Making sense of weblogs in the intranet

What they are, why people are using them, making them useful for
knowledge management

Usability Professionals Association

16 September 2003

Michael Angeles
michael@studioid.com
http://studioid.com
Disclaimer
What this is
A discussion about weblogging for knowledge
management within corporations
A discussion of my organization’s role -- how
we view ourselves in terms of providing
weblogging support
A look at our long view -- how we’re planning
to support webloggers
A history of web publishing in my intranet
Before we get into the nitty gritty of weblogs ...
a very brief and incomplete history of Lucent
intranet web publishing
How web publishing has evolved
Who’s needs are being met by web-based
publishing
Let’s start with a timeline
Technologies First there was the command line

Internet NCSA
protocols Mosaic
(Archie, (11/
FTP, 1993)
telnet)
Company Milestones

LINUS
IIS Milestones

(Client-
server)

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003

Web browser timeline: http://www.blooberry.com/indexdot/history/browsers.htm

Technologies Then came pictures

Internet NCSA Netscape

protocols Mosaic Navigator 1
(Archie, (11/ (12/1994)
FTP, 1993)
telnet)
Company Milestones

Simple sites
proliferate;
Hand editted and FTPed;
Front Page webmasters
(1995-96)

LINUS InfoView ISG created;

IIS Milestones

(Client-server) Digital Library produces

(1994-1995) customized
db-driven
BU intranet
sites
(7/96)

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Technologies Then useful data competed for screen space

Internet NCSA Netscape

protocols Mosaic Navigator 1
(Archie, (11/ (12/1994)
FTP, 1993)
telnet)
Company Milestones

Simple sites ONSource,

proliferate; first BU
Hand editted and FTPed; portal
Front Page webmasters (1/1999)
(1995-96)

LINUS InfoView ISG created; IIS ISG

IIS Milestones

(Client-server) Digital Library produces indexing supports BU

(1994-1995) customized process portals with
db-driven BU introduced indexed
intranet sites (1998) content
(7/96) Business (1999)
taxonomy
development
(1998)

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Technologies The bubble bursts and standards are born

Internet NCSA Netscape

protocols Mosaic Navigator 1
(Archie, (11/ (12/1994)
FTP, 1993)
telnet)
Company Milestones

Simple sites ONSource, Portals close; MyLucent,

proliferate; first BU subdomains Company
Hand editted and FTPed; portal removed portal
Front Page webmasters (1/1999) Migration to (7/2001)
(1995-96) MyLucent
begins
(2000-2001)

LINUS InfoView ISG created; IIS indexing ISG supports ISG

IIS Milestones

(Client-server) Digital Library produces process BU portals ceases to

(1994-1995) customized introduced with indexed produce
db-driven BU (1998) content custom
intranet sites (1999) sites
(7/96) Business (2000)
taxonomy
development
(1998)

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Technologies Then the bottom really falls out

Internet NCSA Netscape

protocols Mosaic Navigator 1
(Archie, (11/ (12/1994)
FTP, 1993)
telnet)
Company Milestones

Simple sites ONSource, Portals close; MyLucent, Much of

proliferate; first BU subdomains Company CIO
Hand editted and FTPed; portal removed portal supporting
Front Page webmasters (1/1999) Migration to (7/2001) MyLucent
(1995-96) MyLucent is laid off
begins (2003)
(2000-2001)

LINUS InfoView ISG created; IIS indexing ISG supports ISG ceases
IIS Milestones

(Client-server) Digital Library produces process BU portals to produce

(1994-1995) customized introduced with indexed custom
db-driven BU (1998) content sites
intranet sites (1999) (2000)
(7/96) Business
taxonomy
development
(1998)

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Technologies And everything old is new again

Internet NCSA Netscape

protocols Mosaic Navigator 1
(Archie, (11/ (12/1994)
FTP, 1993)
telnet)
Company Milestones

