Newsletter No. 122
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Free Pint
"Helping 52,000 people use the Web for their work"
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ISSN 1460-7239 3rd October 2002 No.122
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IN THIS ISSUE
EDITORIAL
MY FAVOURITE TIPPLES
From Terry Kendrick
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TIPS ARTICLE
"Effective Writing: How Good Copy Can Make
Your Information Work Harder"
By Paul Waddington
BOOKSHELF
"Co-operation in Action"
Edited by Stella Pilling and Stephanie Kenna
Reviewed by Alison Turner
FEATURE ARTICLE
"From Knowledge Economy to Knowledge Ecology?
- IBM's David Snowden Maps a 'Third Way'
for KM at Open University Seminar"
By Andrew Everest
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** Sue Hill Recruitment - jobs every day - good candidates needed! **
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They want the best & trust us to provide it. Be part of our success!
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EDITORIAL
In my Exchange workshop in July on email publishing, we talked all
about managing an email publication, technology, etc. Something we
didn't really go into too much detail about was actually writing for
a digital publication.
Paul Waddington of Plain Text is a past master at this sort of thing,
and so I'm delighted to include a number of tips from him on effective
writing in today's newsletter. He's also running the "Free Pint
Effective Writing Exchange" workshop at the beginning of November.
Places are limited, but if you'd like to find out more then visit:
<http://www.freepint.com/exchange>
On that page you can also find out about the "Telecommunications
Exchange" later this month, for which there are only a few places
remaining. This session will equip you to research the telecoms
sector efficiently with an awareness of the key resources and a
basic understanding of telecoms networks and services.
Talking of Exchanges, we've had some super feedback about the two
sessions we've run since the last issue. Data protection and
competitor intelligence are key topics at the moment, and two great
speakers ensured both events were very informative and interactive.
We're already lining up a series of workshops for the new year.
However, do contact me if you have an idea for a session, or indeed
if you would like to run one in your area.
I know you're going to get a lot out of today's Free Pint, and so I
hope you enjoy reading it. I always welcome your feedback or
suggestions about anything we do, and ask you to share Free Pint
with your colleagues.
All the best
William
William Hann BSc(Hons) MCLIP, Founder and Managing Editor
Email: <william@freepint.com> Tel: +44 (0)1784 420044
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Targeted Science and Engineering Information
Nerac delivers hard-to-find information from worldwide resources
within the next business day. Our search experts locate information on
published literature, patents, trademarks and advancements in science
and technology. Our resources provide targeted results that save you
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call 860-872-7000 (U.S.), from 7:00 a.m. to 7:00 p.m. ET to speak
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>>> Free Pint Telecommunications Exchange <<<
Thursday 24th October 2002, West London, UK
"This Exchange is intended to give participants an awareness of the
key sources of information on telecommunications, an ability to
research the sector efficiently, and a basic understanding
of telecommunications networks and services."
<http://www.freepint.com/exchange>
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MY FAVOURITE TIPPLES
By Terry Kendrick
* <http://www.rocketnews.com> - Outrageously good news search engine
with superb international coverage. Never leave for a client meeting
without checking out the latest news on the client and its
competitors. Only a five-day archive but, hey, what a five-day
archive!
* <http://www.business2.com/webguide> - As a links guide to general
business information topics this one comes up with excellent
materials time after time. Nicely laid out and an all round good
product.
* <http://www.kamcity.com> - Part free, part subscription, this is a
gem of a website for key account managers. The news archive (click
on NAMNEWS) is very useful for anyone watching FMCG markets.
* <http://www.radio-locator.com> - Wire the laptop up to your hi-fi
system and cruise the world of music as, sitting at your desk, you
make profound thoughts for your clients. There are 16 US business
news stations. Err... I'm sticking to the smooth jazz stations.
