A common concern I often hear from managers who don't understand Web 2.0 and social media is: "Won't openness be abused?" or "Can we trust our employees to have control over our web?".

Questions which are based upon fear can never be answered satisfactorily. Instead I direct you to Uncyclopedia. Now Wikipedia defines penguins in this manner, while Uncyclopedia defines penguins this way. Assuming you allow your employees to use social networking tools at work, your internal knowledge base will shortly take upon similarities to this example.

My personal input is given below: (read full article)

In early 2005, the invasion took on some real steam. This map of the Lake Superior
region shows an area which the locals now know as Ile de Penguine. As
you can see, the official cartographers, demonstrating their Anglo-Saxon
prejudices, have changed the name to the Penguin Archipelago. This
island chain is now being used for a new northern invasion route into
the USA.

.

The penguins have already begun to prepare for an expected American counter-attack by
calling in powerful allies such as Pingu, Linux and Morgan Freeman to
aid them in seeking out the secret all powerful weapon said to send
waves of unspeakable and horrific 70's funk music at its holders
enemies. An earlier version of this weapon is shown below during recent
Canadian war games.

.


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This leads to the obvious question. Dare you trust your employees? Thankfully the answer to that question where I work is "yes".  In closing, if you really believe that your knowledge base would end up like my penguin example … please re-examine yourself.

Google Book Search just brought online a fantastic feature which allows one to browse at no cost back issues of popular magazines (read announcement). Given this blog's focus on engineering and technology, what better way to explore this cool new feature than by looking at history via the eyes of Popular Science and Popular Mechanics? My search methodology would work for any other magazine! Click upon either of the two images for an expanded view. The images annotate /explain the search process.

My search query results return the cover images for the relevant year. One then just clicks upon any image to browse / read all the articles within that issue. Super Cool !!! This post will be linked via the Engineering Learning Wiki. For the moment, I'll link it is the manuals section of the wiki.

For my purposes I've chosen to do the following searches:

• Google Book Search – Popular Science: 1941 (in honor of Pearl Harbor)
• Google Book Search – Popular Mechanics: 1956 (the year I was born)

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From the NY Times: For Innovators, There Is Brainpower in Numbers:

How did I learn of this article? Yammer! A colleague at my company posted some information about the innovation process. Here are my comments about this kind of tool … essentially Twitter for the corporation:

• My first impression of Yammer … what a waste!
• My second impression … boy was I stupid!
• Yammer introduces the unknown to me … valuable people and ideas in my company

Let me expand. My expectation was that listening to folks … even my colleagues post small messages a la Twitter would be a distraction, and a waste of my time. Instead I discovered:

• Via Yammer I joined groups that pertained to my job
• People from my groups who I DID NOT originally know provided me valuable knowledge

In summation, it's easy to talk to the folks you know. It's easy to seek ideas from your known peers. The big question … how do you discover knowledge hidden to you within your own organization? My company has over 120,000 employees. So far, I don't know everyone. Yammer helps me expand my knowledge base. Thus, this experiment is worth continuing.

Finally, link to my Minnesota Yammer colleague … and watch his overview on how to update your Yammer profile (via Slideshare).

Where do you get your weather forecast! A few minutes ago, when I clicked upon details via iGoogle for Minneapolis, I discovered the current conditions were from my own research center!  I knew some of the guys had a weather station on the roof, I just didn't know that it was linked to Google!  Cool. Take a look; click upon the image to view full sized.

My job at large Fortune 100 company involves the optimization of web collaboration and knowledge sharing. One primary task I have is trying to help my users find relevant information on our intranet. Thus, it's 10 pm … where is your metadata?

Seriously, how many of you use standard corporate templates for Powerpoint or Word documents? Have you ever stopped to see what is contained in the document properties? or do you just re-save your work with a new file name? In that case, many of your files have exactly the same name as far as a search engine is concerned … such as <IBM Template> or <Motorola Template>. You get the idea. Imagine how hard it is for a dumb robot (i.e. the search engine) to determine what content is most relevant.

Search engines look primarily at two document elements, title and subject. Here is an excerpt from John Webb Consulting's overview on office metadata:

Title Field
Titles appear as the caption for documents in search results and give users an idea what the document is about. Titles are searchable and contribute greatly to search engine rankings.

• Use the title as it appears in the document.
• If you have to cut the title short, end the title with complete words, not in the middle of words.
• Search engines will generally display the first 90 or so characters of the title, so make sure the first 90 characters contain the most meaningful and important information.

Subject Field (Summary)
Information in this field appears as the document summary in search results and can also help contribute to ranking in the search engine.

• Include terms used in the document – this enhances the ranking in search results.
• Summaries should not exceed 200 characters.
• Keep it simple.
• Make each description unique.

Ignore all the other document properties fields. If you follow this advice, what you create may actually be found on your intranet!