From the Desk of the Editor-in-Chief

Xenia Stanford, Editor-in-Chief, KnowMap and President, Stanford Solutions Inc.*

Networkers in Paradise and Telling Tales

Where to begin?

Since last issue we have had many networking adventures in a paradise both virtual and real. It is hard to know at what point we should begin our tale of discovery so that you too can journey with us to see the treasures we have found.

Figure 1: Xenia Stanford at a San Antonio City Utilities Building

I suppose the official beginning was the annual Special Libraries Association (SLA) Conference held in hot San Antonio, Texas where the palm trees dwarfed me and the architecture of even normally mundane buildings containing city utilities was beautiful. (See Figure 1) The Henry B. Gonzales Convention Centre seems to be the most amazing conference centre from its size to the building design, the indoor décor and the outdoor surroundings of graceful parks and the popular Riverwalk.

However, so much else has happened during and since this June conference that I have many tales to tell. Why tell them?

Truly great gurus throughout the ages passed on their wisdom through parables and stories to add their insight to collective or common knowledge. Although a more humble storyteller with less wise tales, I hope relating our experiences will lead to some useful tidbits of knowledge for you.

Board News

First we added a new Board member, Laurie LaLiberté as Media Specialist. We are really excited about the ideas she is helping us create. Some of those will be mentioned later.

Secondly Michael Sutton will be absent from active duty as he is off on other adventures in the knowledge management field. We hope for his return in the near future, perhaps to give us some case studies relating to his work and to update us on activities in the much underdeveloped field of Knowledge Management Standards and Conventions.

Meanwhile Peter de Gosztonyi, a contact through Sutton, writes on setting standards for customer service. In Knowledge Management in the Contact Centre he tells us how help desks must move forward to become centres devoted to customer contact and care. He also explains how the dissemination of both anecdotal and organizational knowledge is critical to the success of contact centres.

This issue our Webeditor, Judith Rempel, shows the connection between demographics and knowledge mapping with her article: Mapping of the Aboriginal Population. She shows there is more to mapping than just geographic location of reservations and population to help us understand our aboriginal people.

This leaves only one Board member unaccounted for and that is Al Mierau, who quietly works on our behalf with search engine positioning. We have persuaded him to be interviewed, hopefully for our next issue.

Networkers' Paradise

The SLA Conference was hot in climate and architecture but even hotter in networking opportunities. There in person I met Sue Henczel, a contributor to the first issue, who was giving a course with the same title as the article she contributed to our first issue: The Information Audit as a First Step towards Effective Knowledge Management.

We are giving her a chance to catch her breath after travels in North America and then hope to hear about her recently published book and the latest techniques for information audits.

Auditing is a somewhat neglected tool under knowledge management, especially in moving from the information to the knowledge audit. Thus this issue I start a three part series on the knowledge audit with the first called Knowing What We Need to Know - Part I: Auditing For Knowledge Gaps.

At the conference I facilitated the KTOOLS course (Knowledge Mapping Toolkit) and contributed an article entitled "Map Your Knowledge Strategy" for the June issue of Information Outlook, the journal of SLA. The article is a look at the history and use of knowledge mapping as well as a combination of the following two articles I wrote for Vol. 1, No. 3 of KnowMap:

	Using a Vee Map to Plan your KM Strategy
	Auditing Procedures for Planning Your KM Strategy Using the Vee Map

The article raised much comment both during and after the conference. One example is that from Jack Vinson, Knowledge Manager at BioPharma, reproduced with his permission in Letters.

The great thing about networking is that one contact leads to another. Debra M. Amidon, Chief Executive Officer of Entovation International, a constant contributor and supporter (another virtual friend whom we soon hope to meet in person), forwarded the comment from the Digest for Association of Knowledge Work (AOK-KW), issue 26. I contacted Jack Vinson, who then introduced me (virtually again) to Jerry Ash, the founder of AOK, who since then has sent an article for the next issue of KnowMap.

KnowMap Goes Global

Things happen quickly in the virtual world.

