Far Wise in Knowledge Management

Call for papers: 2005 International Virtual Communities Forum

A conference that I visited one year ago (in London) is the Virtual Communities Conference. This conference is different from the others that I visited before: small, focused on (best) practice, with space for discussion. Some presentations were better and more interesting than others, but I think every conference has that.

Next year it will be in London again (this year was in The Hague). The conference will be 14-15 November. Some of the topics covered are:

• Social Software and Social Networks
• Collaboration Tools: Helping Communities Work Together
• Communities of Practice
• Communities of Users
• Geographic / local area Communities
• Case studies of Successful Communities
• Core tools and technologies
• Communities as pressure groups / Flash communities
• .......

On the site of the conference, there is the call for papers. Deadline of submission is 30 April 2005 (our Queensday!). The site says "Monday 30 April 2005", but my Calender says the 30th of April is on Saturday, so I'm not sure what is the correct date.

Paper accepted in Virtual Communities & Technology Encyclopedia

In the last week before Christmas, before the end of the year, it is nice to get some good news. And the news is that the short paper submission of my colleague (Henny de Vos) and myself to the Encyclopedia of Virtual Communities and Technology has been exepted! Yeh!

The paper is titled: "Community knowledge as business advantage". I'm not sure if I'm allowed to link to the paper, so I give the abstract of our paper:

Virtual communities are becoming more and more common in many companies. The goal of such communities is often internal, i.e. distribution of knowledge within the company. WE argue taht companies can benefit by selling knowledge-based products and services that sue community knowledge. This paper presents directions for additional benefits of community knowledge. On the one hand examples of knowledge-based products and services are outlined and on the other hand the contribution of communities to these services is described. The communities get a more external focus, are in different ways useful for customers.

It is not based on in-depth research, but combines the work of Henny (on marketing knowledge) and myself (on communities). It was a creative collaboration!

End of the year lists

When it is December and closer to the end of the year, you see the listings popping up. Time for all the top 1o's , 100's of all kinds of things (books, companies, songs, marathons). I'm always getting tired of all these lists. Why are we making a competition of everyting, trying to distinguish the 'best' from the (not so good) 'rest'. And these lists are never the same as my list. When I see a top-5 of ski areas, I know these are certainly not the areas I will go (we go to Finland).

So what I can do is add another list, my personal list. Of the best books that I read this year, movies I saw, the nicest colleagues to work with (better not do this, I may need the rest next year), my favourite running races (no so motivating being injured for quite some time now, last race was half May), my top 10 results (papers, knitted sweaters..?). Hmm, doesn't sound like a good idea.

I think I better ignore all those stupid lists. I'm just not a list-type, I think.

Blogging in your underpants

This morning Rogier said: "Blogging is like standing in your underpants".

Blogging for him means exposing (in public), and for that you have to be in good shape. Sound like a perfectionist's comment to me.

We had a meeting (with colleagues) about our blogging experiences. Most of us are now blogging about one year, some hardly write and others more regularly. The non-bloggers say they don't have time (priority) or they don't have anything provocative to say. So, for getting reactions, you need to be provocative. I'm not likely to be provocative all the time (and I don't get much feedback but can live with that, one's in a while makes my happy enough). Is blogging then something for the extravert, who don't care much about the type of reactions and who say what they think. Or is it a misunderstanding to think that you only get reactions when you are provocative?

Lilia says that she can't predict what makes people react, what they pick up from the postings. It's a strange thing, this blogging. But I just keep on writing, provocative or not.

"Blog" word of the year 2004

Shall we shout "Hurray" now?! The word "Blog" is announced word of the year 2004 by Merriam-Webster, the American dictionary publisher (I read it in a Dutch article).  The blog term will be added to the on-line dictionary. Competing terms were: 'incumbent', 'electoral' and 'insurgent'.

According to another dictionary publisher (the Oxford English Dictionary) Merriam-Webster is way behind, a word like "blogosphere" was more eligible as word of the year.

On a grey day like today I needed a smile.