My KM Journey - From the Beginning

Those occupied brain cells prove useful after all

2012-02-06T19:32:00.000-05:00

One of the recent readings in my Business Analytics class was a Harvard Business Review article by Eric Bonabeau called "Don't Trust Your Gut," (free registration required for full article) an excellent read discussing cognitive biases and software models for analytical decision making, including artificial evolution and interactive evolution.

When I was reading it, I got to the section of the article about "agent-based modeling," specifically the quote ""a computer creates thousands, even millions, of individual actors; each of these virtual agents makes decisions, providing an accurate model of a complex system's dynamics," (p. 120), and I immediately thought of an article I once read about a software program designed based on how ants navigate. Ants lay down a pheremone trail that fades quickly, and if one finds food, when others follow the trail the scent is reinforced, which strengthens it and attracts more ants. They end up being very efficient at finding the best routes. And the software was modeled on this and used for determining things like efficient delivery routes. But of course, I read the article some time ago, before I used Evernote to track things I read and interesting quotes. So I had no idea where or when I'd read it. But it had been taking up space in my memory for a while, and there have been several times when I've wished I could remember the source.

Well, a few days ago I decided to try google it, especially when I thought I remembered something about traffic in Brazil being an example in the article. Well, when I googled "ants software brazil traffic," I got to an article in the Economist that talked about swarm intelligence and the work of Dr. Marco Dorigo in creating software modeled on how complex social insects solve problems. Now, I don't think this is the exact article I read, but it has much of the same information. So I googled Dr. Dorigo.

And what do you know, but in the top three "Scholarly articles" on the results page, there are two articles co-authored by Dr. Dorigo and Eric Bonabeau, the very author who inspired my search in the first place! And now I have articles and names to cite to the next time I need them.

And another similar example - in my first discussion post in Business Analytics, I had made mention of software that used analytics to predict music hits. I didn't know where I'd initially read about it, but some googling at least found me some relevant materials on Mike McCready and the companies he's used the software with. Well, in last week's discussion, the instructor mentioned Epagogix, a company that predicts movie hits based on the scripts, and she mentioned that Malcolm Gladwell had written about them. Then another classmate (thanks, Aric!) posted a link to a 2006 video of Gladwell speaking at the New Yorker festival about Epagogix and their hit predictions. In that video, he also mentions Mike McCready and his music hit predictor. And I recognized everything in the video, though I know I'd never seen it. So I checked Gladwell.com for his 2006 articles, and sure enough, there it was, "The Formula," the article I'd initially read from which I remembered the story of the music hit predictor. Over 5 years I'd been remembered that article.

Finally, another memory loop closed. And at least those occupied brain cells were put to good use. I've gotten good grades on all my discussion posts for class so far, which included references to and discussions of the above articles. :)

I am LOVING the fact that the all the things I've been interested in for *years* are turning out to be completely applicable to my current studies. :)

Updated - Plea for Volunteer: Need a Company to be subject of a Business Analytics class project

2012-02-01T01:37:00.000-05:00

UPDATE: I have a victim! Thank you to everyone who made introductions and connections for me, I really really really really appreciate the help! I'm looking forward to the projects for this class.

Now all I have to do is come up with the topic for my Capstone Project...

Greetings,

I'm putting my full plea here on my blog so I can link to itfrom other places. I have a couple upcoming projects to do for myBusiness Analytics class at Columbia (part of my Master's in Information andKnowledge Strategy). The course is taught by Jeanne Harris, a topconsultant at Accenture in their Institute for High Performance, and aco-author of Competing on Analytics: The New Science of Winning and Analytics at Work: Smarter Decisions, Better Results.

Since I'm currently job hunting, I don't have a workplace atwhich to perform my analysis, so I'm looking for a willing victim. :) From the project descriptions (copied below), most of the informationgathering will need to be done in the next week. I'll need to be able tointerview managers or other decision-makers within a company about how theymake decisions, what data they gather and analyze to aid in theirdecision-making, and how use of data factors into organizational strategy. I can evaluate any kind or size of business. The benefit to yourcompany would be written analyses of your organization's analyticalcapabilities, and a proposal for how the organization could improve thematurity level of their analytical capabilities. The first week will bethe main data gathering, but it's possible (maybe likely) that I'll need toperform some follow-up in the later weeks in order to fine tune the maturitylevel improvement proposal.

If your company, or someone you know, would be interested ina free analysis of your analytic capabilities, please contact me asap. Ifyou go to view my profile, there's an "email me" link to my gmailaddress. Or you can email me at my student address, aea2146 ATcolumbia.edu. Or, if you scroll waaaayyyyyy down to the bottom of theblog, the image of the front of my networking card has my gmail addy and phonenumber on it.

