Dear K-Loggers,

There have been lots of efforts to turn knowledge management into merely
discussions or conversations. This is a wrong-headed approach. While
discussions (mailing lists, e-mail conversations, and chat) have merit as a
means of collaboration, they aren't necessarily a good way to produce
archival knowledge. Why? Given the tools used, most conversations are
either hidden (in e-mail inboxes), disappear (as in chat sessions), or
problematic (discussions are often dominated by a few individuals, they can
succumb to spam, and often offer poor user interaction due to performance
problems and threading issues).
K-Logs solve many of these problems. As David and Jim rightly point out, a
K-Log is partly a selfish activity. It promotes a personal brand (as a
domain expert in an organization or a smart person with a valuable POV). It
solves personal organization problems. It makes it possible to be heard in
the online environment despite noise generated by more vocal contributors.
It documents what you do in a way that is visible to a wider corporate
audience. As a result of the above, it provides people with motive to
contribute (a feature lacking in the solutions provided by Lotus and
others). Jon Udell gets this:

(see: http://radio.weblogs.com/0100887/2002/01/31.html#a44 )

Hey, I like to collaborate using e-mail, chat and occasionally use
discussion groups. However, if I am going to put some real effort into
translating my thinking into bits, I want to make sure that effort is
archived and used by as many people as possible. I also want it to be part
of my body of work (which according to David and myself, is a representation
of me online to everyone that hasn't met me face to face). K-Logs make this
possible within a corporate context.

A final thought. Collaboration tools should provide content (raw fodder)
that I can use in my K-Log. Right now, its possible to forward e-mails to
my desktop K-Log tool. A developer is working right now on sucking in IM
conversations. There has even been some talk about building a desktop
discussion group system that runs as a tool in Radio and uses Web Services
to send messages back and forth via a central server. This would not only
make all discussion items postable to my K-Log, it would also solve two
other problems with discussion groups: performance and off-line use (in
this tool, it would be possible for me to have a complete archive of a
discussion group on my desktop).

Sincerely,

John Robb