July 13, 2003
Some folks get it
Every now and then I have the fortunate occasion to speak with people that are truly capable of having wide-ranging discussions on tech matters. Friday afternoon I had just such a conversation with Phil Wolff. Besides having a voice highly reminiscent of Peter Sagel from NPR's Wait, wait, don't tell me!" radio show, Phil comes across as a really sharp guy.
What was most interesting was the back and forth discussion on how weblogs and knowledge management principles are interrelated. From my point of view, weblogs in the enterprise are essentially KM systems of one, without the punitive "HR weapon of management" aspects. I found it rather funny to see his summarization of quotes. He left out my "when did porn become mainstream and advertising become underground?" comment. Perhaps some quips are a little too much for some audiences.
There's a number of amazing things the KM people have encountered. It's both fascinating and painful to watch the weblogging crowd learn the same lessons. The fortunate difference is weblogging can truly remain useful, independent of whether it's following proper management dictates. Unlike KM efforts that often seem to have failed midstream when management tried using it as an HR weapon. Almost immediately the users got wise and refused to participate, or did so in such a way as to doom the KM effort to failure. This is basically an extension of my Quantum Data concept. Which, in a nutshell, says you can't take the results of the experiment and use it against the particpants. They'll refuse to participate or otherwise taint the output of the experiment. (Insert apologies to Schroeginger's cat here)
That's where my comment "Nothing brings the experts out of the woodwork like an idiot speaking his mind" comes from. Rather than look at trying to force the experts to come out at the beginning, look at the slashdot effect. I refuse to read Slashdot's forum comments until about three days after it's hit the main site. At that point I go looking for the very long comments. These are usually incredibly insightful comments from people truly in the know regarding the article's focus. They generally sit back and watch the idiots offer their comments. Comments often rife with errors. It's those errors that so thoroughly rile up the experts that they're driven to post. If just to shut the idiots up. That's a LOT more valuable than had they been called upon to comment at the outset. Instead they get so fed up by the nitiwits mouthing off they shout out the real truths. THIS is where corporate weblogging will undoubtedly see some interesting developments. The newbie hell bent on making a name for him/herself will eventually throroughly irritate the old guard such that they'll be goaded into commenting. If the experts were compelled to participate at the start they'd likely refuse, if just from the aspect of not sharing their hard-earned secrets. But let some newbie start grabbing the spotlight, based on naivete or errors and they'll eventually refuse to just sit idly by watching the audience following the newbie. Yeah, there's certainly the risk of the newbie being punished within the corporate hierarchy. But given the truly personal nature of weblogging that newbie will just go undercover and post it pseudonymously from the outside. Nothing inspires greatness like telling someone what they can't do! Likewise nothing spurs the complacent authority to react like upstarts. Here's to the upstarts! For even if they don't have the answers, they'll draw out those that do.
Getting to these conclusions is often quite difficult in a text-only online fashion. Some of the theories only emerge when actual face to face or verbal conversations are had. Nothing speaks like conversational metadata. A pause, a slight tone of disagreement, those little 'uh-huh' or 'uh-unh' agree/disagree grunts. Those are invaluable in developing a rich picture of the concepts being discussed. And they're totally missing from most online conversations. It'll be interesting to see how weblogging comes to grips with these. If anything I've seen online communication become a powerful motivator for more physical interaction. A half-day's face-to-face meeting or an hour's phone call often work wonders even megabytes of text just never seem to provide.
I've had the delight to engage many significant folks in physical conversations and I thank them for the privilege. Likewise, Phil is yet another one of these significant folks and I'm grateful to have had a chance to speak with him. Keep up the good work Phil, we'll talk again soon.