Thank you!

Alexis

Analytical Assessmentproject:

In your first assignment for this course, you will assessthe degree of your organization’s analytical completion. You will use thisanalysis in your second assignment (due later in the semester) to help youthink through how you might build on this capacity.

To complete this assignment, do the following:

Research your organization’s approach to analytics and decision making. You may need to talk to managers about how they make decisions. What kind of data do managers look at when they make decisions? What kind of data is available? To whom and how do they have to justify their decisions? As you research, continue to look deeper at the use of data in the organization: how does data drive strategy?
Consider the primary attributes of analytical competitors from the Competing on Analytics text.Which of these four attributes is your organization exhibiting? As you define the presence of any of all of the four, use examples from your research to demonstrate why you believe they exist or do not exist.

Define what stage of analytical competition your organization is currently operating under. Be sure you have read the description of these five stages in Competing on Analytics. Defend your assessment.

Finally, define what stage of analytical competition you would select as your organization’s desired state. Not every organization is seeking to be a Stage 5 organization. Based on what you know about leaders in your industry and your own organization’s positioning, what would you recommend as a goal for your organization? Defend your assessment.

Your analysis should be a cohesive, three to five-pageessay. You will submit your paper to the course dropbox by Sunday,February 12 and 11:59 pm, ET. You will receive your graded assignment byFebruary 15 so that you can begin working on your next assignment.

IMPORANT NOTE: I am aware that this assignment asksyou to describe data usage and business processes that you may not feelcomfortable sharing with your colleagues. Please understand that when yousubmit your project to the course dropbox, your instructor and facilitator arethe only people who have access to these assignments. At no point will I askyou to share these papers or their content with the other members of yourcohort.

AnalyticalImprovement Plan project:

In your first assignment for this course, you assessed thedegree of your organization’s analytical competition and defined its goalstate. Now, you will use this information to develop a plan for how you mightbuild on this capacity and help you reach your desired stage of competition. Todo this, you will follow the DELTA model described in Analytics at Work andcovered in this course during Units 4 through 10. I recommend that you writeyour paper piece by piece as we go through each module of the course. That willallow you to take advantage of the optional DELTA forums for posting yourquestions about the content and will help you to manage your time. You willsubmit your final, cohesive paper on March 18 at 11:59 pm, ET.

To complete this assignment, you will do the following:

Apply each DELTA component to your organization’s analytic maturity. I recommend you work through your paper each week as you progress through these units. As you learn more about each component of the model, answer the following questions: At what stage is your organization relative to this specific DELTA component? For example, your organization may be at a Stage 3 when it comes to Data use but may be far more primitive in its Leadership commitment to analytics. What would it look like if your organization were to move from its current stage to the desired stage? Think both about how your course text describes each phase and what it would look like in the specific context of your organization. What recommendations can you provide that would help your organization advance to this next stage? Your text and our discussions may lead to some concrete items, but I am looking for you to use these as foundational suggestions and to develop innovative, targeted ideas for how you might improve the use of analytics in your own organization.

Synthesize your plan and define a holistic rationale for your conclusions. Look realistically at the plans you have developed for how each of these components can be used to strengthen your organization’s capacity. How will you structure an intervention plan that you can deploy as your organization’s knowledge leader? Explain the overall impact this plan might have on your organization’s strategic use of analytics. Please note that this is very important: I am far more interested than how you see analytics impacting strategic decisions (approaches to products, markets, customers, etc.) than how you see them impacting specific tactics (pricing, transactional items, etc.). Your analysis should be a cohesive, 5-7-page essay. You will submit your paper to the course drop box by March 18 at 11:59 pm, ET. I will return this paper with comments before our live session during the final week of the course.

IMPORANT NOTE: I am aware that this assignment asks you todescribe data usage and business processes that you may not feel comfortablesharing with your colleagues. Please understand that when you submit yourproject to the course drop box, your instructor and facilitator are the onlypeople who have access to these assignments. At no point will I ask you toshare these papers or their content with the other members of your cohort.

Teenage girls' new fave pasttime - curing cancer?

2012-02-01T00:41:00.000-05:00

Recently browsing the interwebs, I came across a Huffington Post article about high school student Angela Zhang, who won the $100,000 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology, with a method to use nanotechnology to detect and destroy cancer tumors. And with a little further browsing, I found a Scientific American article about Shree Bose, who won The $50,000 Google Science Fair with yet another cancer treatment.

