipedia's stature rises and new factions start battling for their ideological foothold in the definition of more and more of business's favorite buzzwords. It is nothing new; these arguments have been going on within the communities I belong to for as long as I can remember. The problem is Wikipedia now gives them a platform in which to take their battle "to the streets", so to speak. I don't believe this can be beneficial to either those unfamiliar with the terms, witnessing the bickering, or to the reputation of the groups involved in the fray.

What I'm Playing: Arkanoid DS

I don't know what it is about Arkanoid. I am old enough to remember when retro games were new. I still enjoy playing many of the classics -- Pacman, Scramble, Space Invaders -- for their pure unadulterated-by-story-or-graphics game mechanics. But there are just a few of those old games that I have a real soft spot for.

Arkanoid, DigDug, Mr. Do! ... There is something about these particular games that attracts me. It isn't the game play. Arkanoid is nothing more than Breakout in portrait mode with a nonsensical story and a few extra powerups that drop randomly from above. But that's just it! Those extras give it that bit of character, that twist, that keeps me coming back.

So when I heard they were redoing Arkanoid for the DS, I was torn. It would be my third purchase of Arkanoid (I already had it on the Macintosh and SNES). Besides, Taito's last remake (Dig Dug: Digging Strike) was so awful, the controls so horrendous, I thought my attraction to nostalgic games would be destroyed forever. But still... Arkanoid?

My hesitation was swept away when I learned they were bundling a new peripheral with Arkanoid; a miniature paddle that replicates the original arcade feel. I know it is a toy, I know it is a ploy for my affection, but I'm a sucker. I ordered the bundle immediately.

There's very little I like more than a quirky new gizmo, especially a game gizmo. So the paddle controller put Arkanoid into the "must have" category. And I've got to say it was well worth it. The paddle itself works perfectly. It is small but it has the weight and resistance of the original arcade machines.

But equally important, the game itself is the Arkanoid we know and love. The movement is smooth, the graphics crisp and familiar, the controls tight and comfortable. There are some changes from previous versions I have played: I haven't yet encountered the warp gates from the Revenge of Doh and you start with a barrier at the bottom of the screen that essentially provides three "saves". Mind you, I haven't progressed too far yet, so things may change later.

Also there are a host of customizations possible -- such as different backgrounds, music, graphics, and borders -- that you can "buy" with points you collect from playing.

But essentially Arkanoid on the DS is Arkanoid: batting a puck back and forth knocking out bricks through level after level. So if you are looking for something deep or beyond pure addictive mechanics, this game is not for you. But if you do have a fondness for mindless retro gaming in a shiny wrapper, Arkanoid is well worth it.

I should just mention, Arkanoid is currently a Japanese import. But those -- like myself -- who do not know Japanese don't need to worry. Most of the menus are in English and those that aren't (such as the customizations) are easy to navigate with a little trial and error. The only really tough menus are those for internet play. I haven't figured those out quite yet...

Funny thing is, despite it being the ostensible reason for my purchase, after a day or so I don't use the paddle controller much anymore. I do occasionally plug it in just for the quirky retro experience. But Arkanoid gives you three different control modes: paddle, stylus, and buttons. They all work equally well and I have ended up settling on the buttons (moving with the left/right D-pad) as my favorite. The buttons are at least as intuitive as the paddle and the game is far more portable that way.

With or without the paddle controller, Arkanoid DS is a great game for any Arkanoid fans out there.