I was invited to join the Global Knowledge Leadership Map, asked some questions and next thing I knew there I was among the likes of Karl-Erik Sveiby, Karl Wiig, Hubert Saint-Onge, Leif Edvisson and others from whose knowledge I have learned a great deal.

On the map we also see David Skryme, Denham Grey and Debra M. Amidon, all who have been appreciated and early supporters of KnowMap.

Amidon continued her support this issue by offering an article on The Stories of ENTOVATION® from Global Learn Day IV - Year 2000. Her article led me to visit the web site of the Benjamin Franklin Institute (founders of GLD) and there I discovered John Hibbs, who in his Welcome Message for Global Learn Day Four tells a wonderful story about a fairly modern day hero and his unique insights into solving a problem on a physics exam.

I discuss what I learned about Global Learn Day in an article in this issue (What is Global Learn Day?), which like that of Amidon and Hibbs is open to everyone - subscriber or not. (Any of our articles open to the public are marked with an open lock symbol .)

Writing for permission to republish this welcome address led to a virtual meeting with Hibbsie (as he is affectionately known), which we also followed up with a phone call. Thereafter Hibbs assigned a spot to me as a presenter for the upcoming Global Learn Day V on October 7, 2001.

Hibbs, who had read the editorial Who's Capitalizing on Knowledge from the previous issue of KnowMap, was struck by the quote from Eric Hoffer and the relevance to the GLD theme of the value of distance education. This led us to the concept of the presentation as a virtual dinner party to which I will invite several special guests to talk about this two-part question:

Everyone who so desires can drop in on this dinner conversation and express their views through a number of means. We will cover more details in the next issue of KnowMap but meanwhile you can give us your opinion on the acceptability of distance education degrees by voting in our first KnowMap web poll (poll closed). The anonymous results will be part of our dinner party discussion.

KnowMap Taps into Tacit

Another aspect of the virtual world, or cyberia as Benking calls it, is that it also brings you in touch with people close to home who share your passion.

Through various searches and links I found my way to articles on the Web authored by two professors, Brian R. Gaines and Mildred L. G. Shaw, currently at the University of Calgary. Contacting them by e-mail led to the contribution of an article on Emergent Knowledge Maps.

Here they show how maps can be used not just to show the explicit but also as an elicitation tool for tapping into tacit knowledge. This is an article that could easily have been put under a case study heading and what are case studies but stories of learning gained through experience!

Survey of Cyberia

We can see how KnowMap benefits from virtual as well as face-to-face networking. Would it not be interesting to know how others use the Internet and Intranet for this and other purposes?

Richard V. Hollinger might have interesting tales to tell us about this once he analyzes the results of his Survey on Internet/Intranet Use.

In this issue read his reasons for conducting the survey and then help us all learn the truth by completing the questionnaire. He will report on the survey in a future issue.

KnowMap Maps the World

Figure 2: Xenia Stanford at KnowMap Booth

In the more physical world of networking, the KnowMap booth at the SLA Conference attracted many conference attendees. Those who stopped by commented on the map with a dragon peering over it and the dragon piñata filled with lifesavers. (See Figure 2)

Both dragons are courtesy of Sarah Naomi Stanford, who was also our photographer at this event and a contributor to Vol. 1, No. 2.

Laurie LaLiberté had helped us plan our display and our media kit. The display included a large map on an easel with pins pushed in each country, state or province where KnowMap had subscribers. (See the map in last issue's editorial: Who's Capitalizing on Knowledge.)

As people dropped by the booth we asked if their location was already represented. If not, we added pins to the map for their area.

Figure 3: KnowMap Subscriber Locations

Through this we added many new countries, states and provinces and will report on the results and the prizewinner of our draw for a Sapphire subscription in the next issue of KnowMap.

We have subscribers from every continent except Antarctica. To close this gap we are offering a free Sapphire subscription to the first person to contact us from that continent. Help us spread the word!

Roles and Techno-mania

Much discussion of knowledge management occurred at the Special Libraries Association conference - both inside and out side of sessions. In this issue we discuss the Roles of Librarians and Technologists in Knowledge Management.