I'll admit that 2 is too small a sample size to really say whether the fact that Angela and Shree are female has anything to do with their wins beyond coincidence. But it's certainly a positive sign, when there seems to have been a lot of lamenting that there aren't as many women entering the STEP disciplines as men. And even more noteworthy than that, I think, is just how advanced a level of research some high school students are both able to do, and interested in doing.

This is many worlds beyond the old baking soda volcano. And I would bet that these capabilities owe no small debt to the evolution of technology and collaboration, and the democratization of information and access to information that ye olde internet has wrought. Angela Zhang mentioned in the HuffPo article that she started reading doctorate-level bioengineering works when she was a freshman in high school. I'd be willing to bet that it was a lot easier for her to find and access such publications than it would have been for me 20 years ago. The internet alone, plus the developments of search engines like Google, have surfaced so much more information to the masses than would have been easily findable prior to their arrival. I might have been able to find those sorts of articles if I had wanted to, but it would have required a much greater investment of time and travel for me than it likely did for Angela. In the time it would have taken me to locate and get hold of such articles (and decipher them), Angela was already beginning her research.

It's always been possible for highly motivated people to accomplish amazing things. But what's truly amazing, and really quite promising, is how quickly technology enables those motivated people to get to the meat of what they're interested in accomplishing. And it can substantially reduce the threshold for less motivated folks to get to something interesting and valuable before they lose their motivation. Which all ultimately benefits society.

Just imagine, if these young women are successfully working on curing cancer at age 17 or 18, how much more might they accomplish in another 40, 50, 60 or more productive years of their lives?

Dare we hope that such accomplishments create a virtuous cycle of increasingly ambitious young people? If two teenage girls can cure cancer (okay, that's a bit hyperbolic, but still, their work is significant), perhaps more high schoolers will realize just how much they can accomplish if they want to. And of course it's not only high schoolers who can do amazing things, but if significant discoveries start being made by more and more younger people, just think how many more productive years that essentially adds to all sorts of fields of study. 5-10 extra years of practical contribution is a lot, and multiply that by thousands of young people, and you have a lot of potential benefit to society.

Cheers to Angela and Shree for being a big part of that potential!

Mirror Neurons and Intuition

2012-01-23T19:04:00.000-05:00

Well, the spring semester is off to a great start, with Business Analytics & Strategic Intelligence with the amazing Jeanne Harris, and Enterprise-Wide Applications & Project Management, with the also amazing Len Peters. The two courses are already proving complementary to each other, and boy does the analytics class have my brain going full speed!

So many thoughts and connections, but the thought of the moment comes from some class discussions about examples of analytics in the media, one of which was Lie to Me, and its use of analytics and Paul Ekman's Facial Action Coding System. Which led me to comment that it's interesting how we're getting to a state with technology and computational power that things which might not seem at all mathematical can now be effectively quantified, measured, and analyzed. That is, things like facial expressions and emotions.

Several of our articles for this next week are about intuition and decision-making. We've already covered a bit of ground in the class discussions regarding behavioral economics, the work of Kahneman & Tversky, Dan Ariely's Predictably Irrational, and the cognitive science behind intuition. Several of my classmates and I have already said that intuition is the brain essentially performing analytics faster than conscious thought - crunching a lifetime of experiences and knowledge and data on sub-conscious observations and associations about a situation to create something you "just feel."

The talk of intuition made me remember Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear, an amazing book (and one I believe every woman should read, especially if you live in a big city, but that's another topic). De Becker talks a lot in his book about trusting your intuition, and the survival signals you pick up on (usually subconsciously). The book is full of numerous story examples of people's intuitions, and in some cases when de Becker spoke to the people about their experiences, he was able to suss out numerous details which they had perceived and responded to without ever consciously thinking about them. But the point is they had noticed all these many details at the time, and their brain had processed them more quickly than they could have consciously broken them down and articulated them.

So where do the mirror neurons come in? Well, mirror neurons have this funny ability, such that when you watch a person perform an action or make a face, the mirror neurons in your own brain fire, mimicking the same pathways that you would use if you were to perform that action or make that same face yourself. Your brain is mirroring what you see, as if you were doing it yourself. According to neuroscientist Marco Iacoboni, in an interview with Scientific American, "[mirror neurons] are obviously essential brain cells for social interactions. Without them, we would likely be blind to the actions, intentions and emotions of other people. ... When I see you smiling, my mirror neurons for smiling fire up, too, initiating a cascade of neural activity that evokes the feeling we typically associate with a smile. I don’t need to make any inference on what you are feeling, I experience immediately and effortlessly (in a milder form, of course) what you are experiencing"

