[Sigia-l] knowledge management

[James Robertson]

At 07:15 8/05/2003, Jody Hankinson wrote:

>I'm interested in talking to people who work with or are part of a
>Knowledge Management initiative. (My apologies if this is in the archives
>- I didn't see anything).
>
>Truth be told, I think the IA I practice could be defined as knowledge
>management, but I'm not quite sure how I fit within the buzz words. My
>questions are motivated by an initiative that is launching with one of my
>clients. I know I need to be part of it, but I'm still figuring out how to
>position myself.
>
>I'd love to hear thoughts, experiences, etc. I'll summarize back to the
>list.

Now that I'm catching up on the later messages
in this post, I'm finding it all very interesting.

What I see is two worlds here, actually doing pretty
similar things, but speaking different languages.

On the KM mailing lists, they haven't heard of IA or
usability at all. On these lists, there is much talk
of "communities of practice", "story telling", and
"complex adaptive systems". In practice though, systems
and interfaces do get built, any many of these are
in desperate need of both IA and usability.

On the IA/usability lists, there isn't much understanding
of knowledge management. Instead, there are lots of (good)
discussions about techniques, approaches, and tools. In
practice, of course, you can't do IA in isolation of
business needs, culture and processes, and this is where
KM comes in.

As someone who stands with a foot in both camps, I
could babble on about this at great length, but I
will resist. :-)

James


-------------------------
James Robertson
Step Two Designs Pty Ltd

Knowledge Management / Content Management / Intranets

http://www.steptwo.com.au/
jamesr at steptwo.com.au