* <http://www.kplay.cc/reference.html> - Know Play? is an excellent
idea particularly if you are in the USA. It provides a neat front
end to sources for answering quick reference enquiries. UK readers
will find great benefit from using the general and reference
sources. It's never more than a couple of keystrokes away on my
laptop.
Terry Kendrick is Director of Information Now Ltd. He originally
trained as a librarian in the late 1970s but since the mid 1980s has
been freelance, initially as an information broker and, since 1990, as
a marketing planning consultant. He has worked on assignments for over
50 large organisations in 17 different countries. He still maintains
close contact with the library and information world and regularly
presents workshops for the Chartered Institute of Library and
Information Professionals (CILIP) as well as doing occasional
strategic planning-related consultancy for library and information
services <http://www.terrykendrick.co.uk>.
Email your top five favourite Web sites to <penny@freepint.com> or
see the guidelines at <http://www.freepint.com/author.htm>.
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MANY MORE SESSIONS ADDED TO FACTIVA'S LEARNING SCHEDULE
Factiva Learning Programs has organised many more Factiva.com
introductory and advanced learning sessions both online via the
Web and as face-to-face seminars. To learn how to search our
unmatched collection of sources more effectively register today at
http://www.factiva.com/learningschedule
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TIPS ARTICLE
<http://www.freepint.com/issues/031002.htm#tips>
"Effective Writing: How Good Copy Can Make
Your Information Work Harder"
By Paul Waddington
It is an enduring paradox of business that companies are prepared to
spend massive sums on systems to manage information, but balk when it
comes to putting money and time into interpreting what comes out of
them. In one of the many studies of information overload, Gartner
estimates that organisations worldwide will spend a cool USD 30bn on
information management systems in 2002. Yet the same survey reports
that 90% of companies feel that they are overwhelmed with information.
So what is happening here? Do information management systems simply
not work? I don't think that's the case. There's no doubt, for
example, that a well-managed intranet cuts down the time that staff
spend looking for things. But no matter how well-managed it is, if
readers then have to read lengthy, badly-written copy in order to get
the information they need, the intranet will not have done its job. To
put it another way: what's the point of a great medium if the message
doesn't get through?
The web in particular has led to an explosion of publishing that we
are still struggling to manage. On the Internet today, commercial
websites live or die by the quality of their design and their written
content. And since the technology boom ended, only the best sites,
with the best writing, are still surviving. The popularity of weblogs,
with their brief, informal style of writing, is testimony to the power
of good writing online to draw and retain an audience.
But not every online communication is subjected to the savage
Darwinism of the Internet. Internal websites, extranets, email
newsletters, press releases: many of these continue to survive
regardless of the quality of their written content. But as
hard-pressed companies start to look for a return on investment from
their information systems, good content becomes key. Because it is
content that drives readership, traffic and results.
So how can information professionals boost the value of information
with good writing? Here are five practical steps.
1. Make sure content is written for its audience
------------------------------------------------
Even the smallest organisations contain a mix of different people --
technologists, accountants, salespeople -- who consume information in
different ways. Some are happy to read dense, complicated text. Some
would rather not read at all, and prefer to get their information from
meetings and phone calls. When you are distributing content within a
company, this difference in 'information consumption' style needs to
be borne in mind. For example, only a few staff might bother to read a
lengthy management announcement full of jargon, even if it does
contain vital information on the future of the company.
Finding out about your audience is a key first step in producing
effective written content. So if an announcement is targeted at the
entire company, it should be written to extremely high standards. It
is a paradox of writing that concise, clear writing often takes the
most effort, as Pascal said: "I have made this letter longer than
usual, only because I have not had the time to make it shorter".
However if content is targeted uniquely at specialists, for example
engineers, then lengthy jargon and specialist terms are fine.
2. Recognise the strengths and weaknesses of different media
------------------------------------------------------------
One of the biggest errors with any new medium is to over- or
underestimate what it can do. So we had early websites dense with text
and slow-loading graphics. Much online information continues to ignore
the strengths and weaknesses of the medium. If information is to be
effective online it should:
* use the 'inverted pyramid', where a brief summary explains the
content to follow. This is the same technique used in news stories.