Now back to Ekman and his Facial Action Coding System. Ekman also has done a good bit of research into people who are very good at reading other people, such as being able to tell when someone is lying. And he has found that what makes those people's intuition so good is their ability to pick up on and recognize micro-expressions. Micro-expressions are fleeting, involuntary facial expressions that reveal an emotion that someone is otherwise either concealing or unaware of. They last only a fraction of a second. Most of us miss them entirely, never noticing them at all. But some people are innately good at picking up on them. And even better than that, people can be trained to catch these fleeting expressions. (There's an excellent article by Malcolm Gladwell about Paul Ekman's work on Gladwell's website, which is also incorporated into chapter 6 of Blink)

So I just wanted to connect the dots. I'd be willing to bet that the intuition that comes from picking up on micro-expressions is a result of the activity of mirror neurons, that they are the mechanism underlying the ability to recognize those ephemeral emotions. For a fleeting second, as one's mirror neurons reflect the micro-expression, you feel what that other person is feeling, and if you're "in touch" with your intuitions, maybe you actually pay attention to and recognize whatever that feeling is, and act upon the information it provides you.

Brief Post-Christmas Update

2011-12-27T14:42:00.000-05:00

This semester was a doozie - both challenging and rewarding. Heavy course work load kept me from blogging, although I probably have at least a half-dozen half-written posts needing to be polished up and fleshed out so I can publish them already.

As far as how I did in the classes, I enjoyed them greatly, and I really like finally getting to thoroughly exercise my brain. I'm still awaiting the final grade on a major group project in one class (40% of the grade for that course), but I got a high A in Organizing and Accessing Information and Knowledge, which was a course heavy on metadata, taxonomies and information architecture, with three substantial projects. In the first course (in September), Information and Knowledge in the 21st Century Economy, which was a foundational course, I got a solid A. Management and Leadership in the Knowledge Domain is my only still-outstanding grade. I have a 94 so far, but that 40%-of-the-grade project obviously carries a lot of weight, so the final grade in that class is still up in the air, but I have high hopes and expectations. :)

I just got back to NY from Texas, after visiting the family for Christmas. My 1-year-old niece is absolutely adorable :) I love getting to play doting Auntie! Of course, I came down with a cold my last day there, so had to skip the goodbye kisses and hugs for the little one :( At least I got my flu shot this year. Too bad it doesn't do anything for the common cold. :\

Now back to the job hunt, and seeing how much productive stuff I can get done between now and when classes start back up on January 17.

Happy New Year!!

Thoughts on a (rhetorical?) question in Peter Morville’s “Search Patterns”: “What, if anything, will never be subject to search?”

2011-10-16T22:01:00.000-04:00

My first thought was that we’re not currently able to search by feeling or emotion, and that that might not ever be possible. And to be clear, when I say search “by feeling or emotion,” I don’t mean searching using a feeling word, like googling “sad” or “depressed” or “happy.” That, obviously, is eminently possible now.

What we aren’t doing yet, is to literally search (and tag) by the feeling or emotion experienced. Certainly, you can already tag, for example, a TED Talk, with a feeling or emotion word, such as “inspiring,” or “fascinating,” or “funny.” But you can’t communicate the actual physical, emotional experience that a video, blog, website or other content provides. At least, not yet. What if you could tag a YouTube video with the physical sensation of the uproarious laughter you experienced when you watched it? Or if you could actually share the feeling of delighted terror you experienced at that new horror movie?

Or perhaps you could search by physical touch sensation. If you could imagine the feel of silk, and the online store would filter clothing results by those with that “feel.” Or someone might sensation-tag a wool sweater as “very itchy,” and when you clicked on that item, you could choose to “feel” the sensation-tags that other users had applied. (I would hope the default would be that you would have to request or allow that tag first - nobody likes auto-launching music on sites, I can’t imagine they’d appreciate auto-launching sensory overload.)

Or what if you could research vacation destinations by searching for the sensation of warm sand between your toes and the sun on your face? Or picturing the type of wilderness trails you'd like to hike and letting the search engine find close matches to that visual image, and rank them by, say, how close they are to you?

The more I thought these ideas, though, the more I realized it might not be so impossible, after all.

Consider how advanced things like fMRI are now. Scientists know where in the brain certain emotions are seated, and can visualize, in real-time, the blood flow to those regions, indicating whether or not you are using that part of your brain, and experiencing that emotion. And advanced prosthetics are able to use electrical signals from the brain to control movement of those artificial limbs, and the science behind those is continuing to advance. One has even been demonstrated on the Colbert Report. We already have fairly accurate speech recognition capabilities which allow people to control their computers hands-free.