Simple sites ONSource, Portals close; MyLucent, Much of

proliferate; first BU subdomains Company CIO
Hand editted and FTPed; portal removed portal supporting
Front Page webmasters (1/1999) Migration to (7/2001) MyLucent
(1995-96) MyLucent is laid off
begins (2003)
(2000-2001)

LINUS InfoView ISG created; IIS indexing ISG supports ISG ceases
IIS Milestones

(Client-server) Digital Library produces process BU portals to produce We are here

(1994-1995) customized introduced with indexed custom Blogs appear;
db-driven BU (1998) content sites Blog-related
intranet sites (1999) (2000) services
(7/96) Business (2002)
taxonomy
development
(1998)

Pre-web 1994 1995 1996 1997 1998 1999 2000 2001 2002 2003
Really seems like web-publishing chaos
There’s a story to be told in that diversity/chaos

Our intranet story can best be explained in

terms of people
Diverse set set of user types
Diverse set of needs
Diverse set of technologies used to meet
these needs
Who’s who in intranet web-publishing
Knowledge workers
Researchers, engineers, sales force

Communities of Practice (CoPs)

Communities organized around projects, products or
topics (e.g. Mobility)

Chief Information Organization (CIO)

Enterprise Information Technology people

Executives
Officers, upper managers
 Knowledge worker
Researchers, engineers, sales force
"I need to capture and
distribute information about
companies and contracts I'm
working with. Email and the
telephone is usually the fastest
way to do this, but I want to
spread this information
throughout the company."
Background
Knowledge workers are closes to
our products. Depending on their
role and Business Unit, typical
kowledge workers might do
research related to products or
prepare contracts for customers.
One common need is to document
and communicate knowledge within
their department.
Goals
Create and share personal or
project-related knowledge.
Tools
HTML editors (Front page,
HomeSite, vi) and FTP, Weblog
applications (Radio Userland,
Movable Type), Email
Community of practice
Groups organized around specific
topics or projects
"We increase our personal and
group intelligence through
collaboration and knowledge-
share."
Background
Communities of practice are formed
around topics, product lines,
technologies, customers. CoPs are
typically interested in collaboration
and knowledge-share at a group
level.
Goals
Increase awareness and knowledge
on topic of interest to CoP for
group or personal gain.
Tools
Document management systems,
Groupware, BBS, Wiki, Email
discussion groups
CIO manager
CIO directors and managers
"I satisfy my user demands
using our standard toolbox of
technologies. CIO works hard
to establish the solutions that
deliver the most bang for the
buck"
Background
The CIO organization is interested
in establishing technical standards
within the company. They are
looking for ways to efficiently meet
information systems needs in a
manner that reflects the budget and
resources of the company.
Goals
Meet user needs with standardized
processes and information
technologies.
Tools
Enterprise portals, document
management systems
Executive
Executive officers, vice presidents
and upper management
"In this tight, competitive
economy, we have to operate
at world-class levels, but we
have to be lean and cut costs
where we can.
Background
Upper management is focussed on
keeping the company profitable.
One of the popular ways to do this
is to control costs. Management is
looking to reduce duplication and
leverage resources in order to cut
back on unnecessary costs.
Goals
Lead organization to profitability.
Diversity is a good thing
Nardi & O'Day on information ecology
A system of people, practices, values, and technologies at work in a local
environment.

A healthy ecology is one that is dynamic (changing/evolving), diverse (made

up of different types of people and technologies) and that allows for a
diverse set of people and technologies to work in a complementary way.

The new knowledge management

Deloitte: bridging the gaps between people and systems depends on first
creating the conditions that allow people to participate in KM locally rather
than enforcing technology-based KM policies. These local activities are
bridged in Knowledge Network systems

Forrester: organizations have begun to move away from single-solution KM

packages
Analysis of Lucent information ecology

Diversity remains the only constant

Our information ecology is diverse
Our needs are diverse
Our web publishing toolbox is
diverse
Our web publishing tools
Database driven publishing -- CMS and
document management
Home grown and low-cost server-based
publishing tools
Desktop personal publishing tools
Groupware applications
What do we do with this diversity?

