Category: Research & Knowledge Management

Their are two schools of thought when it comes to filing information; store everything in one big file or break things up into smaller, easier to manage, separate files.

When I designed Surfulater I went down the path of one big file, thinking this would make Surfulater easier to use, because you didn’t need to go around opening, closing and creating files. It didn’t take long at all for our users to tell us they really did want to use multiple files and Surfulater was changed to suit. Their is no right or wrong way to handle this, although some may disagree. It is a matter of what works best for each individual.

The argument for one big file stems from the point of view that all content should be stored together in one place, and the software provides sufficient means to view and work with various subsets of information, to overcome the problem of managing and working with what otherwise might be overwhelming. For example you could hide all folders except those in a specific branch, or only show articles that match some search criteria. You can think of these as filters which strain out most content, leaving behind only the juicy relevant bits.

Surfulater already has some capabilities that let you restrict the content shown in the Knowledge Tree. For example you can hide all articles except those in a specific folder or hide all articles period, or show all folders fully expanded, without any articles. And there is the Chronological tree view that shows content according to when it was added. These are a good start but we need to do more and will.

Fortunately the tree control I’ve written for Surfulater is very fast and was designed to enable tree items to be shown or hidden at will, without having to re-populate the tree from scratch. You can see this for yourself by using F9 or Show Articles and notice that the tree is instantly updated, even when it contains a large number of items. Without this capability, filtering a large tree would be impractical.

So the groundwork has been laid to enable us to provide more ways to filter information to help you focus on what’s important at a particular point in time. I’ve got several ideas for filters including letting you create your own via say a search string. I’d welcome your suggestions on this.

I need to wrap up as I’m told some of my posts are getting a bit long. I’ll end with a few comments. Multiple knowledge bases currently work best for me. This may change as more sophisticated capabilities are added like filters and keywords, but I somehow doubt it. Trees are well trees, and the bigger they get the more time you waste working the tree, instead of getting things done.

I’ve stumbled across several interesting articles on Personal Knowledge Management recently. The first is by Steve Barth entitled The Power of One and was published in Knowledge Management Magazine. Steve’s article discusses the importance of implementing knowledge management systems within an organization and includes information I’m sure will be of interest to all Surfulater users.

Personal knowledge management (PKM) involves a range of relatively simple and inexpensive techniques and tools that anyone can use to acquire, create and share knowledge, extend personal networks and collaborate with colleagues without having to rely on the technical or financial resources of the employer. Implemented from the bottom up by one knowledge worker at a time, these techniques can increase productivity and enthusiasm and help to build momentum that can overcome the technological and social barriers to top-down, enterprise-wide KM initiatives.

….

Information overload is a fact, not a theory, and there is evidence that most people lack the skills or tools to keep up in the Knowledge Age.

Steve talks about Personal intellectual capital and how employees can increase their value both within an organization and in a broader sense by using PKM techniques.

Getting a grip on the shifting mass of information is an important tactic, but using PKM techniques and tools, individuals can go farther, to enhance their abilities and career potential. Effectively managed personal knowledge assets become the currency of personal intellectual capital.

Surfulater is being used by a diverse group of people to collect and manage all sorts of information and of course build and retain knowledge. This article should be of interest to all Surfulater users, especially those using it within an organization.

I spend a reasonable amount of time reading about and looking at Knowledge Management (KM) style software. Lots of different types of programs can be used or abused into performing knowledge management tasks. These range from storing bits and pieces of information in Word Documents or text files (or PDF files!), to Outliners and Notepads with Trees to structure and categorize information, to ever more complex programs that morph trees and display them as graphs, or in other visually exciting and sometimes useful ways. For example programs like Grokster use circles within circles where you drill down deeper and deeper to see things of interest. (Surfulater customers who visit the forums will have seen threads about this there.) The higher end knowledge management tools tend to be quite complex and expensive beasts indeed. Continue reading “Managing Knowledge Pt 1”

David Weinberger writes:

We’ve organized knowledge into trees, from Aristotle to Linnaeus to Dewey. You get a tree by doing the basic thing of lumping and splitting, and then splitting the lumps until you get to a lump that is too unitary or miscellaneous to bear any more splitting. But lumping and splitting has been constrained by physical limitations. For example:

1. A thing has to go in one pile or another. For Aristotle, this was expressed as the Law of Identity (A is A and A is not not-A), a pretty basic rule. Continue reading “Information Organisation”