And the technological development (that I know of) that is closest to something which could evolve into the mechanism for such a type of search, is the brain-computer interfaces which are already capable of helping locked-in syndrome victims communicate by focusing their thoughts to move a cursor on a computer screen to communicate, surf the internet and more. One great example is this video of the NeuroSwitch: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GWe5YVV9dWs And that’s not the only such brain-computer interface out there.

It’s not a far cry from that to “mind reading,” of a sort. In fact, when I googled the phrase “computers reading minds,” it returned over 28,000,000 results. Perhaps a little frightening, in the time elapsed from this afternoon to this evening, the same search yielded 100,000 additional results the second time.

Right now, the focus seems to be on more obvious practical benefits, such as helping the locked-in communicate, rather than a superfluous-seeming search-by-emotion capability. But if you consider how quickly computers evolved from giant mainframes that cost millions of dollars, to something you could carry in one hand and use to read books, watch tv, play games, shop, make phone calls, video conference, and more, given the technology that already exists for computers to interpret human brain patterns, what as-yet un-thought-of applications might that develop into in the next 25 years? It would be frivolous now to use the technology for “mere” online search purposes, but there may come a time when that’s the least of what brain-computer interfaces can achieve.

Twitter - I'm behind the curve :\

2011-10-12T00:32:00.000-04:00

Sometimes I think I'm so smart, but so far, it's always been the case that somebody else already had the idea before me... Wall Street Journal article about Researchers utilizing Twitter data

Knowing the right compromise requires knowing your purpose

2011-10-10T01:41:00.000-04:00

[slightly modified from a discussion board post I made for a class assignment]

Management thinking great Peter Drucker states that you have to start out with “what is right rather than what is acceptable” before you compromise, so that you don’t make the wrong compromise (from The Daily Drucker, p. 304).

As an aside, I would argue that part of the reason is that the compromise itself is what is “acceptable” - it’s what you settle for when you can’t get what’s ideal. If you’ve compromised the ideal before you even reach the point where you have to compromise, you haven’t left yourself many good options.

But I digress. I think in corporations, compromises are most often made over money - how much to budget, and for what. Where to strike the balance between profitability and the sustainability of the organization.

And this is where successful companies have realized that having a purpose can help guide those determinations and compromises. Some part of any corporation’s purpose is, of course, to make money, to be profitable. But that can’t be the sole driving force in a company. It doesn’t motivate workers, or create or increase morale, and it often doesn’t even drive profitable behaviors, because the decision-makers ignore sustainability and future success in favor of profits now, and by failing to invest and plan ahead, can (eventually) completely eliminate the business’s ability to be profitable.

So, “what is right” is what aligns with the company’s purpose. To use our first class presentation subject, Procter & Gamble, as an example, the company’s purpose is “touching and improving more consumers’ lives in more parts of the world more completely.” And this sense of purpose is infused throughout the company. We had the good fortune to interview a P&G employee who said that he is guided only a daily basis in his work by the company’s purpose. With that sense of “what is right,” people at any level of the company can make the right decisions, the right compromises, and still achieve the company's goal without "cutting the baby in half." The company can decide to invest in an audacious goal like digitizing the entire company, because they see that doing so, and using technology to be as efficient and informed as they can possibly be, will help enable them to touch and improve consumers' lives all over the world, including growing markets like China and India, where they can’t necessarily just sell to a few giant Wal-marts, but need to reach many smaller stores in order to deliver their products to their consumers.

A blind pursuit of nothing but profit can lead organizations to make bad compromises and bad decisions. “Undisciplined pursuit of more” is what Jim Collins, in “How the Mighty Fall,” labels as the second of five stages of corporate decline. If you cut costs and expand markets or grow company size without investing in technology, training, and process improvement, you can end up with a company that is analogous to a tree that has rotted on the inside, where it may still look fine on the outside, but it’s only a matter of time before a storm comes that tears the whole thing down.

And the expert interview [part of our class materials] with Jim Igel touched on this, as well, when he and Guy St. Clair addressed the importance of corporate social responsibility. The interesting fact is that social responsibility and even altruism in corporations is not only *not* anathema to profitability, but there’s also a substantial body of research demonstrating that the two things actually go hand in hand - a company that benefits society ultimately improves its own bottom line (cf. “Built To Last” by Jim Collins).

Coincidentally, I posted this homework assignment on Friday, October 7, and the very next day, October 8, @TEDNews tweeted this TED Talk by Simon Sinek, discussing how inspired and inspirational leaders and organizations "Start With Why" - "people don't buy what you do, they buy why you do it."