It seems everyone wants to jump on the bandwagon and push everyone else off. This is not the collaborative spirit we need in KM. The rulebook should come with a warning: No pushing and shoving allowed!

I play no favourites in this article showing both where the two professions currently err and how they can learn to enable KM in their organizations. In the article I elaborate upon the past paradigms to which both cling and from which both must depart in order to become an integral part of the knowledge society.

Although I refer specifically to these two professions and also mention records and document management, there are lessons in here for all workers who would and should become part of the KM solution.

As I wrote, I thought of the books by Donald Norman, which are reviewed for this issue: Things That Make Us Smart: Defending Human Attributes in the Age of the Machine and The Invisible Computer: Why Good Products Can Fail, the Personal Computer is So Complex, and Information Appliances Are the Solution

It seems we are hopelessly caught up with the toys of the information era and cannot get on with the tools of the knowledge economy. However, both my article and the two books by Norman give solutions rather than leave us wallowing in despair or being pulled willy-nilly by the techno-mania that besieges us.

Collaboration Versus Conformity

This does not mean we must all conform and become part of a mixed mush. Individual skills and cultural differences must be valued or we will become one big nothing!

Knowledge management is not about conformity or even about majority rule. It is neither democracy nor communism. It is perhaps something we cannot yet understand though through Amidon's The Global Knowledge Primer reviewed in this issue, we can seek some help.

Further, we have two other contributors to help us understand how we can bypass a uniformed mass to form a collaborate web of individual and appreciated designs.

First there is Barbara Weaver Smith who helped us launch our first issue with an article on Due Diligence. Now she brings us a two-part case study (sharing more stories!), which we have listed under Culture but also cross-referenced under Case Studies-General. In this issue she shares Modeling A Culture of Collaboration: Part I - Designing a Social Venture.

Now we have heard of joint business ventures before, but joint social ventures? Weaver Smith shows us how a complex collaboration can overcome competitive oneness to encompass the strengths and values of the whole.

Of course, her lessons learned could apply to business and any other venture. The spanning rather than removal of differences is necessary for any knowledge management initiative to succeed regardless of who is involved.

Virtual Collaboration

The other writer who helps us see both the value and how-to induce collaborative visions is Heiner Benking, who resides in Germany when he is not virtually everywhere!

He is a prolific writer and thinker. His three part series of articles, all included in this issue, lead us through some mind-expanding ventures in which he was involved and which he helped shape.

Did he misspell spatial as spacial? He assures us not and encourages us to look with new eyes beyond the known and commonplace.

The truth of the saying "it is a small world after all" is proven by remarkable coincidences. Benking too was involved in the first Global Learn Day. In fact, Benking is in far too many places on the web and in the knowledge community for anyone to keep track. However, if you are ready to hang onto your hats and join him on the journey starting with Spacial Versus Spatial Part I and through to part III, he will take you beyond the common borders to which we have been tied.

Maybe someone who thinks in a different language can show us how to expand our margins. Writing between the lines of experience, he shows us how in-betweening can be far ahead of usual paradigms of compromise and ordinary.

It has been an extraordinary experience working with him and certainly increases our feeling that KnowMap is going global or even beyond into the next galaxy.

KnowMap to Go Galactic

This subtitle probably seems like a tall tale. However, we have been listening to and ferreting out our customers' needs.

Recently establishing Internet authentication due to customer-driven needs, we have listened to readers who visit the site and are having difficulty locating the material they want or need quickly. The sitemap icon is a bit hard to see from our issue cover pages and the areas that are public versus those that are subscriber only are sometimes confusing.

Working with our new Board member, Laurie LaLiberté, we are developing the idea of dividing our site map into three galaxies: media, public and subscriber-only. Watch for this in the near future.

Now that I have opened the lid and exposed the treasures herein, I hope you found the voyage of discovery worth venturing deeper into the nooks and crannies of this issue to find more knowledge awaiting you.

Read more about Xenia Stanford.

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