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Blog139: May 8, 2006; Posted by Jordan Frank |
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Marvin Kabakoff of the National Archives and Records Administration
hosted a 1/2 day conference on blogs and wikis last Wednesday in
Boston. Marvin talked about the evolution of records management, Matt
Kowalczyk reviewed the use of Traction for a US Department of Defense
project, and Mark Levitt
from IDC pointed us to the role of Blogs and Wikis in contextual
collaboration. Over a bagel, I had revelation on knowledge worker
productivity. |
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Marvin Kabakoff provided a useful context and introduction. |
Record keeping has changed dramatically since the etching
of records in stone to papyrus. In the last 30 years we have seen a
major changes in terms of what we keep and how we keep it. In the
future, record keeping will change more rapidly.
We now have email, IM, blogs, wikis and other technologies. We have
concerns at archives in terms of how do we keep and maintain the
public record. If someone sent an IM where did it go, and where was it
saved. |
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The discussion of record keeping later evolved into a discussion of "What constitutes a record?" |
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Matt Kowalczyk's presentation (Click here for 3.5MB PDF)
reviewed the Liberty Project (Public524: US Department of Defense - Rapid Acquisition Incentive-Net Centricity), a DOD CIO funded project with
the goal of demonstrating the efficacy of Enterprise Blog software
(from Traction) for project communications. He pointed to benefits
including a 75% reduction in the status reporting process and a 50%
reduction in time spent by end users in the electronic communications
management process. |
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A NARA rep asked how and where we stored the
blog archive from the Liberty Project. I opened up a wider thread about
what aspects of the blog system should be considered a record. In
addition to the posts, comments, and meta data, you could consider the
log of who read what when (otherwise known as the W3C web server log) a
record. In the context of the DOD project, there was reasonable
agreement that the important record was the final Opportunity Analysis
which serves as a report to the DOD sponsor and is stored in their
archive. |
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While some folks took comfort in the assessment that an OA could
be the material record, I pushed the conversation one leg further down
the path. Complicating the issue of archiving blogs and wikis, which
can mean taking content off-line after a certain number of years, are
the issues of: |
- connectedness - taking down a blog or wiki blows a hole in the knowledge network it is a part and
- distribution - parts of the blog or wiki record may have
distributed via RSS, search engines (and their caches), and email to
hundreds or millions of locations in the digital universe.
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The group considered these points and considered it a Pandora's box
better suited to wait for NARA to release guidance on record keeping in
the context of blogs and wikis later this year.
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| Mark Levitt started his presentation by asking why we are so
tired at the end of the work day. Then did a whirlwind explanation by
example detailing how knowledge workers busily move between application
environments, opening and closing windows, responding to interruptions
only to open more windows, and eventually finish something before the
sun goes down and its time to rush home. You may be tired just reading this sentence! My apologies. |
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Levitt says we are moving from the ICE (Integrated
Collaborative Environment) age of the 1990s where applications were
central, asynchronous and operated in silos to the age of Contextual
Collaboration. Against this backdrop, Levitt says: |
We perform tasks within work processes. The tasks require multiple
applications and information sources. Users are exposed to the
complexity and must context shift and interface shift constantly.
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The interface shifting process, and the interruptions, slow down the knowledge worker. |
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Levitt finished by discussing how wiki's and blogs fit in the
enterprise context (high on knowledge management, high on ease of use)
and predicting that the lines between enterprise applications will blur
until we have a truly integrated, contextual application environment.
The "mashups" that you hear about and see on the web are a good example. |
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The talk reminded me of Jonathan Spira's line of reasoning about the high cost of interruptions (I'll spare the details, the cost is A LOT of time and therefore money) and the response from Luis Suarez. Suarez quotes a colleague "We create our own distractions and just need to learn to manage them." |
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I learned this lesson in the practical sense that very same day: |
- While stuck in rush hour on the way to Boston, I caught up with all the overdue calls on my April list.
- While waiting for lunch at Finagle a Bagel, I opened my laptop
and breezed through roughly 600 RSS messages from our internal blog
which collected over the last two weeks.
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Since I was stuck waiting, and disconnected from all my primary web
application environments, my distractions were managed for me. The time
I spent "waiting" was my most productive hour of the week. When we
reach application integration nirvana, I only hope the integrated
mash-up that results will let me focus on one task at a time! |
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