Maybe these diverse needs and

approaches should be accepted
The goal should be to work with this
diverse set of user needs and
technologies
To find some way to glue the data
together to make it usable
Enter the weblog
Let's step back a bit and talk about weblogs.
They're the new up and comers in web
publishing on the intranet.

Weblogs are growing in popularity and there

are lot of inexpensive weblog tools to
choose from today.
A quick look at what weblogs are
A web site (usu. of personal/non-commercial origin)
that is frequently updated with information and links
to resources within a particular subject area.

The published information is presented much like a

journal on the web in reverse chronological order.

In 1999 Peter Merholz coins the term "Blog".

Rebecca Blood. “weblogs: a history and perspective”.

Rebecca’s pocket. Essay discussing the emergence
of weblogs. http://www.rebeccablood.net/essays/
weblog_history.html
What do people blog?

Personal opinion
Industry & topic specific information &
opinion
Very often meta discussion / revolve
around specific web page content
(URL) -- discussion about something
some else has written about
Blogging also means sharing
Weblogs allow you to publish a news feed
A news feed can be a data file listing recent
entries from a weblog
Or a data file listing recent news headlines
from a commercial source.
Blog feed formats are in XML format
(specifically RSS or RDF)
Look for these buttons:
Reading blogs in a news aggregator
Aside from being tools to publish and share,
weblogs often offer a mechanism for reading
other weblog data in XML feeds
News readers / aggregators
An application that retrieves and displays
news feeds from multiple sources.
Client application -- runs on PC for
individual use.
Server application – runs on a web server
for group use.
Creating and publishing a blog entry
Usually HTML form based interface for
creating each blog entry
Really entering a simple database record
Enter title
Body of text
Category (optional)
Author (auto-entered)
Date (auto-entered)
Blogging variations
Variations of the process -- URL based
blogging
Since a lot of the time blog entries contain
meta-discussion, the starting point is a
pointer to an article someone else has
written
Blog from an aggregator
Blog from a bookmarklet
Let’s see how it works...
Movable Type

1. Enter title

2. Enter body
of blog entry

3. Select category

4. Publish
Click here to read comments
Enter the k-log
Sounds good, but why use them
inside the intranet?

In the current economy, some

individuals are breaking away
from traditional KM to do KM on
a Budget.

Low cost weblog tools are

available to help with 2 core
concerns of KM.

Knowledge creation
(publishing)

Knowledge sharing (XML

feed aggregators)
K-logging is about knowledge share
Bloggers are often subject area experts
“Free-loading” on these experts helps grow
the knowledge of individuals and the
organization
There’s advantage in belonging to a social
network formed around research interests
Fast, cheap and in total control
Fast (and easy): Set up is quick and doesn't
require much expertise.
Cheap: Powerful personal publishing solutions
at low cost.
In total control: The real power in weblogging
is that it puts knowledge creation in your
control and also allows you a standards-based
mechanism for pushing/sharing that
information.
How we are supporting k-loggers
XML feeds of databases
News data
ABI/Inform
Technical documents
Almost any data set can be mapped to the
standard RSS format
Email discussion groups, CRM, directory of
new personnel
What our users do with the RSS
Adding the URL for the RSS feed
to your news aggregator.
In news aggregator view, user sees a story they want to blog

Selecting the POST button copies that story's URL and title to a new blog entry in the editing form.
So where do we go from here?

