Far Wise in Knowledge Management

Great visualization!

Animation of employment trends in North America (don't forget to click on the arrow). A great way of explaining what happened with the jobs the last couple of years.

It reminded me of the presentation of Hans Rosling during Le Web 3 conference.

Google Wave

This looks interesting: Google Wave, released yesterday to 100,000 beta testers. To quote from the CNN-page:

The Web application from Google Inc. combines elements of e-mail, chat, Wiki documents, blogs and photo-sharing sites to create a form of Internet communication called a "hosted conversation," or a "wave."

I found out too late to become one of the testers, so I'll have to wait, I guess.

Océ and micro-messaging

One company I got to know pretty well when I worked in the Netherlands, is Océ - provider of digital document management technology and services. Océ is a company that has a large R&D department, especially compared to many other companies in the Netherlands. I've worked with it on several knowledge-management related topics, such as communities of practice, storytelling and information overload. Samuël Driessen was one of the people from Océ our team worked with very closely, and I was pleasantly surprised to read the (long) posting by Bill Ives about Océ, Samuël and micro-messaging. Nice! Read the full story on Bill's blog, or read Samuël's experiences with micro-messaging in his own blog (info-arch).

How the mighty fall, by Jim Collins

Some people know that I write management book reviews (in Dutch) for a Dutch management book site. They send me the books of choice, I read them and write a 600 words review, they publish it online and sometimes in the paper magazine. I'd like to share these reviews, but many books are only available in Dutch. Next to that, translating the review is a lot of work. But sometimes I get an English book, which I think may be of interest for more people. Not so long ago I reviewed "How the mighty fall", written by Jim Collins, which you can read here (warning: this is a long posting!).

Human is more important than technology

"The human is more important than technology". Nothing new about this, thoughI think it can't be said often enough. The comment was made Monday by, and this is also not a surprise, the co-founder of Apple Computer, Steve Wozniak. "The Woz" was keynote speaker at a Communitech breakfast event (sponsored by, among others, RIM). It was an event attended by over 700 people, while Iain Klugman, director of Communitech, beforehand thought it would be nice to invite Wozniak to visit Kitchener/Waterloo and have a meeting with 80 people or so. The room was filled by people of all kinds of organizations, gadget lovers (like Wozniak) or not - everybody wanted to hear his story.

Breakfast event with "The Woz"

We live in RIM-city and everybody (except from me) seems to have a Blackberry. That's why it surprises me that the co-founder of Apple (a competitor with its Iphone, I think), Steve Wozniak (aka "The Woz"), is invited as keynote speaker for a Communitech breakfast event on the 17th of August. An event sponsored by... RIM. Hmm, interesting!

(I signed up for the event, so hope to come back to it in a later posting)

Information Overload Awareness Day

Make a note: 12 August is Information Overload Awareness Day and a global event is organized with various presenters. You can participate via the web and participants who promise not to multi task get 50% discount (so, nobody, I guess). Interesting idea this web event, and I hope I have time to participate.

A concept game about future ways of working

My former colleagues at Novay (was: Telematica Instituut) have developed a "concept game" on future work. I read that it came online in May'09, but I missed the launch and saw it today. The game consists of 59 cards that each describes a concept on working in the future. Participants (you, it's all in English!) can choose the 3 concepts they support most and the 3 concepts they support least.

59 Cards to read is a lot (too much maybe) and to choose is not easy. There are many good ideas among the cards and there are ideas that I think are alreay implemented in some form. Some concepts just don't have my interest (but may be a good idea). What I find a good idea now may be related to problems I recognize in my current job. I recognise concepts from our study on information overload, collaborative work. Some ideas will not work in a work environment as I have now, with cubbicles. We have a lot of discussions here about disruptions, since the way the cubicles are set up, it's almost impossible not to disrupt neighbouring colleagues when you talk with someone else.

The cards in the game look nice and I like that you can move them, which helped me in selecting the 3 ideas I like most and least. The concepts I liked least were easiest to pick:

• (5) Gesture interface: Control your computer with arm, hand and finger movement
• (33) SpotMe: Device that helps you to contact others
• (58) Wake-up Calendar: Best time of waking up, taking your activities into account

The best are much harder to select. Here is my choice, though not a convinced choice:

• (28) Flow workspace: A virtual workspace that helps block distractions
• (35) My home is my castle: Work concentrated at home and use office for the collaborative, social part
• (56) Social search: Don't find information but people, the person with the expertise

It is called a "game", I think it's a nice-looking information gathering (survey) tool!

I want a world-wide view

I don't know how Google search works, but apparently Google knows I am located in Canada (or in the past in France and the Netherlands). Although I never choose the option 'pages from Canada' but 'the web', the hits on the first page mostly come from the country of location. The results I get from the same input in Canada is different from when I am in France or in the Netherlands. It really annoys me. I want a broad perspective, a world-wide view! And not 'please give me everything that is close-by, because I don't care what's there in the rest of the world'.

50 Green energy gadgets

Everybody is on holidays, work is becoming quiet, so time for some fun. Here is a list of 50 green energy gadgets (found in Wired Gadget Lab).  I love the Wind-Helmet Power Generator, it's hilarious!  [But I should add that most are pretty serious and I support any suggestion to save energy]

"The Wind-Helmet has a windmill in your helmet. Wind flows over the helmet, through the propeller in the rear, and stores energy in a set of rechargeable batteries for later use. Although there are a lot of power chargers out there, the Wind-Helmet allows for you generate power with something you will already be using."