Online readers would rather not scroll
* be brief. It is suggested that web-based content, for example,
should not exceed 500-700 words per article. Anything longer than
this needs to be on separate pages or to be designed for print
* be 'scannable', using bullets and bold text to draw readers'
interest. The low resolution of screens relative to paper makes
people read more slowly
* use the power of hypertext. Good use of hypertext aids readability
and builds the value of web pages
3. Tell stories
---------------
Much writing in business assumes that readers are more interested in a
lengthy explanation of, say, a product's features than an interesting
narrative explaining why it is good. So we get sentences like this:
"X's core product suite delivers an open, robust, cross-platform
scalable solution for the indexing, categorisation and integration of
disparate information feeds."
Someone knows what this means. But the intended reader is unlikely to
get the point. Putting the same information in a narrative form, using
examples and case studies, is much more effective:
"X's technology can manage information from many different sources. It
has helped companies to:
* Categorise information effectively (link to brief customer case
study)
* Integrate their information where different technology platforms are
involved (link to brief example)"
People like stories. Using a narrative structure -- with a beginning,
middle, and end -- is a powerful way of making complex information
easy to interpret.
4. Remember that some writers are better than others
----------------------------------------------------
Online (particularly web) publishing can make it possible for anyone
to publish, yet quality in the online medium -- for example a public
corporate website -- is just as important as, say, in the printed
annual report. Just as many staff would never make good salespeople,
not everyone is a natural writer. It is important to recognise and
deal with this, either by training or by giving staff access to
templates and style guides. The alternatives are to outsource writing
or to ensure only selected staff can publish directly online.
5. Build style guides and editorial processes and apply them
------------------------------------------------------------
Rules and processes are well-established in the fields of information
and knowledge management. Applied to writing, they can help to ensure
quality and credibility. Organisations need to have a policy on
questions such as: when is it OK to use abbreviations? How do we treat
job titles? Product names? Who has final sign-off?
Building and managing style guides, for example, takes a little effort
and time. But the value of minimising errors and
inconsistencies -- a misquote, an out-of-date reference, or a
misplaced decimal point -- far outweighs this.
In summary, good writing has a major part to play in helping companies
to get the maximum value from their investment in information. Getting
it right takes a little work, but if the reward is information that
people want to use, the effort is worthwhile.
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Paul Waddington of Plain Text is running the "Free Pint Effective
Writing Exchange" on 7th November 2002. For full details visit
<http://www.freepint.com/exchange>.
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Paul Waddington is a co-founder of Plain Text
<http://www.plain-text.co.uk>, a company that specialises in writing
for businesses, writing training and in helping companies improve
their written communication.
Before establishing Plain Text, he was communications director of
FT.com and prior to that spent ten years at Reuters, working with
research products such as Reuters Business Briefing. Paul regularly
publishes and speaks on writing and information-related issues. He can
be contacted at <paul.waddington@plain-text.co.uk>.
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"Co-operation in Action"
Edited by Stella Pilling and Stephanie Kenna
Reviewed by Alison Turner
Co-operation, partnership, collaboration - all buzzwords in the
current political climate, but also a reality for most librarians.
Given the growing emphasis on cross-sector and cross-domain working,
the publication of this book is timely. Offering the expertise of a
range of well-known contributors, the book presents a snapshot of
current co-operation. But don't be misled by the 'world of
information' referred to in the book's title - this book is firmly
focused on public libraries, museums and archives, albeit with
significant space given to the academic sector. Whilst co-operation
with other sectors is referred to, there isn't the level of detail I
was hoping for, as someone working in the health sector.
