A few weeks ago there was an interesting exchange of ideas among Shawn Callahan, Matt Hodgson, Stephen Collins, and Dave Snowden (and many others, I’m sure) on the nature of knowledge work. Some key excerpts:
In one of my very first blog posts (my second, actually), I asked the question, “What is knowledge management, anyway?” Like many others, I’ve never really found a truly satisfactory answer, though there are very many answers to chose from. In the post KM 0.0…, Dave Pollard presents this definition:
KM is simply the art [...]
If knowledge work is indeed a craft, then information is the raw material in which knowledge workers work. What really intrigues me about the idea of information as raw material is that you can give the same information to two different people, and end up with completely different products. There are only a few ways you can turn aluminum into a can (or bottle), but there are an almost infinite variety of ways you can turn information into knowledge.
The question of how a knowledge worker learns how to be a knowledge worker begs the question, “What is knowledge work?” Lilia Efimova has some thoughts on this in her post Knowledge Work Framework (PKM + Tasks).
How did you learn how to be a knowledge worker? Did you spend your early years in an “apprenticeship” or were you just thrown into the fray? How do we help new knowledge workers learn their craft?
Like a true master, Slater chooses the latter and comes away with two perfect rounds. The moral of the story: Trust your instincts and your training, and don’t overthink it.
One of the key questions I’m still not sure how to answer is: with all of these means of communications available with my friends, colleagues, and strangers that I’d like to get to know, what is the best way to actually communicate - E-mail? Facebook? Post a comment on their blog? Post to my blog about their blog? Update Twitter? As if that isn’t enough, a recent post by Jack Vinson - commenting on a post by Amy Gahran - now has me thinking of another issue raised by all this: How do I keep track of it all?
My del.icio.us feed
