2004 November | Rebecca Thomas Designs

Plan before you implement

Nov 302004

It’s always interesting to note how when you discuss a topic, it seems to plague your days for a while. I recently temped at a local data management solution company where I had a rather interesting conversation with one of the gentlemen there. We were talking about knowledge management and my feelings toward it.

He informed me that those with my mindset are too bogged down in the implementation and that the solution is to just throw up a wiki and let people figure it out.

The other day, I came across this article, which actually deals with learning management systems as opposed to knowledge management situations, but I feel it highlights the flaw in the gentleman’s “just do it” mindset. These systems have to be created with the users in mind, and need to be able to grow and change to meet the needs of the corporation.

Planning considers the user and the future in its scope. The “just do it” mentality can outgrow itself before it ever get off the ground.

Found via eLearningPost’s daily links newsletter

The lore of the cards

animation, anthropology, gaming View Comments

Nov 272004

I’ve never felt ashamed for being so old and yet still watching cartoons. Firstly, I’m a fan of animation. I have an incredible amount of respect for the work that goes into even a twenty-minute cartoon. Secondly, I am generally amused by elements of storyline or the writing.

Currently, one of favorite cartoons to watch and pick on, despite the fact I’ve only played the game once, is Yu-Gi-Oh. There’s just some very amusing writing going on in this cartoon that I have often felt compelled to share. Today, I watched Joey give the full lore behind one of a card he was about to play. It was reminiscent of the days when tradeable card games were supposed to be these great stories of powerful opponents dueling.

It wasn’t just a one-sentence story, either. Joey actually told his opponent the entire story of the card he was about to play. It was quite fascinating. Then again, it’s always interesting to see a children’s show that is actually in touch with its fabricated past. It adds depth to the show.

Keeping logs of creative ideas

creativity View Comments

Nov 252004

Today’s article details a practice that I’ve been a long time practitioner of. The technique is suggested for the workplace, but I’ve found it a great technique in all of my design work, too.

I’ve always kept idea logs. In middle school and high school, the margins of my notebooks were filled with doodles and jottings as I planned out various projects. In college, I switched to tabbed notebooks where one entire tab was dedicated to this purpose, although it wasn’t long before I was marking in the margins and even writing in the back of a course’s section, which led to funny things sometimes.

Last year, I bought myself a beautiful notebook, and I now use a combination of that notebook, an online journal, a plog, and Outlook to record and organize these ideas. It’s wonderful!

I can’t imagine wandering without having an idea journal handy.

A KM Skeptic

anthropology View Comments

Nov 252004

The other day, I was dubbed a “KM-skeptic” by a Knowledge Management guru in Chicago. He appreciates my position, at least.

Today, I shared this fact with a gentleman at Insightful, who then shared with me that wikis are the ultimate KM solution. His argument is that wikis are simple to use and anybody can edit them or add pages as necessary, thereby allowing the growth of the corporation’s information lore. I can see where he is coming from, but his attitude of “just build it and let mistakes direct the structure” just frightens me.

After having spent the past month lurking about ResumeWiki, I know that wikis are not intuitive creatures and easily sabotaged even by the most well-meaning of souls just trying to add their information to the wiki. I can see the benefit of a wiki used as the structure containing the corporate lore, but my concern is usability. Yes, you want to get something up and running because it’s better than nothing, but you want to make it something that’s usable almost immediately.

I really ought to start looking at KM as an integration of usability, UI, and the structure of the information contained within.

Deriving meaning from content

education View Comments

Nov 232004

One of the chief goals of education is to help the learner construct their own meanings around the provided content. What’s interesting to note is that businesses are starting to realize the value of this practice, as demonstrated by this article.

Without interpretation, content artifacts are rather useless. Teachers know this and create their lesson plans accordingly. It’s nice to see other fields come to this realization and start seeking to build the bridge between content and meaning for their target audience.

I could probably use an advocate

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Nov 232004

I’m still thinking about the conversation I had yesterday. It was such an odd, random conversation, and yet it just keeps tugging at me.

One of the things he said after talking to me for such a short bit was that he wanted to be my agent. His fee was actually something I could possibly live with: my first day’s paycheck. Pretty low as far as agents or headhunters go. When he said it, I figured he was joking and made the appropriate polite giggle.

Surprisingly enough, I think there may be something to his thinking. I’m absolutely no good at marketing myself, prefering to let my work, experience, or word of mouth speak for me. I did consider approaching a headhunter a few years ago when I started struggling with finding a job within my field, and I’ve often said that the first position I would hire for when I had my business running enough to support the position is a marketing/business-minded person. I’m not an aggressive person. Thankfully, I’m not an entirely passive person either. I prefer to think of myself as an assertive person. Unfortunatey, assertive can only go so far.

Now I’m sitting here rethinking the whole agent/headhunter angle again. I have some seriously marketable skills that can be translated to other fields. I can see this, but getting someone else to see it has been like pulling teeth. They look at my specialized background and can’t see past the low-level job titles and the high-level job specifications and achievements.

What I really need is someone who’s connected and doesn’t mind saying, “Hey, you know what? I know this woman who I think could be a great fit for you. Let me arrange a meeting for you.”