The book opens with a foreword by Tessa Blackstone, Minister of State
for the Arts, which serves to emphasise the current political lean
towards partnership and collaboration referred to in the book. The
current climate in the UK is considered by several contributors, who
outline influences and issues which are probably relevant to all types
of library/information service. The book comprises 9 chapters in total
covering issues such as: funding; areas where co-operation is working,
such as preservation; and the perspectives of key organisations such
as academic libraries. An overview of the international dimension
concludes the book.
Two organisations which are particularly important in facilitating
co-operative initiatives are the British Library and Resource, each
meriting a chapter in this book. The chapters make for interesting
reading, covering:
* The British Library approach to partnership working, with some
detail on their Cooperation and Partnership Programme (BLCPP), and
activities involving higher education, museums, just to mention two
examples. This includes some reference to the British Library's work
on the international scene, which readers may be less familiar with.
Some indication is given of the future direction of travel.
* An overview of the work of Resource, particularly relevant given
their recent announcement concerning cross-sectoral working. This
chapter starts with a fun vision of the future where an entire
family is making use of library and museum services in much the same
way as they might use their TV or Playstation today. The author
gives an interesting overview of the strategic direction of
Resource, in three priority areas: user focus, seamless services and
format of delivery.
I especially liked the positive outlook on co-operation given by the
editors in the Introduction: "co-operation is about breaking down the
artificial boundaries between institutions, between sectors and
between domains in order that better services can be provided". The
editors and contributors, whilst maintaining a positive approach, are
nonetheless realistic and cover some of the thornier issues around
co-operation.
The book is useful in sharing the experiences of successful projects
and initiatives and offering practical lessons. I imagine it's
probably of more interest to colleagues in the public library sector
or to those working in the allied services of museums or archives.
There are some conclusions to be drawn of general interest, and for
this reason it would make interesting background reading for anyone
embarking on formal partnership projects.
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Alison Turner is the Library Partnership Co-ordinator at the National
electronic Library for Health (NeLH), NHS Information Authority.
Alison joined the NeLH <http://www.nelh.nhs.uk> in 2001, having
previously managed the library service at Gloucestershire Royal NHS
Trust. Alison has worked in the field of health information for 8
years. In her current role, Alison liaises with health librarians to
keep them informed of developments within NeLH and to identify
opportunities for partnership working. The overall aim of the NeLH is
to make information about effectiveness of care readily available to
NHS staff, using Internet and associated technologies.
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Related Free Pint links:
* Find out more about this book online at the Free Pint Bookshelf
<http://www.freepint.com/bookshelf/co-operation.htm>
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<http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1856044246/freepint0c>
or Amazon.com
<http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1856044246/freepint00>
* "Co-operation in Action" ISBN 1856044246 published by Facet
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(Editor), Tessa Blackstone
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FEATURE ARTICLE
<http://www.freepint.com/issues/031002.htm#feature>
"From Knowledge Economy to Knowledge Ecology?
- IBM's David Snowden Maps a 'Third Way'
for KM at Open University Seminar"
By Andrew Everest
Monday 8th of July saw David Snowden, Executive Director of the IBM
sponsored Cynefin Centre for Organisational Complexity, acknowledged
KM 'guru' to governments, corporations and their ilk, deliver an
agenda-setting lecture at The Open University on the next generation
of Knowledge Management.
Entitled "Complex Acts of Knowing - beyond the baleful influence of
the 'tacit' and 'explicit' words", the lecture, hosted by the Open
University Library & BBi (Beds and Bucks Information), gave Mr Snowden
a platform to outline an iconoclastic 'organic' approach to KM.
Offering effectively a 'third way' for KM, his approach does away with
previous simplistic notions based purely on knowledge capture, and
focuses on employing and exploiting traditional human knowledge-
building instincts and behaviours. It conceptualises 'knowledge' as a
flow, rather than a confinable commodity, in need of channelling and
divining rather than control, and suggests use of a variety of
'pragmatic', sometimes unorthodox techniques to bring knowledge to the
surface. With references to channelling of flows and the unorthodox,
and a mysterious Welsh-/Druidic-sounding Moniker, one might have been
be excused for thinking this new 3G KM had something of the 3rd Age
about it!