Keep close watch of weblogs in the

enterprise
As weblogs profilerate, work on
strategy for making blog data usable
Talk to the bloggers who might benefit
from sharing and finding
Consider your place in the ecology
The natural progression in an information
ecology where k-loggers start to proliferate is
to seek a system that pulls together the
disparate k-log data.
The role of the information services
organization is to glue together the aggregate
of produced k-log data for its users to
consume.
Collecting blog data
How do we do that?
Use metadata to create rich bibliographic
records of each entry (author, publisher,
date, etc.)
Included in the process of recording
metadata is to help people make sense of
that data by classifying it -- by topic/subject.
Making blog data findable
Make the aggregate of collected blog entries
available by publishing it
Make searching and browsing of indexed blog
entries possible
Our organization already does a lot of the text
parsing, classification and republishing that is
needed to make a Blog aggregator fly
Offer varying means of use and notification when
new relevant data comes in. Email alerts, etc.
Our process
Start: Raw feed from various sources
(vendor data, internal databases, weblogs)

Data from external feeds

are loaded into server
Human indexers review auto-classification
and correct or add index terms

Machine algorithms do some

clustering and auto-classification
using subject taxonomy

Classified data is stored

Finish: Classified data is served through

web server requests
One way you could do it
The brute force method
Use an aggregator (e.g. Radio or Drupal)
Get humans to blog and classify the blogs
Web-based aggregator (brute-force) example
Web-based aggregator (brute-force) example
Other ways you can do it
Just use search software with automated
classification
Consider our hybrid approach
Success
It’s important to note that the success of KM
depends on the willingness of individuals to
participate by using tools that will integrate
seamlessly with the organization’s knowledge
network.
Deloitte suggests that while localized KM
efforts may not require knowledge networks in
small organizations, the advantage of
knowledge networks becomes manifest when
communities express the need to re-use that
localized knowledge.
Sustainability
Another important factor is sustainability
If you plan on doing automated classification
of data human resources will be needed at
some point to set up taxonomies
If you plan on a hybrid machine and human
aided indexing process, full time staff might be
needed
Closing thoughts
Weblogs are really not different as a
technology, although they put control of
publishing closer to users
Classifying weblog data can be difficult and
requires human resources, but some search
applications can help
Value diversity and above all, support users’
needs
Allow users to produce organizational
knowledge using whatever tools they choose
Further reading on info. ecology and KM
Bonnie Nardi and Vicki O’Day. “Information Ecologies:
Using Technology with Heart.” First Monday. http://
www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_5/nardi_contents.html

Robin Athey. “Collaborative Knowledge Networks:

Driving Workforce Performance Through Web-enabled
Communities”. Deloitte Consulting. http://www.dc.com/
Insights/research/cross_ind/ckn_workforce.asp

Joshua Walker. “The New Knowledge Management

Landscape”. Forrester Research. http://
www.forrester.com/ER/Research/Brief/Excerpt/
0,1317,15338,00.html
Further reading about k-logs
John Foley. "Are You Blogging Yet?" InfoWorld. Discusses the
value of using weblogs in the enterprise. http://
www.informationweek.com/story/IWK20020719S0001

David Weinberger. “The 99 cent KM solution”. KM World. http://

www.kmworld.com/publications/magazine/
index.cfm?action=readarticle&Article_ID=1337&Publication_ID=76

John Robb. “A simple approach to KM”. K-Logs discussion group.

http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs/message/313

K-Logs discussion group. Email discussion group that discussions

klogging for KM. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/klogs

A Klog Apart. Phil Wolff's klog about klogging. http://

www.dijest.com/aka/
Where to get software
Weblog software
“Weblog publishers.” Open Directory Project. http://dmoz.org/
Computers/Internet/On_the_Web/Weblogs/Tools/Publishers/

RSS news reader client software

“News Readers.” Open Directory Project. http://dmoz.org/Reference/
Libraries/Library_and_Information_Science/Technical_Services/
Cataloguing/Metadata/RDF/Applications/RSS/News_Readers/

Server-based news aggregator software

AmphetaDesk http://www.disobey.com/amphetadesk/

blagg. http://www.oreillynet.com/~rael/lang/perl/blagg/

Drupal. http://drupal.org

Radio Userland. http://radio.userland.com/multiAuthorWeblogTool

Thank you :: The end