[Sigia-l] knowledge management

[Derek R]

>| Fundamentally, I question anyone's ability
>| to "manage knowledge"

I have a strong history of 'managing knowledge.'

Unlike Information Management, within Knowledge Management you are not
'altering' or making 'modifications' to anything, not creating any new
'handles' for anything -- this key to the discipline.

Knowledge Management's focus is on presentation and preservation, or
'preserving presentation,' if you wish, so that 'what is' (i.e. the
knowledge-base) remains uncorrupted (i.e. identified).
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Knowledge Management is about keeping things together -- protecting the
integrity + clarity of purpose which has already been established. 
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For instance, typical duties could include content licensing, ensuring
everything adheres to the spirit of a negotiated content contract,
targeting content acquisitions, or keeping content acquisitions in-line
with existing collections (again -- identity, identity).

Knowledge Management has to do with 'direction' and 'leadership' in the
content arena, but only, typically, with *how* people, brands, and
content-producers/handlers interact with one another -- and -- *how* the
'totality of content' is effected by business interaction. 

Knowledge Management is accounting for what you have (content inventory)
as a business on both the actual and spiritual (in-the-head) levels.

Indeed, Knowledge Management chiefly involves the ability of content
businesses to 'react to themselves.' It is the ability to reflect on
*how* the 'mechanics' of day-to-day and strategic business effect
content.

It is the dip-stick in your oil-tank whose 'silver-shimmer' indicates
how dirty the oil is. It owns the 'indicator' function for content --
prompting change when necessary (to maintain the engine one wishes to
have), but NOT participating in that change.

I define Information and Knowledge Management as such on my resume: 

Information Management:
-Information Architecture, Navigation, UI
-IT Requirements, IT Planning, IT Strategy
-Usability, Evaluation, Human Factors

Knowledge Management:
-Branding, Messaging, Community
-Acquisitions, New Business, Legal
-Editorial, Style and Voice, Logic

which I ultimately, (perhaps belligerently ~ excessive
self-involvement), meld into what I call 'Information Knowledge' --
which is my attempt to define and highlight the space which exists
*between* Information and Knowledge (the big-picture *how*), without
which, neither could exist (an agency of reference ~ derivation).