David Snowdon's talk, however, avoided mysticism and concentrated on
practicality. After a brief "Cooks' tour" of the sins of past
generations of KM, he described the means by which his IBM-sponsored
Cynefin Centre plans to explore and stimulate new ways of acting on
the whole arena of knowledge discovery and knowledge-centred problem
solving. His talk briefly illustrated a variety of devices/techniques
used to tap underlying truths or hidden knowledge, including a
memorable and amusing description of the appropriation of 'The Sims'
computer game to unearth the undisclosed knowledge of executives'
families in a study of work/life balance in corporate life.
The Cynefin approach rests on three tenets, paraphrased here from
David Snowden's talk (the text after the maxim is the my
paraphrase/interpretation of David's comments):
1. KNOWLEDGE CAN ONLY BE VOLUNTEERED; IT CANNOT BE CONSCRIPTED -
Unless the conditions are right, people will only let slip what
they wish to disclose, and will often only provide the minimum
amount or inferior grade 'knowledge' required for compliance when
forced to 'share knowledge' as the KM mantra often exhorts.
2. WE CAN ALWAYS KNOW MORE THAN WE CAN TELL, AND WE WILL ALWAYS TELL
MORE THAN WE CAN WRITE DOWN - The amount of knowledge that can be
codified into abstractions (e.g. a textbook or written procedure, a
know-how database or best practice) is restricted by time and the
ability to express complex instincts in a common language
understandable to an audience.
3. WE ONLY KNOW WHAT WE KNOW WHEN WE NEED TO KNOW IT - Knowledge is
contextual, i.e. it only rises to the surface or can be captured
when required or in reaction to an appropriate stimulus or set of
conditions, which may relate to a shared history, environment, or
situation. Thus 'knowledge' or useful knowing will often only
present itself in reaction to an event and can remain hidden or
dormant unless prompted by techniques that mimic or somehow tap the
factors that elicited its manifestation and creation in the first
place.
The Cynefin Centre and its programme of seminars and 'action research'
aims to promote:
* Descriptive self-awareness - creating the conditions where new
meaning, understanding and insights emerge by looking at things in a
new light.
* Diverse response - turning things on their heads; not settling too
quickly into a comfortable solution or one way of doing things (i.e.
no recipe).
* Embracing paradox - refraining from artificially resolving
contradictions because contradictions are often rich sources of
meaning and new insights.
Delivered in a lecture theatre these tenets and objectives could sound
a tad high-concept and perhaps a little glib. However, where David
Snowden scores over the average 'guru' is his use of anecdotal
evidence (appropriate to the man who brought Storytelling to KM),
underlining their practical applicability. Where do Descriptive Self
Awareness, Diverse Response and Embracing Paradox fit into the real
world of business, politics and the everyday operations, you might
ask? Mr Snowden gave us the tale of the US Military Academy class,
reduced to ashen-faced anguish when invited to understand the
motivation and commitment of their new found terrorist foes, by
re-imagining their present conflict in terms of a guerrilla war much
closer to home, the American War of Independence, with the US cast
as the British, and Al-Qaeda as the colonists. A valuable lesson
learned, an insight gained and real knowledge generated, focusing on a
real-world situation, using paradoxical cultural similarity to access
existent, but untapped knowledge.
Coming off the global stage, David Snowden also illustrated how
Cynefin seeks to exploit the paradoxes of human behaviour in relation
to knowledge, and elicit new reactions to knowledge capture, creation,
transmission and definition at ground level. Witness experiments
carried out in association with Cynefin in weaning people off email,
which actually improves the level of communication and knowledge
sharing. Paradoxically something designed to aid knowledge transfer
has become a bane, and often limits valuable knowledge transfer in its
time-consuming volume.