Twitter for Research?

2011-09-18T17:00:00.001-04:00

We just finished our P&G research project and presentation yesterday, and wouldn't you know it, today I came across an excellent source that I hadn't previously found - a video interview with P&G's current CEO, Bob McDonald. And you know how I found it? By searching the phrase "P&G CEO" on Twitter. A Yale student/grad had tweeted a link to it (it's on a Yale Blog). None of my other research (or the rest of my team's) had uncovered this. I found it in a twitter mention. It hadn't occurred to me to use Twitter for my research for the project - I was just trying to see whether Bob McDonald tweets, since I was very impressed by his thinking and management style, after having done our project.

I've also been discovering that seeing who a person/entity is following can give you a lot of insight into that individual or company. And that can be its own source of valuable research. I followed @RossDawson because a lot of KM people I follow are following him (e.g., Thomas Stewart, Kate Pugh, David Griffiths, KM World Magazine, David Gurteen, Andrew McAfee, ARMA, AIIM and more). I didn't know anything about him but what was on his twitter profile.

Then the other day I somehow came across Ross Dawson's name outside of Twitter (I think I followed some series of links from an Andrew McAfee blog that's assigned reading this week). And from there I got to Amazon and their Ross Dawson author page, and learned more about him. Now he's less a random name to me, and more a recognized quantity. And a good resource to be following.

I'm trying to formulate my thinking on Twitter follows and mentions. In the current digital landscape, it seems that a follow on Twitter can be somewhat analogous to a citation in an article or book, and the perceived quality of the follower (as would be the case with a publication), reflects directly on the person/entity being "cited" to in this way. A follow isn't a citation (as opposed to an @ mention or a RT or link to a blog post), but it's sort of a "potential" citation, in that the follower values the follow-ee's knowledge and insights enough to want them in their feed, and/or expects the content thereof to be useful and/or entertaining.

I'm finding that I very much use Twitter as my source for news and articles relevant to my current interests. I'm following people involved in the field(s) I'm interested in, and when they link to blogs and/or articles, I often try to read those myself (I really need to learn to speed read, though!).

The twitter-verse is sort of like word of mouth at warp speed. I think many companies and individuals have already seen its potential as a resource, but I suspect there's even more gold to be mined, both content-wise, and from studying the sociological phenomenon of it...

The Personal Statement that got me into Columbia

2011-09-14T13:37:00.001-04:00

Unabridged and unadulterated, below is the personal statement/statement of academic purpose I wrote as part of my admissions application to the Columbia masters program in Information and Knowledge Strategy. I was pretty pleased with it, if I do say so myself, and I dare say it helped me get into the program. Judge for yourself:

I recognize that it may not be obvious from my resume why I would be interested in knowledge management generally, and specifically in Columbia’s Masters in Information and Knowledge Strategy. I will admit that mine is perhaps a strange path. I’m definitely a career-changer, looking to significantly alter my trajectory.

I came to New York to study acting, and pursued that for about ten years. While I was taking acting classes and singing lessons and voiceover lessons and auditioning, I worked mostly full-time day jobs, usually as a secretary or assistant.

A couple of my early jobs gave me valuable exposure to business processes, because I worked in very small companies (an owner plus me in one; an owner, an accountant and me in another). In those environments, I learned to be a jack-of-all-trades; to look for ways to overview an entire business and find ways to help it operate more efficiently by creating documents, systems or processes to automate or streamline whatever I could. I had a lot of responsibilities, and I learned a lot, but didn’t see where I could apply that experience (plus, I was still focused on pursuing acting).

My next substantial job brought me to the field of law, working as a legal secretary at a small law firm (approximately 20 employees total), where I supported three partners and an associate. My four years there were another wonderful learning experience, as I gained broad exposure to many aspects of the law and legal processes. In fact, during that time I brought a rent overcharge case against my then-landlord, pursuing it pro se and doing my own legal research, writing and filing my own briefs, and even arguing twice in New York State Supreme Court.

I found that I had a certain affinity for the law, but after my four-year odyssey with the legal system, I had no desire to become an attorney. I won my case, and therefore had some money on which to live, so I quit working to pursue acting full-time. Ultimately, that proved less than successful. Although I was getting some steady voiceover work, I was soon low on reserves and feeling disheartened. Shortly after returning to work from my “sabbatical,” I began working as a legal secretary at my current employer. In this job, I have seen numerous opportunities to improve processes and efficiency but have rarely been able to find an audience for my ideas. I simply don’t have the credentials to back them up.

