Knowledge Management of the Personal-Flavored Variety, Part 1

[photo credit:  "Knowledge Management," originally uploaded by F. Montino]

Today's Boston KM Forum Meeting at Bentley University focused on "Personal Knowledge Management," and I was fortunate to attend three interesting and divergent sessions.

The first was a panel discussion focused on personal information management.  The speaker from I took away the most actionable content was Stever Robbins, aka "The Get-it-Done Guy."  Although the panel mostly focused on e-mail management (and I don't subscribe to much of what I heard, being of the "store it in a pile and use search and metadata to find everything" school), the following ideas were of note:

• Reduce any KM tool to Return on Investment (ROI).  What is the cost of getting the information in & out of the system?
• Test ANY tool you want to use to see if it makes you more productive.  Just because you use something a lot DOES NOT mean you like it, or that it makes you more productive (e.g., iPhone, heroin, etc.).
• Take a "deathbed" perspective once in a while.  How important is this e-mail, or document, or presentation, REALLY, in the big picture?
• Use the same structure to manage your data on every platform (consistent folder taxonomy, tags, etc.), and keep it simple:  no more than 4 or 5 top-level folders.
• For all you "Inbox Zero" devotees, try this:  move EVERYTHING to your deleted items folder, then "rescue" the really important ones.
• The degree to which noise or echoes are being made about a topic is more related to the topic's velocity than its value.  Weigh content from trusted, primary sources high and tune out the rest (e.g., US Geological Survey usually  > a blog about geology).

(to be continued in part 2)

[photo credit:  "Knowledge Management," originally uploaded by F. Montino]

Today's Boston KM Forum Meeting at Bentley University focused on "Personal Knowledge Management," and I was fortunate to attend three interesting and divergent sessions.

The first was a panel discussion focused on personal information management.  The speaker from I took away the most actionable content was Stever Robbins, aka "The Get-it-Done Guy."  Although the panel mostly focused on e-mail management (and I don't subscribe to much of what I heard, being of the "store it in a pile and use search and metadata to find everything" school), the following ideas were of note:

• Reduce any KM tool to Return on Investment (ROI).  What is the cost of getting the information in & out of the system?
• Test ANY tool you want to use to see if it makes you more productive.  Just because you use something a lot DOES NOT mean you like it, or that it makes you more productive (e.g., iPhone, heroin, etc.).
• Take a "deathbed" perspective once in a while.  How important is this e-mail, or document, or presentation, REALLY, in the big picture?
• Use the same structure to manage your data on every platform (consistent folder taxonomy, tags, etc.), and keep it simple:  no more than 4 or 5 top-level folders.
• For all you "Inbox Zero" devotees, try this:  move EVERYTHING to your deleted items folder, then "rescue" the really important ones.
• The degree to which noise or echoes are being made about a topic is more related to the topic's velocity than its value.  Weigh content from trusted, primary sources high and tune out the rest (e.g., US Geological Survey usually  > a blog about geology).

(to be continued in part 2)