The Chicago Tribune had a below-the-fold article today on FBI hits glitches as it joins digital age (registration required - here is the same article at the Biloxi Sun Herald) The new system is already months behind schedule and more than $200 million over budget, and its backbone component will not...
Brian Nielsen spoke on "Knowledge Management in the University: Emerging Technologies and Trends at Northwestern" this evening to a very small crowd of KMPro regulars. Nielsen has been at Northwestern for 20+ years, spending the first part of his career in the libraries (Ph.D from UNC). He is now working with...
My home computer meltdown over the last week seems to have stopped. Stop reading here, if you don't care about technology. The source of the meltdown was our attempt to use the multiple users "feature" of Windows XP to allow different setups for my wife and me. Primarily, I wanted to...
During the AIChE conference last month, and during many such conferences, the question of what is it to "do" chemical engineering arises. I've always liked to think of it as using chemistry, math, physics to develop salable goods and services. Even this doesn't fit all people who do chemical engineering.
Sorry about the lack of posts lately. My machine had a meltdown, and I am just getting back up to speed....
The email issue appears to be fixed. Don't know quite what the hiccup was, but I lost about two days' worth of incoming mail....
From the announcement (paraphrased): Brian Nielsen will speak about "Knowledge Management in the University: Emerging Technologies and Trends at Northwestern" at the December 9th KMPro Chicago chapter meeting. He will also provide an overview of a number of projects in the works at Northwestern. He will show some software projects in...
Jeff Angus talks about situations where a deal seems too good to be true in The Mets: Keep Your Eye Off The Prize I had a client that had been shopping for a computer system to manage her "traffic" for a long time. The analysis we did said the systems available...
At the AIChE meeting, Cawas Cooper from Air Products talked about a project that evolved from their Innovation Week, where people were encouraged to come up with new ideas and collaborate with their colleagues to sell the idea to their respective management. Those projects that get management blessing are pursued.
More from the AIChE meeting. Jonathan Worstell of Shell Chemical in Houston talked in a a number of sessions about the importance of Concurrent Engineering. In Worstell's view, the basic problem that Concurrent Engineering solves is that projects are too complex and too long for traditional serial engineering, where each phase...
Judith Meskill points us to an article that mentions some new technology for knowledge workers: knowledge management barriers... The following article is really about getting spammed on a continual basis, finally flipping your proverbial 'bit' and sending an email to the offending spammer threatening them with bodily harm and getting arrested...
If you are trying to contact me via email, there is something seriously amiss with my mail server. It seems to be bouncing mail to the senders, and it is not letting me send mail out. I have other mail servers, so this isn't the end of the world. Hopefully, my...
Some more thoughts about designing experiements based on talks at the AIChE annual meeting.
It is perfect timing for me to be having a conversation with David Buchan about using PersonalBrain with a blog aggregator, given that I've changed jobs.
People are talking about status reports and the new world of work. Writing, in general, is one of those hidden arts. Done well, people thrive. Done poorly, no one knows why people starve.
In case you are wondering, simply creating a policy to enforce behavior of your people won't work. The Computerworld "Security Manager's Journal" this week has a piece on discovering that people aren't following policy. After some hunting and discussion with a number of people, he decides to do a better job...
Allan Bonner talks about some of the history behind knowledge management and the difficulty we have in separating new technology from what might be more interesting in Locating the Human Element: In Search of Knowledge Management We are all striving to manage knowledge in such a way as to benefit workers,...
I've been looking for a description of K-Collector, as I have heard a number of people talk about it, including its creators. Matt Mower calls it a "Knowledge Centrifuge."
People have changed the world ever since they figured out how to bash on things with sharpened rocks. This book covers the evolution of our tools over the eons, from the simple tools of our ancient ancestors to the sophistication of our scientific technique today. The bulk of the book is a fascinating tour of surprising revelations and connections between technological, political and sociological changes.
I have a lot of thoughts running about my head after the AIChE conference. One of the topics that happens to have a lot of blogosphere crossover recently is working with limited resources, whether in the lab or in business.