It wasn’t until February of this year that I discovered the existence of the field of knowledge management. I was visiting with a long-time friend who works at an AmLaw 100 firm. One of our conversations segued into a discussion of her firm’s intranet and knowledge management department. I was surprised and excited to learn that much of what that department does encompasses the types of ideas that have occurred to me over the past three years.

Finally, something fit. This was a field where I could utilize all my abilities: I’m intelligent, analytical, organized, and detail oriented; I’ve discovered that I’m a systems thinker (I hadn’t known there was a term for the way my brain works); I’m a problem solver and a figure-out-er; I anticipate needs and potential problems, and plan ahead to avoid or minimize future difficulties; I’m good at finding more efficient ways to do things; I enjoy exploring technology and software (everywhere I’ve worked, people have always come to me with their questions about software). Knowledge management would take advantage of all these skills and would allow me to perpetually challenge myself. I finally have an answer to a question I’ve always dreaded: “What are you passionate about?”

In March, I saw an ad on LinkedIn for Columbia’s Masters in Information and Knowledge Strategy. I immediately clicked through (proof that internet advertising does, at least occasionally, work), and signed up for the online information session. Much of what was said in the session dovetailed neatly with what I’ve been researching and contemplating for the last few months. The role of a knowledge management professional was described in exactly the way I’ve been conceiving it in my head for the past several months.

I plan to use the MS in Information and Knowledge Strategy to enter the field of knowledge management, and ultimately to take on a role such as Knowledge Management Director or Chief Knowledge Officer, perhaps even establishing a knowledge management initiative at my current firm.

Too much information

2011-09-10T19:31:00.001-04:00

Loving IKNS so far, but man, do I feel like I have a short attention span.

When I was in college, we didn't have all this new-fangled technology. So much information, so easily accessible (and that's the key), I just keep following links and reading fascinating things and absorbing and learning and then I realize, I'm getting away from the actual task - getting my homework done!

It's not like I'm "wasting" time, exactly. I'm not watching tv or playing games or goofing off. But I go check my twitter and follow an article link from The Economist, then one from the ABA Journal, then see something Richard Susskind tweeted and investigate that, and then see Ted News tweet about how the screenwriter for Contagion started out by watching a TED Talk and so on and so on...

I have to figure out how to rein in my curiosity, at least until I've finished my coursework :|
I feel compelled to follow all these information trails, because I worry that if I don't follow the links to things now, I won't come across them later, because I won't know to look for them. And I'm not too great at remembering sources (if I'm not specifically writing them down and citing them for a paper). For instance, in my research on Proctor & Gamble for my current class team project, I came across a page (pdf) on their website where they talk about how they have "begun to use Lofts, an immersive, multi-sensorial experience based on classic storytelling." I could swear I've read a story or article somewhere about something similar, but when I try to recall specifics, I can't pin them down, and I sure can't remember whether I read it online, or in a magazine, or in a book. I'd like to read that article/chapter/story again, but I can't even think what search terms to try on Google.

And none of that has anything to do with my homework. :\

Focus. I haz to find some...

IKNS First Residency Over

2011-09-05T22:29:00.000-04:00

Well, our first residency for the Columbia IKNS program ended yesterday. I already miss everybody, although we're starting to make all sorts of online connections, and there's the course website and an IKNS community site.

I'm still coming down from all my excitement about the program and the people involved. Larry Prusak spoke with us on multiple occasions during the week, is an Advisor for the program, and will be teaching one of our courses. He's an author (or co-author) of numerous books in the field.

Thomas Stewart is the author of the first book we read for class, Intellectual Capital, one of the faculty advisors, and he is an amazing speaker in person. Lots of short stories throughout his speech. Little bits of unexpected humor everywhere. And, like all the other faculty and speakers, lots of energy for his topic.

We can also count as faculty Guy St. Clair, Kate Pugh, Linda Stoddart, Joshua Goldblas, Leala Abbott, Jeanne Harris and more. Guy Scalzi with Aspen Advisers is another faculty advisor. In addition to authors Prusak and Stewart, both Kate Pugh and Jeanne Harris have authored recent books in the field.

We also have an extremely diverse and talented cohort, all of whom I'm excited to begin and continue this journey with for the next 16 months. It's going to be a lot of work, but thank goodness I find all this fun! :) Stay tuned...