An equally interesting project is the Cynefin centre's attempt to
solve or at least provide an alternative answer to the sometimes
thorny question, often posed by accountants, 'Why libraries?'. Once
more, a paradox appears in that something as arguably useful as
libraries are constantly under threat in the commercial and non-
commercial world as a perceived cost. The Cynefin Centre in
association with the Chartered Institute of Library and Information
Professionals (CILIP) is exploring an alternative approach to cost-
based justifications, by attempting to position libraries not as a
cost to be borne, but vital eco-systems required for the survival of
organisations. The aim is to provide a model of ecological impact
measurement within an organisation, calculating environmental impact
of using or losing the library on surrounding areas (e.g. communities,
parent organisation, business units, etc.) as linked ecosystems,
rather than relying on previous financial/resource based measures. In
the process, mainstream ecologists have been enlisted to view the
problem, thus providing a degree of external validity to the thesis,
rather than relying on the library profession to justify itself, with
the obvious bias toward self-protection. For more details of this
study see this month's CILIP Knowledge Bulletin - Starship Librarian
<http://www.cilip.org.uk/practice/km_bulletin/num1_040702.html/>, where
Mark Field, CILIP's Knowledge Advisor, describes the project briefly,
going boldly as it were into the undiscovered country of 3G KM.
Whilst the Cynefin or '3rd generation' approach, as described
by David Snowden, does not seek to completely throw out current
thinking on KM, it does aim and claim to modify and challenge these
substantially, with new insights from the science of complex adaptive
systems.
The Cynefin approach -- and similar human centred approaches to KM,
emphasising the power of approaches such as those that focus on the
Human- Centred and Narrative aspects of knowledge -- would seem to
have a great deal to offer, refocusing the attention of KM away from
the 'bottle it and keep it and drink it like so much wine' mantras
that have been generally swallowed whole as a cure-all for the
information deluge. They might even provide the spark that re-ignites
faith in KM, amongst punters who have yet to see convincing results
from the mechanistic and IT-heavy information-retrieval biased
versions of KM, turning the spotlight, as they do, on the deeper and
more satisfying (and perhaps rewarding) dynamics of the knowledge
equation.
Anything that makes the point that knowledge is a dynamic quantity,
challenging a phrase that has launched a thousand expense accounts,
but whose results are unsubstantiated, is worth a look. Insight into
this new methodology does however come with a price tag. Participation
in 'Action Research' programmes of the Cynefin Centre weighs in at a
GBP 5K for a place at the table (something not mentioned too loudly
during the lecture). Nevertheless, given the amounts thrown at KM
systems whose return on investment are open to question, some might
consider this new methodology a bargain, particularly if it yields
early (and perhaps unexpected) results.
David Snowden certainly made an interesting and entertaining case for
his new paradigms at the OU keeping a mixed audience of OU academics,
external visitors and assorted University Knowledgistas listening
avidly over their otherwise prized lunchtime.
The subject matter of the Cynefin approach is complex, and reviews
tend toward over-simplification. As Mr Snowden's theory points out "We
can always know more than we can tell, and we will always tell more
than we can write down", certainly true for this reviewer. An in-depth
view of the concepts underpinning this '3rd way ahead' for KM can be
obtained at
<http://www-1.ibm.com/services/files/Complexactsofknowing_1.pdf/>.
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Andrew Everest is a seasoned Information Professional. After an early
career in corporate libraries he worked extensively for Library
Automation vendors. Andrew returned to mainstream knowledge/information
work in 2002, consulting for Senior Executive Learning Systems, and
contracting/freelancing for the Open University Library and Spark
Knowledge. He created Everest Informatics
<http://www.e-informatix.com>, for freelance/contracting purposes and
marketing knowledge/information services and products.
Presently working for CFBT, an educational services provider, he
maintains Everest Informatics, as agent for Datanet, a business class
ISP, and for enquiries on Knowledge/Information projects. He can be
contacted at <ae@e-informatix.com>.
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