Still thinking through this change

writing View Comments

Nov 222004

Someone today got me to thinking about technical writing. I’ve looked at trying to gain experience in this field before, but after we talked for a bit, he made an interesting point.

It’s no secret that I have a bit of tunnel vision when I consider my skill sets. I see the curriculum development aspects. I see the teaching aspects. I see my analytical and problem solving skills. I even see how I’ve been editing for longer than I think.

Never once have I looked over my years of experience and seen any writing skills.

I was sitting there explaining about my teaching background and what it meant to be a museum educator, part of which involved writing lesson plans and workshops to be directed by others or writing teacher guides. Then, I mentioned my blogs and how well they’re faring for having only been in existence for six or seven months.

He looks at me and says, “Wait. You’re a blogger?” I nodded, having no clue what direction the conversation is about to turn, and explained a bit about my blogs. He says, “Why don’t you give technical writing a try? You’ve already got experience writing documentation.”

Now I’ve never been one to consider any of my teacher guides as documentation, but sadly I found the guy making some sense. I started pulling together a number of resources, lessons, programs, and units I have written over the past several years. Sadly, all three of my teaching guides are in San Antonio because I told myself I wouldn’t need them if I was truly leaving the museum profession behind. Ironic, isn’t it? The reason this guy thinks I could shift over to technical writing, and they’re home because I couldn’t see them anything but part of my museum past.

Technical writer, Trainer, Instructional designer. So far, I think that encompasses the list of fields I’ve considered shifting to where I actually have a potential skill set already existing.

Is it knowledge management or not?

anthropology View Comments

Nov 162004

I was reading my way through the blogosphere recently, when I came across an article covering decision-making and its role in the hiring process. The point it was truly making was that managers should experience a resonance between their rubric method of hiring and their gut instinct. It had lovely charts supporting this and everything.

I scrolled down to the comments, because that’s just the kind of reader I am, and found this gem in the comments: Like your blog…thanks for the link. I put you in Knowledge Management on my blog…seems like this is a part of knowledge management…even though we all know there is no such thing.

Perhaps I’ve missed something here, but how does the consideration of hiring methods ever warrant being defined as knowledge management? I realize I criticize knowledge management a lot, but I think this example just furthers my belief that knowledge management is not a useful practice because nobody knows what it is. Even CLOs seem to have problems figuring it out and agreeing on what that term means.

Yes, there should be a fostered learning and lore environment in a corporate environment, but I don’t think the solution is knowledge management.

Visualization and decision-making

creativity View Comments

Nov 152004

A visualization can serve many purposes: to help you prepare for an upcoming event, to help you make a decision, to help you set a course of action. The important part here is to keep your visualizations positive, since you are more than likely searching for a positive outcome.

While the idea of a visualization can seem a bit frightening, or in the words of certain family members “new age”, there has been evidence to show that it can be a very useful and powerful tool for people in any discipline. (Most of the studies I’ve seen have related to either sports, the upper echelons of corporations, or job seekers.)

Found via Curt Rosengren.

A wish for documentation

writing View Comments

Nov 142004

Every year, I learn a different lesson from participating in National Novel Writing Month. Two years ago (the first year I did NaNoWriMo), the lesson was: Document your daily word count. I didn’t heed that lesson last year. Then again, I fell ill and then got in over my head in workload at work last year and never made it past 5,000 words. Last year’s lesson was: Write as much as you can every time you sit down to write.

This year’s lesson is going to be: Document the NaNoWriMo experience.

Right now, I’m posting daily to my writing journal with the day’s word count and the chapter that corresponds to that day. There are occassional notes punctuating the posts, like on the first day when I realized this year’s novel was nothing at all like what I envisioned when I came up with the idea. I hated my novel. I’m not all that fond of it now, but as I am now over 60% through it, I feel compelled to finish it. (Constructive criticisms are welcome if you decide to peruse any of it. Please keep in mind that no editing takes place during NaNoWriMo, so there may be some problems in the current draft.)

What’s not documented at all is the life and world cropping up around me as I write or participate in affiliated activities. For example, I am currently engaged in a discussion over what constitutes a reality tv show and whether or not American Gladiators counts as one. (If you’re curious, my arugment is that it was not one.) Over the past two weeks, i have engaged in discussions about Star Trek and most of it spin-offs, Babylon 5, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and a lot of computer geekery. Like a good geek grrl, I’ve managed to keep up with most of it and have held my own in debates, even in the computer arena. The only fannish conversation i didn’t participate in was the Backstreet Boys, and I think that’s forgivable.

I’ve made friends. I’ve gone out and done things with these friends. I’ve gone shopping, seen a movie, hung out in a game shop, and spent several hours in an arcade learning to play DDR. I’ve developed a new affinity for rubber ducks and power strips.

None of that is documented for the past fourteen days. Next year, there will be documentation, and it will be more than a five word excuse for why i didn’t write one day.

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Plan before you implement

The lore of the cards

Keeping logs of creative ideas

A KM Skeptic

Deriving meaning from content

I could probably use an advocate

Still thinking through this change

Is it knowledge management or not?

Visualization and decision-making

A wish for documentation

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