When I Grow Up I Want to Be Malcolm Gladwell

2011-08-31T21:44:00.000-04:00

If I had realized, in middle school or high school, that such a career path was possible, I would have wanted to be Malcolm Gladwell when I grew up. Or maybe Atul Gawande. Theirs are the kinds of minds I admire, that inspire me. They are perpetually intellectually curious, and capable of amazing (and entertaining) feats of analysis and synthesis. Oliver Sacks is another one.

It’s funny - when I was growing up, somehow I got it into my head that “non-fiction” was synonymous with “boring.” I just didn’t understand at the time how non-fiction could possibly be entertaining. Now I know better. Thank you, Malcolm Gladwell.

So many organizations, so little time...

2011-08-27T20:35:00.000-04:00

So, I just discovered that my firm is a member of the ILTA, which means I can join the ILTA (International Legal Technology Association). So I just did, woohoo! Yet another wealth of resources that I can never possibly have enough time to digest.

I've read a number of excellent books since spring, and I have a ton of books on my shelf waiting to be read (as well as dozens more on my Amazon wish list), plus the PMBOK and BABOK (monster tomes, both).

I've joined ARMA (Association of Records Managers and Administrators), AIIM (Association of Image and Information Management), ABA (American Bar Association, as a student associate member) and PMI (Project Management Institute). Still on my to-join list are the IIBA (International Institute of Business Analysis) and WITI (Women in Technology International, which I'll join as a student member once I pick up my Columbia University ID next week).

I'm trying my best to take full advantage of everything available out there to expand my knowledge of the field of KM and related disciplines (I think an understanding of project management and business analysis is important to KM as well). There's such a mountain of good material out there, I just have to try not to get buried under it!

Off-Topic: Excerpts from Stonehenge Management's big F*** all of You email

2011-08-27T18:15:00.000-04:00

Roseland Properties is truly a caring, concerned property management company, whose first and top priority is the comfort and safety of their tenants. Observe:

“If the authorities issue a hurricane warning for the area, the management team will leave the community.”

“It is important to remember that hurricanes and all associated weather and tidal conditions are natural disasters. Management cannot be responsible for any resulting property damage, interruption of utilities/services, or bodily injury.”

“We would like to remind everyone that the use of personal portable generators is not permitted”

“Given the potential for driving rain during a hurricane, please take the steps necessary to prevent damage within your apartment home, i.e. dry water around windows, blinds, and window sills to reduce the potential for mildew. Also, don’t forget to empty your refrigerator before evacuating or at the point power loss exceeds 24 hours. The refrigerator must be emptied at the point power loss exceeds 24 hours, otherwise the refrigerator could be damaged resulting in financial responsibility to the resident up to and including the replacement of the refrigerator.”

“Do not tape any windows. Windows may be boarded from the outside only. Repairs needed from any damage caused to the building by the resident from boarding windows will be the financial responsibility of the resident.”

“Pursuant to your lease agreement, all residents are required to carry renter's insurance.”

“Please wipe all moisture from windows and doors.”

“Be patient. It takes a team effort to clean up after a storm. Responsibility for the cleanup falls to numerous local, state and federal agencies.”

“As you can imagine, many of the vendors and contractors we depend on to provide parts, labor, or technical assistance may be stretched to the limit. Because of this our response to service requests in you apartment home may be delayed.”

“Please take the time be as prepared as possible.”

So, basically, "we're getting the hell out of here," "any damage is your fault," "you'll have to pay for any damage," and "we aren't responsible for doing anything".

Classy.

The middle of the Beginning

2011-08-25T14:42:00.001-04:00

Next week I start the Information and Knowledge Strategy masters program at Columbia University, and I'm excited to meet and work with some heavy-hitters in the KM field. It's been a whirlwind year - at the beginning of 2011, I'd never even heard of Knowledge Management, and now I'm going to get a masters degree in it!

Considering that I came to New York in 1998 to study and pursue acting, one could legitimately wonder how I got from there to here. I’ll skip the long story for now (maybe I’ll revisit in a future post), but in February I visited a good friend in California, who works at an AmLaw 100 firm. The conversation turned to intranets, and she told me a bit about their knowledge management director, then said, "hey, you'd be great at that!"

And with the seed thus planted, I started researching and reading everything I could find about knowledge management, clicking from articles to blogs to books to footnotes back to websites and articles, discovering a vast community of resources. I’m still uncovering new gems, even after months of reading and downloading and connecting. I had thought I was more passionate about performing than anything else, but once I discovered KM, I realized I hadn’t had a clue what it felt like to be truly compelled and impelled by an interest in something.

Somewhere in the midst of all my researching, I stumbled across an ad on LinkedIn for Columbia’s brand-new masters program. I applied, interviewed, and got in, and the journey begins next Wednesday. :)